I appreciate the responses to my posting on economic strategies and the
state. I also hope that, whatever discussion we have, we can build upon
rather than recreate our past discussion/debate of national versus
international perspectives on strategy.
More specifically, I think there is a need for us all to be more precise
about what we think and the organizing implications of our thinking. For
example, I recently read a book that many people had recommended: Global
Visions: Beyond the New World Order, edited by Jeremy Brecher, John Brown
Childs, and Jill Cutler. While I found a number of the articles very
interesting I found the book itself very frustrating. The reason was that
each author tended to speak to similar issues but with different terms,
leading to a clack of overall clarity about both problems and responses.
For example: in arguing for the need for a new global vision some authors
said that it was now necessary because of the kind of problems we face,
such as environmental destruction, militarism. These problems went beyond
the national state and thus required global transborder organizing. Other
authors argued that we needed a new global vision and transborder
organizing because transnational corporations had now brought us under one
integrated international division of labor. Thus, like it or not we are
all subject to the same dynamic and thus must organize collectively if we
are to successfully confront it. While there is a relationship between
the problems and the operation of transnational corporations, the nature
of that relationship was never made clear. In fact depending on this
starting point, writers often chose to emphasis very different organizing
strategies. (more later.)
There also seemed to be considerable difference between those who saw the
global process proceeding on a primarily regional basis and those who saw
it truly global. Again different organizing strategies follow.
There was also considerable difference between how the authors understood
what was driving the regional/global process. Some pointed to
transnational corporations. Others pointed to what was loosely called the
global power center which included the governments of the North plus the
IMF/WB etc. Transnational corporations while included seemed to occupy a
less prominent place.
At the risk of oversimplifying, it seemed that those who saw the process
as driven by the global power center tended to focus on the need to
challenge the authority of the state and to build a grassroots transborder
movement based on common interests in confronting the global or regional
problems of environmental destruction, militarism, and poverty. Those who
understood the process as being driven by transnational corporations
tended to see the corporation rather than the state as the key enemy
(dominating institution) and called for transborder movements, with unions
playing a key role, to restrict the operation of the corporation. Both
groups certainly saw themselves as anti capitalist, but based on different
understandings of the global process, tended to focus on different
institutions and dynamics, different problems, and thus different
organizing strategies.
Here I am looking only at the position of those who support a transborder
emphasis. The point is that I think we need to clarify what we mean by
terms so that we can really sharpen our thinking about what is happening,
why it is happening, and how we should build our response. I am hoping
that PEN discussions can help to do this.
Marty Hart-Landsberg
