Latham Democratic Provision Ism

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Record: 1Title: Globalisation and democratic provisionism: Re-reading...

Authors: Latham, Robert

Source: New Political Economy; Mar97, Vol. 2 Issue 1, p53, 11p

Document Type: Article

Subject Terms: *ECONOMICS

Abstract: Presents an analysis of globalization from a democrative point of view. Information on the terms international,multinational and global; Arguments over global markets.

Full Text Word Count:

5573

ISSN: 1356-3467

Accession Number: 9703280977

Database: Business Source Premier

GLOBALISATION AND DEMOCRATIC PROVISIONISM: RE-READINGPOLANYIIn one of the best of the many recent manifestos on the virtues andopportunities inherent in globalisation, Richard O'Brien distinguishesbetween the terms 'international' ('activities taking place betweennations'), 'multinational' ('activities taking place in more than one nation')and 'global' ('operations within an integrated whole').[ 1] O'Brien, anemployee of American Express Bank and perhaps abstracting fromcorporate goals and strategy, goes on to claim:

A truly global service knows no internal boundaries, can be offeredthroughout the globe, and pays scant attention to national aspects. Thecloser we get to a global, integral whole, the closer we get to the end ofgeography.

Ultimately, he writes: the 'end of geography is all about the reduction ofbarriers'.[ 2]

At first sight O'Brien appears to offer a version of the longstandingstory-made famous by Marx and Engels--of the emergence of a 'worldmarket'. All things, everywhere, are subject to sale and capitalists are ableto purchase, trade, produce and market in any feasible locale around theworld. Over the past decades, so the typical story goes, this market has


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become increasingly integrated or globalised as flows of capital, goods,information and identities have smashed old limits and barriers, even inthe face of sometimes resurgent protectionism. But O'Brien is different. Heargues that there is a world full of barriers, despite the potential for someglobal market integration based on global level regulation andcoordination. For him, Kenichi Ohmae's notion of a 'borderless world'unrealistically assumes that states will 'not interfere' as this world forms.3Despite the recent strides of liberalisation, easing market transactionsacross boundaries, there remain over 180 separate regulatory regimes(i.e. states). The intricacies of European integration underscore howformidable the construction of anything like a global common marketwould be. Yet O'Brien speaks the language of the end of geography. Howcan 'a global, integral whole' form in a world of barriers? O'Brienunwittingly avoids contradicting himself because for him it is not the singleworld market per se that is forming into 'a global, integral whole'. What hedescribes is the emergence of separate networks around foreignexchange, securities, debt, investment and financial services.4 Thesenetworks constitute distinct markets. In O'Brien's own words:

[W]hat we can observe here is the development of global networks aslinks between markets [that] develop even where barriers still exist. Aglobal network in effect seeks to offer a global service but does notdepend on integration of markets. Advancing technology is offering moreways of developing global networks in addition to the base of a physicalpresence in each market.[ 5]

Rather than look to one giant world market space being formed, we are tosee multiple networks of enormous proportions forming distinct marketspaces, integrating as wholes across the globe. Readers experienced inthe internet will instantly grasp the analogy with the formation of acyberspace that essentially transcends traditional national communicationsystem barriers. A worldwide integration of global communications andinformation is not necessary for the continued expansion and consolidationof cyberspace across the globe. The market network for foreign exchangelikewise does not depend on the integration of national currency systems.

O'Brien, like many other observers of globalisation, adopts the stance thatstates are the source of current and future barriers. Whereas he sees risksthat state intervention might cook the golden goose of emerging globalmarkets, critics of the social costs of globalisation--such as unemployment,impoverishment, economic insecurity or food price shocks--fear that statesare unable to shield their citizens from these costs. My sympathy is withthe fearful critics. But I want to argue in this article that contending withthe social effects of O'Brien's global markets should not rest on the faiththat states, if they could, would guard against the forces of globalisation inthe interest of their citizens. We need to go deeper into the very terms bywhich material life is organised across the planet. The simple notion that


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the state should be (re)empowered as a guardian does not get us there.The question is: upon what political and ideological basis would it be(re)empowered? The task is to place the possibilities of state action in abroad normative context that incorporates a diverse range of practices,actors and strategies on a global rather than a national basis.

