Social Movements in Opposition to American Capitalism's - Essay Example

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN OPPOSITION TO AMERICAN CAPITALISM’S CONTROL OF GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY February 25, On the one hand, the force of globalization grows and expands; on the other hand, anti-globalization rises to challenge it and to claim power for those who were marginalized and suffered because of globalization. This is not a plot from a dystopian film, but a reality of the new global order, an order that is burdened with complex conflicts that intersect class, gender, religion, nationality, ethnicity, politics, and environmentalism. Several texts explore these contestations of power, and how new movements are developing to fight for their own legitimate political space. These texts show that globalization is not entirely positive or a monolithic empowering process for all, but something that the West, particularly the United States, direct and control, while disempowering specific nations, cultures, classes, and genders. New national and international social, political, and environmental movements are arising from different sectors and nations because of the continuation of colonialism and slavery in the global political economy through American capitalism, although these issues cannot be resolved without finding common interests and agreeing on win-win solutions. Anti-globalization is a not a new movement, but started alongside economic, political, and cultural globalization. Heather Gautney describes the various protests that aimed to stop the implementation of world trade policies that undermine national sectors because of unfair trade changes. The roots of the anti-globalization movement are not from the Seattle protests to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1999, but much earlier, with anti-International-Monetary-Fund (IMF) protests sparking during the 1970s in Peru, Liberia, Ghana, Jamaica, and Egypt.1 In Egypt, the bread riots happened because of the rapid increase in bread prices due to IMF trade policy effects.2 These are examples of movements that opposed the negative effects of globalizing trade policies on national economies. Feminist internationalism is another anti-globalization movement that seeks to elaborate transnational values and standards that will promote the position of women in society.3 Its primary goal is to free women who are trapped in various disadvantaged positions brought about by globalization’s gender-oppressive values, policies, and practices.4 Elizabeth Bernstein discusses a different feminist uprising through the new abolitionism movement. The new abolitionism is against the modern slavery of women that happens through human trafficking and commercialized sexual activity, as well as other human rights abuses.5 The leaders of this movement is a group of evangelical Christian and secular feminist groups that seek to re-categorize all or some forms of sexual labor as “slavery,” to advocate for laws that punish people who are accountable for women’s slavery, and to energetically save sex workers from their enslaved conditions.6 In effect, new abolitionists wanted economic and political power for sex workers and other abused women. A different strand of anti-globalization diverges from gender issues by focusing on environmentalism. Kirkpatrick Sale explores the struggle of the environmental movement against the excesses of global capitalism. It began in 1962, when marine biologist Rachel Carson questioned modern civilization’s destruction of nature: “The question is whether any civilization can wage [such] relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.”7 The modern environmental movement has begun. All these protests signify the rise of anti-globalization as an anti-thesis to the domination of West-led globalization. Apart from the rise of the twin of globalization through anti-globalization, one of the main themes of the latter is to challenge the evolution of colonialism to equally oppressive political systems, where neo-colonialism is present in the collusion between supposedly sovereign states and global capitalist superpowers. Timothy Mitchell analyzes the rise of McJihad and its inherent ironies.8 McJihad shows how transnational capitalism is involved in supporting conservative Islam that has become critical to the former’s global business dealings. He argues that U.S. oil companies have depended on and supported Unitarian Islam as a strategy of operation in Saudi Arabia, because through this process, they preserved their hold on a global oil economy.9 The primary school of Islam in Saudi Arabia believes in Unitarian Islam or the belief in the oneness of God, called muwahhidun. The muwahhidun is an example that Mitchell used to assert the global political pattern where the more secular Islamic states were, the more independent they were of America, while the more conservative they were, the stronger their relationship with America.10 These conservative societies used their strong moral and social grip on the masses to maintain neo-colonial policies that preserve economic interests in maximizing oil revenues. Mitchell further asserts that it is not scarcity that drives the economic demand for oil, but the invented notion of scarcity, when