Study On Globalization Issue

JOURNAL OF CRITICAL GLOBALISATION STUDIES
Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 Imperialism, Finance, #Occupy (2012)

ISSN 2040-8498 Editors Amin Samman Nathan Coombs (editor-in-chief for issue 5) Pepijn van Houwelingen Editorial advisory board Dr. Dibyesh Anand Dr. Claudia Aradau Dr. Michael Bacon Dr. David Bailey Prof. David Chandler Journal affiliations The Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies was established with the help of a grant from the Royal Holloway Faculty of History and Social Sciences fund for research activity 2009/10, in conjunction with the Politics and International Relations Departmental Research Committee. The journal is associated with the British International Studies Association working group Global and Transnational Politics and is an affiliate of the Global Studies Association. Contact abstracts@criticalglobalisation.com Address correspondence to: Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies 62 Carter St London SE17 3EW United Kingdom Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, 2012 Thanks to Ana Lee Smith for the cover image ( 2012) Dr. Faisal Devji Prof. Costas Douzinas Dr. Benjamin Noys Dr. Christopher Perkins Prof. Chris Rumford Dr. Larbi Sadiki Prof. Leslie Sklair Prof. Manfred Steger Prof. Stephan Stetter Dr. Illan rua Wall
http://www.criticalglobalisation.com
Contents
Articles: From Imperialism to Finance
Globalising Resistance against War? A Critical Analysis of a Theoretical Debate in the Context of the British Anti-War Movement, by Tiina
Seppl
Lessons from #Occupy in Canada: Contesting Space, Settler Consciousness and Erasures within the 99%, by Konstantin Kilibarda Imperialism and Financialism: A Story of a Nexus, by Shimshon Bichler and
Jonathan Nitzan
24 42 79
The Architecture of Investment Climate Surveillance and the Space for NonOrthodox Policy, by Hvard Haarstad
Occupy IR/IPE: A symposium on the global #occupy movement
Introduction: #OCCUPYIRTHEORY? , by Nicholas J. Kiersey Three Thoughts About What #occupyirtheory Might Mean, by Patrick
Thaddeus Jackson
104 107 110 114 117 121 127 129 132 138 143 149 153 157 161
Occupy Wall Street and IPE: Insights and Implications, by Elizabeth Cobbett
and Randall Germain
Authoritarian Neoliberalism, the Occupy Movements, and IPE, by Ian Bruff Reconciliation or Bust?, by Elisabeth Chaves Mic Check/Reality Check, by Wanda Vrasti Street Politics, by Michael J. Shapiro The Human Chain Is Not About Holding Hands, by Nicole Sunday Hughes Occupy Wall Street: From Representation to Post-Representation, by Simon
Tormey
#Occupy: Strategic Dilemmas, Lessons Learned?, by David J. Bailey Occupy Wall Street? Position-Blindness in the New Leftist Revolution, by
Agnes Gagyi
Return to the Real, by Aida A. Hozic #Occupy IR: Exposing the Orthodoxy, by Ivan Manokha and Mona Chalabi Occupy Wall Street as Immanent Critique: Why IR Theory Needs a Mic Check!, by Nicholas J. Kiersey Riot, why wouldnt you?, by Colin Wight
Reviews
Perspectives on the Global Financial Crisis, by Alex Andrews Globalisation and Democracy, by Louise Gonsalvez Violence, Capitalism, Language and Physical Force, by Charles Barthold
167 171 173
Globalising Resistance against War? , Seppl (pp. 5-23)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012), pp. 5-23
ISSN 2040-8498 criticalglobalisation.com Article submitted 20 Nov 2011; article accepted 17 Dec 2011
Globalising Resistance against War? A Critical Analysis of a Theoretical Debate in the Context of the British Anti-War Movement
Tiina Seppl
The political revival of the anti-war movement after 9/11 launched a controversial debate on global resistance against war. Liberal cosmopolitans characterise the movement as a consensual force of opposition against war in the form of global civil society acting on the basis of universal values. Radical poststructuralists consider it a preliminary example of the Multitude, waging a war against war as a global body of opposition. For state centrics, these views are utopian in referring to global struggles and political subjects that do not yet exist, and alarming because global resistance escapes power in the post political struggle. Here, the theoretical debate is critically analysed from the perspective of critical theory in political practice. Through an empirical case study of four organisations within the new anti-war movement in Britain, it is demonstrated that these theories connection to practice is inadequate, and in many ways problematic due to their tendency to resort to a dualistic either-or logic. The paper introduces a both -and approach that not only reflects more accurately the way in which the relationship between global and local is conceived within the movement but also provides a more comprehensive perspective for conceptualising power in the context of social movements generally.
Introduction The political revival of the anti-war movement after 9/11 launched a controversial debate on global resistance and inspired conceptualisations of a global political collective dedicated to resistance against war. The debate has been dominated by two discourses,
Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012) the liberal cosmopolitan approach and the radical poststructuralist approach. Their
adherents can be described as belonging to the category of academic globalists. A third perspective, the state-centric approach can be considered their critique. In this paper, the liberal cosmopolitan approach is examined through the work of IR theorists such as Mary Kaldor and Joseph S. Nye, Jr. and sociologists such as Manuel Castells and Ulrich Beck. The radical poststructuralist approach is studied as it is reflected in theorisations by probably the best-known poststructuralists: the post-Marxists thinkers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. And the state-centric approach is identified with the critique by David Chandler. The works of these scholars are treated here as illustrative examples of current political theories describing and conceptualising the role and power of social movements from different perspectives.1 According to academic globalists, resisting war and transforming the war system must take place from below, which requires transnational political engagement in global advocacy networks transcending the boundaries of nation states. While liberal cosmopolitans suggest that global civil society can become an important challenger of state power, contesting the status quo from below (Beck, 2000; Castells, 2008) and resisting war (Kaldor, 2003a), radical poststructuralists argue that the global state of war can be challenged by the oppressed people of the world by forming together a Multitude which would wage a war against war (Hardt and Negri, 2004, p. 67, 215, 284). In this context, the political meaning of the worldwide demonstration day against the Iraq War in February 2003 is celebrated. It is described as the movement of public opinion at the global level full of political meaning (Castells, 2008, p. 86, emphasis in original) which showed that each individual was confronted with the existential choice between war and peace (Beck, 2006, pp. 123124). The anti-war movement has been referred to as an example of the becoming Multitude and as a continuation of the alter -globalisation movement (Hardt and Negri, 2004, p. 67, 215, 284). Liberal cosmopolitans maintain that any meaningful political engagement must take place at the global level, where social movements can gain symbolic power by influencing global public opinion through their informational and soft-power resources. It is explicitly suggested that social movements should think locally but act globally. (E.g. Castells, 2004, p. 143; 2008; Nye 2004; Beck 2000; Kaldor 2003a). Shaping global opinion is considered the most effective form of power. It can be used for putting pressure on states and governments when challenging their official foreign policy goals. (See Castells, 2004, p. 161; Castells, 2008, pp. 8282, 90; Beck, 2000, p. 70; Nye, 2004, pp. 3132, 90, 9798, 105106, 137.) Radical poststructuralists hold that resistance should be globalised, because power has been decentralised and globalised in the Empire. For them, too, the global level is clearly primary and they consider traditional and local forms of resistance oldfashioned and ineffective. (See Hardt and Negri, 2000, pp. 45 46, 206207, 299; Hardt and Negri, 2004, pp. 9193, 100, xv.) They explicitly argue that social movements must 6

think globally and act globally (Hardt and Negri, 2000, p. 207). The power of social movements lies in their ability to resist biopower with instruments of soft power, that is, in their ability to execute moral interventions against the Empire (Hardt and Negri, 2000, pp. 3536, 61; Hardt and Negri, 2004, pp. 9193, xv, 82, 100). Both approaches are abstract and future-oriented in that they talk about global struggles and global political subjects that do not yet exist. As a representative of the statecentric approach, David Chandler (2009b, p. 537) points out, these struggles remain immanent ones because there is no collective political subject that could giv e content to the theorising of global struggle articulated by academic theorists. According to Chandler (2009b, p. 535), it means that theorising becomes a political act or statement in itself regardless of any link to social agency. Provocatively, he g oes on to argue that politics has become globalised in the absence of political struggle rather than as a result of the expanded nature of collective political engagement (Chandler, 2009b, p. 537). Because resistance is nothing without the strategic, instrumental, struggle for power, he regards global and symbolic forms of resistance as lacking strategic engagement and thus escaping power in the post-political struggle (Chandler, 2009a, p. 1822, 207208).2 Despite these problems, there is something very interesting going on, since many political theorists invite us to take a closer look at the anti-war movement as an integral part of global civil society or the Multitude. Obviously, the debate has been taken far beyond the current movement when speculating on the possibility of establishing a global collective political subject dedicated to resistance against war. It does not mean that the existing anti-war movement should, or even could, be totally left out of the debate. Although it is not considered the forthcoming global collective political subject as such, it is difficult to imagine a global collective dedicated to resistance against war that would exclude the existing anti-war movement. The contradictory debate on global resistance/anti-war activism operates on a very abstract level. It is alarming that in fantasising about global struggles, suggesting global strategies, and even constructing visions of a global political subject dedicated to resistance against war, the theorists are not engaging empirically with the current anti-war movement but jumping directly into the future. This invites four critical questions. Firstly, the lack of empirical engagement with the current anti-war movement invites the question of the extent to which the globalised interpretations made by academic globalists in regard to the nature of the movement and its political strategies can be considered accurate. Secondly, one might ask whether their globalised normative assumptions and visions are even compatible with the values, beliefs and political premises of the movement. This question relates to a third one whether the kinds of global political collectives academic globalists are dreaming of can be regarded as possible, or even desirable, political projects from the perspective of the existing movement. Fourthly, it prompts one to ask whether academic globalists are able to
Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

provide any practical suggestions on how to organise resistance against war more effectively. An intimate link between theory and political practice is the basis of critical theory, by definition. Critical theory must be explicitly constructed for social theories to have a practical political impact (Fay, 1987, p. 2). As Stephen Leonard (1990, p. 3) puts it, without a practical dimension a critical theory would be bankrupt on its own terms. Critique is to be understood as a synthesis of theory and practice: advocates of critical theory must help emancipate its addressees by providing them with insights and intellectual tools they can use t o empower themselves (Leonard, 1990, p. xiii, 14; Fay, 1987, p. 4, 22, 29; see also Gilbert, 2008, p. 213; Massumi, 1992, p. 103). Political theories, such as currently dominant theories of resistance, can thus be read as proposals of strategies put forward to social movements. These proposals should be immanent for their objects in this case the anti-war movement. The problem is that there have been no serious attempts to engage with the existing movement. Without understanding its political and normative premises, it is as easy to make wrong interpretations as it is difficult to offer concrete suggestions on how to organise resistance more effectively. This paper critically reflects on the ongoing theoretical debate from a perspective of critical theory in political practice (Leonard, 1990). Through an empirical case study the article evaluates how much common ground there is between the theoretical debate and political practice at the moment. The aim is to determine to what extent the understandings within the movement resonate with those of the three theoretical approaches, and what the main convergences and divergences are. Such a critical mediation in between the metatheories and micropolitics can help to develop the theoretical debate further by establishing a more intimate dialogue between the recently popular theories of resistance and the current anti-war movement. The case study is based on an analysis of the premises of four anti-war organisations opposing the Iraq War in Britain during the period between 2003 and 2008. A wide umbrella organisation, the Stop the War Coalition (StWC), was founded in 2001. It is closely connected to the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) but cooperates also with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Together they have organised dozens of mass demonstrations against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The CND is a well-known long-standing (founded in 1958) anti-nuclear organisation that has intimate links with trade unions and the Labour Party. Globalise Resistance (GR), founded in 2001, is a leftist organisation involved in a broad range of issues such as promotion of anti-capitalism and global economic justice. War Resisters International (WRI) is an international pacifist organisation with its headquarters in London. It was founded in 1921. WRIs long-term work is based on the principle of nonviolence and direct action in particular. The organisations were studied by analysing different sets of materials: thematic in-depth interviews with their representatives3, histories, statements, books, and 8

web sites. The interviews and other materials were analysed by qualitative content analysis. The fact that only a limited number of organisations were studied might raise some critical questions in regard to the extent to which it is possible to talk about a movement4, and whether it is admissible to study the movement through the perceptions of only a few organisations.5 It is not suggested here that the premises of four organisations could be equated with those of the British anti-war movement as a whole. Hence, qualifying expressions such as within the movement are used. It is also acknowledged that due to heterogeneity members share a particular set of ideas only in regard to certain issues (Gillan, 2006, p. 88; Gillan, et. al 2008). In the empirical analysis, there were five different units. Each of them considered one major aspect of the theoretical debate in light of the empirical material: 1) the who-question (agency) of resistance; 2) the what- and why-questions (aims, targets and causes); 3) the how-question (strategies and tactics); 4) the question of power; and 5) the question of the effects of resistance. In each regard the theoretical debate was analysed in terms of the empirical material, with a summing up of the main convergences and divergences between the two perspectives, and concluding remarks on the extent to which the two seem to resonate with each other. In the sections to follow, the findings of the study are presented in the following order. First, the main empirical findings are discussed. Thereafter the discussion proceeds to a more detailed treatment of the main failures of the theoretical approaches. This is followed by suggestions as to how the theories can be developed further by outlining a both-and instead of an either-or approach. The paper concludes by critically discussing the broader normative political projects and visions proposed by the theoretical approaches. Summary of Empirical Findings Firstly, the study reflected the theoretical debate on the movement against the Iraq War by exploring how the political agency of the movement, its ascendance and the new elements proclaimed by academic globalists are conceived within the movement. It revealed a gap between the political reality experienced by the organisations within the British anti-war movement and the highly globalised and consensual interpretations made by academic globalists who also tend to emphasise new characteristics of the movement more than is the case within the movement. The more recently founded organisations, the StWC and GR, tell a rather uniform story of the birth of the new movement, whereas the long-term organisations, the CND and WRI contextualise it differently. They tend to emphasise traditions and history while conceiving the movement as a continuation of the old, long -term peace movement, not something completely new and extraordinary. It is common to consider the anti-war movement an

