The MOST Phase II website is available at: www.unesco.org/shs/most.
|
| You
are in the MOST Phase I website (1994-2003). The MOST Phase II website is available at: www.unesco.org/shs/most. |
|
Management of Social Transformations - MOST
Discussion Paper No. 52 |
|
The Logic of Globalisation: Tensions and
Governability
in Contemporary Society
by
|
Abstract For countries on the periphery of capitalism, integrating into the "global
economy" has had a negative effect on per capita GNP and income concentration.
This in turn has started to undermine national support of the political
networks that engaged in the reformation programs. In the early 1980s,
the conflict between capital and work began to present a new structural
situation. The addition of information technology and automation processes
to the production methods of goods and services triggered a change in
the correlation of forces among social classes. Labour unions lost their
power, and structural unemployment became the main instrument for organizing
the labour force. The asymmetry between the logic of the global production
chains and the needs of workers is growing larger, and workers can find
themselves thrown back and forth between the formal labour market and
the informal economy. The contemporary State is no longer taking responsibility
for full employment, but neither are the transnational companies which
define the technological vectors that set parameters for employability.
As present global economic processes involve conflict and exclusion, especially
in poor countries, the levels of internal violence are a source of concern.
The political responses available to deal with the strong negative effects
of globalization are rhetorical and confused. It seems that the survival
of the States requires the construction of new models of equilibrium which
point to renewed economic growth, employment policies and improved income
distribution. Two crucial questions are to be posed: First, what is the
degree of determinism in the generation of this new technology that creates
simultaneously accumulation of capital and exclusion? And second, will
the organized forces of society be able to control the new upcoming technological
advances and the logic behind globalization itself so as to ensure better
work prospects and social inclusion?
After two decades of implementation of deep economic reforms such as the opening of the economy and the economic integration within a "global economy", a significant group of nations - specially those at the periphery of capitalism - has shown poor per capita GDP growth and a worsening of income distribution. There is evidence of social exclusion everywhere, a process that has been aggravated by the successive economic crises of 1997 and 1998, by the increasing unemployment and the growth of the informal economy. These negative factors signal erosion of the political support that sustained the "global" reform programs. The gap widens between public opinion and government discourse on the need for more in depth neoliberal reforms, as the people question whether it is indeed possible for there to be sustainable economic growth that also improves their incomes and job possibilities. Before turning to an analysis of the alternative theories on how to deal with this crucial question, we first need to study the current global economic model and its psychological and social impact.
The technological revolution has also had a significant impact on world financial markets, allowing the capital mobility necessary to implement the globalization of production. These radical changes have affected the lifestyles of a large part of the world’s citizens, influencing their behaviour, jobs, work routines, and their relationships with the economic agents and producers of goods and services. Global capitalism contains two main dialectics: concentration versus fragmentation and exclusion versus inclusion. On the one hand, the large scale of investments necessary to maintain the technological leadership in products and processes - and the need to establish global networks - will maintain a process of concentration, which enables only a restricted number of large transnational corporations to join the global club as world leaders of the main production chains. These corporations will basically decide what, how, when, how much and where goods and services used by contemporary society will be produced. At the same time, they will be competing in price and quality, in a ferocious game to gain market share and accumulate capital. As long as this dispute continues to generate profits and create "expansion", part of the current dynamics of capitalism will be maintained. Simultaneously, this radical process in search of efficiency and market access generates a wave of fragmentation - spin-offs, subcontracting, franchising and the growth of the informal economy - opening the way for a large number of small companies that can operate inside the production chain at lower costs. Competition is the selective engine in this process. The other contradiction in contemporary capitalism is summarised by the exclusion versus inclusion dialectic. In spite of the growing expansion of structural unemployment (due to an increasing incapacity to generate formal jobs in an adequate quantity or of a certain quality), capitalism has maintained its dynamic force because the fall in price of many global products continuously acts to incorporate new markets that were previously excluded due to lack of income. It is not surprising that the largest growth in sales of global consumer goods is occurring in Asia and Latin America, where a large share of those new markets is concentrated. In this environment, the main actors of this new global economy - the large transnational corporations - make their decisions with the intention of maximizing their competitive position (i.e., regarding price and quality) and pursuing the maximum rate of return for their investors’ resources. However, that does not mean that small and medium sized enterprises will disappear. They played a vital role in the development of capitalism and in the generation of jobs during the last Industrial Revolution. Today they take on another role in associating themselves with large corporations, made possible by the decentralized control of information and their capacity to integrate within a flexible system which is associated with global strategies of the transnational corporations. Their position will however be subordinated and subjected to the strategic decisions taken by those transnational corporations, and they will be integrated into their production chains. The exclusion versus inclusion dialectic affects not only people but also territories. The places that are not "functional" within this new systemic logic will not find a role in the new global economy. Inside the city, this is reflected in the acceleration of the dualization process of the city’s social arrangements, producing a gap in the city’s urban development.
