Reviews
Globalization and its Discontents: The Rise of Postmodern Socialisms by Roger Burbach, Orlando Nufiez and Boris Kagarlitsky, Pluto Press, 1997, 196 pp., $49.95 (cloth), $19.95 (paper). The...
...Those governments have simply become "administrative and law-enforcement complexes" for neoliberal capitalism...
...So having been "discarded," are these "highly differentiated activities" really outside the capitalist mode of production...
...Rather, they are out to engage the reader on the nature of the system's "discontents," which, they claim, represent the first steps toward "postmodern socialisms...
...Again, there may be nothing new here...
...The authors of this provocative book-activist/theorists from California, Nicaragua and the ex-Soviet Union-take "globalization" as a given...
...There has been an exhaustion, say the authors, of the legacy of the French Revolution-the legacy that has shaped the politics of the past two centuries with its emphasis on the quest for state power and on the centrality of political parties to advance all interests and philosophies...
...And in the regions of the world where most people live, "governments find themselves weakened as international capital imposes its prerogatives on them...
...Rather, they attempt to construct power in the interstices of the old system...
...This is why we speak of postmodern socialisms...
...If socialism is to be a part of this process," they say, "it will assume many forms...
...These were the watchwords of Paris, 1968...
...For Burbach, et...
...The content of the "postmodern" project comes out of the new-left project of the 1960s...
...Nonetheless, if the "globalization" they describe really is something new, Burbach, Nufiez and Kagarlitsky may have some justification in sweeping these diverse political actors into a new political movement...
...If that is correct, these diverse challenges may indeed be, at least chronologically, postmodern...
...They laud the new social movements which organize quests "to satisfy individual needs and desires...
...Indeed, say the authors, "we are witnessing the struggles that burst into the open in 1968...
...These are underclass crime and violence, ethnic and racial movements (like the Muslim nation of Farrakhan or the Zapatista rebels), Islamic fundamentalism (now spreading beyond the Middle East) and urban rebellions (linking the first three phenomena...
...These challenges, unlike the old "modern" challenges to capitalism, do not contest for state power...
...These include the street vendors of the informal economies of Latin America, weak enterprises sold to workers, "cottage" activities of small firms that subcontract to big capital, the new (impoverished) peasantry of the ex-USSR, township enterprises of China and microenterprises in general...
...Capitalism has always marginalized certain activities, though many marginalized activities (like 16-hour workdays in off-shore sweatshops) have, in turn, been central to the functioning of the system...
...As the left searches for new directions and footholds, the book, more manifesto than analysis, makes an interesting contribution to the debate...
...A "new individuality" is being created which, in contrast to the old selfabsorbed individualism, is defined "in relation to one's sexuality, to a particular social or ethnic group, or even in relation to other species or the environment...
...Their global significance is linked to the downfall of modernism: the "destabilizing impact" of late capitalism, the "ideological impasse" of liberal democracy and the collapse of (real existing) socialism as a politicaleconomic alternative...
...The authors link these "challenges" to the rise of "new postmodern economies" which "are comprised of highly differentiated activities and economic islands that rise phoenix-like out of what capitalism discards...
...And while the Zapatistas are on everybody's list as the first postmodern guerrilla movement, they can also be seen as very unpostmodern heirs to the Mexican Revolution, rebelling over questions of land and the tyranny of landlords-hardly "postmodern" questions...
...One can argue that there is nothing particularly "postmodern" about self-help groups based on racial identity or about the political power of strongly held religious beliefs...
...This will produce "a vast class of associate producers," and a synthesis of capitalism and socialism...
...The authors emphasize participatory democracy, human rights, environmentalism, pacifism as an ideal, feminism, economic democracy, sexual freedom, social justice, ethnic liberation, local power and workers' power...
...al., these marginal activities "are part of an emergent mode of production" and, as such, give rise to potential insurgencies: "A wave of mercantile and petty productive activity," say the authors, "will gradually begin to coalesce with other popular endeavors like cooperatives, worker-run concerns and municipal or township enterprises...
...The postmodern movements are multicultural in scope, involving people of color, Indian movements and religious people all organized around issues of culture...
...The current "world disorder," they say, has produced four "antisystemic challenges...
...In effect," they say, "capitalism and technology have collapsed time and space...
...Whether this state of affairs represents anything qualitatively new in the history of capitalist development can be-and has been-called into question, but the authors are not interested in that particular debate...
Vol. 30 • May 1997 • No. 6