international collection of nationally operating movements which have due to exceptional political circumstances cooperated more closely together than is usually the case. International coordination in the context of the Iraq War is not regarded as evidence of a permanent phenomenon, or the start of a totally new kind of global project for the anti-war movement. Moreover, the ascendance of the movement was not as easy and consensual a process, nor its relationship to the alter-globalisation movement as harmonious, as academic globalists assume. Many organisations, especially GR, suggest that when the anti-capitalist movement was subsumed into the anti -war movement, it experienced inflation. Because the former is considered more critical of the system as a whole than the latter, many anti-capitalist activists had resisted any attachment to the anti-war struggle. It is often argued that due to the StWC becoming such a strong group, interest in the anticapitalist movement declined. There have been also other internal disagreements and conflicts within the movement in regard to leadership issues. The movement has faced difficulties when trying to make collective decisions and to define its main goals and strategies. One of the main problems is that the StWC articulated the political purpose of the new movement as an effort to unite the left, which was not a position supported by all. There have been also disagreements concerning cooperation between organisations, the preferred extent of centralisation, and the movements connection to other social movements. Secondly, the theoretical debate concerning the aims, targets and causes of resistance was reflected in the study by analysing how these are defined within the movement. It was found that the main targets of resistance are articulated quite clearly. All organisations consider the US the main perpetrator of the war, and are critical of its power more generally. The war is regarded as an imperialist endeavour of the US, supported by its loyal ally Britain. The British government is portrayed as a target of resistance for the movement in two different ways. Firstly, it is represented as either a poodle of the US, obeying the latters will in the context of the transatlantic special relationship, or as more of an independent actor which has its own political and economic motives for participating in the war. Secondly, it was criticised due to its refusal to respect the will of the majority of its citizens, who opposed the war. The analysis of the StWC rests on a traditional Marxist approach, in which war is seen as the result of economic rivalry between great powers. The CND partly shares this view but it emphasises the role of militarism and arms trade more. Whereas these two organisations stress the importance of resisting the imperialist governments, GR takes a broader perspective. It underlines the role of multinational corporations and international institutions such as the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as servants of neo-liberal world order. Resisting the US and the UK governments on account of their policies is considered important, but not sufficient in itself to stop wars or structural violence. WRI, 10

too, maintains that there is a direct linkage between economics and militarism, whereby it believes that socio-economic problems and injustices must be tackled in order to address the causes of war. However, it stresses that it is not enough to concentrate solely on great powers. It is necessary to resist the militarism and authoritarianism embedded in every nation state: the main target of resistance should be militarism as an institution of the nation state. Rather than citing the abstract global opponents or invoking the abstract forms of governance put forward by the poststructuralist approach, most of the organisations define the main targets of resistance in quite traditional terms governments and nation states. This locates them closest to the state-centric approach. Yet, when it comes to the long-term aims of the movement, many understandings correlate also with the views of academic globalists. The fact that the results are mixed indicates that the movement has simultaneously clearly articulated state-level opponents and more abstract targets of resistance. In contrast to the theoretical debate, within the movement it is maintained that both are important. Yet there are also divisions between the organisations with regard to how they consider the relationship between the short- and long-term aims of the movement. Thirdly, the theoretical debate concerning strategies and the primary context of resistance was reflected by analysing how these are understood within the movement. The study found that both the national and international levels are considered important, but emphases vary. GR regards war and other global injustices as inseparably interconnected, and therefore, it views strategies of resistance in global terms: different struggles can be advanced by common strategies of global opposition. In contrast, the StWC and the CND advocate collective political engagement at the national level. They regard pressuring the national government with a strategy of mass mobilisation as the most effective strategy. They readily engage in parliamentary politics through their close political contacts in the Labour Party and the SWP. Their understanding of politics and power is quite traditional in that they seek political change by influencing those in power. GR has an intimate connection to the political system through the SWP as well, but seems to regard this kind of an engagement less important. WRI is the only organisation that has no connections with the political system. It does not cooperate with trade unions either, which the other three engage with. Despite their national focus the StWC and the CND believe that it is important to engage in international campaigning as well, and they have taken part in organising some of the global demonstrations. They also share the belief that resistance against the war can be enhanced by supporting the objectives of other social movements. The StWC connects the anti-war struggle to the struggle against imperialism, and stresses the importance of a united front and the organisation of the working class. The CND connects anti-war activism to the anti-nuclear movement and also suggests that different
11

social movements are in the process of developing a common analysis of interconnected problems that stem from unjust international economic structures and institutions (e.g. Hudson 2005). Usually specific forms of support or collaboration are not outlined in detail, but are instead articulated through references to global solidarity. WRI stresses that long-term work promoting peace through nonviolent direct action is more effective than organising mass demonstrations or working through the political system. It cooperates primarily with other pacifist organisations, and is clearly internationally oriented. While WRI connects anti-war activism to issues such as the expression of individuality and freedom from collectives, centralised organisations as well as state rule, the three other organisations believe that the struggle against war requires unified and large political collectives with a strong sense of solidarity, and often one of unity as well. In sum, most resonance was found with the state-centric approach but also some common ground with the globalist frameworks, especially in regard to long-term struggles of the movement. Instead of defining strategies in purely national or globally oriented terms, as the theoretical approaches do, the organisations rather advocate a mixed approach. While they usually target the national government in order to influence political decision-making, the significance of expressive, symbolic politics aimed at the global level, especially in the form of international cooperation and solidarity, is simultaneously emphasised. Fourthly, the study reflected on the theoretical debate regarding the power of social movements by analysing how power is conceptualised within the movement. It was found that power is understood mainly in relation to three elements: public support, the unity of the movement, and the diversity of the movement. Public support is articulated as a power resource either by reference to public opinion or public action. Especially the StWC and the CND emphasise public action in the form of mass demonstrations. GR is more inclined to regard global, and not national, public support as a constituent of power. Although more generally WRI subscribes to a more multifaceted definition of power, in the context of the anti-war movement it views power from an instrumentalist perspective. Although expressing some very critical views towards the political system, organisations such as the StWC and the CND have nevertheless sought power by drawing on their contacts in political parties and major trade unions. Their conception of power echoes the more traditional, instrumental view of power advocated by the statecentric approach. However, they are not hostile towards liberal and radical conceptualisations of symbolic power: they consider it possible to simultaneously engage politically outside the political system of the nation state and to seek soft power via symbolic politics. GR, too, operates on a similar kind of logic but its emphasis is the opposite. Its conception of power is closer to that of the poststructuralist approach it promotes symbolic forms of political engagement at the global level. While the three other organisations define power in terms of public support and collective power, WRI 12

explicitly criticises this view. It is highly critical of engaging with the establishment and sceptical of other forms of power, too. Yet due to its strong emphasis on civil obedience, WRI has the most optimistic view in regard to the power of an individual to make a difference: s/he can effectively use power by either refusing to obey, or by actively breaking, unjust laws and restrictions. Besides public support, both unity and diversity are believed to bring power to the movement. Since there is less explicit discussion about unity than about diversity, one might easily get the impression that the importance of unity has been overwhelmed by that of diversity, given that the latter is constantly celebrated in almost all possible contexts. However, a closer analysis reveals that much of the debate about diversity is actually related to issues that bear on the unity of the movement. From the perspective of the power of the movement, most organisations consider unity more important. Where diversity is explicitly discussed, it, too, is argued to give more power to the movement. Diversity is considered not so much a value in its own right but instead as a means to an end. Fifthly, the study explored how the main effects of resistance and the successes of the movement are regarded. The organisations believe that the anti-war movement has accomplished many things although it was not able to prevent or stop the war. In the national context, the most significant success is said to be getting rid of Prime Min ister Tony Blair, who is usually represented as Bushs poodle. It is argued that the movement has shaken the political establishment, and managed to pressure the government in different ways. Influencing domestic public opinion, uniting people from different backgrounds, empowering participants, getting people interested in politics again, and encouraging young people to become politically active are considered among the main national achievements of the anti-war movement. In regard to the international level, the arguments are more presumptuous. Without a doubt the most interesting idea is that the movement has prevented certain future wars from taking place, such as the War on Iran. It is also argued that the anti-war movement has been effective in preventing terrorist attacks, in breaking up US alliances as well as shaping its policies. The most common argument is that the movement has influenced global public opinion, and thus enhanced global consciousness and created a sense of solidarity at the global level. Of the organisations studied, the StWC is the most eager to proclaim a great number of achievements for the movement while also downplaying some of the principal failures. It allows the organisation to promote its own role within the movement when seeking more public support and power. The CND also emphasises many of the successes brought up by the StWC, whereas GR and WRI are more cautious, or even sceptical, in this regard. The fact that the StWC and the CND have in many ways been the leading and most influential organisations within the new British anti-war movement probably explains to a great extent why they dare to refer to so many achievements. The
13

views of the StWC and the CND resonate with the state-centric approach as they conceptualise the effectiveness of the movement mainly in terms of its ability to take part in and shape political struggle against government policies. However, this constitutes only part of the organisations understanding: many of the suggested broader, global impacts of the movement that the StWC and the CND draw attention to are similar to those presented by GR. Together these views resonate with the argumentation by academic globalists. Although there are differences in regard to what are considered the most important successes, and what the movement is expected to be able to achieve in a certain time frame, generally all the organisations studied consider the effects of the anti-war movement in short-term and long-term, instrumental and symbolic, as well as national and global terms. In comparison to them, all three theoretical approaches can be considered quite narrow. While academic globalists approach the question of effectiveness from an abstract and idealistic perspective, the problem in the state-centric approach is that it is mainly concerned with direct impacts on government policy in the short term. Thus, it fails to pay attention to broader long-term goals, which take longer to materialise and are also more difficult to evaluate. Towards a Both-And Instead of an Either-Or Approach On the whole, the five empirical sections demonstrate that within the anti-war movement the understandings and premises are overlapping, complex and mixed rather than clear and simple. This shows that it is not only difficult but also problematic to conceptualise resistance from only one theoretical perspective. Why is this problematic? Firstly, from the perspective of normal political theory it is troubling that a lack of engagement with the current movement leads theorists either to make inadequate, and sometimes even false, interpretations of its character, aims, targets and strategies or to evaluate its power and influence from a very restricted perspective. Secondly, and more importantly, it is problematic from the perspective of critical theory that the theoretical approaches are characterised by their inability to engage and communicate with the objects of their conceptualisations and/or addressees of their visions and suggestions in terms which could be practical, helpful, or at least somehow relevant to them. Thirdly, as we will see below, it is unfortunate that theorists define their political projects of resistance and emancipation in a way which enables their conceptualisations to be autonomous from practice, and their normative suggestions and visions to be divergent from the values and beliefs held within the movement. Despite the academic globalists many emancipatory claims, normative suggestions and political projects, their connection to the political practice of the existing anti-war movement seems to be weak. Before these findings can be elaborated on a higher level of abstraction, an 14

