Harry Targ
Sketching Today’s Global Political Economy
During the latest phase of monopoly and finance capital (1945- to the present) enormous changes occurred in the global political economy. First, the United States emerged as a superpower and in an effort to crush the threat of socialism around the world committed itself to constructing a “permanent war economy.” This permanent war economy would create the military capacity to destroy alternatives to global capitalism, stimulate and maintain a high growth manufacturing economy, justify an anti-communist crusade to crush the left in the United States, and co-opt and/or repress working class demands for change. In addition, the permanent war economy would occasion the perpetuation of racism and patriarchy in public and private life.
As the years passed corporate rates of profit began to decline as a result of
rising competition among capitalist states, over-production and
under-consumption, an increasing fiscal crisis of the capitalist state, and
rising prices of core natural resources (particularly oil). With a growing
crisis, global corporate and finance capital shifted from investments in
production of goods and services to financial speculation. Thus capitalist investment
steadily shifted to financialization, or the investment in paper-stocks, bonds,
private equity and hedge funds and other forms of speculative investment.
Financial speculation was encouraged by state tax policies, “free trade”
agreements, an expanded international system of indebtedness, and increased
reliance on consumer debt.
Multinational corporations which continued to produce goods and services sought
to overcome declining profit rates. This, they concluded, could only be
achieved by reducing the costs of labor. To overcome the demand for higher real
wages, health and other benefits, and worker rights, manufacturing facilities
were moved from core capitalist states to poor countries where lower wages were
paid. Thus, in wealthier countries millions of relatively high paying jobs were
lost while production of goods increasingly moved to sweatshops in poor
countries. Wealthy capitalist states experienced deindustrialization.
Finally, assisted by technological advances, from computers to new forms of
shipping, financial speculation and deindustrialization fueled the full
flowering of globalization, or the radically increased patterns of cross border
interactions-economic, political, and cultural. Globalization began to
transform the world into one integrated global political economy.
In short, we may speak of a four-fold set of parallel political and economic
developments that have occurred since the end of World War II, in which the United
States has played a leading role: creating a permanent war
economy, financialization, deindustrialization,
and globalization.
Should We Be Thinking About Socialism Today?
A rich and vital set of
images of a socialist future comes down to us from the utopians, anarchists,
and Marxists, the martyrs of the first May Day, and the variety of experiments
with socialism attempted in Asia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Africa, and
the Caribbean. Extracting from the multiple reasons why individuals and
movements chose socialism one reason stands out; that is, that capitalism
historically is and has been a cruel and inhumane system, a system borne and
fueled by slavery, genocide, war, super exploitation of workers, tactics of
division based on race and gender, and an almost total disregard for the
natural environment that sustains life. Building a permanent war economy,
financialization, deindustrialization, and globalization are merely extensions
of the cruel and heartless pursuit of profit which has been the fundamental
driving force of the capitalist mode of production.
Drawing on the history and the images of a better future coupled with the
brutality of the capitalist era; we might conceive of a 21st century socialist
future that has four main dimensions.
First, we need to create institutions that are created and staffed by the working classes and serve the interests of the working classes. While scholars and activists may disagree about what “class” means in today’s complicated world, it is clear that the vast majority of humankind do not own or control the means of production, nor do they usually have an instrumental place in political institutions. Therefore, socialism involves, in the Marxist sense, the creation of a workers’ state and since most of us are workers (more than 90 percent of the US population for example), a state must be established that represents and serves the interests of the many, not the few.
Second, our vision of socialism is a society in which the working classes fully
participate in the institutions that shape their lives and in the creation of
the policies that these institutions develop to serve the needs of all the
people.
Third, socialism also implies the creation of public policies that sustain
life. Socialism in this sense is about good jobs, incomes that provide for
human needs, access to health care for all, adequate housing and
transportation, a livable environment, and an end to discrimination and war.
Fourth, socialism is also about the creation of institutions and policies that
maximize human potential. A socialist society provides the intellectual tools
to stimulate creativity, celebrate diversity, and facilitate writing poetry,
singing and dancing, basking in nature’s glow, and living, working, and loving
with others in humanly sustainable communities.
