The discussion of globalization by some prominent Marxists (but not all) has oddly focused on the question of whether the new “internationalization” of capital will undermine national sovereignty and the nation-state. Invariably these observers (for instance, Ellen Wood and William Taab in Monthly Review; Ian Jasper and Morris Zeitlin in Nature, Society, and Thought; and Erwin Marquit in Political Affairs) conclude that the nation-state still plays a key role in capitalist imperialism, that capital—while global in its scope—is not international but bound to particular nations, and that “globalization” is little more than another name for overseas capital investment.
They repeatedly remind us that Karl Marx already had described globalization, this process of international financial expansion, as early as 1848, when he and Friedrich Engels in the Communist Manifesto wrote about how capitalism moves into all corners of the world, refashioning all things into its own image. Therefore, there is no cause for the present uproar. Globalization, these Marxists conclude, is not a new development but a long-standing one that Marxist theory uncovered long ago. Nor is there any reason to fear, they assure us, that the nation-state will disappear from history because of the globalization of trade and production.
The problem with this position is that it misses the whole central point of the current struggle. It is not national sovereignty that is at stake, it is democratic sovereignty. People all over the world have taken to the streets to protest free trade agreements not out of concern for their flag but for their democratic rights, their ability to defend themselves from the preemptive expropriations of an internationalized monopoly capital. Among them are farmers, workers, students, and intellectuals, including many Marxists who see things more clearly than the aforementioned.
As used today, the term globalization refers to a new stage of international expropriation, designed not to put an end to the nation-state but to undermine whatever democratic right exists to protect the social wage and restrain the power of transnational corporations.
The free trade agreements potentially can override all statutes and regulations that restrict private capital in any way. Carried to full realization, this means the end of whatever imperfect democratic protections people have been able to muster after generations of struggle. Under the free trade agreements, any and all public services can be ruled out of existence because they cause “lost market opportunities” for private capital. So too, public hospitals can be charged with taking away markets from foreign-owned private hospitals; and public water supply systems, public schools, public housing, and public transportation are guilty of depriving their private counterparts in other countries of market opportunities, likewise public health insurance, public mail delivery, and public auto insurance systems. Laws that try to protect the environment or labor standards or consumer health already have been overturned for “creating barriers to free trade.”
But let it be repeated: what also is overthrown is the right to have such laws. This is the most important point of all and the one most frequently overlooked by persons from across the political spectrum. Under the free trade accords, corporate investment rights have been upraised to imperial supremacy, able to take precedent over all other rights, including the right to a clean, livable environment, the right to affordable public services, and the right to any morsel of political-economic democracy. Under the banner of “free trade,” corporate property rights are elevated above all democratic rights.
Globalization has been used to stifle the voice of working people and their ability to develop a public sector that serves their interests. Even free speech is being undermined by free trade agreements as when product disparagement (public criticism of the safety or quality of a product) is treated as an interference with international trade. And even nature itself is being privatized by transnational capital, as corporations buy up patents to monopolize the world’s natural food supply. What we have is an international coup d’état by big capital over the peoples of the world.
Another form of laissez-faire supremacy not mentioned so far (and given relatively slight attention by Marxists) is the European Union (EU). It is a 27-state confederation in which “free movement” of goods, services, capital, and labor are promoted, and no EU member state is allowed to protect local producers from the competition of a more powerful transnational company situated in another member state. As there are substantial income disparities between member states, “free movement,” as Anthony Coughlin points out, leads to wider inequalities, with “high cost capital and businesses tending to move from Western to Eastern Europe and low cost labor moving from Eastern Europe westward.”20
In sum, the fight against free trade is a fight for the right to political-economic democracy, public services, and a social wage, the right not to be completely at the mercy of big capital. It is a new and drastic phase of the class struggle that some Marxists—so immersed in classical theory and so ill-informed about present-day public policy— seem to have missed. The free trade accords benefit the rich nations over poor ones and the rich classes within all nations at the expense of ordinary citizens. It is the new imperial specter that haunts the world.