important question needs to be asked: How generalisable can they be considered when only four organisations have been studied in the context of one country? In other words: Would the empirical findings be different if, for example, German or French anti-war organisations were studied instead? The answer is probably yes, at least in some respects. In each country there are historical, political and cultural factors which influence how the state and political system is viewed. In Germany, for instance, the role of established political institutions has traditionally been quite weak in the anti-war movement. Therefore, it is likely that the German movement resonates more with many of the perspectives of academic globalists than those of scholars espousing the statecentric approach. Ideologies and coalitions vary in each country: whereas pacifism has historically had a negative connotation in France, it is deeply rooted in the British political tradition. Due to the above-mentioned differences and many others it must be openly acknowledged that studying the premises of anti-war organisations in another country would surely have shown different degrees of resonance with the theoretical approaches under investigation. However, I argue that the most important findings would nevertheless be the same. Even with this very limited case material, the study has demonstrated that the theoretical approaches are excessively polarised and dualistic in their conceptualisations. In that respect, they all fail to relate to the movements political practice and premises. In conceptualising effective resistance solely in terms of expressive and symbolic action at the global level that, is, where social movements shape global opinion by communicating their values and beliefs the liberal cosmopolitan approach ends up ignoring the more practical side of power. Radical poststructuralists make essentially the same mistake. The state-centric approach is problematic, too, because its strong emphasis on the national context does not completely resonate with the understandings held within the anti-war movement and probably not with those of many other social movements either. Although the approach recognises that politics is deterritorialised in terms of its conceptualisation, in terms of the aspirational content of political demands, it argues that power is always and necessarily territorialized in terms of the specific strategies and articulations of those demands to put those demands into practice (Chandler, 2009a, p. 16). The state-centric approach importantly reflects on problems in regard to symbolic expressions of solidarity becoming the main point in political activism. It is a development understood as signaling a lack of political engagement, or even a radical justification for the refusal to engage politically (Chandler, 2004, p. 331). Although this is a legitimate concern, worthy of examining in greater detail, the argument constructs unnecessary binaries. Social movements can have clearly articulated political projects at the national level as well as express solidarity and acquire support for the cause beyond
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the nation state all at the same time. Moreover, there is no reason why a particular political activity cannot be both expressive and instrumental (Rochon, 1998, p. 122). It is very interesting that this polarised theoretical debate resembles the spirited discussion between advocates of the resource mobilisation theory and the new social movement theory a few decades ago. The resource mobilisation theory maintains that social movements do not primarily aim at challenging political institutions. They are defined as collective efforts to alter public policies, and expected to cooperate with political institutions of representative democracy in order to seek particular reforms (Rochon, 1988, p. xvii). Like the state-centric approach, the resource mobilisation theory asserts that in order to gain political power social movements need to have clearly defined aims, opponents, strategies and centralised organisational structures. While defining power as the ability of social movements to achieve their stated aims (policy changes), it shares the instrumentalist view of power with the state-centric approach. In contrast, the new social movement theory holds that the significance of social movements derives from their efforts to pose a revolutionary challenge to established political institutions (Tilly, 2004, pp. 6871; Rochon, 1988, p. xvii). Social movements are considered expressive in nature, and expected to represent broad demands on the socio-political system while signalling the dissatisfaction of people towards mainstream political institutions (Rochon, 1988, p. xvii, 99). Movements are not to be assessed by their immediate capacity to induce existing elites to pursue more enlightened policies but their ability to find new spaces in which to act politically and new ways of acting politically as well as to discover the interconnectedness of seemingly different movements struggling in different situations (Walker, 1988, p. 8, 80). Because the goals of social movements cannot be determined in advance, it is sometimes argued that it is important to resist inevitable demand for hard -nosed, concrete solutions to particular problems (Walker, 1988, p. 7). In short, the difference between the two approaches is whether social movements are considered collective efforts to delegimitize the political system, or whether exercising political effectiveness within the system is paramount (Rochon, 1988, p. xix). Both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses. The resource mobilisation theory does not answer, or even address, all relevant questions. Being primarily interested in interactions between movement organisations and political institutions, it concentrates mainly on the process of mobilisation rather than ideas and ideologies. It often fails to recognise the critique that political institutions confront across the western industrialised countries (Rochon, 1988, pp. 18 19, 122). The new social movement theory has shortcomings as well. One of its problems, which characterises also academic globalists, is that it invests very challenging, idealistic, even utopian expectations in social movements. They are believed to have the capacity to extend the horizons of our political imagination while transforming the boundaries of the possible (Walker, 1988, p. 3). They should not only challenge universal paradigms but also defy commonly 16

held understandings of what politics and power are about (Walker, 1998, p. 2). While this kind of a polarised discussion took place already decades ago, the same dualism seems to surprisingly characterise the theoretical debate today. Academic globalists consider movements that aim to gain political power as reactionary and inward-looking in trying to control the political landscape as well as political imagination. The state-centric approach regards more broadly oriented movements as nave, utopian and ineffective, because they mainly aim at affecting values and attitudes. In a new theoretical context, the debate has gained some new characteristics. It seems that increasingly globalised conceptualisations have led some approaches to go wild on those perspectives that were articulated in what might be considered more down-to-earth terms in the late 1980s. In this regard, it is easy to agree with the state-centric approach. The interpretations of academic globalists are often too idealistic: whatever social movements do, they are almost automatically considered powerful, emancipatory and contributing to the good of the whole world (Chandler, 2004, p. 328). However, in the name of political realism it is always very tempting to argue that social movements are weak and unsuccessful in their attempts to change the world for the better. As R.B.J. Walker (1988, p. 146) points out, this view presumes that power is always and everywhere the same. The suggestion that movements should not be assessed in terms of some timeless notion of what power is but in terms of their capacity to alter our understanding of what power can be (Walker, 1988, p. 146) would deserve substantially more attention. However, it is important to revitalise theoretical debate concerning more strategic and instrumental forms of political engagement as well. Indeed, the empirical analysis of merely four organisations within the British anti-war movement has been able to demonstrate that it would be possible to have an intermediate, a sort of a middle position that could combine the advantages of several perspectives. This kind of a both-and approach6 not only reflects more accurately the way in which the relationship between instrumental and symbolic power is conceived within the movement but also provides a more comprehensive perspective for conceptualising power in the context of social movements generally. It enables global and state-based forms of political conceptualisations as well as dimensions such as instrumental/symbolic to be considered simultaneously. By deploying a dialectical approach in which rival perspectives are replaced by a more holistic one, it is possible to take into account the premises of the original perspectives yet go beyond them (Fay, 1998, pp. 227228, 224). The both-and perspective can also enable a more reflexive relationship between theory and political practice, as suggested by the findings here.
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The Multitude/Global Civil Society as an Answer to War? When it comes to evaluating the global political projects against war that academic globalists are talking about, the many divergences and shortcomings discussed above suggest that those efforts are not easily compatible with the normative premises of the current anti-war movement. Their suggestions regarding the organisation of resistance, based as they are on quite different understandings of such central concepts as war and power, encounter the same problem. For liberal cosmopolitans, the ideal towards which global civil society should be moving is based on liberal values, regarded as universal hence, the term cosmopolitan. They are accused of normative universalism, imposing western values and liberal governance on the rest of the world by radical poststructuralists. For them, the ideal towards which the Multitude should lead the rest of world is based on a vision of a post-Marxist political regime. Neither of these seem to resonate very well with the political premises of the current anti-war movement. Within the British movement, the premises of many organisations are based on a much more traditional Marxist analysis, where effective strategies of resistance against war are conceptualised in terms of anti-imperialist struggle, preferably combined with international organisation of the working class. There are also nonviolent ideals that challenge the liberal and radical approaches even more, neither being based on pacifistic ideals. Liberal cosmopolitans generally regard interventions by western liberal states as legitimate and radical poststructuralists do not exactly advocate a pacifist principle when talking about a war against war. These findings certainly do not help academic globalists to counter the criticisms they have attracted for not having a collective political subject that could give content to the theorising of global struggle (Chandler, 2009, p. 537). One the one hand, it seems that academic globalists do not have much to offer the anti-war movement. On the other hand, one may wonder whether a closer engagement with the existing movement is even their purpose, as academic globalists have already fixed their notions of the goals and normative ideals towards which the struggles of resistance should proceed. When the end goal is already determined, what is left to be done is merely to find a suitable social movement that would lead the pre-ordained political project. In this way academic globalists put themselves above their forthcoming, but as yet non-existent global political subjects. Another problem is that while continuously celebrating diversity, academic globalists fail to take the diversity of movements into consideration in practical terms. The empirical analysis of only four anti-war organisations demonstrated that there is a great variety of political positions, beliefs and ideologies which are not always readily compatible with one other. These are sources of political conflicts and power struggles within the movement. It is troubling that in the theoretical debate the possible conflicting interests and power struggles within the global political collective are not taken into 18

account. The lack of this kind of discussion is especially problematic in the poststructuralist theory, since it claims to construct a metatheory with a clear direction for many movements to take while it itself ignores political ramifications as well as power issues within the Multitude. When it comes to liberal cosmopolitans, the problem is basically the same, but since they do not generally discuss power or power relations much and usually not at all in terms of governance the post-political and power-ignorant stance is more predictable. On balance, both liberal cosmopolitans and radical poststructuralists can be criticised for their inability to conceptualise possible conflicts and contradictions within their global movements. Although the state-centric approach does not discuss these issues either, it seems to be the only one of the theoretical approaches capable of offering any analytical instruments for addressing these problems due to its definition of politics and the political. The theorists should also note that the anti-war movement has not yet despite two hundred years of efforts managed to create a truly global organisation against war. The political revival of the movement after 9/11 did spark a vigorous debate about whether it should adopt a more global approach. However, similar kinds of debates have surfaced regularly throughout the history of the movement (see e.g. Prasad, 2005, p. 141, 339). There are thousands of different kinds of peace and anti-war groups in the world. Different branches all have their own coalitions and movements. Their aims and objectives, ideologies and premises vary greatly they have different kinds of analyses of the causes of war, their main opponents and strategies of resistance. Taking a closer look at the movements history as well as exploring the diversity within the existing movement would be extremely beneficial for academic globalists. It would compel them to reconsider their conceptualisations of the Multitude and global civil society as essentially consensual political collectives. It is difficult to accommodate different views into one national movement, let alone to a global one. Transforming the anti-war movement into something more permanent and global is an extremely challenging endeavour one that cannot be established from above. Critical political theory can and should play an important part in these debates, but it should not result in abstract intellectual projects that are independent of political practice and the premises of the movement. Critical political theory needs to communicate with its addressees in order to be emancipatory and practical (Leonard, 1990, p. xiv, 14; Fay, 1987, p. 2, 4, 22, 29). Social movements can benefit greatly from new theories of resistance but such theories must not be too abstract or completely determined in advance, for that is probably the most certain way to ensure that the visions of political theories remain mere utopias. The inability of the theoretical approaches to seriously address the problems discussed above leaves much to be desired when it comes to offering convincing analysis,
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visions or practical suggestions for resistance. There are also other problems in the theorisations. Liberal cosmopolitans do not take relations of power into account sufficiently or address power structures adequately. They have an obvious tendency to overemphasise the power of social movements and to consider the structural aspects of power only in very limited terms. Liberal cosmopolitans also depoliticise some issues, as seen in its tendency to regard certain (liberal) values as universal, and not affected by power. They uncritically equate a liberal order with peace and justice which is a problematic view. For many outside the western world this order equals violence and poverty both of which are deadly. While celebrating global interconnectedness, which is supposed to bring peace and stability to the whole world, liberal cosmopolitans rarely pose the question of from whose point of view peace and stability is being constructed or secured. Peace is often understood simplistically only as the absence of war, and the liberal way of war is rarely, if ever, problematised. Radical poststructuralists emphasise the concepts of global power and global state of war perhaps too strongly. They also maintain a very broad and somewhat idealistic view of resistance that makes it difficult to propose concrete solutions and practical guidelines for resistance. Moreover, their concept of democratic violence which legitimates the use of defensive violence is a highly problematic concept from the perspective of the anti-war movement, at least if pacifists and nonviolent groups are to be included. Although the concept of war against war can be regarded as an effort to construct some sort of a middle ground between pacifism and traditions of revolutionary violence (Reid, 2006, p. 120), the idea of democratic viol ence as a conception of the legitimacy of violence in terms of its defensive qualities, is intrinsic to the very liberal tradition of war which Hardt and Negri are attempting to stand outside of (Reid, 2006, p. 105). The state-centric approach fails to recognise the legitimate critiques of those who argue that it is justified to resist democratic political institutions when these, in the name of liberal democracy, continuously resort to violence and military force. By very strongly defending the representative democratic system, the state-centric approach is too hasty to dismiss many of the justified criticisms put forward by academic globalists. Even if one were to reconcile oneself with the view that representational democracy is the best political system that currently exists, it hardly can be argued that we have now achieved a perfect form of government that should not be criticised or cannot be improved. On the whole, all the problems of the three theoretical approaches provide justification to suggest that their connection to political practice, and thus, to emancipatory critical theory is problematic and inadequate. At the same time, it has been shown that any generalisations are difficult because movements really are complex and multifaceted. Hence, I argue that critical theorists should aim at looking at specific movements in the way Leonard (1990) suggests, and directly engage with them, because otherwise it is impossible to establish anything of an emancipatory dialogue from the 20

