‘Globalization’: simply a stage in the
internationalization of capital or a new form of organization of capital?
Nothing new?
Is globalization only a
slow, long-term progression?
Share of international trade
as % of national product in developed countries:
· In 1913 > 12.9%
· In 1993 > 14.0%
· In 1938 > 6.2%
Flow of direct foreign
investment as % of developed country GDP:
· In 1913 > 3%
· In 1990 > 4%
Ø 1st
overseas subsidiary of Ford in 1913 in Britain, followed by one in 1916 in
Canada
Interaction between
liberalization and globalization
A 15-20-year process
Permanent movement:
· Ongoing
concentration of capital
End of cycle:
· Profits are not
repatriated, but also not reinvested in productive activity. Eurodollars from
1960s on. Progressive reconstitution of a mass of capital that seeks
realization by financial means because of growing difficulties of realization
through production. Amplification with petrodollars in 1970s.
· System of flexible
exchange rates after abroagation of Bretton Woods system in 1979
· Economic crisis of
1974/75
· Rise of public debt
– Sharp exchange-rate fluctuations
New ‘behaviour of direct
investors
Polarization and
marginalization >> modification of uneven development
More concentrated capital,
more oriented toward other developed countries, less toward countries of
‘periphery’
More unstable, more volatile
capital (‘footloose’)
Ø Spreading risk
Ø While constantly
seeking optimal return on investment
The US target
The
‘foreign’ share of the US doubled in 7 years (from $405 bil. to $883 bil.)
The US and
Britain are the only two countries where this proportion has increased
absolutely and relatively.
The rising share of
‘foreign’ capital in domestic activity
Firms in the globalization process
Firms as agents of
globalization
Partial
or total denationalizations and privatizations:
Ø Acquisitions,
redeployment
Free
circulation of capital:
Ø Increased freedom
in allocation of resources, investments and internal financial flows
Ongoing
tendencies to concentration
Centralization
of treasuries (‘cash pooling’):
Ø facilitated by ICT
Ø as insurance
against exchange rate fluctuations
Ø direct intervention
in financial markets and creation of financial products
A >>>>
M >>>> A’
A >>>>>>>>> A’
Overcoming the
contradictions of really existing capitalism
Shifting forms of
organization of labour and valourization of capital
Confronting:
·
The tendency of profit margins to erode (falling tendency of the rate of
profit)
·
Market uncertainty (production for sale and to realize surplus-value)
… and social uncertainty:
·
Mobilization of the labour force in the service of profitability is
never guaranteed in advance
·
Disciplining the labour force (e.g. turnover) and cost-cutting
·
The political and social dimension of the organization of labour
·
How can capitalism end its dependence on the knowledge of wage-earners?
>> Different
combinations in different periods of: external market pressures + internal
discipline + material and symbolic incentives
>> From authoritarian paternalism to Taylorism and Fordism (and
Toyotism)
Firms are social
constructions
Development of strategies
for competitiveness
·
Development of production technology; standardization of procedures,
products, management technic and skill levels
Ø Producing what has already been sold; saving
on fixed and variable costs (subcontracting)
·
Development of products, value added and start-up risk (high-speed
trains, space shuttle, big planes, new medicines, etc.)
·
Development of social relations of forces
·
Development of markets, market organization and effective demand
Ø
Impact of market openness = overcapacity
· Historical
evolution: from manufactures to networking multinationals
·
Geographical variation: between centre and periphery (delocalization of
factories in the 1970s)
The example of the
pharmaceutical industry
A decade of mega-fusions
Centralization of
resources to reduce risk
The case of research in
the pharmaceutical industry
Average
cost of launching an innovative new medicine
(including amortization of
failures)
à 2000/2001 average:
$880 billion
From multinationals to
world groups
Variations on the theme of
investment optimization
Very prevalent in
the past and still a bit today:
· Delocalizations in
search of lower costs (labour, taxes, energy)
A bit in the past and very
prevalent today:
· To gain access to a
national or regional market
Finding the optimal
organization of resources by relying on globalization:
·
Groups organize on a world scale, in networks, and in matrix form
Ø
Old
forms of organization ‘by country’ are being left behind
Matrix organization
Centralizing and
globalizing operational responsibility
Deconcentration of
production (‘small is beautiful’) and financial concentration
Making resources flexible
A = Global or regional managements
B = Factories producing for the
national, regional or global market; C = Subcontractors and outside
suppliers
X =
Nationally functional company
Groups
are demassified by giving greater autonomy to ‘profit centres’, operating under
rigorous profitability requirements
The coercive power of
financial markets
·
Reality and myths on pension funds and speculative funds
·
The goal: a 16% rate of return
·
The pressure of stock markets; the speculative boom around new
technologies (‘the new economy’)
Ø
An (almost perfect) capital market:
Ø
Very great capital mobility
Ø
The function of placement steadily replaces every other function
Ø
For the first time in history, the profitability of big firms can be
compared day-by-day. Other financial actors can punish excessive profitability
gaps every day.