Whose state, for what?Increasingly, commentators are looking back to Karl Polanyi's The GreatTransformation to frame their understanding of how the effects ofglobalisation can be responded to or resisted politically.[ 6] Polanyi madeclear that, in the face of the dislocations and insecurities generated byboth global and domestic markets, states, alone or collaboratively, arelikely sooner or later to act on behalf of their national societies to counterthese effects. Polanyi continues to resonate for critics of unbridledglobalisation not only because of his analysis of countermeasures onbehalf of communities, but also because he sharply denounced the waysthat markets took on a self-regulating aura, operating in a fashion thatwas 'disembedded' from the societies they often ravaged. Disembeddedmarkets make societies conform to the logic of commercialisation;embedded markets or economies, in contrast, would conform to the needsof societies. O'Brien's market networks, as integral wholes coming intobeing, have taken on this self-regulating aura. They increasingly drawcapital and resources that were once part of a public sector or nationalwealth into their nets through extensive trading that has no connection tosocial needs, or through privatisation programmes that place infrastructureand enterprises on the world investment market. The construction of newsocial spaces--markets or otherwise--is never innocent and withoutpowerful implications. They displace, change, challenge and reconfigurepractices, principles, institutions and resources.

Writing at the end of the Second Word War, Polanyi was guardedlyoptimistic that states, organised as liberal democracies, could disciplinenational and global economies so that they would meet the needs ofindividuals in societies to ensure their economic well-being. He thought thiswas possible because--although markets and market economies weregenerally taken to be natural to material existence and capable of a kindof spontaneous generation-they depended profoundly for their constructionon state action. If markets could be made by states, then they could be, ifnot unmade, at least contained or redirected to the advancement of socialwell-being and security by states. Why should states undo theirhandywork? Polanyi, of course, had the history of protective measuresundertaken throughout the life of capitalism, most recently during thedepression years (ending in some very undemocratic regimes). However,protection from market forces is one thing, challenging the basicorganisation of material life around markets is another. Throughout hisbook, Polanyi shows how protective measures, rather than undoing marketpower, have made it even more feasible by softening its ravages and


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avoiding its total delegitimation among affected populations. Short ofsocialist revolution, nowhere does Polanyi identify or think through therange of modem state actions necessary to contest the organisation ofmaterial life around markets, however much he desired them.[ 7]

Eric Helleiner has recently shown how post-World War II planners wereable to fashion a Bretton Woods system that allowed Western states to useinternational markets to advance the well-being of their Western societies,yielding the traditional welfare state.[ 8] Polanyi had hinted at theattraction of this type of reconciliation of society and international market.But, as Helleiner continues his argument, he demonstrates how thesuccessors to those same planners, in a fit of liberalisation, undid theBretton Woods system, allowing finance and investment to begin to formthe 'floating' market networks described by O'Brien. The notion thatinternational financial markets should contribute to the protection of mostindividuals in developed states and societies was all but abandoned ageneration later. What survived as legitimate, however, was the operationof global markets.

We should not forget that the Bretton Woods system was hardlyexperienced as conducive to well-being by developing states and societies.The reasons for the contests in the 1960s and 1970s between thedeveloped and developing states over unfair terms of trade, burdens ofdebt, and patterns of investment are too quickly forgotten in the currentrush to provide a critique of a contemporary globalisation in which thesecurity of Westerners is often of primary concern.

The basic lesson is that we ought to be suspicious of both the depth andscope of commitment to truly institutionalising protection by states. Afterall, Polanyi identified protection as typically taking form as ad hoc ormakeshift measures established in response to the better plannedformation of markets. Thus the measures can be undone in a similar, adhoc fashion. Moreover, the international bureaucracies advancing theliberalisation of markets and privatisation, such as the IMF, are directed bystates, albeit only the powerful Western states, most of all the USA.