Today we remain terribly far from any of these dimensions of socialism. But
paradoxically, humankind at this point in time has the technological tools to
build a mass movement to create a socialist future. We can communicate
instantaneously with peoples all over the world. We can access information
about the world that challenges the narrow ruling class media frames about the
human condition. We have in the face of brutal war, environmental devastation,
enduring racism, super exploitation of workers everywhere mass movements of
workers, women, people of color, indigenous people, and youth who are demanding
changes. Increasingly public discourse is based upon the realization that our
future will bring either extinction or survival. Socialism, although it is not
labeled as such, represents human survival.
Where do we who believe that socialism offers the best hope for survival stand
at this critical juncture? We are weak. Many of us are older. Some of us have
remained mired in old formulas about change. Nevertheless, we can make a
contribution to building a socialist future. In fact we have a critical role to
play.
We must articulate systematic understandings of the global political economy
and where it came from: permanent war, financialization, deindustrialization,
and globalization. We need to articulate what impacts these processes have had
on class, race, gender, and the environment. In other words, we need to
convince activists that almost all things wrong with the world are connected
and are intimately tied to the development of capitalism as the dominant mode
of production.
We need to take our place in political struggles that demand an expanded role
for workers in political institutions. We need to insist that the working
classes participate in all political decisions.
We need to work on campaigns that could sustain life: jobs, living wages,
single payer health care, climate change etc. Our contribution can include
making connections between the variety of single issues, insisting that
participants in mass movements take cognizance of and work on the other single
issues that constitute the mosaic of problems that require
transformation. We must remember that in the end the basic policies that
sustain life require building socialism. Most struggles, such as those to
achieve living wages or a single payer health care system for example, plant
the seeds for building a broader socialist society. We can incorporate our
socialist vision in our debates about single issues: if we demand a living
wage, why not talk about equality for example?
We need to rearticulate our belief that human beings have a vast potential for
good, for creativity, and given a just society, we all could move away from
classism, racism, and sexism. We could pursue our talents and interests in the
context of a sharing and cooperative society.
By working for institutional incorporation (empowerment) and life-sustaining
and enhancing policies we will be planting the seeds for a socialist society.
May Day and No Kings 2026
This year May Day will continue the
historic mass mobilizations for social and economic justice of recent historic
No Kings rallies. The original May Day was designed to remember the May 1, 1886
rally in Chicago for the 8-hour day. At that rally more than 300,000 workers
from 13,000 businesses walked off their jobs to demand justice for workers.
At a subsequent rally two days later at another rally an unknown person threw a bomb, violence broke out, police and others were killed. Anarchist leaders of the rallies, the Haymarket Martyrs, were charged with the violence, which they had nothing to do with. Subsequently eight martyrs were convicted, four of whom were executed for crimes they did not commit. Three years later, a federation of socialists workers, the Second International, declared May 1 an International Workers Day to remember the Haymarket Martyrs and at the same time to continue to rally for worker rights, from social and economic justice to ending war. Almost 70 countries around the world honor May Day as an official holiday today, and workers in many more countries celebrate the day and workers’ rights even though it is not an “official” holiday.
Today working people, most
of the population of the United States, still need social and economic rights,
labor rights, and would benefit from dramatic cuts in military spending and
increases in social spending. As a result,
millions of people in the United States have marched and rallied for social and
economic justice, defending democratic institutions, and against wars in recent
No Kings rallies, the most recent being March 28. Given the threats of fascism
at home and world war overseas, activists are asking “What do we do now?’ One answer is to step up the militancy while
honoring May Day, the International Workers Day.
“Coming off the heels
of the massive energy from the No Kings mobilizations, people are ready to take
action and keep fighting for a democracy of, by, and for the people,” says
Indivisible Co-Founder Leah Greenberg, whose organization started the No Kings
protest.
On May 1, Indivisibles
will be joining people across the country with a clear message: we demand a
government that invests in our communities, not one that enriches billionaires,
fuels endless war, or deploys masked agents to intimidate our neighbors.”
https://paydayreport.com/no-kings-organizers-pivot-to-may-day-general-strike/
As Ralph Chapin. the lyricist of the industrial Workers of the World wrote in 1915 in the workers' anthem, “Solidarity
Forever”:
“In our hands is placed a power greater
than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a
thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes
of the old.
For the union makes us strong”