Shareholder tyranny
·
Need to combine price competition with competition through quality and
innovation. Need for reactivation, linking spheres of expertise and capacity to
anticipate.
·
Outcome: Casualization + cooperation
·
The final judge (of firms, managers and wages): stock prices and
shareholder satisfaction.
·
Managers and employees have immediate access to the efficiency norm
imposed on everyone. The financial market sets the performace norm to be
reached. Market discipline ‘mobilizes’ the labour force.
·
This notion of efficiency has spread even onto the shop floor. It is
rational inasmuch as it forces wage earners to cooperate in improving their
performance.
A new productive order
shaped during the depressive phase
More efficient, making it possible to reinforce the competitiveness of
cutting-edge firms
|
|
expansive phase |
recessive phase |
|
1st cycle |
1789-1816 |
1817-1849 |
|
2nd cycle |
1850-1873 |
1874-1895 |
|
3rd cycle |
1896-1919 |
1920-1940 |
|
4th cycle |
1941-1973 |
1974-? |
A new mode of capital accumulation
·
New industrial and financial structures
·
New predominant type of wage relation
A type of new productive forms
·
New technical bases
·
Implementation of a new mode of labour organization
A new international division of labour
·
New hierarchy
A specific process of economic and social regulation
Wage earners up against their globalized firms
A growing number of employees in global groups
The real boss is farther and farther away
The new scale of wage conflicts
A new and complicated
strategic framework
· Disjunction between
the strategic and juridical space of the big groups and that of political and
social regulation. National
manoeuvering room for arriving at specific compromises is shrinking.
· Crisis of systems
in which social regulation is too costly (e.g. Japan)
· Crisis of national
law and weakening of national governmental organs
· Rise of
infra-regional and continental spaces of accumulation
The neoliberal firm is
neither efficient nor rational
· The cases of ENRON
and ANDERSEN
· Corporate
bureaucracies, corruption and wasted resources
· The average annual
salary of a member of a global board is between € 300.000 and € 1.200.000 — before stock options and
without retirement plan.
(between 25 and 66 times the average wage in France)
The impasses:
· The hypocrisy of
antitrust procedures and controls
· The mirage of
Corporate Government
· The false solution
of social and environnemental ‘dues’
What strategies for trade
unions and the left?
·
The question of law in a context of structural weakening of
national social legislation (where it exists)
· The debate on
constraints on speculative capital flows (Tobin Tax). Is this effective
in influencing corporate restructuring?
· The debate on the internationals
institutions (WTO, European Union, Nasdac, etc.). What to do with them?
· The debate on
workers’ rights in e.g. European firms
Global justice and firm
reorganization
Once more the issue of delocalizations. The debate on European
‘deindustrialization’ >> which is also a debate about economic flows and
therefore about the environment
What kind of solidarity do we need inside the big global groups?
And
‘how to struggle’? >> Crisis of trade unionism, for lack of
adequate responses — due not only to pressure of unemployment but above all
destabilization of work collectives
Open-ended programmatic
questions
A strategic debate that
has barely begun and lags far behind social and economic reality
·
On the working class, its organization and its struggles
·
Increased proletarianization of intellectual labour
·
On new forms of solidarity to be created and organization of common
struggles in the big global groups
·
On the relationship between workplace struggles and social struggles
outside workplaces; the notion of social appropriation can also come from
outside the firm (e.g. ecological issues)
·
On workers’ democracy and trade-union democracy (the issue of groups and
subsidiaries from one firm to the next)
Globalization & social
formations
A strategic debate that has barely begun and
lags far behind social and economic reality
Industrial
delocalizations past and present
The question of China
A new ‘uneven and combined development’ ; evolution of centre/periphery
relations
Debate on the proletariat and the revolutionary
subject:
·
Massification, concentration, expansion of the working class … what’s
going on?
·
Reminder of Trotsky’s analyses of the Russian working class in uneven
and combined development and our debates about permanent revolution … And our
debates about the ‘working-class majority’
·
The effects of dislocation of the welfare state in Europe today
No anti-capitalist
strategy without an analysis of social formations
· Do not confuse: social
class, class consciousness, class mode of organization
· Do not evade the
debate on internal segmentations, divisions and stratifications – sources of
division and differentiated consciousness
· The (universal)
issue of growing inequality within the working class, and between the working
class and the growing masses of the unwanted
A new configuration of global capitalism, new social
formations ... and a new political practice