>/** nacla.report: 308.4 **/
>** Written  9:28 AM  Oct 24, 1997 by nacla in cdp:nacla.report **
>Reprinted from the May/June 1997 issue of NACLA Report on the
>Americas. For subscription information, E-Mail to nacla-i...@igc.apc.org

>Globalization and its Discontents: The Rise of Postmodern
>Socialisms

>by Roger Burbach, Orlando Nunez and Boris Kagarlitsky, Pluto
>Press, 1997, 196 pp., $49.95 (cloth), $19.95 (paper).

>The authors of this provocative book - activist/theorists from
>California, Nicaragua and the ex-Soviet Union - take "globalization" as a
>given. "In effect," they say, "capitalism and technology have collapsed
>time and space."

>And in the regions of the world where most people live, "governments
>find themselves weakened as international capital imposes its
>prerogatives on them." Those governments have simply become
>"administrative and law-enforcement complexes" for neoliberal
>capitalism.

>Whether this state of affairs represents anything qualitatively new in the
>history of capitalist development can be - and has been - called into
>question, but the authors are not interested in that particular debate.
>Rather, they are out to engage the reader on the nature of the system's
>"discontents," which, they claim, represent the first steps toward
>"postmodern socialisms."

>The current "world disorder," they say, has produced four
>"anti-systemic challenges." These are underclass crime and violence,
>ethnic and racial movements (like the Muslim nation of Farrakhan or the
>Zapatista rebels), Islamic fundamentalism (now spreading beyond the Middle
>East) and urban rebellions (linking the first three phenomena). These
>challenges, unlike the old "modern" challenges to capitalism, do not
>contest for state power. Rather, they attempt to construct power in the
>interstices of the old system. Their global significance is linked to the
>downfall of modernism: the "destabilizing impact" of late capitalism, the
>"ideological impasse" of liberal democracy and the collapse of (real
>existing) socialism as a political-economic alternative.

>One can argue that there is nothing particularly "postmodern" about
>self-help groups based on racial identity or about the political power of
>strongly held religious beliefs. And while the Zapatista National
>Liberation Army is on everybody's list as the first postmodern guerrilla
>movement, the Zapatistas can also be seen as very unpostmodern heirs to the
>Mexican Revolution, rebelling over questions of land and the tyranny of
>landlords - hardly "postmodern" questions.

>Nonetheless, if  the "globalization" they describe really is something new,
>Burbach, Nunez and Kagarlitsky may have some justification in sweeping
>these diverse political actors into a new political movement. There has
>been an exhaustion, say the authors, of the legacy of the French Revolution
>- the legacy that has shaped the politics of the past two centuries with
>its emphasis on the quest for state power and on the centrality of
>political parties to advance all interests and philosophies. If that is
>correct, these diverse challenges may indeed be, at least chronologically,
>postmodern.

>The authors link these "challenges" to the rise of "new postmodern
>economies" which "are comprised of highly differentiated activities and
>economic islands that rise phoenix-like out of what capitalism discards."
>These include the street vendors of the informal economies of Latin
>America, weak enterprises sold to workers, "cottage" activities of small
>firms that subcontract to big capital, the new (impoverished) peasantry of
>the ex-USSR, township enterprises of China and microenterprises in general.

>Again, there may be nothing new here. Capitalism has always
>marginalized certain activities, though many marginalized activities
>(like 16-hour workdays in off-shore sweatshops) have, in turn, been
>central to the functioning of the system.

>So having been "discarded," are these "highly differentiated
>activities" really outside the capitalist mode of production?  For
>Burbach, et. al., these marginal activities "are part of an emergent
>mode of production" and, as such, give rise to potential insurgencies: "A
>wave of mercantile and petty productive activity," say the authors, "will
>gradually begin to coalesce with other popular endeavors like cooperatives,
>worker-run concerns and municipal or township enterprises."

>This will produce "a vast class of associate producers," and a
>synthesis of capitalism and socialism.

>The content of the "postmodern" project comes out of the "new left"
>project of the 1960s. The authors emphasize participatory democracy,
>human rights, environmentalism, pacifism as an ideal, feminism,
>economic democracy, sexual freedom, social justice, ethnic liberation,
>local power and workers' power. These were the watchwords of Paris, 1968.

>Indeed, say the authors, "we are witnessing the struggles that burst
>into the open in 1968." A "new individuality" is being created which,
>in contrast to the old self-absorbed individualism, is defined "in
>relation to one's sexuality, to a particular social or ethnic group, or
>even in relation to other species or the environment."

>They laud the new social movements which organize quests "to satisfy
>individual needs and desires." The postmodern movements are
>multicultural in scope, involving people of color, Indian movements and
>religious people all organized around issues of culture. "If socialism is
>to be a part of this process," they say, "it will assume many forms. This
>is why we speak of postmodern socialisms." As the left searches for new
>directions and footholds, the book, more manifesto than analysis, makes an
>interesting contribution to the debate.

>** End of text from cdp:nacla.report **

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