Theorizing Global Justice Movements: Class, State, and Resistance in the Transnational World

8/4/2019 Theorizing Global Justice Movements: Class, State, and Resistance in the Transnational World

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Jose A. Laguarta RamirezGlobal iz ati on and its DiscontentsFinal Paper

Theorizing Global Justice Movements:Class, State, and Resistance in the Transnational World.- . . . . . .

.The decisive election of the leader of Bolivia's indigenous coca growers, Evo Morales, tothe Presidency should dispel, once and for all, a n y - lingering doubts that the hegemony ofthe so-called Washington Consensus has come to an end, at least in Latin America. ,Thisdoes not mean, of course, that capitalism is being seriously challenged, or that neoliberalthinking is not still dominant in circles of power around the globe, but it does signal theend of an era during w hich alternatives were nearly unthinkable. W hat is unclear is whatthe alternative will be. Some influential critics of the Washington Consensus, like Joseph

~':.., Stiglitz, emphasize the need to strengthen the state and civil society, without challenging:>' : . .~~-;.)~~e-:, the basic premises of global capitalism (2003). In stark contrast, Morales's close ally,;e~,< -': Hugo Chavez, a fiery opponent of neoliberalism from the start, has declared he is..building "twenty first century socialism" in Venezuela. Unlike Stiglitz, Morales andChavez can at least claim to be partially accountable to millions of people who a re among

. the most affected by neoliberal policies on the planet.

IntroductionA ccording to W illiam R obinson, "challenges to the hegem ony of the globalist bloc com e

from the antiglobalist far right; progressive elites and nationalist groups in Third Worldcountries, such as the populist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez; and popular sectorsworldwide, as expressed in the rise of a global justice movement (usually referred to~notentirely accurately, as the antiglobalization movement), ' (200 4: 17 3)& The connection

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between the second and third such possible challenges is not fortuitous. Chavez firstrevealed the "socialist" character of his revolution to an overflowing crowd at PortoAlegre's Gigantinho stadium in January 2005., during the fifth round of the yearlygathering of global justice activists known as the World Social Farum (WSF). Chavezh ims elf w ill host the W SF in J an ua rv 2 0 06~ when the event will assume a "decentralized", . . .format, taking place in Caracas, Bamako (Mali), and Karachi (Pakistan).

For Robinson, "globalization" marks a qualitatively distinct epoch of worldcapitalism, characterized by the rise of a global economy distinguished from an earlier"world economy" by the globalization of the process of production itself, so that nationalunits are fragmented and externally integrated into the new global circuits ofaccumulation (2004: 11; 12-13~figs. 1.1, 1.2) Robinson argues that transnational capitalhas become the hegemonic fraction of capital on a world scale, leading to the rise of atransnational capitalist class (Tee) which is constructing a "new global capitalist bloc,"composed of "economic and political forces led by the T ee whose politics an d policiesare conditioned by the new global structure of accumulation and production," (75). FromRobinson's neo-Gramscian perspective, if he is correct in identifying the global justicemovement (GJM) as a challenger to the hegemony of this globalist bloc, the GJM mustnot only offer sustainable alternative forms of globalization (as its proponents claim itdoes), but must also correspond to class formations grounded in the globalization ofaccumulation an d production, which is by 110 means certain,

For the purposes of this paper, I will assume Robinson's assessment of the :globalization of production and the rise of the TCC to be accurate. Iwill set aside the>"challenges of the "antiglobalist right" ~noting that it exists as a political and ideological

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movement which recruits adherents from all social classes. Taking Robinson's cue, I willconceptualize the GJM as a Gramscian historical bloc which may include radical eliteslike Chavez. What I am primarily concerned with is the viability, from the standpoint ofRobinson's conceptual framework, of the GJM, and more specifically of the WSF, as alocus of resistance against neoliberal globalization. To this end, there are three keyquestions that must be addressed about the WSF movement, including the plethora ofregional, national, and local forums in its orbit. First, are they structurally in conflict

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with neoliberal globalization? Second, do the social actors who participate at the social.":~r 'j . : . : : : .forums constitute a cohesive political force? Finally, are they capable of sustaining I ii', /t(

. TJ : .?:!...~ ..{ ..~ t, ~i _ /_...~ /.ongoing opposition to it? This paper does not seek to provide empirical evidence to f /f , .~. .; :;i 1 .:-

I .. ~,"resolve" these questions, but rather to set out a general framework for future inquiry.These questions necessarily intersect with the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio

