Globalization and the State - Essay Example

?Globalization and the The body of literature has established the dominant view that globalization or international integration is the ideal world system or the best so far. It also persists and is adopted by most countries of the world, indicating an actual validation. The proposition is that it is an effective paradigm especially as a global economic system (Chong 2007; Hill and Rapp 2008). It enables nation states to develop faster and become more capable in solving problems such as poverty, ignorance and equality. But there are worldviews that oppose this assumption. Marxism is a case in point. It argues that the system is rife with exploitation, greed and is destined for an inevitable demise. The position is that nation-states are rendered helpless as globalization forces wrest control of the social, economic and political spheres. These issues highlight the conflicting views on the link between globalization and the state. Is there an accurate approach to explaining the phenomenon and its impact on nation states and the world? This paper proposes that the Marxist perspective can be effective in answering this issue. What is a state? For the purpose of this paper, it is helpful to establish the concept of the state. Max Weber defined it as “an agency of domination” which bounds civil society together (Abinales and Amoroso 2005, p6). The domination variable is important because it guarantees and holds together what Weber called the state’s main attributes: territory, monopoly and legitimacy (Stewart 2001, p103). This is one of the most comprehensive and widely cited definitions. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels (2012, p3) also provided his own definition by explaining that the state is “a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” Both of these definitions – as the rest of other conceptualizations – differ in elements, structure and they do vary according to politics. But there are commonalities such as territory and control and, interestingly, most of these elements are present in the modern world system under globalization. This factor along with the state’s response to internationalization underpins the relationship between state and globalization. Globalization and the Marxist View It is important to note that Marxism is fundamentally a critique of capitalism. It established how the economic organization of society defines and control the political and social system (Neack 2003, p21). Any society that adopts this system is said to be characterized by stratified socio-economic classes. The Marxian analysis approaches globalization from this perspective. It maintains that globalization, as a capitalist system, is endlessly driven by the need to accumulate more. Here, the means of production and consumption is cultivated in such a pattern of expansion, where the market is pushed further from the local to the nation on to the international levels (Milward 2003, p23). In 1857, Karl Marx (1973, p524, p.539) published Grundrisse, wherein he predicted globalization by declaring: “capital by its nature drives beyond every spatial barrier,” in order to “conquer the whole earth for its market.” The Marxist theory accurately explained globalization as a phenomenon wherein the world comes together in order to create a system that is conducive to profit making and wealth accumulation. Marx has explained that capitalistic development cannot be confined within states. Ultimately, such development was expected to break free of its spatial constraints and this is supposedly underpinned by the nature of capital mobility. Marx and Engels (1973, p77) wrote: The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country… [old industries] are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose production are consumed not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. The above concepts depict how Marxism holds that the developmental trajectory of globalization is facilitated by a reorganization of space. For example, primitive accumulation and feudalism evolved into the modern form of capitalism by means of expanding the dynamics of production (Bonnano and Cavalcanti 2011, p27). The expansion has supposedly manipulated and reorganized space and changed society and states in the process. It has consistently eroded barriers present in the traditional concept of states and their ability for self-determination. All these developments have already transpired, validating the Marxian arguments. The Globalization of the State Marxism explained the relationship between globalization and the state in at least two perspectives. First is along the line of the concept of imperialism. Here, the collective forces of international trade, the integration of international market and the internationalization of production have eroded the domination of nation states over its territory and, as a result, new global players assumed control in the global system. Fine et al. (2012, p162) likened it to a new wave of colonization on the heels of a new era of capitalization where power and authority is at the hands of those who benefit in the growing concentration and centralization of capital. The dynamics of the system came to depend on the agency of states or, as Grindin and Panitch (2012, pvii) pointed out, one state in particular: America. This aspect is supported by the Gramscian concepts of hegemony and the extended state where dominant groups have corrupted both society and juridical government, fusing it into one source of manipulated authority (Gramsci 1972, p2). Robinson (1996, p629) confirmed this when he wrote that, “the structures of asymmetry in the international political economy and international relations of power and domination may be exercised or sustained through variants of coercive or consensual mechanisms of