There are two related reasons for being suspicious of a direct recourse tothe state to resist globalisation. One, just pointed to, is its profoundWestern bias. The implicit assumption is often that, given the incapacitiesof non-Western states, it will be the great powers that will do theprotecting, at least internationally. Yet why should we assume they willlook out for the interests of non-Western societies? History is no comforthere, since the postwar protection of Western welfare states wasconstructed in part on the backs of those non-Western societies.

Second, although critics of the costs of globalisation are often astutelyobservant regarding the dynamics of global market forces, they tend to


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forget in their focus on global phenomena what was taken for granted bythe 'New Left' in the 1960s and 1970s. Important segments of state andnational elites may not only ideologically assume markets are supreme,they may be unduly influenced by the power and interests of the verycorporations that have so much to gain from the operation anddevelopment of global market networks.9 In turn, these forces and thestate officials responsive to them can incapacitate the state as a force ofprotection or counter-movement. It is a mistake to assume that aresurrected European welfare state of the 1960s type can be a spearheadfor counter-movement. The turn to the right in the 1980s, symbolised bythe Thatcher and Reagan revolutions, is sadly only part of a story ofchange that makes that vision specious.[ 10]

Unfortunately, one of the paradoxes of globalisation is that, on the onehand, the making of market networks rests on constructing relativelybarrier-free global spaces within which to operate. On the other hand, thatvery construction requires that powerful boundaries--ideological orotherwise--be placed around the action and capacities of states to interferein those spaces. In the developing world, the impact of these newboundaries, imposed most visibly through structural adjustmentprogrammes, is far greater since most states, facing a sometimes hostileinternational economic environment and rampant internal corruption, haveonly had historically limited capacities to order the material life of theirsocieties.

Polanyi was writing in the midst of what I have elsewhere called a 'liberalmoment'.[ 11] Self-determination, democratic governance and individualand group rights became particularly salient as the terror of world warslowly lifted. States were understood to be central to the realisation ofthese liberal principles. Indeed, if not the state, then what? When Polanyilooked beyond the state he saw the international market interests that hadhelped pave the way for two world wars by ignoring the needs of societiesfor protection. Today, of course, there is a growing faith that grassrootsorganisations, self-help cooperatives, local enterprises and new socialmovements can fill some of the gaps of protection left lying open. But,again, if global market networks are integrating wholes increasinglydetached from the needs of communities, it is difficult to envision how localforces of limited authority could harness them, especially if the most--andmany of the less--powerful states are complicit in that detachment.

Democratic provisionismI believe if we read Polanyi only from the perspective of formal politicalinstitutions we are likely to overlook a far more basic approach to therelationship between markets and social life. This alternative has theadvantage of directly speaking to the crucial issue of the formation ofpolitical will within and across societies not only to contest and resistglobalising forces, but to rethink how we approach the organisation of


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material life on a global basis, through states or other political forms.

To get at this alternative we need to go back to a basic, unifying concernin Polanyi's work that moves beyond the formal understanding ofeconomics associated with the analysis and application of rationaldistribution systems, scientific laws and means-- ends calculi. Polanyiwanted to re-establish that economics--or economic life more broadly--isabout 'man's [sic] dependence for his living upon nature and his fellows ...[and] ... refers to the interchange with his natural and social environment,insofar as this results in supplying him with the means of materialwant-satisfaction'.[ 12] Without this understanding, the notion thateconomic practices and institutions should and could be embedded in theneeds of society makes little sense. He would have us remember whatsome might now take as a kind of primeval question: what are economiesfor? Much of The Great Transformation is dedicated to showing how, in theorganisation of material life around market systems, the liberal utopia of aharmonious match of supply and demand across divisions of labouroverlooked the possibility that market systems would form their ownlogics, laws and interests separate from the rest of society. Thereby, theywould become sundered from the more basic social purpose of supplyingall of humankind, the impoverished as well as the privileged, 'with themeans of material want-satisfaction'.[ 13]

In answering his key question, Polanyi wanted to redirect attention to theactivity basic to all societies: provision of the means of existence. Lookingacross history, cultures and civilisations, he saw that this ubiquitousactivity need not be treated as the exclusive purview of the market? Butthis was exactly what he observed in the middle of the 20th century.Markets increasingly monopolised provision. Even more, provision came tobe seen as a function of the operation of market economies. In otherwords, provision had become one of the benefits of markets (along withprofits and freedom), rather than markets being one among a number ofmechanisms or logics of provision. Despite the history of alternativemodes of provision in the many so-called primitive and archaic societiesthat Polanyi studied, in his time socialist command economies were takenas the only working alternative.