Negri (2000; 2004) for whom the emergent revolutionary force of our time is notspecifically a class actor, but a diffuse entity they simply call "the multitude". Hardt andNegri were acclaimed as the intellectual sweethearts of the GJM when their first book,Empire, first came out, shortly before the first W5.F. Loose networks, which for Hardtand Negri are the form of the multitude, rather than closed or bureaucratic organizations,are the preferred political vehicles of the \VSF. They seem to have fallen somewhat outof favor more recently, in part because their writing (especially in Empire) is oftenimpenetrable, but also as a result of the harsh reactions by their Marxist colleagues, manyof whom a re e qu ally if not m ore influential at the W SF~ against the ambiguity of theconcept of the multitude. In any case, Hardt and Negri's contribution to understandingthe possibilities of contemporary resistance should>not be overlooked. In terms of this

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paper, Hardt and Negri raise an additional question about the character 0 the politicalsubject(s) in the vVSF movement, which needs to be addressed.

This paper will explore the lines of inquiry' raised by this series of questions bysurveying analyses of class formation in Latin America since the 1980s, as well ascontemporary debates about Left political strategy in Latin America, and concreteexamples of potential political and economic alternatives emerging from popularmobilizations in the region. These include Brazil ~s experiments in participatorydemocracy and the experiences of "twenty first century socialism" in Venezuela. Thegeographic focus of the paper will be Latin America. although I will propose argumentsthat should be testable elsewhere. My hope is that these examples might yield someinsight into the composition and character of popular resistance to ncoliberalism in thepresent, and its possibilities as the engine of a more transfonnative process whichchallenges global capitalism in the future.

Neoliberalism a s a Class ProjectThe first step is to defme the concepts that will be deployed in this paper. I acceptRobinson's definition of "globalization" as an epochal shift in the evolution of worldcapitalism, resulting from its extensive and intensive expansion, characterized by the riseand dominance of the transnational fraction of the capitalist class, the T e e (2004: 2-9).In contrast to Leslie Sklair and others (2001), for Robinson the T ee comprises thepropertied agents of transnational capital (Robinso:n 2004: 36, fn. 1), whose interests liein the expansion of the global market. As the leading strata of the T e e becamepoliticized in the 1980s and 1990s~ it set about to create or transform emergingtransnational institutions, building a "transnational state" (TNS) in the form of a network

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of nation-states and supranational forums that is not yet centralized (87-88). TIletechnicians, bureaucrats, politicians, intellectuals, and other agents of the TNS apparatusall form part of the Gramscian historical bloc which- enables T e e hegemony.

The ideology of this globalist bloc, which manages the TNS!) is neoliberalism,"the doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism legitimated by the assumptions of neoclassicaleconomics and modernization theory, by the doctrine of comparative advantage, and bythe globalist rhetoric of free trade, growth, efficiency, and prosperity," (77). Thisdefinition can be nourished by the insights of David Harvey, for whom neoliberalism is"in the first instance a theory of political and economic practices." one which "hasbecome hegemonic as a mode of discourse.i , to the point where it has becomeincorporated into the common-sense way many of us interpret, live in, and understand theworld," (2005: 2-3; my italics). This was not always the case. Neoliberalism grew out of..obscurity as the brain child of a handful of intellectuals after the Keynesian model of"embedded liberalism" of the post- World War II period began to become an obstacle tocapital accumulation in the late 1960s, and coming to the fore in the 1970s as neoliberalslike Paul Volcker reached positions of state power.

As a project, the aim of neoliberalism is to "disembed' capital from theconstraints of state-led planning, welfare systems, and other elements the classcompromise represented by embedded liberalism (11). Neoliberalism is therefore, forHarvey, a project for th e restoration of the class power th rough conce rte d efforts totransform the state, As Harvey points out, however, "while neoliberalization may havebeen about the restoration of class power, it has not necessarily meant the restoration ofeconomic power to the same people," (31). What is meant by "class" ,q which as Harvey

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notes means different things in different places(31-32) is the sum total of the socialforces that relate to the forces of production in . a specific way the "collective worker" or"collective capitalist". The "restoration" of class power in the neoliberal context, then,means the resumption of capitalist accumulation, under new conditions, by rolling backthe concessions to labor of the Keynesian class com.promise.

