In Our Hands is Placed a Power: Austerity, Worldwide Strike Wave, and the Crisis of Global Governance
2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 25; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/08854300.2011.601173
ISSN1745-2635
Autores Tópico(s)Elite Sociology and Global Capitalism
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. With thanks to Silvia Bedulli. Many of the citations on strike activity in this article came from the indispensable website http://www.labourstart.org. 2. To give an idea of the centrality of the Davos conference and its transformative impact on participants, consider the following passage from Nelson Mandela's published diary extracts: "The decisive moment was when I attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where I…met the major industrial leaders of the world…who made it a point to express their views very candidly on the question of nationalization, and I realized…that if we want investments we will have to review nationalization…we had to remove the fear of business that…their assets will be nationalized." Nelson Mandela, Conversations with Myself, London: MacMillan, 2010, 381. 3. See Timothy J. Sinclair's excellent study, The New Masters of Capital: American Bond Rating Agencies and the Politics of Creditworthiness, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. 4. See Ernst Haas, The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social, and Economic Forces 1950–57, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968. Haas originally referred to an increasingly "European" outlook resulting from working with one's counterparts in the European Economic Community. I have extended the meaning here to suggest a process of international, arguably global, class formation. 5. Arundhati Roy, "Confronting Empire," Speech Given at the World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, Brazil, Jan. 27, 2003. 6. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, London/New York: Penguin, 1991, 254–301. Marx makes clear that this process of the equalization or formation of a general rate of profit is a political process of concentration and of ruling-class political unity: "…each individual capitalist, just like the totality of all capitalists in each particular sphere of production, participates in the exploitation of the entire working class by capital as a whole, and in the level of this exploitation; not just in terms of a general class sympathy, but in a direct economic sense" (298f). 7. The historical struggle over realizing this project, at least up to the early nineteenth century, is arguably the focus of the second and third volumes of Fernand Braudel, Capitalism and Civilization: Vol. 2, The Wheels of Commerce, New York: Harper & Row, 1979; Vol. 3, The Perspective of the World, London: Phoenix Press, 1984. 8. Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, London/New York: Penguin, 1976, chapter 32, "The Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation," 929; Braudel, The Perspective of the World, 622, 629, and passim. 9. "French Protesters Block Marseilles Airport" Associated Press Oct. 21, 2010; "French Leader Vows to Punish Violent Protesters" New York Times Oct. 22, 2010. 10. "Acropolis Closed, Riot Police Protecting Entrance," Associated Press Oct. 19, 2010. 11. "AENA is Ready to Fire Those Air Controllers Who Strike Tomorrow," Avio News Oct. 21, 2010. 12. "Firefighters Vote for Strike Action," Tullamore Tribune Oct. 14, 201. 13. "UK Workplace News Roundup," from http://www.libcom.org, Oct 21, 2010. 14. "Workers at Newsquest Hampshire Vote Overwhelmingly for Action," National Union of Journalists, http://www.nuj.org.uk/innerPagenuj.html?docid=1779. 15. "Court Injunction Halts Tyrone Meat Plant Strike," BBC Oct. 21, 2010. 16. "Public Sector Cuts Make Strikes Inevitable, Warn Unions," Guardian Oct. 21, 2010. 17. "1,000 dock yards workers march in protest in Romania requesting higher wages," Associated Press, Oct. 23, 2010. 18. "Unions Threaten with General Strike," Croatian Times Oct. 22, 2010. 19. "PSA Planning Massive Protest," Trinidad and Tobago's Newsday, Sept. 21, 2010; "Lecturers in Pay Protest at UWI," Trinidad Express, Oct. 16, 2010; "Workers Also March in Tobago" Guardian (Trinidad and Tobago), Oct. 20, 2010; "UWI Increases Wage Offer to Staff" Guardian (Trinidad and Tobago), Oct. 21, 2010. 20. "NIEPA Workers Protest Non-Payment of New Wage," NEXT (Nigeria), Oct. 21, 2010. 21. "Strike Jump Starts Year End Revision" Hawkes Bay Today (New Zealand) Oct. 21, 2010; "PNC in Solidarity with POTAG," The Accra Mail, Oct. 21, 2010; "Italy: Strikes Delay Start of Academic Year," University World News, Oct. 17, 2010. 