The post-World War Two period opened up the possibility of a lessextreme partial alternative, the modern welfare state. It was characterisedby varying levels of nationalised industry, workers' rights and security,industrial democracy and income redistribution. While markets, in practice,are increasingly monopolising provision, symbolically the function ofprovision is strongly associated with the welfare state. This symbolicassociation allows the attackers of the public provision to displace basicconcerns with provision, as applied to both states and markets, with afocus regarding the latter (i.e. markets) on consumption and theaccumulation of wealth. While welfare functions will continue into the


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future, to the extent that defenders of the welfare state treat it as theanswer to global forces, they are playing a rhetorically deadly game. It isindeed promising that some progressive scholars and activists from theWestern social democratic tradition have begun to ask questions andformulate political agendas that are global in scope and are cognisant ofthe limitations of old models. [ 15]

I believe this questioning needs to join up with, or at least pay specialattention to, the efforts to fashion effective mechanisms for provisionmentioned above, such as cooperatives, that are increasingly a part of lifein the developing world. Typically, these are understood as part of 'copingstrategies' constructed or employed in the face of adjustmentprogrammes, price shocks and the erosion of already weak or nearnon-existent public sectors. Any progressive Westerner who has travelledin places like Latin America or South Asia should be impressed not onlywith the knowledge of activists, but their strong political commitment toprovisionist action. Whether or not this activist strength stems from thelack of public provision in the developing world, Western progressivesshould not derive their notions of what communities or 'civil societies' arecapable of based solely on their observations about the West, whereapathy, if not also clearly non-progressive ideologies, appears prevalentamong all classes.

But just as we should be sceptical that developing world alternatives cancounter global market forces, we should also not idealise developing worldefforts to cope with dislocations as the route to post-market provision,especially since large segments of the most impoverished of the worldhave not been able to organise as such, sometimes because they arepainfully uprooted from their communities and forced to migrate regionallyor globally. But rather than be pessimistic, we can come back to Polanyiand read his entire corpus, not just The Great Transformation, assuggesting that there is no one strategy, mechanism, or schema likesocialism or localism for contending with the social costs of markets. Thuswe need an approach that is self-consciously heterogeneous, but whichalso takes provision as a central and unifying task. We might call such anapproach provisionism or, more specifically and for reasons I will considershortly, democratic provisionism.

Provisionism begins from the basic proposition that the purpose ofinstitutions and activities that shape material life is to provide communitieswith goods, services and other values necessary to sustain community orgroup life, free of deprivation. Any economic institution and activity shouldbenefit directly in goods, services or other defined values all thecommunities or groups that are directly affected by it. From oneperspective, provisionism can be taken to mean that all communities andtheir constituents have rights of provision and thereby claims on economictransactions and exchanges that draw from, occur within, or simply impact


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upon them. From another, provisionism can mean that a community's owneconomic systems and institutions should be providing for all.

In addition, I have purposefully included the phrase 'other defined values'to make clear that it is not only goods and services as typically understoodthat answer the question 'provision of what?'. If the sustenance ofcommunity or group life is taken seriously, those values might include theviability of what Polanyi called 'habitat', and which today we can translateas meaning the conditions, environmental and infrastructural, that areessential for a healthy existence in a given locale or national space andthat have been emphasised by greens and those committed to sustainabledevelopment.[ 16] Other values might include social security, humanservices and education. Which values are emphasised depends on thenature of the society or community in question.

I believe the attempt to reinject social purpose into economic life woulddirectly challenge the kind of developing network market spaces writtenabout by O'Brien and others. Transactions within them approach a kind ofabstract profit-taking that has little connection with provision. It is onething when these transactions involve foreign exchange, damaging enoughas it erodes already weakened governments or forces.enterprises to throwworkers out of work. But it is another thing when whole industries, oftenconstituting basic infrastructure, become drawn up into global investmentnetworks within which foreign investors or purchasers pay little attention tohow these industries became essential to the basic provision of a nationalor local community.