In the past, Fordism, mass consumption and Keynesian economic policies, which expressed a given correlation of forces among different social groups, had granted workers some of their many historical claims of the post-war era. The capital accumulation model of the period, based on the Taylorist organizational pattern, was intensive on the use of labour. This model, and the hard organization and mobilization of workers into unions, presented them with favourable conditions for negotiations. As a result of this new capital accumulation structure, which was expanded across nations, the social power of union workers had grown considerably. This power became evident in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as a wave of social mobilization swept through many countries across the world. However, the new addition of information technology and automation processes to the production methods for goods and services in the 1970s triggered a change in the correlation of forces among social classes. Starting in the beginning of the 1980s, the capital-labour conflict began to show different conditions, subject to new determinants:
The new forms of labour organization, which are more flexible and less hierarchical, present an important challenge to labour unions: how to mobilize workers under a common union following a unified political project when they are increasingly scattered and in a more precarious situation. It becomes more and more difficult to manage collective agreements and to find a common language to represent workers with increasingly divergent interests, specially workers in more flexible jobs who perceive unions as "clubs" of privileged people that are involved only in maintaining their privileges. Globalization and the new technological innovations reduce the room for maneuver of the unions and the State. Capital mobility and the possibility of moving whole segments of the production chain to other regions destabilize wage structures, thus moving the dynamics of competition away from the national State’s influence. As a result, income disparities are growing, and poverty, unemployment and underemployment are increasing social exclusion.
The speeding up of the integration of economies within global markets was accomplished by three important reforms that affected the accepted economic logic at the end of the twentieth century: the free flow of capital, the goal of monetary stability, and the rigour applied in balancing government budgets. The effects of these reforms have been very complex. The free mobility of capital has transformed each national economy into an alternative focus for risky investment opportunities or financial speculation. If capital is not committed to any particular country and its only allegiance is maximum profits, then on the one hand it serves the strategic investment interests of the corporate leaders of the global production chains, while on the other hand it causes severe damage to weaker economies which become dependent on part of this capital, which is very volatile in the moments of crisis. With respect to the issue of currency stability, which was achieved after huge efforts in economies that had previously suffered from heavy economic mismanagement, it is now established as an important social value in virtually all countries. The return to high inflation is not desired by any section of these societies. On the other hand, the end of chronic inflation has also created serious problems to government budgets, causing their adjustments to become less flexible, and causing big political difficulties in implementing deeper reforms to the social security system. Adjustments to the pension fund budget, which were carried out in the previous decades by inflation which eroded the real value of benefits, have now to be carried out with total transparency by the abolition of formerly acquired benefits. Finally, the rigour in implementing tight budgets, necessary to maintain monetary stability, has caused a significant reduction in the budget assigned to social programs, just at a time when social exclusion is growing and these programs are most needed.
Faced with a complex world economic scenario that worsens unemployment, the informal sector and exclusion, Jürgen Habermas says: "National states have been unable to show signs of action, command and organization: the functional integrity of the national economy disappears, that is, the reliable presence of local capital and organization vanishes. These are factors on which labour supply is dependent to enable itself for production. An uncommitted capital wanders around and it uses the possibility of flight as a threat. Thus national governments lose the capacity to maximize tax resources from the local economy and to stimulate growth, and as such, lose the capacity to assure the fundamental basis of its legitimization." (Habermas, 1999). The question is extremely complex. One needs to ask, as Alain Touraine did in Pourrons-nous vivre ensemble (1997), what room is left today for liberty, solidarity, and equality when the main place - that of the prince - is empty; and the throne room is swept by global air currents, gangs of spectators and paparazzi. The institutions, which were expected to restore order, often become agents of disorder, inefficiency and injustice. The place is being occupied by the strategies of large financial, industrial, and commercial corporations. Touraine reminds us that political order does not provide grounds for social order anymore. The crisis of representation and trust deepened as political parties became "political corporations" capable of mobilizing legal and illegal resources to produce "bought" politicians considered by voters as defenders of their interests, not defenders of the interests of the whole society. This disturbing political emptiness is not being filled by humanitarian organizations either, which were supposed to substitute philanthropists in the ruins of social integration policies.
