DEMOCRACY & NATURE:
The International Journal of INCLUSIVE
DEMOCRACY
vol.7, no.2, (July 2001)
Editorial
The issue of globalisation is at the centre of
discussions today, and rightly so, since it raises a whole series of crucial
questions relating to the future of society and nature in the new century.
Democracy & Nature, in an attempt to encourage a serious discussion on the
matter, which is particularly needed by the Left that usually offers outdated or
confused and contradictory interpretations to this phenomenon, initiates with
this issue a comprehensive discussion on globalisation and the movement against
it which, hopefully, will be continued in forthcoming issues.
In my contribution (Takis
Fotopoulos) the meaning and significance of globalisation is discussed in
relation to the main theoretical trends on the matter (which are compared and
contrasted to the Inclusive Democracy approach), as well as with reference to
the nature and potential of the present anti-globalisation movement. It is shown
that the main division in the theoretical analysis of the Left on the matter,
and also within the anti-globalisation movement, centres around the crucial
issue whether the present globalisation (which is considered to lead to a
growing concentration of economic and political power and to an eco-catastrophic
development) is reversible within the market economy system, as theorised by the
reformist Left, or whether instead it can only be eliminated within the process
of developing a new mass anti-systemic movement, which starts building ‘from
below’ a new form of democratic globalisation. It is argued that such an
alternative globalisation should be
based on a New Democratic World Order that is founded on the equal distribution
of political and economic power between nations and their citizens, irrespective
of gender, race, ethnicity or culture.
Jasmin Sydee
and Sharon Beder
offer an excellent critical assessment of ecofeminism as an epistemology to
interpret the present society in general and globalisation in particular. They
rightly conclude that ecofeminism should not be seen as ‘the’ truth or the
‘right’ epistemology to see modern society, as some ecofeminists insist,
but, instead, as a contribution to understanding, which, in relation to
globalisation in particular, offers ‘a useful yet limited framework through
which to critique it’. This is because, as they put it, ‘ecofeminism insists
on the primacy of gender as the determinant of social organisation, attempts to
separate women from ‘culture’, and identifies patriarchy as the defining
characteristic of capitalism’. No wonder, one may add,
that for some ecofeminists the deepest contradiction in present society
and the root of all domination is not the unequal distribution of political,
economic and social power in general-- which also leads to the domination of
nature - but the psychosexual
domination of men over women and therefore over nature! Furthermore, it is not
surprising either that ecofeminists end up with a utopian kind of reformism
which in no way challenges the fundamental institutions of present society
(market economy and statist ‘democracy’).
Carl Boggs
offers a
brilliant discussion of the fact that economic globalisation is not accompanied
by a parallel formal political globalisation. As he points out, in contrast to
the acceleration of economic globalisation over the past few decades, in the
realm of politics, there is a diminution of national and local governing
structures, a depoliticization of social movements and NGOs and a failure of any
international system of governance to take hold. It is of course true that
no formal arrangements have yet been set in place to institutionalise political
globalisation, although it could be argued that an informal form of political
globalisation is being initiated lately by a ‘transnational elite’, which
seems that, for a variety of reasons, prefers to work through the present
international economic and political/military institutions (WTO, NATO etc)
rather than through a new system of
political governance. However, if this transnational elite is being
systematically --though informally-- organised at the political level, the same
cannot be said about the anti-globalisation movement. As Boggs stresses, the
overwhelming emphasis in this movement is on protest as such and on negating the
destructive policies of world bodies –a trend which undercuts a politics of
vision needed to frame long-term alternatives to economic globalisation
in its present catastrophic form. It is for these reasons that the author aptly
concludes that ‘If democratisation constitutes the main underlying thrust
behind anti-corporate movements, then we will need a more inclusive view
of politics, a deeper understanding of democracy, extending the conventional
public realm to include the economy, social life, and ecosystem as well as
politics as integral to a more radical anti-globalisation insurgency.’
Timothy
W. Luke’ s paper offers an insightful analysis of the new political zones
created by globalisation, at some points even reminding one of a similar
prophetic description of bureaucratic capitalism by Castoriadis, almost thirty
years ago—as, for instance, when Luke points out that ‘the main political
conflict zones today are no longer necessarily those between labour and capital,
left and right, persons of colour and WASPs, or women and men, but rather they
are cut along new contours of control between those who know and those who do
not, those who can and do participate in elitist managerial decision-taking and
those who cannot’. His conclusion that ‘societies of
bureaucratically‑controlled consumption, as a whole, can be undone’ is
of course correct. The crucial issue is how this could be achieved and Luke’s
suggested strategy (‘their revolutionary "undoing" will be attained
only by destructively reconstituting pieces and parts of existing institutions,
technologies and values’) seems problematic. This is because this strategy is
not conceived as part of a mass anti-systemic (not merely ‘anti-corporate’)
political movement, with clear long-term goals about a future society, a
well-designed strategy and a short-term program to achieve it. Instead, Luke
adopting the usual postmodern problematique, seems to be dismissing such a
movement (‘Populism does not
provide a failsafe recipe for the future or a surefire method for realizing
successful commonwealths; rather this new populism only starts to outline
tactics for the present by elaborating clearly what to undo in the subpolitical
systems of expert decision-making’). However, it is exactly this lack of any
positive vision that, for many, constitutes
the main weakness of the present anti-globalisation ‘movement’, which
may already be leading it to a
cul-de-sac.