Polanyi showed how trade became an important dimension of provision fora society. Goods that were not available or too costly to produce in alocale could be traded for others. At the end of the 20th century, tradecontinues to be essential to provision. Despite the unfortunate history o.funfair trade practices between the developed and developingworlds--where the latter as suppliers of primary goods and now cheaplabour could have perhaps done better in terms of provision to theirnational communities--trade does bring in goods and services todeveloping societies that otherwise would not be present. However, eventrade becomes problematic from the perspective of provisionism to theextent that new networks of intra- and inter-firm trade are developing thatnot only have no direct provisionary benefit to affected communities, butmay actually undermine other benefits. Moreover, trade can becomeconcentrated in luxury items that exclude poorer constituents and helpprecipitate the trade imbalances that further erode the capacity fornational economic provision.

Despite these limitations, the world's economies and economic systemsare generally in the business of provision. Provision is taking placeeverywhere, locally, nationally, regionally and internationally. And on the


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whole many people, except the most extremely deprived, are arguablybetter provided for than in any time in history. The point is rather thatmillions of people in every region are facing deprivation or increasingsocial insecurity and there is every reason to believe that, in the face ofthe global forces described above, things will be getting worse for themand others who will be joining them.

To some, democratic provisionism will sound like a version of greeneconomic philosophy. However, if we take Polanyi's eclectic and broadhistorical perspective seriously, democratic provisionism can beunderstood to be quite different. As observers of the greens have madeclear, they emphasise local initiatives and distrust 'large-scaleinstitutions'.[ 17] But not only is small often not powerful as pointed outabove, it sometimes is not beautiful. The history of corruption and abuse inlocal contexts is long and bloody, involving traditional landlords,opportunistic functionaries or maquiladora enforcers. Democraticprovisionism starts from the assumption that large-scale institutions likestates, markets or trade and communications systems can be extremelyvaluable politically and economically as mechanisms of provision. When itcomes to provision we need it all: global, local, state, regional, market,collectivist, industrial, capitalist, socialist and modes not yet imagined. Thepoint is that populations would need to hold it all accountable to the basictenets of democratic provisionism. As a result, the old boundaries betweenpublic and private provision would be less relevant. Provisionism wouldprovide a normative basis to contest and discipline state policies as well asmarket outcomes, serving as a sort of common moral denominator acrossthe 'myriad modes of authority and allocation operating globally. Ratherthan simply bemoan the exploitation of markets and thereupon call fortheir abolition or severe containment, democratic provisionists would seekto organise the political capacity to develop strategies for the exploitationof markets for the ends of provision. Such an approach would recognisethe proliferation of material goods, capital and services to whichindustrialism and market economies have contributed.[ 18] While thestate-led development associated with the NICs of east Asia is likely tostand as an attractive path, these countries developed in very differenthistorical circumstances than are faced today, especially vis-&-vis themarket networks described above. Market exploitation may rest on farmore collaborative projects between societies, from regional Tobin taxeson foreign exchange transactions, to collective renegotiation of terms ofresource extraction and export commodity pricing.

The eclectic nature of democratic provisionism rests on the understandingthat provision constitutes a distinct dimension of social existence that cantake different forms in the different practices and institutions that bear onit, as manifested in various local, national and regional contexts, fromcooperatives in Mexico to development zones in east Asia. When viewedfrom a global perspective, these specific practices and institutions can


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show great variation not only across social spaces, but across time as well.One could imagine writing the history of provision as a distinct domain ofpractices, principles and institutions. Perhaps Polanyi had something likethis in mind when he became engaged in the comparison of ancient,archaic and modem systems of provision. Among the advantages ofviewing provision as a domain is that it underscores that a wide array ofactors are involved in provision, from states and corporations to self-help,grassroots organisations. In addition, it allows for differences in theprinciples of provision emphasised by communities and societies. Quitedifferent things can be meant by the terms that constitute the basic tenetsof provisionism, such as 'benefit', 'values', 'directly affected' and'sustenance of community life'. Where equality of income might be crucialfor one community, it might be less so for another.