The political answers available to deal with the negative effects of globalization are confusing and unclear. The neoliberal orthodoxy still proposes the unconditional submission of the State to global social integration by means of market forces. According to this theory, the State should leave its citizens open to the negative liberty of global competition and should limit itself to providing the infrastructure necessary for the promotion of entrepreneurial activities. Even if this completely liberal world economy - including unrestricted movement of productive factors - could restore global equilibrium and a reasonable symmetric division of labour, in the transition period we would see a harsh increase in social inequality and a fragmentation of society, as well as a corruption of moral and cultural values. Even if, arguendo, we admitted the viability of this ultra-optimistic vision, how much time would be necessary to cross the "valley of tears", and how many victims - individuals and political regimes - would be left behind during this "creative destruction" process? And what place would be left for democracy, especially in the large peripheral countries? On the other hand, the old protectionist zeal and expressions of xenophobia
are not accepted any more in a world dominated by information technology.
The National State cannot regain its old strength under a renewed cloistering
policy. In its offensive variant, the Third Way proposes the creation of larger, transnational political units, which could compensate for the loss of functions of the State without fracturing the chain of democratic legitimization. The European Union is the most visible example of this project. However, politics will only have precedence over global markets when it succeeds in creating in the long run a solid infrastructure linkage to legitimization processes. In reality, civic solidarity, which is restricted today to the national State, would have to be extended so that, for example, Portuguese and Swedes would be inclined to help each other. It remains to be seen whether a less and less influential group of political actors are capable of constructing a network (and do in fact have the interest to do so) aimed at supporting a unified world government, in a scenario of a reformed world organization.
The contemporary State no longer feels any obligation towards the goal of full employment. Neither do transnational corporations that establish the technological patterns that determine workers’ employability. Each person must find his or her own opportunities, take a personal risk, and be a responsible risk-taker. For those at the periphery of global capitalism, they must find their place in the informal market, invent their own jobs. What is being pursued here, contrary to what was pursued in the USA in the beginning of the twentieth century, is the redemption of the protestant work ethic to apply it in societies that cannot generate employment opportunities. We should remember that the Christian conception of work was an act of expiation for original sin. For a brief moment in history, Calvino redeemed it. With the decline of religious belief - that Marx saluted - work once again became painful. However, unemployment and exclusion from the global society have just reinstated the Fordist concept of a formal job as something highly desirable, but which is today a distant dream of security and stability. Without the State’s protection, man is left to his own devices once again. Freud had given us a world without God, denying the illuminist discourse according to which science would guarantee welfare for all of us, and denying the existence of a universal formula for happiness. The Freudian discourse has put helplessness in the foundation of the subject, marked by unpredictability and uncertainty. At the same time, people in most countries at the periphery of capitalism are trapped in societies where the level of violence is high. The main cause seems to be the tensions generated by the growing level of income concentration and the social exclusion of large masses of urban populations, living with global media patterns that stimulate anti-social behaviour and consumption patterns that are available to just a few people. National States and political parties lose legitimacy and the capacity to arbitrate those tensions using traditional controls. This is currently happening in Brazil with the issue of the landless and the incidence of urban criminality, especially among the young. It would be interesting to draw a parallel between the behaviour of law-breaking teenagers and, for example, the Kurdish guerrillas of 1993 or the recent conflict in Bosnia. For all of them, a boy carrying a gun starts to behave like a man. However, Eric Hobsbawm (1998) reminds us that the majority of Europeans since 1945 - including people from the Balkans - have lived in societies where the State had the monopoly over legitimate violence. When these States broke up, that monopoly also broke. For some youngsters, the chaos resulting from that breakdown provides an opportunity to enter a "paradise" of erotic violence, where everything is permitted and facilitated by the use of guns. For these hopeless and dangerous groups in limbo between puberty and marriage, there are no limits to their behaviour. In theory, the current social conflict between those excluded and those included in global society can be controlled by the use of some "safety valves", as some urban, plebeian conflicts in pre-industrial cities were controlled. But it is necessary to institutionalize "rebellion rites" according to which the State can control those conflicts and legitimate social order by keeping itself out of the conflicts (like a distant king as a source of justice), creating institutional and political devices that preserve the societies threatened by its own tensions. The State, however, can lose this capacity to mediate in the conflicts if it is perceived as involved in a "conspiracy of the rich working in their own interest". What makes this issue even more complex is that we live in a world in which performance defines each person’s social place in society. Post-modern men and women have become "preoccupied only with performance"; they live for the moment and for short-term satisfaction. And perversion is not a deviation anymore, in contemporary times, but the rule. The great diseases studied by psychiatry today are those where "performance" fails: depression and panic syndrome. The production of drugs comes about to reverse this situation. Legal and illegal drugs offer people the possibility of giving a "good performance", which explains the subtle relationship between drug dealing and psychiatry: both try to manage helplessness with the help of drugs. Since current global economic processes are based on conflict and exclusion, especially in poorer countries, it seems certain that the survival of States requires the construction of new models of equilibrium - even if they are based on tension and conflict - which necessitates economic growth, employment policies and some improvement in income distribution. Discontent in civilization today translates into the helplessness of the citizen within our global society. Will there be an irreversible determinism in the generation of new technology, which creates simultaneously accumulation of capital and exclusion? Will the organized forces of society be able to control the new upcoming technological advances so as to ensure better employability and social inclusion? Is Norberto Bobbio (1994) right when he says - in his optimistic moments - that the majority of inequalities are social and not structural, and as such will be eliminated one day? We can conclude, as Freud did, that this issue is at the core of the conflict between instinct and civilization, and will never be overcome. All that can be done is the endless management of this conflict. Even so, the level of helplessness will still depend on the quality of this management. And this quality, in turn, will depend on the governability and the democratic content with which we will be able to operate our societies. This seems to represent our big challenge.