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accumulation, increasingly transnational corporate practices, and the need to bypass thesovereign nation-state, which accounts for the rise of Robinson's Tee. At the same time,!:~,~

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as Harvey notes, individual capitalists and corporations may attach themselves to.t:.!s:,':,~f~,

particular state apparatuses forprotection or advantage (34). InRobinson' s analysis, ._ . . ' " . ' ' . : - ' I - - I _ . . _ - - - _ - _ : - -

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nation-state, but in a diffuse network of command mechanisms they refer to as Empire.This is not the nation-state based imperialism of the past, but an interconnected entity ofglobal control, or "biopower", which permeates all spheres of life and "regulates sociallife from w ithin ... the m anagem ent of life is it s primary task ... w hat is directly at stake isthe production and reproduction of life itself," (2000: 38; my trans.). Counterposed to thebiopower of Empire is its "living alternative", the multitude, defined primarily as"singularities that act in common," .a-eencept a concept "meant to repropose Marx'st-political project of class struggle," and "based not so much on the current empiricalexistence of the class but rather on its conditions of possibility," (2004: 103-105)0

Hardt and Negri contrast multitude to traditional definitions of "the workingclass", usually applied to industrial workers, or at its broadest, to waged labor. Theyconceive of the multitude as "all those who work under the rule of capital and thuspotentially the class who refuse the rule of capital," (106). As Hardt and Negri correctlypoint out, "class is determined by class struggle. 9. [and] can only be a collectivity thatstruggles in common," and that "a theory of class not only reflects the existing lines ofclass struggle, it also proposes future lines," (104). This view coincides with Marx'snotion of th e proletariat at its broadest, as "the class of mod em work ers who liv e o nly so

. . . . . . . .long as they find work.?:' owning nothing but their own labor ...ower. In Marx's time andplace, powerful economic forces compelled this class of laborers into large industrialfactories. As Hardt and Negri point out, the "hegemonic" form of labor (not in terms ofnumeric superiority, but its centrality to other forms) is no longer industrial labor, butwhat they call "immaterial ~, (only insofar as its products, such as the intellectual oraffective outcomes produced in the service or communications industries) or

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"biopolitical" labor "that creates not only material goods but also relationships andultimately social life itself,' (109). It is this biopolitical production that creates theconditions of possibility for the emergence of the multitude.

What remains ambiguous about Hardt and Negri's vision of the multitude is itsvehicles of political organization and struggle. For Hardt and Negri, the multitude makespossible genuine global democracy of a scale and intensity never seen before, but whichdoes not take the modem shape of representation, not even "instructed" forms ofrepresentation that reduce the separation between representative and represented, likeparticipatory budgeting, which incompatible with the democracy of the multitude because

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they ultim.ately reproduce the principle of sovereignty (246-247). The democracy of themultitude is not even "direct" democracy, but "absolute" in that citizens "do the politicalwork of creating and maintaining social relationships collaboratively in the samecommunicative, cooperative networks of social production, not at interminable eveningmeetings," (350). Hardt and Negri are not interested, either, in addressing the question of"what is to be done?" which "has to be decided concretely in collective politicaldiscussions,' (357).

There is a crucial distinction between Hardt and Negri's multitude and theconcept of historical bloc M indeed, any concept that relies on a notion of politicalstrategy and opposition ....As Ghopal Balakrishnan points out, the authors "came to rejectany residual conception of politics as a strategic field. In the age of Empire,revolutionaries no longer need to distinguish tactics and strategy, position andmanoeuvre, weak links and invulnerable ones; they can now rely on a pervasive, ifdiffuse, popular desire for liberation and an episodic intuition of friend and enemy"

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(2000: 146). Historical blocs are by definition strategic, The multitude, because it iseverywhere, does not strategize.. It communicates and collaborates. I, for one, would

.~ . . . .-. . . . . . . . _. . . . - _ f rr..l h op e fo r an amicable resolution. Throughout the rest of this paper, I will adapt elements1.

":.. of the multitude, which in my view is an accurate theorization of "the working class"when necessary, to sustain my argument about the GJM as a historical bloc.

