Comments on Charlie Post's review (from PEN-L)

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Charlie Post's review makes a number of excellent points in his
critique of Hardt and Negri's Empire. However, his attempt to use Kim
Moody's lean production model to explain globalization, or should I
say "explain away," globalization seems fundamentally flawed to me.
It is not surprising to see Post attempt this approach since it is
consistent with the pseudo-syndicalist point of production view of
capitalism that predominates inside the Solidarity milieu, especially
those close to the Labor Notes organization.

This perspective often provides helpful insights on the shortcomings
of business unionism, though it blinds the follower of this viewpoint
to the larger dynamic of global capitalism. For example, since LN and
Solidarity put huge emphasis on an attempt to revive some form of
militant trade unionism as the core of their politics, they clearly
want to find that the dynamic of global production chains is the key
that can unlock our understanding of global capitalism.

But that leads Post into problems. For example, he mentions briefly
the masses of the developing world but only to suggest that they
serve as a reserve army of labor. Instead he thinks the key is in the
core of the accumulation process found in the most developed
economies. It is certainly true that as one measures capital flows,
most are found to go back and forth between Europe, Japan and the
United States with some additional flows growing up in the key
peripheries around those three countries in southern Europe, Mexico
and south and southeast Asia.

But so what? Does that mean that the billions who live outside the
core countries are irrelevant? I would argue for their relevance not
on the basis of some kind of third worldist viewpoint about the
countryside overtaking the cities (a perspective still to be found in
various anti-globalization circles among others). Rather, it is
because I think the law of value functions at a global level. The
concentration of accumulation in the core triad also means that the
tendency of the rate of profit to decline hits those countries as
well. Thus, capital must find new sources of surplus value. Much of
it is found in greater accumulation through technological advances,
speedup, and other forms of restructuring.

But an important source of that surplus value comes from the toil of
the billions in poor countries that is then fed into the global
system. Some of this is obviously an extension of Post's aside about
the reserve army but the absence of any discussion about the dynamic
impact of the law of value makes me doubt that this is critical to
Post's thinking or to the politics of Solidarity and Labor Notes.
Further, the problems associated with declining profits are often
solved on the backs of the masses in poor countries.

Sociologist David Smith has written about the impact that U.S.
backing of the coffee buyers' cartel (centered in the US) against
"high" coffee prices had on countries like Rwanda. His careful
research demonstrates that the IMF then forced the Rwandans to impose
a coercive labor regime to squeeze more production out of overworked
coffee fincas to make up for lost profits and government revenues.
Hence, cheaper coffee from Rwanda helped resolve the profit squeeze
on U.S. coffee buyers.  The result was a social revolt that the
government eventually suppressed through the 1994 genocide. Only an
analysis which examines the global process of value creation and
destruction in all its complexity can account for today's capitalism.
Think about that next time you order a frappacino at the local
Starbucks.

Stephen F. Diamond
School of Law Santa Clara University
sdiamond@xxxxxxx

--
Louis Proyect, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx on 06/12/2002

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