22. "NWC Customers Warned to Brace for Problems from Threatened Strike," Jamaica Observer, Oct. 20, 2010; "Unions to Government: Renegotiate IMF Agreement," Sunday Jamaica Observer, Sept. 12, 2010. 23. "Government Happy General Strike Called Off" Jamaica Observer, Sept. 17, 2010. 24. "Kenya: Union Warns Tea Firms Not to Replace Striking Workers," Business Daily (Nairobi), Oct. 20, 2010; "Tea Plantation Workers Set to Strike," The Standard (Nairobi), Oct. 20, 2010; "80,000 Workers Strike Over New Technology," Reuters, Oct. 18, 2010; "More Than Just a Gathering Storm in Kenya's Tea Cup," The Standard (Nairobi), Oct. 18, 2010. 25. "Stay 200 Meters Away from Unitrans Premises," Times of Swaziland, Oct. 21, 2010. 26. "Striking Union Workers: DTCB Compromising Diamond Security," The Israeli Diamond Industry Diamond News, Oct. 20, 2010. 27. "Chinese Bosses Fire on Angry Zambian Miners," Daily Telegraph (Canada), Oct. 19, 2010. 28. "Civil Servants in Protest March to Demand Higher Pay," SW Radio Africa News, Sept. 17, 2010. 29. "Benin Trade Unions Slam Government Over Ban on Protests," Africa News, Oct. 13, 2010. 30. "KCC Employees on Strike," Daily Monitor (Kampala), Sept. 21, 2010. 31. "Labour Shelves Pay Raise Strike" Vanguard (Lagos) May 4, 2010; 32. "Nigerian Oil Union Calls Strike at Exxon's Local Unit," Bloomberg, Oct. 12, 2010. 33. "Union Intensifies Strike," Nigerian Observer, Oct. 22, 2010; "Electricity Workers Threaten Indefinite Strike," AllAfrica.com Oct. 4, 2010; "Nigerian Oil Unions Threaten Strike over PIB Implementation," http://www.icem.org, Oct. 4, 2010; "New Minimum Wage: Workers Threaten to Go on Strike Oct. 1," Nigerian Tribune, Sept. 23, 2010. 34. "CTG Dock Workers Attack Private Berth Operators, 15 Hurt," Daily Star (Dhaka), Oct. 13, 2010; "Bangladesh Deploys Army As Port Strike Hits Garment Exports," AFP, Oct. 15, 2010; "Jute Export Hampered as Bailing Workers Continue Strike," Daily Star (Dhaka), Oct. 21, 2010. 35. "Pilots Defy Warning, Begin Protest against Service Benefit Slash," Daily Star (Dhaka), Oct. 23, 2010. 36. "Sugar Workers Strike for Pay Hike," Stabroek News (Georgetown, Guyana), Oct. 19, 2010. 37. "Foxconn's Global Empire Reflects a New Breed of Sweatshop," In These Times, Oct. 19, 2010; "Protesting Workers at Foxconn Arrested," Express News Service, Sept. 25, 2010. 38. "DHL Faces Worldwide Unrest," Transport and Logistics News, Oct. 14, 2010; 39. "World Action Day Tomorrow Backs Fired Turkish UPS Workers," International Transport Workers http://www.itf.global.org, Aug. 21, 2010; 40. "Chilean Public Employees on Strike," Latin American Herald Tribune (Caracas), Oct. 22, 2010; "Chile Collahuasi Union Set to Strike as Vote Nears," Reuters, Oct. 21, 2010. 41. "ACT NOW! Solidarity Campaign – Labour Conflict in Chile," Building and Wood Workers International bwint.org, Oct. 20, 2010. 42. "Brazil Bank Workers Keep Strike After 6.5% Raise Offer. They Want 11%," Brazil Magazine, Oct. 20, 2010; "Bank Workers End 15-Day Strike," Wall Street Journal, Oct. 14, 2010. 43. "Unions Secure Record Wage Increases in Brazilian Auto Sector," International Metalworkers Federation http://www.imfmetal.org, Sept. 22, 201. 44. "COSATU: Strike Over But Still No Deal," Mail and Guardian (Pretoria), Oct. 13, 2010; 45. "Argentina Protest Over Labour Activist Killing," BBC News, Oct. 21, 2010; "Tension Mounts as Demonstrators March to Protest Death in Earlier Clashes, CTA Umbrella Union Calls for General Strike Today," Buenos Aires Herald, Oct. 21, 2010; "Garbage Collection Returns to Normal After 3-Day Conflict," Buenos Aires Herald, Oct. 20, 2010. 46. "Workers at Vietnam Footwear Factory on Strike," http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/business/news/article_1593271.php/Workers-at-Vietnam-footwear-factory-on-strike, Oct. 22, 2010. 47. "Police Alert Over Anti-G20 Rallies," Korean Herald, Oct. 15, 2010. 48. "Labourers Stage Protests Nationwide to Demand Better Salaries," Al Masry Al Youm, Oct. 20, 2010; "Workers Protests Put Forcibly Down," Al Masry Al Youm, Oct. 19, 2010. 49. "Palestinian Authority Workers Still on Wages Strike at Sol-Or Factory," Jerusalem Post, Oct. 21, 2010; "Public Health Risk as UNRWA Goes On Strike," Ma'an News Agency, Oct. 21, 2010. 50. "Workers in Governmental Universities and Colleges hold a sit-in in front of the Council of Ministers asking the PA to meet their demands," Democracy and Workers Rights Center Palestine, http://www.dwrc.org Oct. 22, 2010. 