"Another World is Possible"TIle gatherings of the \\1SF have been held every January (originally with the

intention of coinciding with the World Economic Forum) since 20001 in Porto Alegre,Brazil, except in 2004, when it took place in Mumbai, India. The event has grown from20,000 participants from 117 countries in 2001 to 155,000 from every country in theworld in 2005 (Gautney 2005: 76). In the 2006 "decentralized" WSF, the Caracas eventalone is expected to surpass that amount. In addition, over 250 regional and local forums

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adhering to the principles of th.e WSF have taken place since 2001. On the eve of theoccupation of Iraq, the third WSF explicitly brought together the anti-neoliberal and anti-war movements. The WSF "vas the main organizing body for the worldwide antiwardemonstrations which drew tens of millions into the streets that February, eliciting a NewYork Times headline identifying the anti-war movement as "the other superpower.I"

The WSF defines itself as "an open meeting place for reflective thinking,democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and

interlinking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that areopposed to Ilea-liberalism and to the domination of the world dominated by capital andany form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society directed

4 Patrick Tyler, "A New Power inthe Streets", February 17,2003 (in Gautney 2005).

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towards fruitful relationships among Humankind, and between it and the Earth.~,5 Thisfirst principle at once sets the limits of the WSF, and reveals its ideological breadth. Onthe one hand, the anti-neoliberal and anti-imperialist character of the forum is firmlyestablished. On the other, th e opposition to "the domination of the world by capital"rather than to capitalism, allows for the participation of social-democratic and left-liberalactors. In fact, important and influential social-democratic organizations have beencentral to the effort from the beginning.

In fact, a great deal of the initiative for the WSF has come from the Associationfor the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens (ATTAC.), the FrenchJournal Le Monde Diplomatiq tie, and the Brazilian Entrepreneur's Association forCitizenship (elVES). The ruling Brazilian Workers' Party (PT), which at the timecontrolled both the municipal government of Porto Alegre and the state government ofRio Grande do SuI, has been central to the effort as well, providing both space andconsiderable funding for the event (Teivanien 2002: 623-624). This close relationshipwith an electoral party," which happens to hold power at the national Ievel, and whoseadministration has i nc re as ing ly been discredited by corruption scandals and attacked bycritics o n th e left for being, well, n eo lib eral (P etra s 2 00 5), is to s ay th e le as t p ro blematicfor the WSF, whose Charter of Principles explicitly excludes the participation of electoralparties, for-profit corporations, and armed groups.

Given these relationships, then, in what sense can the WSF be considered a site ofresistance to neoliberalism (not to mention capitalism), except perhaps ideologically?This question does not have a straightforward answer, becau se neo libe ra li sm , like

; _ I 't d W I 11 d _ _ I E-) First Principle, WSF Charter of Principles, www.forumsociahnundial.br6 Chico Whitaker one of the founders of the WSF, was recently elected to the Porto Alegre MunicipalCouncil on the PT ticket (Gautney 2005: 77)

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capitalism, is not a thing that can be "opposed" in the literal sense, but a complex socialreality of which oppositional actors are still part. Martin Camoy and Manuel Castells goso far as to argue that, NGOs (which by definition include all of the organizations presentat the forum) are in fact an extension of the contemporary "Network State" (2001).Evidently, no event of the magnitude or the press coverage that the WSF has generated infive short years could have taken place without the initiative and considerable resourcesof organizations like ATTAC and the PT. The question is whether the event has in factadvanced the cause of the GJ11, or served to co-opt it?

It would be very hard to prove that the WSF has co-opted its participants in anysignificant way. In fact, only days before Chavez's announcement of his "twenty firstcentury socialism" was unanimously cheered by the crowd, Brazilian President LuizInacio "Lula" da Silva "vas booed by about half of those present at the same stadium.The same could very well happen to Chavez in a few years. Hardt invites us to see theWSF as the contemporary equivalent of the 1955 Bandung Conference, with Lulastanding in for SUkalTIO and Bernard Cassen of ATTAC as Nehru: "TIle leaders cancertainly craft resolutions affirming national sovereignty around a conference table, butthey can never grasp the democratic power of the movements. Eventually they too willbe swept IIp in the multitude ... " (2002).7 Perhaps this perspective of the multitude asgrowing out of and overflowing global capitalism, rather than "opposing it" is moreadequate. Another way is to conceptualize the GJM as a historical bloc, which mayinclude diverse actors differentially invested in "opposing" neoliberalism.

The fact is that the WSF has counted on the strong presence of popular andsubaltern movements of people directly affected by neoliberalism from the very7 For a response to Hardt on the WSF, see Mertes 2002.