perspective of critical theory in political practice. By communicating with activists, it is also possible for theorists to learn many new and alternative ways of thinking which, in turn, may help them to transform the relationship between theory and political practice, knowing and being, into something more reflexive. Moreover, it should be admitted that it makes as much sense to try to produce a unified perspective for the anti-war movement as to try to develop a universal recipe for resistance against war in theoretical terms. As Leonard has illustrated, emancipatory political projects based on critical theory are deeply historical and necessarily localised in their efforts to change a perceived injustice because otherwise the ghost of universalism will bring many more problems. However, it is not enough to engage only in localised forms of critique what is required as well is a metatheoretical self-understanding which accommodates one the one hand, the need for collective solidarity, and on the other, a respect for plurality and difference (Leonard, 1990, p. 87). While admitting that simultaneous commitment to both solidarity and plurality is no mean task, Leonard (1990, p. 261) shows that to be anything less runs the risk of repeating the same mistakes that gave rise to the need for critical theory. Notes
1
These are by no means the only scholars taking part in the debate, but are here taken as examples, since it would be impossible to analyse all the related discussion. 2 Similarly, Chantal Mouffe (2005, p. 107) argues that the poststructuralist and liberal cosmopolitan approaches lack a properly political dimension. For her, Hardt and Negris theory represents no more than an ultra-left version of the cosmopolitan perspective which, instead of providing an empowering perspective, contributes to reinforcing the current incapacity to think and act politically (Mouffe, 2005, p. 107). 3 The in-depth interviews with seven representatives of the four organisations were conducted in London in March 2008. 4 There are many different kinds of definitions of a movement (see e.g. Tilly, 2004, pp. 3 7; Tilly and Tarrow, 2007, p. 8; della Porta and Diani, 2006, pp. 2022; Rochon, 1988, p. xv). 5 Although social movement organisations cannot be equated with a movement (della Porta and Diani, 2006, p. 21; Tilly, 2004, p. 48; Tilly and Tarrow, 2007, p. 8), for certain purposes there are analytic gains to be had from adopting a more restrictive definition of a political movement, for example by looking only at the major organizations (Rochon, 1988, p. 23). 6 This terminology has been adopted from Brian Fay (1998, p. 224).
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References Beck, U., 2000. What is Globalization? [1997] Trans. by Patrick Camiller. Cambridge: Polity. Beck, U., 2006. The Cosmopolitan Vision [2004]. Trans. by Ciaran Corin. Cambridge: Polity. Castells, M., 2000. The Rise of Network Society [1996]. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Blackwell. Castells, M., 2004. The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society [2001]. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Castells, M., 2008. The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance. The American Academy of Political and Social Science, Annalls 616: 7893. Chandler, D., 2004. Building Global Civil Society From Below? Millennium: Journal of International Studies 33(2): 313339. Chandler, D., 2009a. Hollow Hegemony? Rethinking Global Politics, Power and Resistance. London: Pluto. Chandler, D., 2009b. The Global Ideology: Rethinking the Politics of the Global Turn in IR. International Relations 23(4): 530547. della Porta, D. & Diani, M., 2006. Social Movements: An Introduction [1999]. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Blackwell. Fay, B., 1987. Critical Social Science: Liberation and its Limits . Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Fay, B., 1998. Contemporary Philosophy of Social Science: A Multicultural Approach [1996]. Oxford: Blackwell. Gilbert, J., 2008. Anti-Capitalism and Culture. Radical Theory and Popular Politics . Oxford: Berg. Gillan, K., 2006. Meaning in Movement: An Ideational Analysis of Sheffield-based Protest Networks Contesting Globalisation and War. Unpublished PhD thesis. University of Sheffield. Gillan, K. & Pickerill, J. & Webster, F., 2008. Anti-War Activism: New Media and Protest in the Information Age. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hardt, M. & Negri, A., 2000. Empire. London: Harvard University Press. Hardt, M. & Negri, A., 2004. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: Penguin Books. Hardt, M. & Negri, A., 2009. Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Hudson, K. (2005) CND Now More Than Ever: the Story of a Peace Movement. London: Vision. Kaldor, M., 2003a. Global Civil Society: An Answer to War. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Kaldor, M., 2003b. American Power: from Compellance to Cosmopolitanism? International Affairs 79(1): 122. Leonard, S. T., 1990. Critical Theory in Political Practice. Princeton: Princenton University Press. Massumi, B., 1992. A Users Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze & Guattari. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Mouffe, C., 2005. On the Political. London: Routledge. Murray, A. and German, L. 2005 Stop the War: The Story of Britains Biggest Mass Movement. London: Bookmarks Publications. Nye, J. S., Jr., 2004. Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. New York: Public Affairs. Prasad, D., 2005. War is a Crime Against Humanity The Story of War Resisters International. Foreword by G. Willoughby. London: War Resisters International. Reid, J., 2006. The Biopolitics of the War on Terror: Life Struggles, Liberal Modernity and the Defence of Logistical Societies. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Seppl, T., 2010. Globalizing Resistance against War? A Critical Analysis of the
Theoretical Debate through a Case Study of the New Anti -War Movement in Britain. PhD thesis. Rovaniemi: Lapland University Press.
Seppl, T., 2011. A Critical Analysis of a Theoretical Debate on Power of Social Movements a Case Study of the New Anti-War Movement. Journal of Critical Studies in Business and Society 2 (1-2): 1029. Special issue on Online and Offline Social Movements: Critical Perspectives. Seppl, T., (2012, forthcoming) Globalizing Resistance against War: Theories of Resistance & the New Anti-War Movement. London: Routledge. Rochon, T. R., 1988. Mobilizing for Peace: The Antinuclear Movements in Western Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tilly, C., 2004. Social Movements, 17682004. London: Paradigm. Tilly, C. & Tarrow, S., 2007. Contentious Politics. London: Paradigm. Walker, R.B.J., 1988. One World, Many Worlds: Struggles for a Just World Peace. London: Zed Books. Dr. Tiina Seppl holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Lapland, Finland, where she works as a post-doctoral researcher. Her PhD thesis (2010, Lapland University Press) will be published by Routledge in 2012 under the title Globalizing Resistance against War: Theories of Resistance & the New Anti-War Movement. Contact details: tiina.seppala@ulapland.fi
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ISSN 2040-8498 criticalglobalisation.com Article submitted 31 Dec 2011; article accepted 6 Jan 2012
Lessons from #Occupy in Canada: Contesting Space, Settler Consciousness and Erasures within the 99%
Konstantin Kilibarda1
Under a slogan of We are the 99%, the #occupy movement has won praise for its bold reclamations of public space and for re-centring class analysis in North America. Despite this, however, important critiques of the movements elisions and erasures have also been raised. This article examines how three #occupy encampments in Canada have engaged with these calls to #decolonise the movement and to address divisions within the 99%. These critiques question #occupys ability to fix a broken social contract, reclaim Canada, or take back our democracy without addressing the underlying racial contracts foundational to North American settler-states. Practical experiences with raising postcolonial critiques are examined through in-depth interviews with organisers at #occupy encampments in Montral, Toronto and Vancouver.
Introduction #Occupy is a late addition to the recent wave of global resistance against neoliberal austerity following the 2008 financial crisis. People continue to be pushed out of jobs, lands, and homes in order to secure an economic model that seeks to commodify all social relations in a context of growing global inequality. But while #occupy addresses these issues directly, its critique remains circumscribed by eliding the racialised nature of inequality in North America, which has been built on settler-colonial dispossession, genocide, slavery, imperial adventurism, indentured and precarious labour, as well as patriarchal, xenophobic and anti-immigrant nationalisms. The #occupy movements desire to transform the prevailing social contract by reclaiming democratic citizenship in 24
Lessons from #Occupy in Canada, Kilibarda (pp. 24-41)

North America, without engaging what Charles W. Mills (1997) identifies as its underlying racial contract which enshrines white-male, settler privilege represents a dangerous bracketing manoeuvre for this nascent movement.2 In response to this, a #decolonise framework has emerged at several #occupy locations, which seeks to rearticulate a postcolonial critique from within. This article examines efforts to shift #occupys discourse and praxis in Canadian cities like Montral, Toronto and Vancouver towards a #decolonise framework. To this end, in-depth e-mail and phone interviews were conducted with organisers directly involved in the #decolonise effort. Given the time sensitive nature of the paper not to mention the commitments of interviewees engaged in #occupy and similar campaigns only two to three organisers were selected from each city through snowball sampling. These organisers were asked to provide their reflections on the internal dynamics they observed at the #occupy encampments in their cities. Furthermore, the Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and websites of 39 #occupy locations in Canada were also analysed for their content. While important strides were made in advancing a #decolonise framework, many organisers felt that their interventions were only partially taken-up at #occupy. Nevertheless, some positive changes were noted, illustrating the power of critiques in transforming social movements from within. In order to consider the contributions of the #decolonise approach in transforming the #occupy movement, this article draws on postcolonial International Relations (IR) theory, indigenous critiques of settler-states, and intersectional social movement analysis. Thus, after briefly situating #decolonise within these relevant literatures, the article goes on to discuss three basic issues: (1) how the #decolonise framework was practically articulated in Montral, Toronto and Vancouver; (2) how inequalities within the 99% have informed decision-making power at the various #occupy sites; and (3) what the potential alliances are that #occupy would be able form were it to acknowledge the importance of those local social movements and struggles that preceded it. Finally, it concludes with some reflections on the challenges that #occupy faces in the wake of increasing repression, and on the lessons that the #decolonise framework can offer in this context. Re-centring Postcolonial Imaginaries in North America: Putting Theory into Practice Through #Decolonise Postcolonial theory has been a relative latecomer to the cloistered world of IR. In 2002, Geeta Chowdhry and Sheila Nairs edited volume Power, Postcolonialism and International Relations (2002) and L.H.M Lings Postcolonial International Relations (2002) both marked an important turn towards questioning the ethnocentric, imperialising and racialised geographies of IRs mai nstream (See also Agathangelou and
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Ling, 2009; Doty, 1996; Grivogui, 2009; Henderson, 2007; Jones, 2006; and Vitalis, 2010). Similar scholarship has also emerged within nationality and citizenship studies in Canada (Bannerji, 2000; Razzaq, 2002; Thobani, 2007), and among indigenous scholars who directly challenge the problematic sovereignty, racial formation and territorial consolidation of Anglo-American settler-states (see Amadahy and Lawrence, 2009; Anderson, 2001; Lawrence, 2004; Lawrence and Dua, 2005; Shaw, 2008; Smith, 2005; and Tuhiwai Smith, 1999). What these academic interventions achieve is the rendering of a radically different geography, enabling IR theorists to re-imagine the worlds remaining settlersocieties in both precolonial and postcolonial terms. This echoes the project that #decolonise seeks to forward on the streets by drawing attention to the stolen and occupied nature of North American lands themselves (Montano, 2011; Yee, 2011). In fact, #occupys elision of these themes echoes IRs own relative silence concerning the string of broken inter-national treaties between indigenous peoples and settler-states, thereby implicating the discipline in the naturalisation and reproduction of tenuous claims to US and Canadian territorial integrity and sovereignty. The failure of the US and Canadian governments to ratify the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) highlights the legitimacy of indigenous claims to un-ceded lands, waterways, forests and mountain ranges. Indigenous understandings of the global thus effectively draw attention to the unfinished business of decolonisation, rupturing the assumed coherence of the North American nation-space through appeals to both international law and to a growing transnational network of indigenous alliances (Shaw, 2008). #Decolonise represents a fragment of such struggles and has sought to take these critiques into the heart of the #occupy movement, thus providing an important case-study not only of how theory becomes translated into practice, but also of how social movements themselves are formed and reshaped by contestations from within. Social movement theory has generally focused on issues of resource mobilisation (McCarthy and Zald, 1979; McAdam, 1996), opportunity structures (McAdam, McCarthy and Zald, 1999; Tarrow, 2011) as well as the importance of social networks, repertoires of contention and common cultural/identity frameworks for building sustainable movements (Della Porta and Diani, 2006; Tilly, 2004). Below I mainly focus on the last of these social movement considerations by examining how the #decolonise framework has attempted to transform everyday organising at the three #occupy spaces considered. #Decolonise Canada: Re-centering Indigenous Self-Determination on Turtle Island as Foundational Jessica Yee, a Mohawk organizer with the Native Youth Sexual Health Network in Toronto, succinctly summarised the indigenous critique of #occupys framework in late September 2011: Theres just one problem: THE UNITED STATES IS ALREADY 26

