European unions and the repoliticization of transnational capital: labor's stance regarding the Financial Transaction Tax (FTT), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA)

Abstract

This article argues that labor and social movements should repoliticize the transnationalization of capital in production and finance. The neoliberal era has demonstrated the power asymmetry between global capital and national labor. It seems that academics, trade unions, and progressive politicians have accepted this upscaling of capital to the global level as an irreversible fact that cannot be challenged. This article claims that progressive labor and social movements should, first, repoliticize the power of global capital and, second, try to scale down capital. The article studies three cases from the European Union to examine whether trade unions are trying to repoliticize, and succeeding in repoliticizing, global capital's power. It is concluded that repoliticizing and challenging the power of transnational capital is not impossible, but not easy either, and that trade unions need to focus more on these struggles.

Keywords::

• labor
• capital
• transnationalization
• neoliberalism
• capital controls
• Financial Transaction Tax (FTT)
• Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)
• Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA)

Acknowledgements

I thank the organizers of the workshop on Labour and Transnational Action in Times of Crisis: From Case Studies to Theory at the Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) in Oslo, as well as the Special Research Fund (BOF) of Ghent University for fully funding my doctoral research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. For example, Wallerstein, February 1, 2008, http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2008/wallerstein010208.html

^2. For example, Fine, “Locating Financialisation,” 114.

^3. Global capital, transnational capital, and internationally mobile capital are used as synonyms here.

^4. See Abdelal, Capital Rules.

^5. See Erne, Agathonos-Mähr, and Gauper, “Social Democracy.”

^6. See Hopewell, “Different Paths to Power.”

^7. See e.g. Hamilton, “TTIP's Geostrategic Implications.”

^8. See Eberhardt and Olivet, Profiting from Injustice.

^9. See e.g. Brenner, “Limits to Scale?”; Gough, “Changing Scale”; Macartney and Shields, “Space, the Latest Frontier?”; Swyngedouw, “Globalisation or ‘Glocalisation’?”

^10.Brenner, “Limits to Scale?,” 604.

^11.Harvey, “Geography of Class Power,” 61–62.

^12.Gill, Power and Resistance.

^13.van Apeldoorn and Overbeek, “Introduction.”

^14.Gill, Power and Resistance, 190; Harvey, Limits to Capital, 149.

^15.van Apeldoorn, de Graaff, and Overbeek, “Reconfiguration,” 476; Gindin and Panitch, “Rethinking Crisis,” 42.

^16.Bieler, Lindberg, and Pillay, “What Future Strategy?” 264; Gill, Power and Resistance, 107, 113; Harvey, Brief History, 168–9.

^17.Cowling and Tomlinson, “Globalisation and Corporate Power,” 45; Harvey, Limits to Capital, 421.

^18.van Apeldoorn, “Theorizing the Transnational,” 159; van Apeldoorn “De macht van het kapitaal,” 168.

^19.Bakir and Campbell, “Financial Rate of Profit,” 299–300; Krippner, “Financialization of the American Economy,” 180.

^20.Panitch and Gindin, “Current Crisis,” 17.

^21.Dufour and Orhangazi, “International Financial Crises,” 342.

^22.Gill, Power and Resistance, 111; Harvey, Limits to Capital, 147.

^23.Grabel, “Marketing the Third World,” 1767.

^24.Palley, “Labor Perspective,” 33.

^25.Harmes, “Neoliberalism and Multilevel Governance,”; Harmes, “Rise of Neoliberal Nationalism.”

^26.Harmes, “Neoliberalism and Multilevel Governance,” 727.

^27.Harmes, “Rise of Neoliberal Nationalism,” 67.

^28. Ibid., 61.

^29.Harmes, “Neoliberalism and Multilevel Governance,” 740.

^30.Lesage and Vermeiren, “Neo-Liberalism at a Time of Crisis,” 45; see also van Apeldoorn, “De macht van het kapitaal,” 168.

^31. For example, Fougner, “State, International Competitiveness”; Fougner, “Neoliberal Governance of States.”

^32.Fougner, “Neoliberal Governance of States,” 320.

^33.Grabel, “Marketing the Third World”; see also Crouch, “Privatised Keynesianism,” 389.

^34.Cowling and Tomlinson, “Globalisation and Corporate Power,” 44–45; Gill, Power and Resistance, 109–110; Harvey, Brief History, 92.

^35.Grabel, “Marketing the Third World,” 1764.

^36.Gill, Power and Resistance, 111.

^37.DeMartino, “Comment,” 83.

^38.van Apeldoorn, “De macht van het kapitaal,” 168; see also Fourcade-Gourinchas and Babb, “Rebirth of the Liberal Creed,” 568–9.

^39.Watson, “International Capital Mobility,” 86 (original emphasis).

^40.van Apeldoorn, “De macht van het kapitaal,” 169; Panitch, “Globalisation and the State,” 62.

^41.Abdelal, Capital Rules.

^42.Wade, “Is the Globalization Consensus Dead?,” 144.

^43.Tabb, “Labor and the Imperialism of Finance,” 13.

^44. For example, Gill, Power and Resistance; for a discussion see Dierckx, “After the Crisis?”

^45.Lesage and Vermeiren, “Neo-Liberalism at a Time of Crisis,” 43.

^46. See Abdelal, Capital Rules.

