Francis Fukuyama, the bourgeois impressionist whose announcement
that the collapse of the Soviet bloc signalled the "end of history"
encapsulated the bourgeois triumphalism of the early 1990s, has taken note of
the recent protests against "globalization." In the 22 May issue of
Time magazine Fukuyama observes: "the egalitarian political impulse to
constrain the power of the wealthy in the interests of the weak and the
marginal remains strong and is already making a comeback." While not a
particularly unique insight, Fukuyama is a competent journalist who articulates
the concerns of many elements of the ruling class:
"There is plenty about our present globalized economic system
that should trouble not just aging radicals but ordinary people as well. A
financial panic starting in distant money centers can cause you, through no
fault of your own, to lose your job, as happened to millions of people during
the Asian financial crisis of 1997....Do you want to extend your social safety
net a bit further? The faceless bond market will zap your country's interest
rates. Do you want to prevent your airwaves from being taken over by Howard
Stern or Baywatch? Can't do it, because the world of information is
inherently borderless. Do you want to pass a law to protect endangered species
in your own country? A group of faceless bureaucrats in the WTO may declare it
a barrier to trade. And all this is true in boom times like the present--think
of how people will regard global capitalism during the next economic
downturn! "So the sources of grievance against the capitalist world order
are still there and increasingly powerful. The question is, What form will the
backlash against globalization take?"
Similar diagnoses have been made by a wide variety of
left-liberals and social democrats, but few dare plagiarize so boldly as
Fukuyama in prescribing a cure:
"It is clear that socialism cannot be rebuilt in a single
country. Workers pushing too hard for higher wages in Michigan will simply
see their jobs disappear to Guadalajara or Penang. Only if all workers around
the world were unionized, pushing simultaneously for a global rise in wages,
would companies be unable to play off one group of workers against another.
Karl Marx's exhortation `Workers of the world, unite! has never seemed more
apt. "In theory, then, what the left needs today is a Fourth
International uniting the poor and dispossessed around the world in an
organization that would be as global as the multinational corporations and
financial institutions they face." [emphasis added]
Leon Trotsky launched the Fourth International in 1938 in order to
lead the expropriation of the expropriators--an act that, in Marx's words,
"brings...the prehistory of human society to a close" and marks the beginning
of humanity's ability to consciously control its fate.
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