ARRIGHI, Giovanni (1994). O longo século XX. São Paulo: Unesp. BIRMAN, J.(1998). Mal-estar na atualidade. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira. BOBBIO, Norberto (1994). Destra e sinistra: ragoni e significati di una distinzione politica. Rome: Donzelli. CASTELLS, Manuel (1995). La ciudad informacional. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. __________ (1998). La era de la información. Economia, sociedad y cultura. Vol. 1. "La sociedad red". Madrid: Alianza Editorial. DAHRENDORF, Ralf (1999). "The third way and the liberty". Foreign Affairs, nº 36. DESAI, Meghnad (1995). "Drawing the line: on defining the poverty threshold". In: Poverty, famine and economics development. The selective essays of Meghnad Desai. Vol. 2. Brookfield, VT: Edward Elgar Publishing. DICKEN, Peter (1992). Global shift. London: Paul Chapman Publishing. DUPAS, Gilberto (1986). Crise econômica e transição democrática. São Paulo: Klaxon. __________ (1996). "Estratégias das empresas transnacionais: oportunidades e riscos". Collection: Documentos, no. 44, IEA/USP, April 1996. __________ (1998a). "A lógica econômica global e a revisão do welfare state: a urgência de um novo pacto social". In Estudos Avançados, no. 33, IEA/USP, May-August 1998. __________ (1998b). "A lógica da economia global e a exclusão social". In Estudos Avançados, no. 34, IEA/USP, September-Decembre 1998. __________ (1999a). Economia global e exclusão social – pobreza, emprego, Estado e o futuro do capitalismo. São Paulo: Editora Paz e Terra. __________ (1999b). "A lógica da globalização e as tensões da sociedade contemporânea". Second Congress of Philosophy in South America, October 1999. São Paulo: Annals (in production). GALBRAITH, John Kenneth (1993). The culture of contentment. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. GIDDENS, Anthony (1990). As conseqüências da modernidade. São Paulo: Unesp __________ (1996). Para além da esquerda e da direita. São Paulo: Unesp. __________ (1998). A terceira via. São Paulo: Record. HABERMAS, J. (1998). Die Postnationale Konstellation. Frankfurt/M. (18 July 1998) "Nos limites do Estado". Folha de São Paulo. HIRSHMAN, Albert (1973). "The changing tolerance for income inequality in the course of economic development". Quality Journal of Economics, vol. 87, pp. 544-565. HIRST, Paul; THOMPSON, Grahame (1996). Globalization in question: international economic relations and forms of public governance. Cambridge: Polity Press. HOBSBAWM, Eric (1998). Sobre a história. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION (1997-1998). "Industrial relations, democracy and social stability". World Labour Report, Geneva. LAYARD, R.; NICKELL, S.; JACKMAN, R. (1991). Unemployment: macroeconomic performance and the labour market. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ROGERS, Garry (1995). "What is special about social exclusion approach?". In: Rogers, Garry; Gore, Charles; Figueiredo, José (eds.), Social exclusion: rhetoric, reality, responses. Geneva: International Institute for Labour Studies. SEN, Amartya (1995). Inequality reexamined. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. TOURAINE, Alain (1994). Qu’est ce que la democratie? Paris: Fayard. __________ (1997). Pourrons-nous vivre ensemble? Paris: Fayard. UNCTAD (1996). Trade and Development Report. WORLD BANK (1998). World Development Report. Washington. Gilberto Dupas is the Coordinator of the International Affairs Section of the Advanced Studies Institute at the University of São Paulo and member of the University's Deliberative Council. He is also professor at the European Institute of Business Administration, INSEAD (France) and at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University (USA). He is the author, among other titles, of "Economic Crisis and Democratic Transition", "FTAA and the Interests of Mercosur" and "The Global Economy and Social Exclusion - Poverty, Employment, the State and the Future of Capitalism".
© UNESCO 2001 The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of UNESCO. |
To MOST Clearing House Homepage