‘Labour and new social movements in a globalising world system’: the future of the past

Abstract

A new set of questions [is] being created by a changing present. Questions about who constitutes the working class, about how fragmented and divided groups of workers have organised, issues about workplace and community and the democratisation of unions and state policies are assuming centre stage. As the contours of the present shift, it is becoming possible to look back from new perspectives.1

Notes

Rowbotham, ‘New Entry Points,’ 68.

Groppo et al., Die Arbeiterbewegung.

Van der Linden, ‘The ICFTU at the Crossroads.’

That labour studies might be so committed does not mean that they are by this token emancipatory in intention or effect. The point is revealed in two such recent studies of national union movements, that of Robert Taylor (‘Social Democratic Trade Unionism’) on the UK and that of Dan Clawson (The Next Upsurge: Labour and the New Social Movements) on the US. These actually illustrate the difference between an explicitly ‘social democratic’ and ‘social movement’ approach—both phrases appearing in the titles. Taylor's is an original attempt to revive, under conditions of neoliberal globalisation, the historical social-democratic project. Clawson's is an argument to the effect that unionism can only revive to the extent that it ‘fuses’ itself with the new social movements—including the internationalist ones.

Jie-Hyun Lim, ‘From the Labour Emancipation to the Labour Mobilisation.’

James, ‘Latin American Labour History.’

Ibid., 162. At the other pole to the political-economic determinists would seem to be the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. In a brief exposition (‘Marx's Mole Is Dead!’) of their yet-to-be-published book, they make a convincing case for starting social analysis from social resistance or protest and treating hegemonic political-economic strategies as responses. While guilty of inventing two of the new century's most problematic left concepts—empire and multitude—these authors deal with the impact of informatisation/globalisation on the working class, the generalisation of proletarianisation, the increasing spread and depth of capitalist contradictions, and the way the old labour internationalism is being transformed into something much more potent.

Van der Linden, ‘The ICFTU at the Crossroads.’

Van Holthoon and van der Linden, Internationalism in the Labour Movement; van der Linden, The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.

I could and possibly should have included (also) the paper of Ilse Lenz (‘Globalisation, Gender and Work’), in so far as this was the strongest conference presentation of what we might have to call the ‘newest international labour studies.’ By way of feeble excuses for not having included her, I will merely say: (1) I am awaiting the completion of the paper she actually presented, and (2) that despite the 15–20 years since we last met or communicated with each other, we have anyway been following parallel or converging tracks, and (3) I am hoping to recommence the dialogue when she eventually addresses herself to her women's international labour protest cases.

Waterman, ‘Problematic Past and Uncertain Future.’

Waterman, Globalisation, Social Movements and the New Internationalisms, 26, 103.

Waterman, ‘Adventures of Emancipatory Labour Strategy;’ ‘International Labour Studies 2000+;’ ‘Whatever Is the Global Justice Movement Doing?’

E.g. the positions of Richard Hyman as summarised in Waterman, ‘International Labour Studies 2000+.’

<http://www.icftu.org/default.asp?Language=EN>.

Waghorne, ‘Getting a Seat.’

<http://www.foodfirst.org/wto/reports/ezln3eng.php>.

<http://www.foodfirst.org/wto/reports/ezln1eng.php>.

For those too young to remember this—and they are increasing—I am here playing, but seriously, with ‘revolution in the revolution’ (Debray, Revolution in the Revolution).

She also throws a certain amount of doubt on the argument of a political-economic-determinist conference participant who declared that rural petty-commodity production gives rise to chiliastic movements.

Castells, The Information Age, 373.

Deutscher, Ironies of History.

Waterman, ‘Adventures of Emancipatory Labour Strategy.’

For more extensive argument around these propositions, see the various references to Waterman. These references also reveal sources for many of the propositions. And the papers themselves mostly have extensive bibliographies.

‘Nominally democratic’ in so far as many unions suffer from the low participation affecting liberal democracies more generally. The further the organisation gets from the shopfloor, moreover, the more nominal becomes the democracy. So, while the ICFTU might claim that it ‘represents’ 150 million workers in x number of countries, it is doubtful whether more than a small percentage know it represents them, even in Brussels where it is situated.

Given the extent to which locales are globalised, and to which the hegemonic global is particularised (by transnationals, by the West, by (inter-)state bodies, by Rich White Men with Diner's Club Cards), many questions arise about how, for example, ‘localisation’ or ‘globalisation’ might be understood by waged and other workers within or around a Coca Cola plant in Kerala, India.