In a
first assessment of postmodern epistemology (the second one is provided
in Steve Best’s contribution) Gökhan Bacik’s article offers a
perceptive interpretation of the apparently contradictory trends of
globalisation and the parallel re-emergence of ethnic identities. For the
author, this contradiction may be explained in terms of a ‘language crisis’
which has decisively helped ethnic problems to become increasingly intertwined
with world politics. In this sense, the article does provide a useful
theorisation of a view (that seems to be flourishing not only in the North but
also in the South) which has to be critically assessed. To my mind, such a
critical assessment would raise serious reservations against the use of a
postmodern epistemology to explain this phenomenon—an epistemology which seems
to focus on the symptoms rather than the causes of it. Thus, one may argue that
the change of language in world politics is the symptom of this apparent
contradiction whereas the causes have to be traced to such factors as the
declining role of the nation-state within an internationalised market economy,
the end of the Cold War that allowed nation-states much less freedom in
suppressing ethnic tensions and, last but not least, the collapse of the
socialist project, which decisively contributed to the emergence of new (or the
re-emergence of old) identity ideologies.
Brian
Morris’
contribution consists of an insightful assessment, from an anarchist
perspective, of Maria Mies & V. Bennholdt-Thomsen ecofeminist view of
globalisation. He aptly identifies
the similarities between the classical anarchist perspective and the subsistence
perspective suggested by the authors, and he rightly praises their opposition to
neo-Marxism (Gorz), capitalist ideology (Hardin) and postmodern feminism
(Butler). However, the very fact that his perspective is the classical anarchist
one may also be seen as the main problem in his assessment of the subsistence
perspective. Thus, not only does he agree with the authors’ defective analysis
of the integration of all national economies into one global market
as an ‘exogenous’ event, but he also does not see the authors’ fundamental
confusion between local markets and the system of the market economy. However,
it is this confusion which could explain what Morris sees as a paradox (‘even
more curious is the fact that after offering a sustained defence of the
subsistence economy and decentralized politics, Mies should end up envisioning
the continuing relevance and importance of not only the nation-state but of
wage-labour!’). In other words, this paradox may adequately be explained by
the fact that the fundamental institutions of today’s’ society which secure
the unequal distribution of economic and political power (the system of market
economy and statist ‘democracy’) --and the corresponding ideologies-- are
not seen by ecofeminists like M. Mies & V. Bennholdt-Thomsen as the main
causes of the present multi-dimensional crisis and, consequently, are not
challenged by them. Instead, they suppose that these fundamental institutions of
modern society could somehow be by-passed in a system of subsistence economics
and politics which is assumed - in a highly utopian way (in the negative sense
of the word) - to be able to perfectly co-exist with these institutions!
Steve Best
offers, from a reconstructive postmodernism perspective, a very
interesting analysis of Harding’s attempt to develop
a
multiperspectival, multicultural, feminist, postmodern critique of scientific
theory and practice, and society as a whole while advancing an alternative
scientific epistemology that rejects both realism and relativism.
Best,
though sympathetic to Harding’s endeavour to develop such a postmodern
epistemology, rightly criticises the author’s failure to provide any criteria
of adjudicating competing interpretations and perspectives on society and
nature. In fact, one may take the next step and criticise not only this
particular attempt but the entire idea of a multiperspectival approach which
does not seem feasible unless two conditions are met, which however are rejected
almost by definition by most postmodernists. These conditions are, first, that
both the science and its critique should be based on
reason alone and not also on religious and other intuitions and, second,
that a universal criterion should be used
to
assess competing interpretations (and such a criterion, in my view, can be none
other than that of individual and
social autonomy)—a condition which is incompatible with the postmodern
hostility to any ‘universalism’. In this problematique, the assertion of
feminists like Harding that the issue is not whether or not objectivity is
possible, but rather what kind of objectivity we can and should have, to which
the answer she gives is what she calls the ‘strong objectivity’ of
multiperspectivism, seems faulty since the
outcome of such an epistemological
process
could at most be some kind of inter-subjectivity, not objectivity (which is any
way impossible). Equally flawed seems
Harding’s
assertion that the very
distinctions Western/non-Western and modern/premodern are invalid, because
"Western" culture, since its inception, has borrowed heavily from
China, India, Egypt, East-Asian and Islamic societies, as well as Africa and
pre-Columbian Americas. It is clear however that the criterion one should use in
assessing and comparing cultures could not be their geographical or historical
origin but their main characteristics. The main characteristic of that part of
Western culture which is rational-- since the time reason and direct democracy
originated in ancient Greece-- was the rational processing of information which
distinguished it from irrational cultures, either in pre-modern West, or in the
East. The implication is that what could constitute the foundation of a
democratic culture should be determined by whether its ‘truths’,
including
values and ethical codes conditioning individual behaviour, are derived
rationally, (i.e. through reason and open discussion) rather than through
Revelation, intuition, myth, or a closed system of ideas or ‘scientific’
truths-- the latter clearly not constituting
legitimate perspectives.
Finally, this issue ends with a brief exchange on
ecofeminism with Ariel Salleh, which was induced by the editorial comment
on her article on the ‘meta-industrial class’ that was published in vol 6 no
1.
Takis Fotopoulos,
Editor