transnational… control”. Indeed, in most respects, America has provided the framework and standard for global integration. This is demonstrated in the manner how “America’s language, culture and economic practices have become the architecture of globalization” (Schake 2009, pxix). Secondly, there is the case of the emergence of a globalized system. This is within the Marxist “internationalization of the state” perspective. It considers the integration of transnational production patterns and finance capital as a precursor to the emergence of transnational business class, which is a dominant multinational group, which transcends national boundaries with impunity. This is the same as the imperialist perspective only that instead of a hegemon, the authority rests on the dominant business class. For some Marxist thinkers, this development has marginalized nation states, relegating their roles as mere “transmission belts” or coordinators of the transnational class interests, legitimizing them in a form of interstate policies (Cox 1992l; van der Pijl 1998). We can see this in how states became subjected to the authorities of international conventions such as the World Trade Organizations. The global economic landscape has made it a necessity and that membership in the organization is critical in ensuring not only the competitiveness but also the very survival of the nation state. Some Marxist theorists have already posited the so-called transnational state based on the globalization phenomenon. One of these is Leslie Sklair (2002) who maintained that transnational practices – both political and economic – has effectively eroded the power of nation-states and that the transnationalist class controls the global system despite the resistance of states and other actors. It is supposedly perpetuating a global governance that has shifted away from being an international system to a globalizing system that is independent from any geographic territory (Ritzer and Atalay 2010, p183). This type of globalization is exactly what Marxism rejected in Marx and Engels’ critique of capitalism. As the role of nation-states is diminished, a global capitalist system emerges with attributes of a capitalist society only on a bigger scale. It is in this respect where the Marxian class relations explain globalization, particularly its weaknesses. Class Relations As Scholte (2005, p1626) has pointed out, Marxism considers globalization as a strategy for capitalists, bourgeois – the accumulating class – to increase resources and power over the proletariat and all of the exploited class. In the supposed scheme to internationalize, the accumulating class established and maintains a framework to exploit the proletariat in the pursuit for profit. This depicts the dynamics of global class relations. According to Robinson (2002, p210), “economic globalisation has its counterpart in transnational class formation and in the emergence of a transnational state ... which has been brought into existence to function as the collective authority for a global ruling class”. Dicken (2003, p200) also noted this as he explained that by internationalizing production, the international business class has expanded the system of labor and class struggle into a global scale. Marxism expects an impending crisis in the globalization system. This is articulated in the discourse on the concept of the surplus value or profit. The basis for its extraction, wrote Dicken (p200), is the system of labor exploitation and, as it is extended and perpetuated within the globalization system, class struggle also emerge on a global scale. Interestingly, this further perpetuates the transnational state in the Marxist point of view. Engels is helpful in this respect. Like Marx, he believes that the state exists for the protection of the bourgeois and its interests (Churchich 1990, p268). Engels (1941, p157) maintained that “the state arose from the need to keep class antagonisms in check” and that “it is normally the most powerful, economically ruling class, which by its means becomes also the politically ruling class, and so acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed classes.” Conclusion In most respects, Marxists see globalization as an evil force. There are no surprises there because globalization is a capitalist system after all. But it does not mean that such criticism is not valid. Globalization does promote inequalities and exploitation. It is safe to say agree with Marxian analysis that the effect is magnified several times more because the arena is global in scope. Moreover, it has all the mechanisms that allow dominant groups or class to co-opt its systems, as well as the nation states, turning them into mere instruments to protect and perpetuate their interests. There are, of course, weaknesses to the Marxist approach to globalization. But the fact remains: the Marxian analysis is closest to explaining the realities of globalization. It provides a valid position in regard to the relations between state and globalization. Marx has predicted actual globalization as we know it today. His thoughts depicted a clear understanding of its elements – the commodity of production, the expansionist economics, the concentration of power either to a hegemon/imperialist or a transnational class, and the class struggle that inevitably emerge as offshoots of exploitation and inequality. For us, these say something about the validity of a theory that has been developed more than a century ago. References Abinales, PN and Amoroso, D 2005, State and Society in the Philippines. Oxford: Rowman & Littlfield. Bonnano, A and Cavalcanti, J 2011, Globalization and the Time-space Reorganization: Capital Mobility in Agriculture and Food in the Americas. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. 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