^47.Lesage, Vermeiren, and Dierckx, “New Constitutionalism,” 202–5.

^48. France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, and Spain.

^49. See e.g. the article on EurActiv.com on 4 November 2014.

^50.ACV, ABVV, and ACLVB, Streng bezuinigingsbeleid?; ETUC, No to Austerity.

^51. There are of course exceptions, e.g. two letters on the website of the Financial Times, one published on 29 November 2011, by Sharon Burrow (General Secretary of the ITUC), Bernadette Ségol (General Secretary of the ETUC), and John Evans (General Secretary of the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD), and one written by Ségol, published on 17 April 2013.

^52. See e.g. BusinessEurope, Why TTIP Matters; also a letter by the president of BusinessEurope and the chair of AmchamEU on the Financial Times website on 13 February 2014.

^53. Like the TTIP as a whole, ISDS is strongly supported by business, as indicated for example by a letter from the CEOs of the United States Council for British Industry and the Confederation of Danish Industry, and the Director General of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise on the Financial Times website on 10 March 2014.

^54.Eberhardt and Olivet, Profiting from Injustice.

^55.Gill, Power and Resistance.

^56. See for instance the website http://eu-secretdeals.info/ or the letter by Magda Stoczkiewicz, see Stoczkiewicz, Civil Society Call.

^57.FOE Europe et al., No Fracking Way.

^58. See e.g. an opinion by a number of civil society groups on EurActiv.com on 13 January 2014 and a post by Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth US, and Magda Stoczkiewicz, director of Friends of the Earth Europe, on the Huffington Post website on 24 December 2013.

^59. See the Financial Times website on 14 March 2014.

^60. Examples include the pan-European AlterSummit, the Belgian Alliance D19-20, the German TTIP Unfairhandelbar, the French Non au Traité Transatlantique, and the Italian Campagna Stop TTIP, which are not even always supported on paper by large trade union confederations.

^61. The US trade union centre AFL-CIO has also stated: ‘We strongly oppose ISDS, which privileges a single type of economic actor – foreign investors – to bring cases against sovereign governments to challenge democratically enacted laws as well as regulations and judicial and administrative decisions.’ AFL-CIO, AFL-CIO Response to Request.

^62. See also Bieler et al., “Conclusion.”

^63. A similar position has been formulated by the largest German trade union confederation DGB; see DGB, Concerning the Planned Negotiations.

^64. See the translation of the interview with Wetzel on http://media.ttippen.se/2014/03/Stop-the-Free-Trade-agreement-immediately-edited.pdf.

^65. See, for instance, within the ABVV, the websites of the public services federation ACOD (http://www.acodonline.be), the Algemene Centrale (‘General Union’) (http://www.accg.be), and the metalworkers Metallos MWB (http://www.metallos.be), and, within the ACV, the white collar workers' union CNE (http://www.cne-gnc.be) and the public services federation ACV-Openbare Diensten (https://openbarediensten.acv-online.be).

^66. See an article by Gus Fagan on the OpenDemocracy website on 6 February 2014.

^67. See the Financial Times website on 22 October 2014.

^68.Ikenson, Compromise.

^69. Note that an important initiative trying to politicize ‘free trade’ within the EU concerns the Alternative Trade Mandate alliance, which published in November 2013, in the run-up to the European elections, an alternative to the free trade agenda. It is probably no coincidence that trade unions again played only a secondary role in this alliance.

^70. Similarly, AFL-CIO declared that a trade treaty ‘could have positive impacts on job creation and income growth’ (original stress), but that it ‘is unlikely to have such impacts unless the United States Trade Representative (USTR) fundamentally alters its approach,’ AFL-CIO, “AFL-CIO Response to Request.” The Head of the British TUC's European Union and International Relations Department, Owen Tudor, has on his ToUChstone blog (an informal blog by TUC staff) called for ‘saving the baby when the bath-water is removed,’ and it is clear from several blogs that he is not necessarily opposed to a trade deal. The social-democratic fraction S&D has adopted a comparable position, published on their website on 17 April 2014.

^71. See the link of the interview in note 64 above.

^72. For instance, whereas by May 2014 there were 129 search results for TTIP on EurActiv.com, there were only six for CETA.

^73.CLC-ETUC, EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement.

^74. See e.g. 11.11.11 et al., Transatlantic Statement; Eberhardt et al., Right to Say No; FOE Europe et al., Stop the Corporate Giveaway; Maes, Investment in CETA; Maes, Investment Protection. The same could be said for Canadian civil society (with coalitions such as the Council of Canadians and the Trade Justice Network).

^75.Crotty and Epstein, “In Defence of Capital Controls,” 122; see also Epstein, Should Financial Flows Be Regulated?; Panitch, “Globalisation and the State.”

^76. For example, Bieler, Lindberg, and Sauerborn, “After 30 Years of Deadlock,” 257; Harvey, “Right to the City,” 39; Radice, “Responses to Globalization,” 15.

^77.Harvey, “Right to the City,” 37.

Additional information

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Sacha Dierckx

Sacha Dierckx obtained his PhD in Political Science at the Ghent Institute for International Studies (GIIS) (Ghent University, Belgium) in November 2014. His doctoral research examined whether Brazil, India, and China are challenging the Western-based neoliberal norm of the free movement of capital. He has published in journals such as International Politics, Globalizations, and Third World Quarterly.