BEING OCCUPIED. THIS IS INDIGENOUS LAND. And its been occupied for quite some time now (Yee, 2011). John Paul Montano (2011), a Nishnaabemwin language instructor, echoed this point in a widely circulated open letter: I am not one of the 99 percent that you refer to. And, that saddens me. Please don't misunderstand me. I would like to be one of the 99 percent...I had hoped that you would address the centuries-long history that we indigenous peoples of this continent have endured being subject to the countless '-isms' of do-gooders claiming to be building a more just society, a better world, a land of freedom on top of our indigenous societies, on our indigenous lands, while destroying and/or ignoring our ways of life.3 In spite of centuries of genocidal policies targeting indigenous lands, belief systems, and bodies, indigenous communities have nevertheless repeatedly managed to check the same capitalist system that #occupy is now confronting (Smith, 2005). This history of struggle is significant in the Canadian context since prior to #occupy, one of the most common uses of the actual term occupy in the media was to describe indigenous peoples resistance to state appropriation of their lands. Since the early 1970s, indigenous groups across Turtle Island have increasingly sought to reclaim traditional territories by blockading bridges, railways and roads; by occupying parks, taking over government offices, and staging sit-ins and hunger-strikes before federal and provincial legislatures (Johnston, 2005).4 As a result, indigenous organisers have faced the full force of the Canadian state, including police violence, extrajudicial executions, military intervention and surveillance, mass arrests and paternalistic government interventions into community governance (Pasternak, 2011). Not only have indigenous communities managed to mobilise support for their struggles in spite of this repression but they also continue to win important victories, which include recent challenges to TransCanadas Keystone XL and Enbridges Northern Gateway pipelines. Unfortunately, these facts appeared lost on many #occupy activists in Canada. An examination of the thirty-nine Facebook pages and websites that claimed to represent #occupy initiatives in various Canadian cities revealed that most failed to acknowledge the (often un-ceded) indigenous territories on which they were being organised. Only #OccupyWinnipeg initially adopted a statement of unity that took indigenous sovereignty as foundational to its analysis (2.6% of the sample), while only six websites in all addressed the issue (15.4% of the sample). Of course, such a sampling is an imperfect reflection of the important work done at various #occupy sites to correct these erasures. However, for a movement whose organisational basis is heavily dependent on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and blogs, the omissions are telling. In response,
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a number of alternative online forums like Occupy(ed) Canada and Decolonize Vancouver emerged to correct the situation online. Beyond social media, the experience of those attempting to shift the #occupy discourse on the ground has been equally difficult. Through sustained interventions by indigenous organisers and allies, initially hostile attitudes towards indigenous sovereignty shifted over time. Liisa Schofield (2011), of the Stop the Cuts anti -austerity campaign in Toronto notes the non-linear ways in which these shifts occurred: [I]n the beginning there were tensions about the constant representation of Canadian nationalism in symbols and the way people talked about Occupy. But then it morphed into Indigenous folks leading off the [General Assembly] every night and people somewhat problematically / tokenistically engaging (in my opinion again, from outside). Then it morphed again into Indigenous folks defending the sacred fire, and not engaged as much in the GAs. The permutations were telling of the shifting dynamics at Torontos St. James Park. An important workshop entitled Race, Colonialism and the 99% in early November helped stimulate more concrete discussions about decolonising Torontos #occupation (Nielsen, Tabobondung and Walia, 2011). By 12 November 2011, #OccupyTorontos one-month anniversary was celebrated with a de-Occupy march. Rebeka Tabobondung (2011), publisher at MUSKRAT Magazine and member of the Wasauksing First Nation, noted the positive impact that some #occupy organisers had in shifting the terms of debate in Toronto: [A] real effort was made on the part of several Occupy organizers and Indigenous Sovereignty Week allies to ensure there was space for Aboriginal voices to be included. They even offered us tobacco as speakers, a gesture that was greatly appreciated and in my experience not common working with NonAboriginalsThese key occupy organizers outreached to us to help them outreach to the broader Aboriginal community and in the end on the day of the march it was an Aboriginal female Elder that opened, mainly female speakers and the march was led by Aboriginal women with the men marching behind. They even painted a huge banner that said Decolonize Bay Street [ n.b. Torontos equivalent of Wall Street] which is what we suggested prior to the march. To see that felt wonderful. Nevertheless, as Krystalline Kraus (2011), an organiser at the Toronto encampment noted, the movement [remained] split in regards to being open and accepting of centering Indigenous ideas. Organisers involved with #OccupyMontrals encampment at Victoria Square 28

also experienced difficulties when attempting to shift the discourse towards decolonisation. Fred Burrill (2011), an organiser with Dcolonisons Montral,5 explains that some of these difficulties were simply the result of the fact that there was very little crossover between ongoing radical organising in Montral (around indigenous solidarity but also around anti-capitalist critiques) and the folks who came together to make the call for an occupy encampment in our city. In order to address this gap in analysis, a diverse coalition of organisations came together behind a Dcolonisons Montral contingent for the initial October 15 rally. This contingent eventually evolved into a permanent presence based around one large tent in Victoria Square. Burrill (2011) explains that: we tried to put forth a solid anti-colonial analysis, create a space for discussion and popular education, and promote a diversity of tactics. In terms of bringing an anti-colonial perspective to the occupy effort, I think we were reasonably successful in the early goings, at least: the General Assembly adopted a motion to the effect of recognizing indigenous sovereignty over the territory and created an Indigenous Solidarity Committee. It's hard to say how effective this was over the long-term, but certainly the discussion was ongoing. Farha Najah Hussain (2011), who was part of the South Asian Womens Community Center (SAWCC) in Montral, found that while these efforts were worthwhile, they ultimately fell short of transforming the discourse at the #occupy site: Although I was not consistently at the site, I think social justice organisers attempted to address the reality of colonialism of Indigenous lands and communities (e.g. via discussions, organising the decolonise tents, speeches) but this did not seem to be sufficient. Ultimately, Hussain (2011) found that: Occupy Montral did not re-center its analysis from an anti-colonial or anti-racist perspective (ibid.). Accordingly, issues of indigenous self-determination seemed more of an add-on, than a proposal coming from an emerging anti-colonial perspective (Hussain, 2011). Similarly, while #OccupyVancouver (OV) acknowledged that it is taking place on un-ceded Coast Salish territories, Jasmine Rezaee (2011) a volunteer with Vancouvers Downtown Eastside (DTES) Womens Centre and an #occupy organiser noted that the analysis continued to meet with obstacles in implementation. As a result, an Indigenous Solidarity committee was formed, since it appeared that many participants of OV did not understand the ramifications of this reality and did not pose the question, how can we reclaim/liberate space without recolonizing/reoccupying it? (Rezaee, 2011). Rezaee explains that the Indigenous Solidarity committee sought to: [E]nsure that Indigenous-specific issues[were] heard, that Indigenous people, particularly elders, are respected at OV and that Indigenous self-determination, ways of living and traditions are supported and understood (ibid). The committee aimed to
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educate those onsite around that fact that all the economic and political injustices [we are protesting] are built on the history of colonialism and that colonialism and indigenous struggles are foundational (Rezaee, 2011). While the effort was a step forward, many at the camp still had problems taking leadership from indigenous peoples (Rezaee, 2011; Walia 2011a). Overall it seemed that concerted efforts by indigenous organisers, elders, members of the homeless urban indigenous population, as well as allies forwarding a #decolonise narrative had some impact. By organising (and often defending) teach-ins, special committees, sacred fires, special tents and territories within the #occupy sites, a space for discussing indigenous sovereignty and decolonisation was created. However, in the experience of most organisers such spaces flourished away from the General Assemblies or were only reluctantly internalised as part of the #occupy analysis. While many #occupy sites in Canada have since planned rallies focused on indigenous rights, the #occupy movement as a whole is still far from coming to terms with the implications of such a politics. This is perhaps understandable given the short time span of these interventions, the limited and already committed resources of #decolonise activists and the nationalist and populist starting-points of many drawn to #occupy. Beyond Tokenism? Confronting Identity and Privilege in the 99% The ability to address indigenous issues in the #occupy movement is arguably an important gauge for the movements broader ability to reflect the diversity of identities, interests and locations of privilege/exclusion within the 99%. In an article for The American Prospect, Kenyon Farrow (2011) summarised the ways in which some of #occupys discourse can be alienating to racialised communities in North America: Comparing debt to slavery, believing police won't hurt you, or wanting to take back the America you see as rightfully yours are things that suggest OWS is actually appealing to an imagined white (re)public. Rather than trying to figure out how to diversify the Occupy Wall Street movement, white progressives need to think long and hard about their use of frameworks and rhetoric that situate blacks at the margins of the movement. 6 Similarly in Canada, many community organisers felt that the 99% discourse glossedover the multiple hierarchies of race, gender, class, sexuality, dis/ability, etc. that structure everyday social relations in the country. As #OccupyVancouvers Rezaee (2011) notes: Ive personally disliked the 99% vs. 1% analysis from the beginning. I think this analysis oversimplifies many issuesFighting the 1% isnt enough in my opinion, we have to fight all the other issues that exist within the 99% in order to be successful. As with indigenous self-determination, Rezaee explains that the #OccupyVancouver GA decided to form an 30

anti-oppression committee to address and discuss some of these issues because: classism, sexism and ableism (but many other issues as well) have been a significant problem at OV and in some ways pose the biggest threat to the success of our movement (ibid.). Furthermore, Rezaee was troubled by the problematic distribution of labour and decision-making power that emerged onsite: participation took on a very oppressive, classist dynamic and reproduced the division between mental and manual labor. The people participating in the decision making bodies i.e. committees and general assemblies were largely university educated and didnt sleep at the encampment overnight whereas most of the people who tented and participated in more communal things (food, cleaning up, peace keeping, etc.) were homeless, not university educated and/or poor. This dichotomy didnt apply to everyone of course, but it was an issue nonetheless that kept manifesting itself and [was] reproduc[ed] in ugly ways. Tent city folks eventually voted to be autonomous from the General Assembly. Harsha Walia (2011a) a longstanding community organiser in Vancouver also described a similar dynamic at play in the ways that tasks were divided and decisionmaking power enacted in Vancouver: If you go to the site, it would seem inclusive. At the tent city it was mostly street involved folks, people of color, women, etc. On site youd see a diversity of people. But you wouldnt see those people being actively involved in decision making. In response tent council had its own meetings and created its own communityThe leadership [of OV nevertheless] remained overwhelmingly white and/or middle class. Schofield (2011), speaking about these issues in Toronto, echoed Rezaee and Walias concerns as power appeared to be concentrated in white, male and middle class hands: The people that I have made connections with at Occupy [Toronto] have been critical of the blanket 99% and have sought to reflect diversity in the space/organizing. The sense that I got is that it was certainly an up-hill battle at [St. James] park. There was one demonstration at City Hall where all of the speakers, except for one woman, were white men. It was a constant list of Johns, Seans, etc. People in the crowd actually started to revolt and heckle. It opened up space at the park and in the action committee about what went wrong, and what needs to be different for next time. There were some strong women who I saw
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step up and really challenge men on the involvement of marginalized communities in the organizing and would actively seek out organizations like Jane-Finch Action Against Poverty, OCAP, No One Is Illegal, Stop the Cuts, etc. to come to the park and speak with peopleThe outreach and action committees largely took this work on. Nevertheless, Schofield identified a lot of oppressive behavior that persisted at the General Assembly and in the ways that leadership developed: The loudest voices often dominated or blocked process. I think consensus decision-making models of that kind were certainly a huge challenge for facilitators. Leadership inevitably developed, and from what I could see, some decisions were definitely being made behind the scenes by small groupings of people that werent always accountable to the group or critical of their own privilege in making decisions for other peopleI wish I could say it became more nuanced than that on the whole, but I am not sure[that] on a whol e the Occupy movement took this up. Kraus (2011) also noted that the free Skool set-up at #OccupyToronto became another space where critical reflections on the tensions within the 99% were addressed. While this space became a hub for discussion, she also noted how diversity was often confined to the free Skool and that she would have liked to see more or better integration of these issues into the larger Occupy Toronto movement (Kraus, 2011). According to Kraus (2011): part of this failure [had] to do with the slogan we are the 99% which created the false assumption of binding unity where diversity is seen as divisive to that 99% whole. #Occupy and Movement Building: Looking Behind to Look Ahead? While often presenting itself as a sui generis response to the current economic crisis, the reality is that #occupy draws on broader genealogies and repertoires of action. In addition to indigenous land reclamations, the occupy tactic has been repeatedly used in a variety of contexts: from the civil rights movement (the occupation of lunch counters, buses, publicly segregated spaces, etc.), to student, labour, anti-poverty, queer, dis/ability, feminist, environmental, housing rights and alternative community projects. 7 Drawing on these histories of resistance, Rinku Sen (2011), editor of Colorlines.com, notes that in the long run, #occupy will have to learn to engage with all the people in communities working people, unions, homeless people, tenants, immigrants who have been struggling for so long to make particular things happen and to get back some of the stuff that was stolen from us. Sen (2011) also suggests that a key question for #occupy remains whether racialised participants and those engaged in long-standing struggles 32