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beginning. Two cite the two most influential, the Landless Workers' Movement (MST)and Brazil's largest and most powerful labor union, the CUT, have been on theOrganizing Committee of all the Porto Alegre events.f Of the thousands of self-organized events and activities that take place at each forum, on a broad range of topics,every single one is somehow connected to the topic of resistance to the processes ofglobal capitalism. The fact is, although the forum is not financially accessible to mostdispossessed people around the world, thousands of subaltern movements send delegateseither to the WSF or to the smaller local forums. Because the Charter of Principlesexplicitly bars the forum from deliberating, any pretense of "representation" iseliminated. Otherwise, the politicians, and academics in the fold, already highly'influential as it is, not to mention people of European descent, who are the numericalmajority at the forum, would certainly carry the day.

Instead, the value of the forum remains "not that it creates democracy on a globalscale, but that it connects the agents and practices necessary for this construction,"(Mesner 2005: 89). The emergence of this kind of communication and collaboration is /J'~'j

~.1one of the conditions for the emergence of Hardt and Negri's multitude. Perhaps this is :.. , . . . .

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why Hardt is able to liken the WSF to his notion of the multitude, "always overflowing,excessive, and unknowable" (2002). Not everyone is happy with this state of affairs,however. During the fourth WSF, attended by over 100,000 people, including 15,000from India, the host country, a smaller "alternative" forum entitled "Mumbai Resistance"was set up by a handful of Maoist parties (Vanaik 2004: 59, 61). This brings me to thenext question regarding the political forces gathered at the WSF: are they politicallycohesive? The short answer is no. The WSF gathers every imaginable shade of left

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liberal, social-democrat, socialist, communist, anarchist," and in between, and those arejust the folks for whom ideology matters.

On the other hand, how do we define political cohesion? For Hardt and Negri,cohesion is not only unnecessary, it is undesirable. From a perspective that understandsthe GJM as a historical bloc, some level of unity in action is required for effectiveopposition. In this sense, all that is required is the capacity to act against neoliberalisrnand imperialism, the two antagonists, so to speak, of the WSF, according to its Charter ofPrinciples. Perhaps the clearest sign that cohesion has been achieved at some level arethe massive, coordinated, anti-war protests of February 2003. Inaddition, there has n O l tbeen a single major meeting of the global political and economic elite since Seattle 1998that has not met with some sort of mass demonstration, and the WSF has immenselyfacilitated that process as well. The organizers have been remarkably skilled atstimulating and facilitating this cohesion, given such a disparate set of actors. This may,in part, result from the self-conscious choice to minimize formal structures of "cohesion'in the same way that Hardt and Negri's multitude consists of "singularities that act incommon" without losing their identity.

Finally, the question arises whether this cohesion (of sorts) can sustain ongoingopposition to neoliberal globalization. Istarted this paper by commenting on theelectoral victory of Evo Morales, and how it had ended the hegemony of neoliberalism illLatin America, which of course is neither an irreversible victory, nor a complete one.The majority of Bolivia's indigenous people have never been to the WSF, despite theclose proximity of Brazil (a have, as has of course has Morales, the rising star of the

9 For an anarchist take on the WSF~see Graeber 2002.

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Latin American Left). Yet, I would argue that Bolivia's indigenous and cocaleromovements are a key piece of the puzzle that is the GJM historical bloc. These are themovements that in a sense are hegemonic wit/lin the bloc, much in the same wayim material labor for H ardt and N egri is the hegem onic form of labor today, although it isnot numerically dominant. Popular movements are pivotal to the GJMand the WSF notbecause they are numerically dominant or because they control more resources, butbecause they are its raison d'etre -Bolivian indians can exist without the WSF, but notthe other way around and they set the pace for their allies. 10

Really Existing MultitudesIn a recent debate on leftist strategy in Latin America,11 James Petras argues against"class alliances hegemonized by a supposedly national bourgeoisie that would reformneoliberalism," noting that in the last 20 years "the only social forces that acted to block,resist, and even overthrow neoliberal regimes were led by class movements includingIndian peasants, urban neighborhood committees of the unemployed, rural landlessworkers, precarious workers, peasants, public employees., . and the poor self-employed,"(2005: 153). In other words, " all th os e "VI10 w ork under the rule of capital." P etras isparticularly weary of electoral alliances, such as the one which brought the PI whichPetras considers "110 longer a 'workers' party' in program, structure, and leadership (daSilva has been out of the factories and a full-time functionary for a quarter of a century,"

(155) to pow er in Brazil. By "class movements" he means ones that respond directly to

10 The WSF is the subject of ongoing debate. For a survey of different perspectives from influentialparticipants, see Bello 2002, Klein2001, Wallerstein 2002, Sader 200211See also Ellner 2004 and Hamecker 2005

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the grievances of the oppressed, rather than those that respond to interests of the"national" fractions of capital against the Robinson' s T e e .

