This past Sunday I attended Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin’s
presentation and Q&A on their book The Making of Global Capitalism in the Bookshelf Cinema. I’m not
going to write about their book per se, since that’s been done so capably by
our guest blogger Terry Moore; this is more a consideration of ideas given in
the presentation itself. It’s too bad we didn’t host Panitch and Gindin fifty
days earlier. If we had, these incisive Marxist economists would have found
themselves at the front of the Bookshelf cinema sitting next to Frank Hasenfratz,
the owner of Linamar and the very model of a modern rags-to-riches industrialist.
I’m sure the audience would have been treated to a lively exchange of views!
As it was, Panitch and Gindin’s own talk was informative, perceptive,
and intellectually bracing. Among the many ideas they presented, two points
stood out for me. The first was how we often interpret the world in an terms of
conflicting sides when what is happening is in fact a more subtle form of
interrelationship. For instance, take US-based multinationals versus local
governments and business institutions. Panitch and Gindin convincingly argue
that the spread of American capitalism is indeed a form of economic
imperialism, but it’s not a matter of blue-suited American hordes pouring over
borders to seize the control of foreign economies away from local institutions.
Rather, historical evidence shows that US-based multinationals have most often
been invited by foreign governments and business elites to participate in local
economies. Instead of a hostile takeover, it’s more “Empire by invitation.”
Or take unions versus businesses. While unions often serve as a bulwark
against exploitation, Panitch and Gindin also point out that if unions narrowly
focus on the financial advancement of their members and blind themselves to a
larger view of their possible role in fostering social and economic justice,
they can become cogs in a larger economic machine that is itself unjust. Their
victories may even be pyrrhic, as when increased union power in the 1970s led
to large wage increases that then fueled high inflation and subsequently
provided rationales for the anti-union actions of the Reagan administration in
the 1980s.
Or, finally, take the idea that there’s an ongoing struggle for
social control between multinational corporations that are fundamentally undemocratic,
accountable only to foreign shareholders, and citizens who are represented by
their democratically-elected governments.
Yet when populations define themselves mainly as consumers, they often
trade the power they have as citizens for the opportunity to acquire more
stuff, essentially handing power over to corporations through their economic
choices. To me, one of the main strengths of Panitch and Gindin’s analysis was
their constant emphasis that, while conflicting aims exist, relationships are
never as simple as they seem.
Given how capitalism in general is so successful at re-absorbing
resistance (this week’s fashion rebellion is next season’s runway sensation in
Paris), for those who want to explore alternatives to global capitalism, this
could be a pretty depressing picture. To paraphrase critic Slavoj Zizek, it’s
easier for us to imagine the end of the world than it is for us to imagine the
end of capitalism. But the second main point I took away from the presentation
concerned agency. In order to counter simplistic assertions that we are all
free, rational agents whose poverty or affluence, impotence or power, is
totally a result of our own personal choices within a free economic system, a
lot of modern political and social theory has emphasized the degree to which we are embedded in,
influenced by, and limited by the social systems we are born into and inhabit.
But when the pendulum swings too far in that other direction, passivity can
result: if my context determines who I am, how can I change anything?
But while Panitch and Gindin offer a thorough, evidence-based
analysis of how the world is becoming increasingly entangled in American economic
colonialism, they also insist that, for those who want to change the system,
action is possible. The first stage is to step back and take a look at the big
picture: for individuals to re-assess what the good life is and to think about
how consumerism affects the world we live in, and for progressive organizations
like unions to take stock more broadly of their purposes and the roles they
might play. And they argue that for systemic change to take place, the actions
of individuals and smaller groups need to be coordinated with the actions of
larger bodies that have more political pull. The exact shape of this
synergy and of the new possibilities it could give rise to remains to be seen,
but Panitch and Gindin’s presentation cleared the space for a larger imagining
of both.