against various forms of oppression within the 99% are able to influence the agendas of local occupations?; and whether [#occupy is] able to help people who are attracted to Occupy Wall Street get moved back out to all of the organizations and campaigns and efforts to really win things?. The recent experiences of #occupy encampments in Vancouver and Toronto suggest that this may already be happening. Along these lines, Rezaee (2011) provides a humble assessment of the #occupy movement in Vancouver and the lineages from which it emerged: Vancouver has a rich and radical history of social movements and OV is a baby movement that, in many ways, has a great deal left to learn. Key campaigns in Vancouver have been about stopping gentrification of the Downtown Eastside (DTES), one of Canadas poorest neighborhoods, and making Vancouver an affordable, inclusive city that has enough social housing and support services for all. Aggressive development has displaced many local residents of the DTES and many locals have been excluded from enjoying the benefits of urban revitalization. Campaigns against economic cleansing in the DTES have taken place for decades now in this city. Other movements that are/have been active in this city in recent years are organizations like No One is Illegal, Food not Bombs, Stopwar.ca, Anti-Poverty Coalition, Carnegie Action project and anti-Olympics resistance. As Rezaee (2011) notes, many within the #occupy movement have come to recognise that we need the support of other organisations in this city to succeed, collaborate, grow and successfully occupy a space[and that] community outreach, building and support is key to our success. Some of these long-standing issues were dramatically highlighted by the tragic death of Ashlie Gough from a drug overdose at #OccupyVancouver in early November. The death amplified conservative media calls to evict the encampment, while British Colombias Liberal Premier Christy Clark sought a province -wide injunction against #occupy (citing health and safety concerns). Nevertheless, the autonomous tent-city in Vancouver and the strong tradition of resistance by the street involved community in the DTES provided a context for a more proactive approach to these issues. As Walia (2011a) explains: while some organizers saw the presence of a tent-city composed of the homeless and poor as bringing us down, others sought to build more substantial links between #occupy and other movements in the city. Following the eviction of #OccupyVancouver by police in late-November, a major focus of local #occupy activism has in fact shifted to long-standing anti-gentrification actions represented by the newly formed #occupycondos campaign thus creatively bringing together the energy of
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#occupy with longer-standing campaigns in Vancouver (Klein, 2011). Similarly, in Toronto, the first #occupy planning meeting in late-September 2011 was convened a few days after 2,500 people had marched on City Hall to oppose newly elected mayor Rob Fords austerity budget. Since the spring of 2011, gr assroots opposition to Fords proposed cuts has grown. Organisers formed neighbourhood committees, held speak outs and convened community forums to plan a response. Each neighborhood committee involved in the campaign defended local services and pushed for alternatives to City Halls austerity budget. Street-level polling of residents in affected neighborhoods, protests, creative occupations (including a family sleep-in in Dufferin Grove Park), petitions and marathon mass-deputations condemning the cutbacks were organised. Migrant justice organisations and organisers from marginalised (and often racialised) communities played an important role in these campaigns. A mass open-air public forum, with over 600 participants was held in early September that came up with a Peoples Declaration outlining alternatives. As a result of this campaign momentum, Schofield (2011) saw the initial caution that greeted #occupy as understandable: [B]oth Stop the Cuts and [the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty] OCAP were slow and hesitant to engage fully in the Occupy movement. We went to the large events, supported it on-line, and had private conversations where we voiced our concerns and worries. A lot of the more experienced activists/organizers that I know were definitely hesitant to engage fully (i.e. put tons and tons of energy into [#occupy]) though at the same time self-critical about our cynicism. I think this comes from an honest place though of not wanting to drop the work that we are doing, of feeling alienated and worried of the space at Occupy (who is involved and who is missing, how anti-oppression gets taken up, etc). Nevertheless, it appeared that the #occupy encampment in Toronto responded really well to Stop the Cuts. Particularly important were the many people who acted as bridges between #occupy and existing movements: people who stayed at the camp, but were familiar/connected with work in the city (Schofield, 2011). According to Kraus (2011): The anti-Ford movement helped build the skeleton that Occupy Toronto continued to flesh out regarding activism in Toronto. While #OccupyToronto was also evicted in late-November, many of the activists involved rechanneled their energies into the anti-Ford campaign, culminating in another 3,000 person rally in front of City Hall on 17 January 2012 that managed to reverse some $20-million in proposed spending cuts.
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What now for #Occupy? State Repression and Re-Imagining Alternatives In her Letter to Occupy Together Movement, Walia (2011b) explains why recognis ing the diversity within the 99% is essential for #occupys future: Ignoring the hierarchies of power between us does not make them magically disappear. It actually does the opposite it entrenches those inequalities. The experiences of organisers in Montral, Toronto and Vancouver noted above speak to the potential of cross-pollination between #occupy and longer-standing social justice struggles. As the last section illustrates, there is no lack of organising for the #occupy movement to undertake as it faces eviction from public spaces by police forces. Building a broad-based anti-austerity program that understands the foundational nature of North Americas racial contract is an important step towards embracing a truly transformative politics. It requires that activists steer clear of the notion that #occupy is necessarily the biggest threat to the neoliberal order or that the current crackdown by the state represents unparalleled policy brutality, as Naomi Wolf (2011) claimed in The Guardian. Instead, it requires a more humble appreciation of the local and global struggles that enable movements like #occupy to emerge. As the #occupy movement faces increasing repression, internalising an analysis of settler-colonial state violence is important if the movement is to survive and adapt. Ignoring the historically racialised forms of state repression deployed against particular communities, while simply focusing on the violence against #occupy, risks undermining tenuous solidarities. Furthermore, while some continue to insist that calls to #decolonise are unrealistic, or complicate the analysis, it is worth recalling indigenous scholar Andrea Smiths response to skeptics of decolonising frameworks: Why? Why does it sound so absurd to say that we dont want to live under a settler state founded on genocide and slavery? That the proposition seems silly shows the extent to which we have so completely normalised genocide that we cannot actually imagine a future without genocide (Smith 2011). The experiences of the #decolonise contingents above offer a glimpse into the potential of re-imagining post-colonial futures. These experiences also pose the question for IR scholars of what it will take to #decolonise our own discipline. Notes
1
I want to thank Fred Burrill, Ryan Hayes, Krystalline Kraus, Farha Najah Hussain, Jasmine Rezaee, Liisa Schofield, Rebeka Tabobondung and Harsha Walia for sharing their time and invaluable insights with me. I would also like to thank Anna Agathangelou, Arthur Imperial, Sean Mills, and the anonymous reviewer for their feedback on this paper. 2 Charles W. Mills The Racial Contract (1997) provides a powerful critique of Western social contract theory, as does Carole Patemans earlier work The Sexual Contract
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(1988). In relation to #occupy, it is worth noting that a similar critique to the one presented in this paper was also leveled at the anti-globalisation movement following the 1999 anti-WTO protests in Seattle (see Yuen, Katsiaficas and Rose, 2001). 3 Since the beginning of colonisation, settler doctrines of terrus nullius and Christian discovery as well as early-modern liberal economic theories were instrumental in framing North America as a virgin land ready to be transformed through the enterprising agency of European explorers, colonists, missionaries, utopians and economic interests. The reality of the encounter for indigenous peoples was devastating (the first peoples to make contact with occupying European armies were nearly always wiped out, including the Arawak in Santo Domingo; the Pequots in New England; and the Beothuks in Newfoundland). Wall Streets own origins serve as a microcosm for the frequently repeated sequencing of settler-occupation, indigenous dispossession and trans-Atlantic slavery (Fraser, 2005; Harris, 2003; Barker, 2011). 4 John Borrows, a legal scholar at University of Minnesota Law, prepared a 2005 study on the historical development of indigenous land reclamations in Canada for the Attorney Generals office in Ontario. The paper Crown and Aboriginal Occupations of Land: A History & Comparison catalogues 16 of the better known land reclamations (or occupations) since the 1970s. These include struggles in defense of land-rights at: Anishnabe Park, Haida Gwaii, Barriere Lake, Temagami, Oldman River, James Bay, Kanasatake, Lubicon territories, Gustafsen Lake, Saugeen Ojibway Nation Territories, Lilwat, Clayaquot Sound, Secwepemc territories, Burnt Church, Grass y Narrows / Asubpeeschoseewagong First Nation. There are currently at least thirty-nine on-going indigenous land reclamations in Canada, including: Anishinabek of the Gitchi Gami, Ardoch Algonquin First Nation, Bear River, Begaee Shuhagot'ine, Blackfoot, Burns Lake, DehCho First Nation, Ebb and Flow, Gitxsan, Innu Nation, Island Lake, Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, Lubicon, Mashpee Wampanoag, Mikisew Cree, Moose Factory, Musqueam, Nuu Chah Nulth Nation, Ojibways of Saugeen, Pimicikamak, Pukatawagan, Red Lake, Roseau River, Sagkeeng, Six Nations, Tahltan, Trout Lake, Tsimshian, Tyendinaga, Wasauksing, Wet'suwet'en, Haida Nation, Athabasca Chipewyan, Barriere Lake, Cheam, Ginoogaming, Grassy Narrows, Secwepemc, Tobique. For an overview of on-going land reclamation actions (or occupations), visit the Defenders of the Land website: http://www.defendersoftheland.org. Muskrat Magazines interview with Secwepemc organizer Arthur Manuel provides important context for the formation of the Defenders network in 2008: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =NOc5-YrRkiI and the legal basis for indigenous land reclamation efforts. 5 The group was formed by a number of groups with a long history of organising in Montral, including: Montrals Indigenous Solidarity Committee, Solidarity Across
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Borders (SAB), the Montreal Childcare Collective, QPIRG Concordia, No One Is Illegal-Montreal, Tadamon and the Immigrant Workers Center (IWC). 6 In response to such concerns, initiatives like #OccupyTheHood (OTH) emerged in the United States to directly address issues relevant to African-Americans marginalized by #occupys framework (OTH, 2011). Ife Johari Uhuru, one of the founders of OTH, claims that understanding the links between identity and class in North America is a central concern for any transformative agenda: When Occupy Wall Street started it just focused on capitalism and classism, and I think that some social issues were not brought up. You can't separate capitalism from racism even if we did away with capitalism there would still be racism so I posed this question to people of color on Twitter and Facebook: Do you think more people would be involved if racism was included in this movement along with capitalism? And the overwhelming consensus was yes (Strauss 2011). 7 Sean Mills, an historian of Canadian social movements, notes that in addition to the indigenous land reclamations already mentioned, there are other prominent examples of this tactic being used in Canada. They include: the labour sit-down strikes in Oshawa, Sarnia and Windsor in 1936-1937 (Palmer, 1992: 255); the massive housing occupation movement led by Henri Gagnon after WWII (Comeau and Dionne, 1981); the 1969 occupation of the computer center at Sir George Williams University in Montreal by African-Canadian, Caribbean and allied students (Austin, 2007); factory, school and hospital occupations during the general strike in Quebec in 1972 (Ethier, Piotte and Reynolds ,1975); the factory occupations that followed plant closures in Ontario in 1981 (Palmer, 1992: 416); as well as on-going use of these tactics by the new social movements mentioned above. References Agathangelou, A. and Ling, L.H.M., 2009. Transforming World Politics: From Empire to Multiple Worlds. New York: Routledge. Amadahy, Z. and Lawrence, B., 2009. Indigenous Peoples And Black People In Canada: Settlers Or Allies? In A. Kempf, ed., Breaching the Colonial Contract: AntiColonialism in the US and Canada. New York: Springer Publishing. Anderson, K., 2001. A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood. Toronto: Sumach Press. Austin, D., 2007. All Roads Led to Montreal: Black Power, the Caribbean, and the Black Radical Tradition in Canada. Journal of African American History, 92(4): pp. 516-39. Bannerji, H., 2000. The Dark Side of the Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism,
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Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012) Nationalism and Gender. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. Barker, J., 2011. Manna-Hata. Tequila Sovereign Blog [Online], 2 October 2011. Available at http://tequilasovereign.blogspot.com/2011/10/mannahata.html/ Burrill, F., 2011. Email interview. 27 November 2011. Chowdhry, G. and Nair, S., 2002. Power, Postcolonialism and International Relations: Reading Race, Gender and Class. London: Routledge. Comeau, R. and Dionne, B., 1981. Le Parti ouvrier-progressiste en crise, 1946-1956. In F. Dumont, J. Hamelin and J.-P. Montminy, eds., Idologies au Canada franais, 1940-1976. Tome III. Qubec: Les Presses de l'Universit Laval. Crenshaw, K. W., 1991. Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence Against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6): pp. 1241-99. Defenders of the Land. 2011. http://www.defendersoftheland.org/ Della Porta, D. and Diani, M., 2006. Social Movements: An Introduction. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Doty, R. L., 1996. Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in North-South Relations. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ethier, D., Piotte, J.-M., and Reynolds, J.. 1975. Les Travailleurs Contre Ltat Bourgeois: Avril et Mai 1972. Montreal: LAurore. Farrow, K., 2011. Occupy Wall Streets Race Problem. The American Prospect [Online], 24 October 2011. Available at http://prospect.org/article/occupy-wallstreets-race-problem/ Frankish, J. C., Hwang, S. W., and Quantz, D., 2005. Homelessness and Health in Canada. Canadian Journal of Public Health, March/April: pp. 523-29. Fraser, S., 2005. Everyman a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Grovogui, S., 2009. Counterpoints and the Imaginaries Behind Them. International Political Sociology, 3(3): pp. 327-31. Harris, L. M., 2003. In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 16261863. London: University of Chicago Press. Hayes, R., 2011. Email interview. 27 November 2011. Henderson, E. A., 2007. Tracing the Mystification of Racism in International Relations. In W. C. Rich, ed., African American Perspectives on Political Science. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Johnston, D., 2005. Respecting and Protecting the Sacred. Attorney General of Ontario. Available at http://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/inquiries/ipperwash/ policy_part/research/pdf/Johnston_Respecting-and-Protecting-theSacred.pdf. Jones, B. G., ed., 2006. Decolonizing International Relations. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc.
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Klein, N., 2011. Video: Naomi Klein speaks out against condos in DTES [Online], 2 December 2011. Available at http://dtesnotfordevelopers.wordpress.com/ Kraus, K., 2011. Email interview. 27 November 2011. Laird, G., 2007. Shelter-Homelessness in a Growth Economy: Canada's 21st Century Paradox. Report for the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership. Lawrence, B., 2004. Real Indians and Others: Mixed-Blood Urban Native Peoples and Indigenous Nationhood. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Lawrence, B., and Dua, E., 2005. Decolonizing Anti-Racism. Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict and World Order, 32(4): pp. 120-43. Ling, L. H. M., 2002. Postcolonial International Relations: Conquest and Desire between Asia and the West. London: Palgrave Macmillan. McAdam, D., McCarthy, J. D., and Zald, M. N., 1996. Comparative Perspectives on Social
Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures and Cultural Framings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . The Dynamics of Social Movements: Resource Mobilization, Social Control and Tactics. Cambridge: Winthrop Publishers. Mills, C. W., 1997. The Racial Contract. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Montano, J. P., 2011. An Open Letter to the Occupy Wall Street Activists. The Zashnain Daily [Online], 24 September 2011. Available at http://mzzainalstraten.blogspot.com/2011/09/open-letter-to-occupy-wall-street.html/ MUSKRAT Magazine. 2011. http://www.muskratmagazine.com/ Najah Hussain, F., 2011. Email interview. 27 November 2011. Nielsen, T., Tabobundung, R., and Walia, H.,. 2011. Race, Colonialism and the 99%. Teach-in at the #OccupyToronto encampment at St. James Park, 3 November 2011. No One is Illegal Toronto, 2011. http://toronto.nooneisillegal.org/ No One is Illegal Vancouver, 2011. http://noii-van.resist.ca/ Occupons-Qubec, 2011. Quest-ce que le mouvement Occupons-Qubec? Available at http://occuponsquebec.org/le-mouvement/occupons-quebec/ OccupyTheHood.org, 2011. http://www.officialoccupythehood.org/ Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, 2011. http://www.ocap.ca/ Palmer, B., 1992. Working Class Experience: Rethinking the History of Canadian Labor, 1800-1991. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1992. Pasternak, S., 2011. Occupy(ed) Canada: The Political Economy of Indigenous Dispossession in Canada. Rabble.ca [Online], 20 October 2011. Available at http://rabble.ca/news/2011/10/occupyed-canada-political-economyindigenous-dispossession-canada/ Pateman, C., 1988. The Sexual Contract. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Razzaq, S., 2002. Race, Space and the Law: Unmapping White Settler Society. Toronto:
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Between the Lines. Rezaee, J., 2011. Email interview. 27 November 2011. Schofield, L., 2011. Email interview. 27 November 2011. Sen, R., 2011. Occupy Everywhere: Michael Moore, Naomi Klein on Next Steps for the Movement Against Corporate Power. Democracy Now! [Online], 25 November 2011. Available at http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/25/occupy_everywhere_michael _moore_naomi_klein/ Shapcott, M., 2008. Income Inequality, Increased Housing Insecurity, and Growing Health Inequities. Wellesley Institute, 1 May 2008. Available at www.homelesshub.ca/ResourceFiles/gbf1ycf3.pdf/ Shaw, K., 2008. Indigeneity and Political Theory: Sovereignty and the Limits of the Political. New York: Routledge. Smith, A., 2005. Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Cambridge: South End Press. . 2011. Critical Ethnic Studies and the Future of Genocide. Queergeektheory.org [Online], March 2011. Available at http://www.queergeektheory.org/2011/03/cesa-2011-liveblog-whitesupremacy-and-settler-colonialism-plenary/ Stop the Cuts, 2011. http://www.torontostopthecuts.com/ Strauss, J., 2011. Occupy the Hood: Including all of the 99%. Al-Jazeera [Online], 10 October 2011. Available at http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/10/2011109 191019708786.html/ Tabobondung, R., 2011. Email interview. 27 November 2011. Tarrow, S. G., 2011. Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thobani, S., 2007. Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Tilly, C., 2004. Social Movements, 1768-2004. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers. Tuhiwai Smith, L., 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books. Vitalis, R., 2010. The Noble American Science of Imperial Relations and its Laws of Race Development. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 52(4): pp. 909-38. Walia, H., 2011a. Phone interview. 27 November 2011. . 2011b. Letter to Occupy Together Movement. Rabble.ca [Online], 14 October 2011. Available at http://rabble.ca/news/2011/10/acknowledgement-occupations-occupiedland-essential/ Wolf, N., 2011. The Shocking Truth About the Crackdown on Occupy. The Guardian 40