Whatever his case against the PT, Petras makes an important structural point. Asnoted earlier, Robinson and Harvey note that the "national state" articulates itself invarious ways to the neoliberal TNS apparatus, and it does this not against the interests ofthe "national" bourgeoisie, but often at its behest, much in the same way that feudaloligarchs throughout Latin America were integrated into the circuits of internationalcapital accumulation during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The old Marxist termfo r that is "un ev en and com bin e-d development" ~ So it is somewhat puzzling to hearsome Marxists argue that there is a structural contradiction between national andtransnational capital which can be exploited by popular movements. Still, there are someelectoral alliances with elite sectors not necessarily the national bourgeoisie -likeVenezuela's Chavez, which have been fruitful for "class movements", and other types ofalliance, like what I call the GJM bloc, which may not directly advance the class struggle,but serve to build the channels of communication and collaboration Hardt and Negri's"biopower -necessary for transfonnative practices to emerge.

tf~-/ \.1s What marks th e difference? A brief survey of-class fo rma tion in Latin Americ a in

the 1980s, and the characteristics of the popular movements that have emerged mayprovide some useful insight. Alejandro Portes and Kelly Hoffman note that"neoliberalism has proven more successful as a political than as an economic project, asthe transformations that it has wrought in society have weakened the basis for theorganized class struggle and the channels for the effective mobilization of populardiscontent," (2003: 77). Privatizations and deindustrialization in general have led to the

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dramatic growth of the segment of the population "not incorporated into fullycommodified, legally regulated working relations, but [that] survives at their margin in awide variety of subsistence and semi-clandestine activities," (43) which Portes andHoffman call the "informal proletariat," (50) and which in Latin America is linked invarious ways to the a class of "microentrepreneurs" possessing some resources and skill,who organize informal labor to produce low-cost goods and services (45).

The overall shrinking of the formal working class has led to the decline of bothclass-based leftist parties and traditional labor unions, with the "precarization' ofemployment and the elimination of the factory floor as a physical space of classsolidarity. The resulting alternative community forms of mobilization, according toPortes and Hoffman, "tend to be erratic and reactive to specific events," (76-77). In this

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view, Petras' strategy of relying on class-based movements is doomed to failure. It. .. . . r- ,. .- . .. .. - .. . ~ . " ' :' '' - : . ' , -" ' ,' - :: - ', ': - - . .. . : _ . " . - ._ , . . '. .. .. - ' .' . ' . . . . _~: . o ~~. . ~-" 1 ; : ' . . . , . . , . . . . . . . . . . . . : . I I l I " ~ 4 R . . . ." _ . . . . : - .' - . - . . . " '. . . . . . . . . ... - ._. . ... _. ... .. - .. - ' _ ".... - -

would seem, however, that historical events have shown Portes and Hoffman to bevictims of their own hyper-empiricisfll. Movements based on community and informalemployment organizations, from Brazilian landless workers 12 to Bolivian cocaleros, toArgentinean unemployed workers, to Venezuelan slum dwellers have proven powerfuland effective enough to elect and remove (and in one case, reinstate) Presidentsthroughout the region during the last twenty years, and spaces like the WSF and localforums are providing the means to expand action beyond narrow, single-issue strugglesand build alliances with other "class movements".

Analyses which still see industrial labor unions as the only or even the primarymeans of effective working class organization are clearly inept for grasping the-~~. . . . '..

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12 S an do va l ( 20 04 ) s hows ho w the M ST grew as a direct consequence o f d ei ndus tr ia li za ti on a nd t he d em i seof the pow er of the CUT. For a first . .hand narration ofMST strategy, se e Stedile.

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significance of these movements. The "informal proletariat", which makes up themajority of the population in most Latin American countries (56-59, table 3), togetherwith diverse forms of unpaid labor, including "women's work" in the household,encompasses "those who work under the rule of capital." Deborah Yashar traces the riseof new forms of collective action and organization to the shift from the corporatist to theneoliberal modality of what she calls "citizenship regimes" defined as a "patternedcombination of citizenship rights and the accompanying modes of interestintermediation," (1999: 79-80), in distinction to political regimes. Where the corporatistregimes dominant throughout Latin America during the mid-twentieth centuryincorporated subalterns by extending limited civil and social rights, but not necessarilypolitical rights.l" the neoliberal regimes which took shape with the rise of the WashingtonConsensus, redefined citizenship to emphasize increased civil and political rights indetriment of social rights.