Viewing provision as a domain allows for the commitment to provisionismto be global in reach, while at the same time locally specific. As a result,holding global market networks accountable to the principles ofprovisionism, perhaps through new forms of collaborative regulationsbetween states and societies at the global level, can be connected withprovisionist political and ideological projects implemented in local contextsas well. It is exactly this type of linkage that has been critical to theneoliberal project of adjustment and liberalisation executed throughinternational organisations such as the World Bank, states, local authoritiesand corporations in global, regional and local contexts.

The politics of provisionProvision is a domain whose universal, global reach rests on a diversity ofapproaches and principles. Democracy in this context cannot mean thegoverning of that domain on a global basis according to classic principlesof representation. If democracy means, literally, rule by the people(demos), we need not limit how we might understand what 'to rule' means.Rather than direct, authoritative control over some realm, we canunderstand rule to mean a prevalence of something that shapes outcomesand relations (as when we say something 'rules supreme'). When thissense of rule is joined with demos in the context of the domain ofprovision, democracy denotes exactly a diversity of approaches, proposedor in practice, that can compete for adherence by groups andcommunities.[ 19] Through competing organisations--from political partiesto NGOs--individuals and groups could choose alternative approaches torealising provision. The lack of alternatives--in the face of the growingmarket monopolisation-currently plagues the domain of provision. Thisoutcome surely reflects the uneven power of actors within and acrosssocieties. Any proposals to democratise provision would therefore have toaccount for ways of redressing these imbalances, at the least through thepopular mobilisation of sometimes disparate populations. In this sense,democratic provisionism is profoundly dependent on the broaderprocesses of political democratisation occurring in places such as


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Indonesia even as I write. New parties, such as political democracymovements, already have or would need to add an emphasis onalternatives for provision to their political programmes. To avoid replayingthe sometimes tragic history of Third World political movements in the1960s and 1970s that did make provision central to their programmes,parties would need to take the other meaning of provision seriously andtreat their proposals as flexible, makeshift (provisional) efforts that aresubject to spontaneous revision--most of all from below--as conditionschange, approaches fail and better ones emerge.[ 20] This will hardly leadto harmonious societies and communities since conflict over provisionistapproaches (as interests) is inevitable.

Obviously, the advancement of a democratic provisionism will restultimately on the capturing of state power, the one institution that has thekind of political history and authority--however compromised--to advanceprovisionist measures rapidly. States may be down as forces of provision,but they are hardly out. Notwithstanding Western apathy, I believe popularpower has never been greater in human history. It would be tragic if thatpower and provision became trapped only in the narrow models of how toorganise liberal democratic regimes. But in looking beyond the state,especially at local alternatives, it should be recognised that unless states,rather than just international NGOs, can facilitate those alternatives--in theways they have historically facilitated the emergence of markets andprivate corporate power--then they are likely to contribute to change, butnot in decisive ways.

Also likely to be important is the potential for cooperative efforts betweendifferent states and societies, advancing provisionist concerns acrossdifferent local and regional spaces. The incentive for that cooperation willprobably be negative at first: as an effort to thwart globalising marketpower. Much thinking about international relations has been geared toshowing how cooperation is not possible (even in the old NIEO--world ofdeveloping states), except in exceptional circumstances like war or itspreparation or around narrow sets of issues that rest on thin agendas andinstitutions. In looking to reinforce the incentives for cooperation, somemight be tempted to treat the threats of market power as analogous towar. Alternatively, it should not be overlooked that provisionist states andsocieties might not operate with the same logics and incentives as theclassic war- and economy-making state, upon which existing models ofinternational cooperation rest. Overcoming the 'cooperation gap' mightbecome in itself central to the strategies of democratic provision.