oil has plenty of supply.11 The muwahhidun used the U.S. and vice-versa to guard the scarcity system, through limiting production that increased oil prices.12 In the 1960s, Mitchell narrates that producer countries in the southern part of the Middle East became more independent, and ten years after, they formed the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) that continued the function of preserving the system of scarcity through persistent collaboration with oil companies and other non-OPEC oil-producing nations.13 His exploration of the economic and political coordination between the U.S. and OPEC demonstrates the depth of neo-colonization, where a superpower remains influential in shaping the economic activities and direction of other sovereign states- the elite of one nation helping and supporting the elite of another nation. Colonialism is also present in global economic trade that benefits capitalists and disadvantages those who have no large ownership or no ownership at all of land, capital, and other important resources. Indigenous groups have been actively fighting for economic and political autonomy after repeated histories of displacement and dispossession. The Zapatistas, indigenous people of Chiapas in Mexico, for instance, formed the Zapatista uprising on January 1, 1994, against the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).14 The deregulation of corn, protective prices on coffee, and nonstop dispossession of the natives of their lands and economic and cultural resources troubled the economy and the natives.15 The Zapatista uprising identified the universality of their demands, as they named the enemy, as not the Mexican government alone, but neo-liberalism in general.16 They were the first movement who connected with other anti-globalization movements and helped consolidate their international uprising against globalization.17 The Zapatistas is only one of the many examples of how colonialist systems serve only the interests of the economic elites, while removing and undermining other minorities in the political process. These sectors are then fighting back, using international media to their advantage, while urging governments to be fairer in their trade agreements. Colonialism is further shown in the continuing environmental struggles in different nations that emphasize the conflict between nature and modern neoliberal civilization. Carson, author of the prominent Silent Spring that launched the environmental movement, died because of cancer that she got from studying carcinogenic poisons in the environment. She said that only people are capable of making cancerous elements and overlooking them.18 She helped inspired a movement that undermined the absolute authority of global capitalism over environmental needs. The 1960s established environmentalism alongside the 1960s civil rights movement. Sale notes that, at first, not many activists seriously believed in and supported the cause of environmentalists.19 Nevertheless, the participation of the youth in the movement provided the energy and innovation (i.e. through direct action protests) needed to bring public attention to ecological issues.20 The Wilderness Act in the U.S. is an important piece of legislation that showed how much the public supported the preservation of wildlife, instead of prioritizing progress over Nature.21 Soon, the environmental movement was able to influence the public and the government’s agenda on the relevance of stopping pollution and preserving different forms of nature.22 The public was realizing that they were willing to forego rapid economic development, if it was already leading to widespread destruction of nature and pollution.23 The environmental movement underlines the ability of people to assert their power against a neoliberal order that treats the environment as another cost that can be paid. The environmental movement helped the government and the masses realize that there is more to life than economic growth, and that they should balance economic and environmental concerns. Slavery is another impact of globalization that is apparent in the politics of gender, where organizations arose to question the neoliberal oppression of women. Bernstein narrates the development of federal and state anti-trafficking laws that defined prostitution in similar terms as human trafficking crimes, which underscores that they all belong to modern slavery concerns.24 She describes the antagonism between liberal feminist groups and the U.S. For instance, the State Department’s Office to Combat Trafficking in Persons, Ambassador John Miller asserts that using the label “sex worker” on the side of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), activists, and feminist academics only functioned to reinforce slavery and to protect the perpetrators and sectors that oppress women.25 His belief indicates the conflict between anti-slavery and liberal feminists, although all these movements against human trafficking agree that human trafficking is immoral. Bernstein explores the parallels between slavery and modern-day slavery, where though there are differences in sexual workers’ conditions and conditions of black slaves, centuries ago, the oppression of women reflects similarities with the oppression of other groups because of