The Turkish Social Science Association
held an international symposium on "Acts of Resistance against Globalisation
from the South" in Ankara between the fifth and the seventh of September
2005. The organisers set the objective of the symposium as an attempt
to discuss and exchange experiences on "intellectual, academic, political
and social acts of resistance to the domination of capital taking place
at the periphery of the imperialist system". It was the understanding
of the organisers that the process of so-called globalisation or changes
taking place under the rubric of "neo-liberal policies or transformations"
would be better defined as the attempt to implement the full, limitless
domination of capital on our societies.
At the opening session it was emphasised that a discussion on "acts
of resistance against globalisation" would have been impossible a
decade ago when so-called globalisation seemed to be the only destiny
for human beings in the near and far future and any act of resistance
to the inevitable process was ridiculed, considered totally irrelevant
and futile. Since then times have changed. At the intellectual and, partly,
academic levels, resistance to "established wisdom" resulted
in neo-liberal recipes losing their respectability and it is now the "TINA"
slogan which sounds ridiculous. Bourgeois academics have been re-discovering
Marx and even the World Bank experts are borrowing (without reference)
Marxian theories of the state (e.g. "crony capitalism" or "capture
of the state by oligarchic groups") But, more importantly, a younger
generation of left intellectuals from the South are analysing their societies
and the world in a critical and creative manner. The ugly face of American
imperialism has facilitated their task.
Social resistance is taking place in an effective manner through internationalisation
of the anti-globalisation movements and, more importantly, at the domestic-national
levels. Limits of resistance to imperialism and international capital
by domestic ruling groups are becoming more and more clear. Popular classes
have shown that their struggle against the limitless domination of capital
can topple governments or hinder the implementation of neo-liberal programs.
However, the capacity of working people to carry their aspirations to
the political arena and to induce societal change is confronting serious
barriers.
The foregoing observations, more or less, defined the framework of the
symposium discussions which followed. There was one consistent theme running
across all the lectures and debates: globalisation is the intensified
practice of imperialism and, because it is a universal phenomenon, there
has to be international cooperation, coordination and exchange of experience
in resistance. As the new international accumulation dynamic shifts from
a policy of 'beggar thy neighbour' to 'beggar your own working class,'
the contradictions inherent in the hierarchical international division
of labour have to be challenged by a collective platform of working people
everywhere in the world. While growing economic disparities tend to create
divisions among the victims of international capital, the exigencies of
social and political struggle demands ever greater unity among them.
From the worker-operated factories in Argentina and the anti-privatisation
movement in Turkey to the new phenomenon of housing cooperatives in China
and Indian women's resistance to commodification of marital relations,
the momentum against the rule of capital is building. Whereas for most
of the twentieth century the industrial working class was concentrated
in the developed world, between 1980 and 2000, the industrial working
class in the third world grew by about two-fold. Sweatshop labour market
conditions in the developing world have contributed to raising corporate
profits to their highest levels during the last decade of the last century.
Capital's ability to relocate production around the world expands the
private appropriation of the gains from the development of productive
forces, and from the exploitation of labour in the underdeveloped countries.
Global capital does not hesitate to aggressively encroach on and even
re-colonise societies. To rephrase Marx, there is more 'blood and fire'
in shifting primitive capitalist accumulation to the underdeveloped world.
Globally as well, the absolute general law of capitalist development is
in evidence: as technological progress creates the potential for universal
emancipation from want, it also creates unemployment and misery by displacing
workers, evicting peasants and forcing all toilers to accept worsening
living and working conditions.
Globalization is not the simple extension of capitalism to the Third World,
because capitalist social relations have existed in the Third World for
more than a century. The current process of globalization gears up less
productive capital in the 'developing' world to the requirements of its
accumulation by extra-economic and, at times, violent means –thus, in
certain respects, reproducing the pattern of the nineteenth century. The
pace of uneven development and disparities in incomes and living conditions
increases accumulation in both the core and in the periphery, and the
violence that underlies it. The principal contradiction of capitalism,
which appears now as the contradiction between globally socialised production
and its private appropriation, is intensifying. A systematic onslaught
of capital is taking place against the social and economic acquisitions
of working people, both in the North and in the South, realised through
class struggles and national liberation movements since the nineteenth
century. The more aggressive this onslaught, the more subservient the
states become to the rule of capital.
The so-called 'war on terror', a close kin of the war on Iraq, amounts
to an assault on civil liberties and a display of brutal force to psychologically
subjugate the working peoples around the world. For the US empire propped
by the trinity of guns, oil and the dollar, dollarizing and controlling
oil provides it with a stranglehold on imperial rivals in the core and
rising powers in the 'developing' world. Global financial integration
and dollarization allow the US to continue to enjoy budget and external
balance deficits, borrow in its own currency and engage in imperialist
aggression. The US has become a liability to the global financial system
and global capital is, once more, looking for a soft landing.
The unthinkable withdrawal from Gaza of the Israeli army, the triumphs
of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, Iran's insistence on its sovereign
right to pursue peaceful nuclear research, the resilience of the Cuban
people under the US trade embargo are vital signs to note in the struggle
against the imperialist intervention and aggression. The disappointing
experience in some countries demonstrates that the widespread grassroots
organization and mobilization of the masses is essential to any substantial
change in state policies. The ballot-box is no subsitute for mass political
mobilization.
Supporting the struggle of the Iraqi people for national liberation should
be one of the foremost current concerns of the international working class.
It is impossible for the US to achieve its political ends in Iraq. The
Iraqi people have experienced and are still undergoing untold suffering
from the first Gulf War, the UN-imposed embargo, and the invasion and
current occupation. But they are seasoned from their anti-British colonial
struggle and sustained by various forms of social bonds. The crimes of
the US army mount and now, similar to the Vietnam War, the US is threatening
to extend the war to neighbouring states, Syria and Iran, and enlisting
its local ally Israel in its aggression.
As the contrast between the potential for universal human prosperity and
the demeaning social existence of toilers under the dictate of capital
grows ever sharper, working people and progressives around the world face
the options of surrendering to the present social order based on competition,
greed and exploitation, or of demolishing it to build a new world based
on the universal human values of egalitarianism, solidarity, cooperation
and freedom.