[Online], 25 November 2011. Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/ cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy/ Yee, J., 2011. Occupy Wall Street: The Game of Colonialism and further nationalism to be decolonized from the Left. Racialicious [Online], 30 September 2011. Available at http://www.racialicious.com/2011/09/30/occupy-wall-streetthe-game-of-colonialism-and-further-nationalism-to-be-decolonized-fromthe-left/ Yuen, E., Burton-Rose, D. and Katsiaficas, G. N., 2001. The Battle of Seattle: The New Challenge to Capitalist Globalization. Berkeley: Soft Skull Press.
Konstantin Kilibarda is a PhD candidate at York University. His research interests include the political economy of neoliberalism, new social movements, and postcolonial theory.
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ISSN 2040-8498 criticalglobalisation.com Article submitted 18 May 2011; article accepted 10 Oct 2011
Imperialism and Financialism: A Story of a Nexus1

Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan
Over the past century, the nexus of imperialism and financialism has become a major axis of Marxist theory and praxis. Many Marxists consider this nexus to be a cause of worldy ills, but the historical role they ascribe to it has changed dramatically over time. The key change concerns the nature and direction of surplus and liquidity flows. The first incarnation of the nexus, articulated at the turn of the twentieth century, explained the imperialist scramble for colonies to which finance capital could export its excessive surplus. The next version posited a neo-imperial world of monopoly capitalism where the cores surplus is absorbed domestically, sucked into a black hole of military spending and financial intermediation. The third script postulated a World System where surplus is imported from the dependent periphery into the financial core. And the most recent edition explains the hollowing out of the U.S. core, a red giant that has already burn ed much of its own productive fuel and is now trying to financialize the rest of the world in order to use the systems external liquidity. This paper outlines this chameleon -like transformation, assesses what is left of the nexus and asks whether it is worth keeping.
Introduction Over the past century, Marxism has been radically transformed in line with circumstances and fashion. Theses that once looked solid have depreciated and fallen by the sideline; concepts that once were deemed crucial have been abandoned; slogans that once sounded clear and meaningful have become fuzzy and ineffectual. But two key words seem to have survived the attrition and withstood the test of time: imperialism and financialism.2 Talk of imperialism and financialism and particularly of the nexus between them remains catchy as ever. Marxists of different persuasions from classical, to neo to post find the two terms expedient, if not indispensable. Of course, the views between them differ greatly, but there is a common thread: for most Marxists, imperialism and 42
Imperialism and Financialism, Bichler & Nitzan (pp. 42-78)

financialism are major causes of worldly ills. Their nexus is said to explain capitalist development and underdevelopment; to underlie capitalist power and contradictions; and to drive capitalist globalization, its regional realignment and local dynamics. The secret behind this staying power is flexibility. Over the years, the concepts of imperialism and financialism have changed more or less beyond recognition, as a result of which the link between them nowadays connotes something totally different from what it did a century ago. The purpose of our article is to outline this chameleon-like transformation, to assess what is left of the nexus and to ask whether this nexus is still worth keeping. In so doing, our goal is not to present our own view of the nexus, but rather to critique what others have written about it (for our analysis of capitalism see Nitzan and Bichler, 2009). We try to stick to the categories and units of the theories we examine categories and units with which we often disagree so that we can compare and contrast the theories on their own terms. And we make no attempt to pick and choose. We do not try to decide which version of the nexus is correct in some universal sense, and not even which version was correct for its time. Instead, our aim is to highlight the historical development of the nexus, particularly the loose manner in which it has been altered to the point of meaning everything and nothing. The paper comprises two parts. The first part examines the different schools. It traces the transmutation of the nexus from its first articulation in the early twentieth century, to the version developed by the Monopoly Capital school, to the arguments of dependency and Word Systems analyses, to the thesis of hegemonic transition. The second part offers an empirical exploration. Focusing specifically on the hegemonic transition hypothesis, it identifies difficulties that arise when the theory meets the evidence and assesses their significance for the century-old nexus. PART I: THE SCHOOLS Empire and Finance The twin notions of imperialism and financialism emerged at the turn of the twentieth century. The backdrop is familiar enough. During the latter part of the nineteenth century, the leading European powers were busy taking over large tracts of non-capitalist territory around the world. At the same time, their own political economies were being fundamentally transformed. Since the two developments unfolded hand in hand, it was only natural for theorists to ask whether they were related and if so, how and why. The most influential explanation came from a British left liberal, Hobson (1902), whose work on the subject was later extended and modified by Marxists such as Hilferding (1910), Luxemburg (1913), Kautsky (1914), and Lenin (1917), among
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others. Framed in a nutshell, the basic argument rested on the belief that capitalism had changed: originally industrial and competitive, the system had become financial and monopolistic (Hilferding, 1910, Ch. 14; Lenin, 1917, pp. 190 and 193-194). This transformation, said the theorists, had two crucial effects. First, the process of monopolization and the centralization of capital in the hands of the large financiers made the distribution of income far more unequal, and that greater inequality restricted the purchasing power of workers relative to the productive potential of the system. As a result of this imbalance, there emerged the spectre of surplus capital, excess funds that could not be invested profitably in the home market. And since this surplus capital could not be disposed of domestically, it forced capitalists to look for foreign outlets, particularly in pristine, pre-capitalist regions (Hobson, 1902, pp. 77-78, 85-86, 106). Second, the centralization of capital altered the political landscape. Instead of the night-watchman government of the laissez-faire epoch, there emerged a strong, active state. The laissez-faire capitalists of the earlier era saw little reason to share their profits with the state and therefore glorified the frugality of a small central administration and minimal taxation. But the new state was no longer run by hands-off liberals. Instead, it was dominated and manipulated by an aggressive oligarchy of finance capital a coalition of large bankers, leading industrialists, war mongers and speculators who needed a strong state that would crack down on domestic opposition and embark on foreign military adventures (Hilferding, 1910, p. 335; Luxemburg, 1913, pp. 371, 467; Lenin, 1917, pp. 243-244). And so emerged the nexus between imperialism and financialism. The concentrated financialized economy, went the argument, requires pre-capitalist colonies where surplus capital can be invested profitably; and the cabal of finance capital, now in the political drivers seat, is able to push the state into an international imperialist struggle to obtain those colonies. At the time, this thesis was not only totally new and highly sophisticated; it also fit closely with the unfolding of events. It gave an elegant explanation for the imperial bellicosity of the late nineteenth century, and it neatly accounted for the circumstances leading to the great imperial conflict of the first World War. There were of course other explanations for that war from realist/statist, to liberal, to geopolitical, to psychological (see, for example, Veblen, 1915; Schumpeter, 1919; Tuchman, 1962 and 1966; and Kennedy, 1987, Ch. 5). But for most intellectuals, these alternative explications seemed too partial or instrumental compared to the sweeping inevitability offered by the nexus of empire and finance. History, though, kept changing, and soon enough both the theory and its basic concepts had to be altered.
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Monopoly Capital The end of the Second World War brought three major transformations. First, the nature of international conflict changed completely. Instead of a violent inter-capitalist struggle, there emerged a Cold War between the former imperial powers and the United States on the one hand and the Soviet bloc on the other (with plenty of hot proxy conflicts flaring up in the outlying areas). Second, the relationship between core and periphery was radically altered. Outright conquest and territorial imperialism gave way to decolonization, while tax-collecting navies were replaced by the more sophisticated tools of foreign aid and foreign direct investment (FDI). Third and finally, the political economies of the core countries themselves were reorganized. Instead of the volatile laissez-faire regime, there arose a large welfare-warfare state whose interventionist ideologies and counter-cyclical policies managed to reduce instability and boost domestic growth. On the face of it, this new constellation made talk of finance-driven imperialism seem outdated, if not totally irrelevant. But the theorists didnt give up the nexus. Instead, they gave it a new meaning. The revised link was articulated most fully by the Monopoly Capital school associated with the New York journal Monthly Review (important contributions include Kalecki, 1943; Steindl, 1952; Tsuru, 1956; Baran and Sweezy, 1966; and Magdoff, 1969). Capitalism, argued the writers of this school, remains haunted by a lack of profitable investment outlets. And that problem, along with its solution, can no longer be explained in classical Marxist terms (Baran, 1957, pp. 22 and 23, fn. 3; Baran and Sweezy, 1966, pp. 6 and 10, fn. 6). The shift from competition to oligopoly that began in the late nineteenth century, these writers claimed, was now complete (Baran and Sweezy, 1966, Chs. 2 and 8). And that shift meant that Marxs labour theory of value and his notion of surplus value had become more or less irrelevant to capitalist pricing.3 In the brave new world of oligopolies, the emphasis on non-price competition speeds up the pace of technical change and efficiency gains, making commodities cheaper and cheaper to produce. But unlike in a competitive system, where market discipline forces firms to pass on their lower costs to consumers, under the new circumstances, cost reductions do not translate into falling prices. The prevalence of oligopolies creates a built-in inflationary bias that, despite falling costs, makes prices move up and sometimes sideways, but rarely if ever down (Baran and Sweezy, 1966, pp. 62-63). This growing divergence between falling costs and rising prices increases the income share of capitalists, and that increase reverses the underlying course of capitalism. Marx believed that the combination of ever-growing mechanization and ruthless competition creates a tendency of the rate of profit to fall. But the substitution of
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monopoly capitalism for free competition inverts the trajectory. The new system, argued its analysts, is ruled by an opposite tendency of the surplus to rise (ibid., Ch. 3). The early theorists of imperialism, although using a different vocabulary, understood the gist of this transformation. And even though they did not provide a full theory to explain it, they realized that the consequence of that transformation was to shift the problem of capitalism from production to circulation (or in later Keynesian parlance, from aggregate supply to aggregate demand). The new capitalism, they pointed out, suffered not from insufficient surplus, but from too much surplus, and its key challenge now was how to offset and absorb this ever-growing excess so that accumulation could keep going instead of coming to a halt (Baran and Sweezy, 1966, p. 218). That much was already understood at the turn of the twentieth century. But this is where the similarity between the early theorists of imperialism and the new analysts of Monopoly Capital ends. Black Hole: The Role of Institutionalized Waste Until the early twentieth century, it seemed that the only way to offset the growing excess was productive and external: the surplus of goods and capital had to be exported to and productively invested in pre-capitalist colonies. But as it turned out, there was another solution, one that the early theorists hadnt foreseen and that the analysts of Monopoly Capital now emphasized. The surplus could also be disposed off unproductively and internally: it could be wasted at home. For the theorists of Monopoly Capital, waste denoted expenditures that are necessary neither for producing the surplus nor for reproducing the population, and that are, in that sense, totally unproductive and therefore wasteful. These expenditures absorb existing surplus without creating any new surplus, and this double feature enables them to mitigate without aggravating the tendency of the surplus to rise. The absorptive role of wasteful spending wasnt entirely new, having already been identified and elaborated on at the turn of the twentieth century by Veblen (1904; 1923). But it was only after the Second Word War, with the entrenchment of the Fordist model of mass production and consumption and the parallel rise of the welfare-warfare state, that the process was fully and conscientiously institutionalized as a salient feature of monopoly capitalism. By the end of the war, the U.S. ruling class grew fearful that demobilization would trigger another severe depression; and having accepted and internalized the stimulating role of large-scale government spending, it supported the creation of a new Keynesian Coalition that brought together the interests of big business, the large labour unions and various state agencies (Gold, 1977). The hallmark of this coalition was immortalized in a secret U.S. National Security Council document (NSC-68), whose writers effectively called on the government to use high military spending as a way to 46