As Yashar points out, neoliberal citizenship regimes tend to erode many of thec la ss -based in stitu ti onal means o f in te re st medi ation put in p lace w ithin the structure ofthe state itself by their corporatist predecessors (79), even as they grant legal recognitionaccompanied by new "rights" to formerly marginalized groups, as in the case of theindigenous groups she is concerned with.l" As a result, the shift in political regime, fromauthoritarianism to formal democracy on the one hand, and in citizenship regime on theother, which took place in tandem throughout most of Latin America in the 1980s makesit possible for ethnic minorities and other subaltern groups to mobilize both within andt I _ _" I a . -13 C iv il r ig ht s: " fre ed om o f o rg an iz ati on a nd expression," (Yashar 1999: 79)~" th e r ig ht t o organize undercertain circumstances," (80); political rights: "suffrage" (79, 80); social rights: "the right to a minimums tandard o f l iv ing ," (79, 80).14 For a similar analysis which focuses on non-ethnic identities, see Eckstein 2001.

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..

beyond state institutions, independent of elites and traditional political actors. At thesame time, new grievances and exacerbated old ones emerge on the basis of identities andinterests from the corporatist past tied to public goods that are often threatened byneoliberal reforms, which can be mobilized and politicized through new institutional (andnon-institutional) means (81 ..81).

We could add, with Harvey, that neoliberalism entails not just new forms ofcitizenship, understood as the relationship between citizens and the state, which itcertainly does, but also a particular regime of accumulation. Harvey describes theprocess of accumulation under neoliberalism as "accumulation by dispossession" (2003:137-182) likening it to Marx' s notion of "primitive accumulation", in that it isreinvigorated to the extent that it erodes preexisting social rights and public goods,effectively dispossessing subaltern actors. An additional factor we may add is thatcorporatist regimes, whether democratic. or authoritarian, incorporated privileged

.l~

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accountability from of the neoliberal state from the citizenry to international financial\Ii .~'~i

-2! /i!" fj .f il ~ .1fJ ",~I ~.1 If' J , } "1 ?'j"iji~!~j"In my view, the ensuing breakdown of the electoral system j.!

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opted them but also made the state directly accountable to them. The TNS displaces the~.- ._ .. ". - ..I . : : r - . . . - : . : . . . _ . - _ . . . _ . _ . . . . . . _ - - .

.. :.. - .: ..... . ......;"... .~ _.- .-: -.1 : :.::"':r.-I.-..-_ . ~ ~ . _ _- ,:r 1 . -; ." "' :P .: .N ' : ..

,-,, .....J institutions (IFIs) such as the IMF, constraining th e options of all electoral parties,, , . ~ . .. x . .. / t < ~ ,. ~ . .~ : :~ .' r . " i : . f ? t ' . 1( _ . ~ _ . . .~ : . . : " t" - . /" ( . ' ! ' : - - ! : : . . r - -.... ...,.;;;.."r-""~... ;:.:.. - s... . ; . ~ . J ; : . ' k., ~..I"'r . " 1 " . e . : ;. .. .s . ~ . .

~ u / t / l l l / > / . especially those on the left.. : i: ~;;. - ;. . - : .:.: , ;j ~ ~ , ' {) . ' . . -~~~~;_ ;""~~ ,? .,/ , . ~ . _ ~,._ . _ .. ,. . ~ - _ : .. ~ ,. . . ~~ _ . - j./ U -.,. . :: ./~: . . ~. ~ r . . , . , : J . r > ~ :- ; ' 7 ' ; ' . .. ~ . ~~y.# : -,-: :.~ .: .:. :. ,... . . ..". .-. . . .," .. . .: ~ - ~ ~ - ~ :~~~ =.. . . . . . .. ! i ' :~' . ;. - , _


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-

Gutierrez in Ecuador -.-or may lead to varying degrees of institutional accommodation ofsocial movement demands. The key variable in this case seems to be the degree to whichthe movement itself is directly represented in the governing coalition. The famousparticipatory budget of Porto Alegre and other Brazilian cities is a case in point.Participatory budgeting mechanisms are in vogue these days, and are even promoted bythe World Bank, but with limited and varying degrees of actual participation. As Brian,Wampler and Leonardo Avritzer demonstrate, the mechanism has also been implementedin hundreds of Brazilian cities, by several parties, but with limited success. The case ofPorto Alegre, where it was implemented by the PT in 1988, is distinct precisely in thestrong presence of movement activists in the local government (2004)~ The fact is thatwhatever it has become at the national level, the PT has a long and tested tradition ofhaving been built from the grassroots up (Abers 1996)~15

