Harry Targ
Introduction
Contemporary global society appears to be dominated
by massive starvation, climate crises, terrorist violence, police shootings,
street demonstrations, unpredictable election outcomes, and an enormous array
of political mobilizations. To some the historical period in which we live is
understood as one of global chaos; a time of uncontrollable and unpredictable
physical and social change. For others, the period is best understood from a
post-modern lens; claiming that social, political, or environmental circumstances
cannot be explained by any coherent narrative or explanation.
However, surveying literature on global political
economy, social movements, and contemporary history suggests that various
common themes and connections can be drawn to help us better understand the
twenty-first century and become more effective political actors. Understanding
four inextricably linked political, social, and economic factors may give clarity
to an understanding of the twenty-first century and inform debates about how to
change circumstances. These phenomena are neoliberal globalization, austerity,
resistance, and reaction.
Neoliberal
Globalization
Neoliberal globalization refers to the changing
features of the international political economy that have emerged from the
1970s. Globalization is a shorthand way of referring to the qualitative
increase in cross-national interactions of corporations, banks,
non-governmental institutions, and people that are supported by or challenge
the prerogatives of traditional nation-states. The rise of the internet has
virtually eliminated space and time as variables constraining the development
of global corporations, financial speculation, war making and social movements
in resistance.
Neoliberalism connotes a kind of economic policy
that governments, international financial institutions, and corporations and
banks promote to transform the way nations and people organize their lives. The
neoliberal policy agenda demands that countries cut their public spending,
privatize their public institutions, and deregulate their economies. In
addition, poor countries are required to redirect their economies to produce
commodities for export to earn scarce foreign exchange (to repay the debt
accrued to foreign banks).
During the 1970s dramatic increases in the price of
oil most countries needed to develop forced them to borrow money to maintain
their oil imports. Banks which had accumulated huge surplus capital from oil
profits needed to put the money to use. The two forces, the need to borrow
money on the one hand and the need to lend it on the other, created the global
system of debt that gave the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank,
private banks, and a handful of rich countries the leverage to transform
international politics and economics.
Austerity
The neoliberal policies that spread to virtually
every nation increased globalization and led every country to adopt these policies
which are often called austerity. Public
institutions have been privatized; benefits to citizens have been reduced ranging
from health care to education, to transportation, to old age assistance; and
guaranteed minimally acceptable wages have been allowed to stagnate. Worker
rights to organize have been eliminated. Jobs were lost. Those who still could
work have lost workplace benefits. Work is being routinized and demand for
skilled work has declined. And through a combination of administrative changes
and technology more and more work has become obsolete.
Therefore, work itself has
become precarious and as a consequence the informal sector has grown; that is
people hustling on the streets and back allies to make some money have become characteristic
features of the quest for survival across Latin America, Africa, and Asia and big
cities in rich and poor countries. Millions, particularly those who lost access
to land, have become migrants desperately seeking work. And all this has proceeded
as governments cut taxes on the wealthy.
Virtually
every policy embraced by most countries involves the transfer of societal
wealth from the increasingly poor majority to the rich minority. That is the
primary purpose of austerity policies. To put it succinctly, governments have
embraced policies that starve workers to increase the wealth of financiers and
huge multinational corporations.
Resistance
The era of neoliberal globalization and the
austerity policies that institutionalized the new age have generated growing
protest everywhere. A recent study of worldwide protests (Isabel Ortiz, Sara
Burke, Mohamed Berrada, Hernan Cortes, World
Protests 2006-2013) indicates that
protest activities, largely motivated by economic circumstance and the desire
for democratization, have spread to nearly half the countries in the world
since 2006. During the second decade of the new century media have reported on
rebellions from Tahrir Square to Madison, Wisconsin, around issues of austerity
and democracy. Austerity has animated workers in Greece, Spain, and Ireland.
Student rebellions against cuts in government support for education have
occurred in Quebec, Santiago, Chile, and throughout the United States. In the
Global South particularly, workers have protested against land grabs, the
International Monetary Fund, so-called “free trade” and the effect of
neoliberalism on workers, peasants, indigenous people, women, and on the rapid
destruction of the environment.
Further, anti-austerity movements have increasingly conceptualized
the connections between neoliberal globalization, austerity, and parallel
issues that are ultimately driven by the economy: the climate crisis, rising
military budgets and war, crumbling infrastructure, attacks on women and people
of color, the destruction of the labor movement, and the intrusion of wealth in
the political process. Reverend William Barber who has inspired the Moral
Mondays Movement in North Carolina refers to the resistance strategy that is
driven by the vision of the interconnections of these issues, as “fusion
politics.”
Reaction
The movements of global resistance have grown
enormously, particularly since the recession of 2008, as has reaction. Violent reaction from rightwing movements, in some
places in the form of fascist and white racist campaigns, has spread. With a
few more degrees of respectability rightwing populist parties such as the Tea
Party in the United States have mobilized to pressure their more dignified
neoconservatives and Wall Street liberals to support austerity and state repression
of resistance.
State violence against public campaigns has
increased. In the United States police killings of African Americans have
increased. Police agencies and vigilante groups have engaged in terrorism
against so-called “illegal” immigrants. And governments have passed laws
limiting mobilizations in public spaces. Through the use of implied police
terror, laws, coded messages in the media that groups of people are “gangs” or
“thugs,” efforts are being made to crush rising social movements.
Building
Twentieth-First Century Movements for Change
The connections between neoliberal globalization,
austerity, resistance, and reaction make clear that the world of the
twenty-first century is not primarily beyond understanding. It does suggest
however that the direction of change in which the world is headed is fraught
with danger from neoliberalism, austerity, and violent reaction. And it is this
threat to humanity and the planet itself that is spawning various movements for
social change. These movements are spreading, occur all across the face of the
globe, emerge around specific issues, and ultimately
are driven by a changing global political economy. It is the consciousness
of these interconnections and growing violence that activists need to address
as they educate, agitate, and organize for a new global society.