51. "Demonstration in Belgrade Rejects European Austerity Plans," Building and Wood Workers International bwint.org, Oct. 1, 2010; "Bulgarian Police Officers Start Protests," FOCUS News Agency, Oct. 17, 2010; "Czech Unions May Go on Strike if Further Talks with Government Fail," Prague Monitor, Sept. 17, 2010; "Protest Over Pay Cuts," Prague Post, Sept. 22, 2010; "Meeting Between PM and Union Shows No Progress on Wage Issue," Prague Monitor, Oct. 1, 2010; "Romanian Finance Ministry Workers Protest Pay Cut," Reuters, Oct. 14, 2010; "Romanian Teachers Strike Over IMF-Driven Pay Cuts," http://www.laboureducator.org, April 24, 2010; "Poland: Trade Unions to Protest Wage Freeze," The News.PL, Sept. 22, 2010; "Croatian Workers Protest Against Shipyard Sale Decided by Government as Part of Effort to Join EU," Canadian Press, Sept. 22, 2010; "Vegrad Workers On Strike," Slovenian Press Agency, Sept. 20, 2010. 52. "Long Struggle Ends in Victory for Ukraine Belkozin Workers," International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco, and Allied Workers Associations, http://www.iuf.org, Oct. 15, 2010. 53. "Kazakh Oil Workers Strike over Activist Arrest," Radio Free Europe, Oct. 23, 2010. 54. "Expert analyses tendency of strikes, labour disputes in Russia," BBC, June 13, 2009. 55. "New Trade Union Association Created in Russia," Itar-Tass, Sept. 20, 2010. 56. Ching Kwan Lee, Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007, 5. 57. "Building Workers Block Traffic in Protest Over Wages," The National (Dubai), Oct. 22, 2010; "Capital's Taxi Drivers Refuse to Sign New Contracts," The National (Dubai), May 13, 2010; "1,474 Labourers in Mass Salary Delay Protest," ArabianBusiness.com, January 5, 2010. 58. "Al Hamad Workers Strike in Bahrain," Constructionweekonline.com, Nov. 16, 2009; "Hundreds of Oil Workers Protest in Bahrain," Business.Maktoob.com, Feb. 12, 2010; "Bahrain Port Workers Call Off Protest," Business.Maktoob.com, Nov. 9, 2009; "Strike Plan by Bahrain Company Workers," Trade Arabia.com, Jan. 21, 2010; "DHL Trade Union in Bahrain Strike Talks," ArabianBusiness.com, July 12, 2010. 59. Sherwood Ross, "Union Busting in Iraq," Counterpunch.org, Oct. 19, 2010. 60. As brilliantly demonstrated in Edna Bonacich and Jake B. Wilson, Getting the Goods: Ports, Labor and the Logistics Revolution, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008. 61. I develop this argument more fully in my forthcoming book, Global Governance and World Revolution. The final straw for capital was not the strike wave of urban workers, but the failure of the global elite to finish the Doha round of WTO talks on world trade (November 2001), which instead were stymied by China and India, who in turn were reacting to gigantic waves of revolt across their national territories. In facing such revolt, agreeing to lift tariffs and subsidies and expose their largely subsistence farmers to the competition of global agribusiness would have been like pouring gasoline on a very large fire already barely kept under control. 62. On the Arab revolts as anti-IMF, anti-neoliberal movements, see, among others, "Egypt takes a step back away from IMF ways" Inter Press Service, Feb. 20, 2011; Nomi Prins, "The Egyptian Uprising is a Direct Response to Ruthless Global Capitalism," Alternet.org, Feb. 4, 2011. On the Egyptian revolution as a working-class movement and on its basis in the preceding strike movements, see, among many: Mohammad Fadel, "Labor and the Future of the Egyptian Revolution," Foreign Policy, March 14, 2011; "Cairo unrest has its roots in actions of Mahallah's workers," Los Angeles Times, Feb. 8, 2011; "Labor unions boost Egypt's protest," Al Jazeera, Feb. 9, 2011. 63. "Public servants face pay cuts as IMF moves in," The Independent (Ireland), Nov. 19, 2010. 64. "Unions to Gov't: Renegotiate IMF Agreement," Jamaica Observer, Sept. 12, 2010. 65. "Croatia's United Unions Threaten General Strike Dec. 10," Bloomberg, Nov. 17, 2010. 66. "Romanian Finance Ministry Workers Protest Pay Cuts," Reuters, Oct. 14, 2010. 67. "Privatization of Power Sector in Pakistan: Appeal for Solidarity with WAPDA Workers" (statement by Divisional Chairman & Zonal Secretary WAPDA Hydro Union) from website http://www.marxist.com, Oct. 28, 2010. 68. "Unions Rally to Fight European Austerity Measures" tribunemagazine.co.uk, Sept. 17, 2010. 69. "ILO Staff Protest Halts Board Meeting" Swiss Info http://www.swissinfo.ch., Nov. 10, 2010. 70. See for instance the call by the IMF for Ireland to reduce its minimum wage (which has no relation whatever to budget cutting or debt), as a part of the austerity program needed to obtain an EU-IMF loan: "EU Urges Feuding Ireland not to Delay Budget," Reuters, Nov. 23, 2010. 