Anadditional example of a successful "populist" anti-neoliberal electoral allianceis Hugo Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution" in Venezuela. Although at the national level,Chavez's governing alliance stars a somewhat disparate array of progressive militaryofficers and left intellectuals of various persuasions, its solid base of support has been anetwork of urban slums which became politicized during the 1989 mass disturbancesknown as El Caracazo, in protest against Carlos Andres Perez's neoliberal adjustmentpolicies. The bloodily repressed uprising gave way to what is known as the "PopularAssemblies" movement, which has been crucial in promoting and sustaining local levelparticipatory democracy during the Chavez era, successfully challenging and unseating,through referenda mechanisms introduced in the 1999 "Bolivarian' constitution,

15 For various perspectives on Porto Alegre's participatory Budget, see Mesner 2005, Munck 2003, an dTeivanien 2002~

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numerous MVR mayors and delegates. Chavez has introduced participatory budgeting inseveral urban centers, but perhaps most importantly, a cabinet-level Ministry of PopularParticipation charged with creating thousands of nationwide Local Public PlanningCouncils called for by the new Constitution, with binding authority over local matters andthe capacity to introduce municipal, regional, and national legislation (Albert 2005).16

ConclusionThe WSF has become a locus of resistance to global capitalism. Like the neoliberalcounterparts, the political forces that coalesce at the forums, and the GJM more generally,

,

can be conceptualized as a Gramscian historical bloc, which includes radicalized elites,intellectuals, and disaffected "middle class" people. However, the spirit, so to speak, thatdrives it is that of "all those who work under the rule of capital, and thus potential ly . ..those who refuse the rule of capital," the working class in its fullest sense. This is notwishful thinking, or metaphysical flight of fancy: it may be the white middle-classp ro te ste rs th at c atc h th e co rporate media's attention , bu t none of it w ould net-be possiblein the first place if not for the countless, daily rebellions of oppressed people around theglobe. The cost of travel may preclude their physical presence at the WSF, but the self-conscious decision by organizers to avoid deliberation has prevented the event fromassuming a falsely "representative" character. Its primary purpose remains to producecommunication between singularities in common struggle.

Hardt and Negri's reworking of the concept of class is accurate, and responds, ingenuine Marxist spirit, to the need to ad ap t th eo retical co nstru cts to changing historicalconditions, rather than allowing them to ossify into doctrine. It is very difficult, however,

16 See also Wilpert 2005, Gindin 2004, Wagner 2004, and Harnecker 2004.

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to decipher what forms of organization of they envision for the multitude. Although theyinsist that the multitude requires a political project to bring it into being, and that itsdevelopment is neither anarchic or spontaneous, the meta ph ors th ey use to describe itsorganization are, in fact, processes of longue-duree: "the formation of habits, orperformativity or the development of language," (Hardt and Negri 2004: 222). There issim ply no sense of political immediacy, opportunity, or strategic action. T his m ay w ellbe an antidote against vanguards, but cultural transformation they hope for also requiresconcerted short-term actions by actors who can actually hope to see them through.Despite their protestations to the contrary, to simply note that production is increasinglycollaborative and biopolitical, amounts to unabashed spontaneism,

The challenges to global c ap ita lism th at Robinson se es p osed by th e GJM towhich I have applied the notion of historical bloc to make room for the "radicalizedelites" Robinson sees as an additional set of challengers -then, emerge from the veryconditions of possibility for Hardt and Negri ~s multitude. These include the

tec hn olo gic al an d c ommun ic ativ e o pp ortu nities th at res ult from "globalization" it se lf , butalso the identities and interests set off by the shift from the corporatist mode to whatYashar calls the neoliberal "citizenship regime", Of, in Harvey's terms, the neoliberalregime of accumulation (that is, by dispossession). As conditions "mature" (to use theold economist adage), new collaborative practices emerge, but so do new oppressiveones, and so do opportunities for political action. In the spaces between conditions andactions, short-term projects take shape social forums, participative budgets, and self-

.managed workplaces however incomplete or attached to old forms of sovereignty theymight be, which reach toward t he hor izon of t he mul ti tude.

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Documents

Theorizing Global Justice Movements: Class, State, and Resistance in the Transnational World