Crisis, the emerging new stage of capitalism, and the need of a transnational class strategy for social emancipation

Abstract

In the context of a rapidly globalizing and tightly integrating capitalist economy ushering to a new stage of ‘totalitarian capitalism’, it is argued that the dominant nation-centric approach is theoretically flawed, historically outmoded, and politically ineffective in serving a revolutionary emancipation of the working-class social majority. After a theoretical substantiation of the emerging new stage of capitalism and a brief exploration of the relation between state and revolution, it is stressed that the currently exacerbating crisis of capitalism and the pressing need of social change point to an urgent need for a new transnational strategy pivoted on the capital–labour contradiction, which acquires an increasing significance under present conditions. A first attempt is also made to articulate the basic elements of such a class strategy.

Keywords:

• transnational capitalism
• class
• state
• revolution
• emancipation strategy

Notes

¹For this reason, Marx (1968a, 288) would approvingly cite the Central Committee of the National Guard of the Paris Commune saying that, ‘The proletarians of Paris … have understood that it is their imperious duty and their absolute right to render themselves masters of their own destinies, by seizing upon the governmental power’.

²As Luis Pozo (2007, 79) points out, ‘Gramsci was indeed right in exposing nationalism as the ethico-political element underpinning bourgeois hegemony; but he was misled in believing that the proletariat could be hegemonic within a framework historically associated with bourgeois concerns’. It should be added here that, unfortunately, most of the left-wing parties and intellectuals have been trapped within this framework for the past century or more.

³In this sense, contrary to Lacher (2005, 47) and all those tending to reverse historical materialism, we should rather properly embrace historical materialism and, with it, ‘the globalism’ of the Communist Manifesto (see also Burns 2010).

⁴For the debates around John Holloway's book Change the World without Taking Power, see, among else, the Symposia in Historical Materialism (2005). See also Chris Wright's (2006) review of the book edited by W. Bonefeld and S. Tischler (2002) in Historical Materialism.

⁵The proclamation of nation-statehood today, however, by some left-wing ‘progressives’, can be understood as, either a futile resurrection of Keynesian regulation, or a reinforcement of a recurrent nationalism, when both clearly do not serve a true social emancipation of the working class majority.

⁶This approach considers imperialism simply as a political strategy for capitalist expansion and intervention, and not as an outgrowth of the CMP itself, while giving emphasis on inter-class alliances for the protection of national interests.

⁷This common practice of capital refers to its capacity to artificially improve competitiveness by imposing the least favourable terms of trade for the less developed countries and the least favourable (on a global level) employment and wage terms for the working classes.

⁸Due to insufficient international coordination, Lenin would in vein expect the spread of revolution in Western Europe after the October. As the strategy for the revolutionary transition to socialism in the early twentieth century has been historically judged, however, the much more favourable objective conditions in the early twenty-first century, not to mention the (less favourable) subjective conditions, make it imperative that the working class should transcend the nation-state centric strategy of revolutionary emancipation (see also Lebowitz 2003, 210).

⁹This safe (ontological) grounding derives, under current capitalist conditions, from the objectively increasing role of a transnational working class and a working-class subjectivity arising from its intensified exploitation by capital.

¹⁰As Marx has repeatedly stressed, the liberation and social emancipation of the working class will be the work of the working class itself (Marx 1968b, 325), and not of any ‘external’ agency or ideological vanguard. In this sense, this political initiative ‘from below’ is a condition sine qua non for this self-emancipation.

¹¹This Directive stipulates that a capitalist firm, by formally establishing its base in a country with a low level of wages and social insurance, can utilize these low standards throughout its transnational economic operations. In this way, a ‘race to the bottom’ is generated across all European countries.

¹²Here we could mention, for example, the exit of countries from international organizations such as the World Bank and IMF, as Venezuela has done, the coordinated action for the rejection of a major institutional change in the EU, such as the draft constitution, the exit of country-members or the potential dismantling of the EU, and a potential transnational initiative of working class organizations for a radical transformation of international institutions concerning economic cooperation and development.

¹³In this case, among else, it can legitimize such policies by invoking international competitiveness, external necessities, and international obligations or commitments undertaken by the nation-state, making the determination of transnational capitalist regulation rather remote to the class action of national working classes (see also Radice 2005).