71. For instance, the widespread acts of solidarity with the UPS workers' struggle in Turkey, the recognition of the struggles of Greek workers as a predecessor to their own fight against austerity on the part of French unions, the aforementioned protest in Brussels by united European unions, the support of international unions for the strikes by Chittagong, Bangladesh dock workers, and the protests against the G20. 72. Karl Marx letter to Friedrich Bolte, Nov. 23, 1871, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1955, 269f. 73. Indeed, in commenting on what he identified as "the first definitive working-class political organization formed in Britain," namely the London Corresponding Society, E.P. Thompson noted "the intermingling of economic and political themes – the 'hardness of the times' and Parliamentary Reform" as among the "features which help us to define…the nature of a 'working-class organization.'" E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, New York: Vintage, 1966, 21. 74. See Paul Krugman, "Graduates versus Oligarchs," New York Times, Feb. 27, 2006. 75. This is one form of what Beverly Silver calls "associational power," ranging from mere union organization and solidarity to wider class movements (Forces of Labor: Workers' Movements and Globalization since 1870, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 13). 76. The best overall study of these is John Walton and David Seddon, Free Markets and Food Riots, Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. 77. Ibid., 50. 78. See the interesting analysis, especially regarding the World Social Forum in relation to the three Internationals, in Samir Amin, The World We Wish to See, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008; see also Midnight Notes, "One No, Many Yeses," Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, 1998. 79. Silver calls this "structural power." Forces of Labor, 13. 80. "Five Suez Canal companies' workers go on strike, no major disruptions witnessed yet," Ahram Online, Feb. 8, 2011. 81. Interestingly, of two important works that foresee a global revolutionary political crisis – Adam Webb, "The Calm Before the Storm? Revolutionary Pressures and Global Governance" in International Political Science Review, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Jan. 2006), 73–92, and Martin Shaw, Theory of the Global State: Globality as an Unfinished Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000 – the more fully developed analysis, that of Shaw, which formulates an intelligent alternative political framework for understanding globalization, does not tie his concept of global revolution to the struggles against Structural Adjustment or neoliberalism, let alone austerity and global governance, but rather to an extension of liberal globalist values. Webb, in noting that the majority of the world's people do not believe that globalization improved their conditions, is closer to the mark, but fails to see any structural power in the hands of the disaffected that might make the global revolution more than a utopian possibility. Webb, in order to identify agents, capable of carrying out the global revolt he presciently senses on the horizon, thus points to inter-state conflicts like the Iraq War and movements such as the spread of Political Islam. 82. For Shorter and Tilly, political crisis is "a prime factor in bringing a large number of men together for collective action" but "political crises do not 'cause' strike waves to happen." Edward Shorter and Charles Tilly, Strikes in France 1830–1968, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974, 104. 83. Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times, London: Verso, 1994; Giovanni Arrighi, Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century, London: Verso, 2007. 84. The most influential work on states of emergency is Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. I have criticized Agamben for neglecting class relations and failing to see the relationship between the imposition of neoliberal policies and states of emergency. Steven Colatrella, "Nothing Exceptional: Against Agamben," Journal of Critical Education and Policy Studies, 9 (1), March–April 2011. The most important work linking states of emergency to neoliberalism remains Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, New York: Penguin, 2007. 85. For the neoliberal nature of Qaddafi's regime since the 1980s, see Vijay Prashad, "The Libyan Labyrinth," Counterpunch Feb. 22, 2011 available at http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad02222011.html.
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