The greatest gap to be bridged, however, is that between communities inthe developed and developing worlds. It is just as difficult as ever toimagine even increasingly insecure Western labour forces or thoserelatively impoverished by Western standards as easily identifying withtheir counterparts in non-Western societies. Hopes of finding linkages have


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occupied 20th-century progressives for decades and hopeful signs haveebbed and flowed with each new epoch. Perhaps the latest glimmer ofhope emerges from the renewed effort of Western unions to reach out tolabour in the developing world. Far more of this type of exchange isnecessary. Democratic provisionism at least offers the basis for somecommon language around basic tenets bearing on material life. Thealternative is to close ranks in a series of communitarian nightmares, thehints of which have recently been articulated by US presidential candidatePatrick Buchanan.

As this article attests, thinking about democratic provisionism is above allan ideological gesture. Its manifestations are everywhere and at the sametime nowhere. Its putative founder, Karl Polanyi, in his attempt toreground economic life, left us one of the most challenging intellectual aswell as political legacies for attempting to work towards, as he put it,'freedom in complex societies'. It is a little known fact that the original1944 edition of The Great Transformation ended with quite somepessimism about the coming postwar period. He changed that provisionalconclusion, making it far more optimistic. At the end of the 20th centurywe need likewise to change our own.

Notes1. Richard O'Brien, Global Financial Integration: The End of Geography(Pinter/RIAA, 1992), p. 5.

2. Ibid., p. 70.

3. Ibid., p. 100. See Kenichi Ohmae, The Borderless WorM: Power andStrategy in the Interlinked Economy (Harper, 1990).

4. We might also have included emerging networks ofproduction--subsuming both intra- and inter-firm trade--where maximumflexibility of location and staffing are central.

5. O'Brien, Global Financial Integration, p. 32.

6. The place they look first is Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: ThePolitical and Economic Origins of Our Time (Beacon Press, 1944).

7. In his inspiring conclusion, Polanyi is assuredly aware of their need.

8. Eric Helleiner, States and the Reemergence of Global Finance (CornellUniversity Press, 1994).

9. It is important not to treat the West as monolithic. The balance betweenpopular and corporate power ranges across a spectrum.


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10. For a sense of the depth of that story of change, see Robert Wade,'Japan, the World Bank, and the Art of Paradigm Maintenance: The EastAsian Miracle in Political Perspective', New Left Review, No. 217 (1996), pp.5-36.

11. Robert Latham, The Liberal Moment: Modernity, Security, and theMaking of Postwar International Order (Columbia University Press, 1997).

12. Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensberg & Harry W. Pearson (Eds), Tradeand Market in the Early Empires (The Free Press, 1957), p. 243.

13. Polanyi's European focus, which made sense before World War Two,would probably, if he were writing today, be replaced by a far more globalone that accounted for the extreme impoverishment in the developingword.

14. Few read anything of Polanyi's work outside of The GreatTransformation. His corpus was broadly non-Western and even moredeeply historical than typically thought. For a good survey of that corpus,see his essays in G. Dalton (Ed.), Primitive, Archaic, and ModernEconomies (Beacon Press, 1968).

15. The greens stand out as an example and are discussed in the contextof the Western scholarly tradition of international political economy in EricHelleiner, 'International Political Economy and the Greens', New PoliticalEconomy, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1996), pp. 59-78.

16. I use the word group in order to ensure that those aggregates ofindividuals who do not necessarily qualify as a 'community', because ofdislocations, are included. I have in mind particularly migrants.

17. Helleiner, 'International Political Economy and the Greens', p. 67.

18. The attractiveness of exploiting capitalism was essential to the thinkingof Marx. Socialist revolution could only be successful if it was preceded bythe full development of bourgeois capitalism.

19. This notion of democracy was forcefully advocated by the Americanpolitical scientist, E.E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People (Holt,Rinehart and Winston, 1960), who thought direct and representationaldemocratic models were unrealistic. For him, democracy 'is a politicalsystem in which the people have a choice among alternatives created bycompeting political organizations and leaders', p. 141.

20. This would be consistent with Polanyi's emphasis, in The GreatTransformation, pp. 86, 41, on the 'makeshift' character ofcounter-movements.


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~~~~~~~~

By ROBERT LATHAM

Robert Latham, Social Science Research Council, 810 Seventh Avenue,31st Floor, New York, NY 10019, USA.

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Latham Democratic Provision Ism