race, religion, and social class.26 Bernstein quotes Saunders who argues for the side of Christians and feminists that they are all against the violations of womanhood and sexuality because of their sexual susceptibility.27 Berman is another feminist who supports the commonality of sexuality and the universal production of femininity. These feminists are saying that neoliberal development continues to see women as sexual objects, and that even modern laws are not enough to erase these gender essentialist conceptions. Sexual politics, in this sense, has its roots in the need of Christian organizations of reinstating traditional gender norms of femininity. They want to free women, but at the same time, they want to do so within the context of their religious beliefs. Though other feminist groups might question these motives, the Evangelical organizations do present an anti-slavery goal that seeks to free women from human rights violations that are embedded in neocolonial sex trade system. Finally, revolutionary struggles between neoliberal America and Islamic societies serve to underscore the conflict in neoliberal and Islamic ideologies. Amin Saikal explores the tension between two contradictory images of the West to Islamic societies. On the one hand, the West sees Islamic fundamentalism as dangerous and whose influence must be removed in international politics.28 On the other hand, Muslims are increasingly seeing Islamophobia as the strategy of the West in serving its own economic and political interests.29 Saikal narrates three important events that awakened Muslims of their subjugated status under the neoliberal capitalist order: (1) the Iranian Mass Revolution of 1978 to 1979 that led to ousting of U.S. ally, Mohammed Reza Shah and the rise of radical Shi’ite clerics under the leadership of Ayatullah Khomeini;30 (2) Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, where the U.S. accepted the rebellion from Islam as a suitable tool for fighting off Soviet political power31; and (3) the creation of Israel state in 1948, which developed into a strategic alliance between Israel and the U.S., so as the former can check and balance the regional power of Arab Muslims in the region.32 Saikal argues that the involvement of the U.S. in these events increased the hostility of many non-radical and radical Muslims against the U.S. He asserts that, because the U.S. contested powers that it could not control or influence, it indirectly fed the coals of radical Islam.33 He is saying that the radical movements against the U.S. are a reaction of Islam to the continued neocolonial control of the U.S. in their political and economic affairs. Saikal provides a compelling argument on how the U.S.’ need for global control of oil supply and political power has resulted to its disadvantaged perception for many Muslims. The anti-globalization movement, sometimes becoming an anti-U.S. sentiment (at least in conservative Islamic states), help bring national and regional issues into global limelight. but they cannot be resolved without finding common interests and agreeing on win-win solutions. If the environmental movement, for instance, gained public attention through working with 1960s civil rights movement, the same strategy of finding universal interests can happen for capitalist and anti-globalization organizations. It is argued that capitalism and globalization can no longer be reversed. Instead, concerned organizations can work together in determining shared goals by focusing on shared values and standards. In doing so, they can prevent anti-globalization from becoming an irrelevant activist rhetoric for the youth who are enjoying the freedoms and technology that are products of globalization too. Whereas globalization has its distinct negative effects on issues of power and allocation of resources, it can be used to promote global values of sustainability and plurality. The anti-globalization movement can turn neoliberal capitalism into a more stakeholders-based capitalism, one that balances conflicting values and aspirations for the empowerment of the minority and the unity between them and the majority. Bibliography Bernstein, Elizabeth. “The Sexual Politics of the New Abolitionism.”A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 18, no. 5 (2007): 128-151. Charlesworth, Hilary. “Martha Nussbaums Feminist Internationalism.” Ethics 111, no. 1 (2000):64-78. Gautney, Heather. “The Alternative Globalization Movement and World Social Forum.” In Protest and Organization in the Alternative Globalization Era: NGOs, Social Movements, and Political Parties, edited by Heather Gautney. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Mitchell, Timothy. “McJihad: Islam in the US Global Order.” Social Text 20, no.4 (2002): 1-18. Sale, Kirkpatrick. The Green Revolution: The American Environmental Movement, 1962-1992. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993. Saikal, Amin. “Islam and the West?” In Contending Images of World Politics, edited by Greg Fry and Jacinta OHagan, 164-177. New York: Macmillan Press, 2000. Jeurgesmayer, Mark. “The Religious Challenge to the Secular State.” In Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State, from Christian Militias to al Qaeda, 9-38. California: University of California Press, 2009. Read More