secure the internal stability of U.S. capitalism. 4 According to its theorists, monopoly capitalism gave rise to many forms of institutionalized waste including a bloated sales effort, the creation of new desires for useless goods and services and the acceleration of product obsolescence, among other strategies. But the two most significant types of waste were spending on the military and on the financial sector (on the surplus absorption of military spending, see for example, Tsuru, 1956; Kalecki, 1964 and 1967; Baran and Sweezy, 1966, Cf. Ch. 7; on the role of finance, see Baran and Sweezy, 1966, pp. 139-141; Magdoff and Sweezy, 1983 and 1985). The importance of these latter expenditures, went the argument, lies in their seemingly limitless size. The magnitude of military expenditures has no obvious ceiling: it depends solely on the ability of the ruling class to justify the expenditures on the grounds of national security. Similarly with the size of the financial sector: its magnitude expands with the potentially limitless inflation of credit. This convenient expandability turns military spending and financial intermediation into a giant black hole (our term): they suck in large chunks of the excess surplus without generating any excess surplus of their own.5 Now, on the face of it, the efficacy of this domestic black hole should have made imperialism less necessary, if not wholly redundant. According to the theorists of Monopoly Capital, though, this would be the wrong conclusion to draw. It is certainly true that, unlike the old imperial system, monopoly capitalism no longer needs colonies. But the absence of formal colonies is largely a matter of appearance. Remove this appearance and youll see the imperial impulse pretty much intact: the core continues to exploit, dominate and violate the periphery for its own capitalist ends.6 Spearheaded by U.S.-based multinationals and no longer hindered by intercapitalist wars, argued the theorists, the new order of monopoly capitalism has become increasingly global and ever more integrated. And this global integration, they continued, has come to depend on an international division of labour, free access to strategic raw materials and political regimes that are ideologically open for business. However, these conditions do not develop automatically and peacefully. They have to be actively promoted and enforced often against stiff domestic opposition and they have to be safeguarded against external threats (the Soviet Bloc before its collapse and Islamic fundamentalism and rogue states since then, etc.). And because such promotion and enforcement hinge on the threat and frequent use of violence, there is an obvious justification, if not outright need, for a large, well-equipped army sustained by large military budgets. In this context, military spending comes to serve a dual role: together with the financial sector and other forms of waste, it propels the accumulation of capital by blackholing a large chunk of the economic surplus; and it helps secure a more sophisticated and effective neo-imperial order that no longer needs colonial territories but is every bit
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as expansionary, exploitative and violent as its crude imperial predecessor. Dependency The notion of neo-imperialism boosted and gave credence to a subsidiary theory of dependency (important texts include Prebisch, 1950; Baran, 1957; Frank, 1967; Emmanuel, 1972; Galeano, 1973; Amin, 1974b; Wallerstein, 1974; 1980; Cardoso and Faletto, 1979; for a summary of the dependency literature, see So, 1990). This support was somewhat paradoxical, since the lineage between the two theories was weak, if not contradictory. Recall that by emphasizing the role of domestic waste, particularly through the open-ended offsets of military spending and the financial sector, the theory of Monopoly Capital served to deemphasize, if not totally negate, the absorptive importance of the periphery.7 But the analysts of dependency put their emphasis elsewhere. The persistence of (neo) imperialism, they claimed, showed that, regardless of its own internal dynamics, the core still needs to keep the periphery chronically subjugated and underdeveloped. This dependency, went the argument, is the outcome of five hundred years of colonial destruction. The basic claim, originally made by Baran (1957, Ch. 5), was that capitalist development is inherently uneven. By the sixteenth century, this unevenness had created a major fracture between Europe and the periphery: the European powers embarked on a colonial process of primitive accumulation, a process that fuelled their own growth while stunting that of the periphery. From then onward, the imperial powers relentlessly and systematically undermined the socio-economic fabric of the periphery, making it totally dependent on the core. And when decolonization finally started, the periphery found itself unable to take off while the capitalist core prospered (Frank, 1966; Wallerstein, 1974). At that point, there was no longer any need for core states to openly colonize and export capital to the periphery. Using their disproportionate economic and state power, the former imperialist countries were now able to hold the postcolonial periphery in a state of debilitating economic monoculture, political submissiveness and cultural backwardness and, wherever they could, to impose on it a system of unequal exchange. Unequal exchange can take different forms. It may involve a wage gap between the less exploited labour aristocracy of the core and the more exploited simple labour of the periphery (Emmanuel, 1972). Or the core can compel the periphery to buy its exports at high prices (relative to their true value), while importing the peripherys products at low prices (relative to their true value). As a result of the latter strategy, the terms of trade get distorted, surplus is constantly siphoned into the core (rather than exported from or domestically absorbed by the core), and the eviscerated periphery remains chronically underdeveloped (Amin, 1974a).8 This logic of dependent underdevelopment was first articulated during the 48

1950s and 1960s as an antidote to the liberal modernization thesis and its Rostowian promise of an imminent takeoff (Rostow, 1960). And at the time, that antidote certainly seemed to be in line with the chronic stagnation of peripheral countries. But what started as a partial theory soon expanded into a sweeping history of world capitalism. According to this broader narrative, capitalism was and remained imperial from the word go: it didnt simply start with conquest; it started because of conquest. Its very inception was predicated on geographical exploitation and domination a process in which the financial-commercial metropolis (say England) used the surplus extracted from a productive periphery (say India) to kick-start its own economic growth. And once started, the only way for this growth to be sustained is for the metropolis to continue to eviscerate the periphery around it. The development of the emperor depends on and necessitates the underdevelopment of its subjects (Galeano, 1973, pp. 38-42, 4951, 67-70, 86-90, 145-148, 206-216, 225-228). The next theoretical step was to fit this template into an even broader concept of a World System an all-encompassing global approach that seeks to map the hierarchical political relationships, division of labour and flow of commodities and surplus between the peripheral countries at the bottom, the semi-peripheral satellites in the middle and the financial core at the apex. From the viewpoint of this larger retrofit, capitalism is no longer the outcome of a specific class struggle, a conflict that developed in Western Europe during the twilight of feudalism and later spread to and reproduced itself in the rest of the world. Instead, capitalism to the extent that this term can still be meaningfully used is merely the outer appearance of Europes imperial expedition to rob and loot the rest of the world. This view reflected a fundamental change in emphasis. Whereas earlier Marxist theorists of imperialism accentuated the centrality of exploitation in production, dependency and World-Systems analysts shifted the focus to trade and unequal exchange. And while previous theories concentrated on the global class struggle, dependency and World-Systems analyses spoke of a conflict between states and geographical regions. The new framework, although nominally Marxist on the outside, has little Marxism left on the inside.9 And if we are to believe the postists who quickly jumped on the dependency bandwagon, there is nothing particularly surprising about this particular theoretical bent. After all, history is no more than an ethno-cultural clash of civilizations, a never-ending cycle of imperial hegemonies in which the winners (ego) impose their culture on the losers (alter) (for a typical narrative, see Hobson, 2004).To the naked eye, the totalizing capitalization of our contemporary world may seem like a unique historical process. But dont be deceived. This apparent uniqueness is a flash in the pan. Deconstruct it and what you are left with is yet another imperial imposition in this case, the imposition of a Euro-American financialized discourse on the rest of the world.
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Red Giant: An Empire Imploded The dependency version of the nexus, though, didnt hold for long, and in the 1970s the cards again got shuffled. The core stumbled into a multifaceted crisis: the United States suffered a humiliating defeat in Vietnam, stagflation intensified and destabilized the major capitalist countries and political unrest seemed to undermine the legitimacy of the capitalist regime itself. In the meantime, the periphery confounded the theorists: on the one hand, import substitution, the prescribed antidote to dependency, pushed many developing countries, primarily in Latin America, into a debt trap; on the other hand, the inverse policy of privatization and export promotion, implemented mostly in East Asia, triggered an apparent economic miracle. Taken together, these developments didnt seem to sit well with the notion of Western financial imperialism. So once more the nexus had to be revised. According to the new script, financialization is no longer a panacea for the imperial power. On the contrary, it is a sign of autumn, prime evidence of imp erial decline (Braudel, 1985, Vol. 3, p. 246). The reasoning, whether explicit or implicit, goes back to the basic Marxist distinction between industrial activity on the one hand and commercial and financial activities on the other. The former activity is considered productive in that it generates surplus value and leads to the accumulation of actual capital. The latter activities, by contrast, are deemed unproductive; they dont generate any new surplus value and therefore, in and of themselves, do not create any actual capital.10 This distinction which most Marxists accept as sacrosanct and to which we return later in the article has important implications for the nexus of imperialism and financialism. It may be true, say advocates of the new script, that finance (along with other forms of waste) helps the imperial core absorb its rising surplus and in so doing prevents stagnation and keeps accumulation going. But there is a price to pay. The addiction to financial waste ends up consuming the very fuel that sustains the cores imperial position: it hollows out the cores industrial sector, it undermines its productive vitality, and, eventually, it limits its military capabilities. The financial sector itself continues to expand absolutely and relatively, but this is the expansion of a red giant (our term) the final inflation of a star ready to implode. The process leading to this implosion is emphasized by theories of hegemonic transition (Cf. Braudel, 1985; Wallerstein, 1984; and Arrighi, 1994). The analyses here come in different versions, but they all seem to agree on the same basic template. According to this template, the maturation of a hegemonic power be it Holland in the seventeenth century, Britain in the nineteenth century or the United States presently coincides with the over-accumulation of capital (i.e. the absence of sufficiently profitable investment outlets). This over-accumulation along with growing international rivalries, 50

challenges and conflicts triggers a system-wide financial expansion marked by soaring capital flows, a rise in market speculation and a general inflation of debt and equity values.11 The financial expansion itself is led by the hegemonic state in an attempt to arrest its own decline, but the reprieve it offers can only be temporary. Relying on finance drains the core of its energy, causes productive investment to flow elsewhere and eventually sets in motion the imminent process of hegemonic transition. Although the narrative here is universal, its inspiration is clearly drawn from the apparent financialized decline of U.S. hegemony (Arrighi and Silver, 1999, p. 33; Arrighi et al., 1999, pp. 88-89). Since the 1970s, many argue, the country has been depleted: it has grown overburdened by military spending; it has gotten itself entangled in unwinnable armed conflicts; and it has witnessed its industrial-productive base sucked dry by a Wall Street-Washington Complex that prospers on the back of rising debt and bloated financial intermediation.12 In order to compensate for its growing weakness, these observers continue, the United States has imposed its own model of financialization on the rest of the world, hoping to scoop the resulting expansion of liquidity. Some states have been compelled to replicate the model in their own countries, others have been tempted to finance it by buying U.S. assets and pretty much all have been pulled into an unprecedented global whirlpool of capital flow. However, the spread of financialization, goes the argument, has only been partly successful. For a while, the United States benefited from being able to control, manipulate and leverage this expansion for its own ends. But in the opinion of many, the growing severity of recent financial, economic and military crises suggests that this ability has been greatly reduced and that U.S. hegemony is now coming to an end. PART II: AN EMPIRICAL INQUIRY Up until now, our discussion was fairly even handed. We devoted more or less the same attention to each version of the nexus, and for good reason. Judged against their concrete historical backdrops, all versions look relevant, even solid. At their time, they all offered insight into the world they described and often provided a platform for popular struggle and alternative politics. But this even-handedness is superficial: although the theories themselves may be comparable, their empirical bases are not. When Lenin wrote his Imperialism (1917) in Zurich in the early twentieth century, the data on which he based his argument were meagre and fractured. There were no organized statistics, no time series and no aggregate facts to speak of. Much of his evidence was drawn from works written by Hobson twenty years earlier (1894; 1902). The situation was quite different half a century later. By the time Baran and Sweezy published their Monopoly Capital (1966), systems of national
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accounts had already been implemented, primarily in the developed countries, and aggregate data analysis had become increasingly commonplace. 13 This new infrastructure enabled Baran and Sweezy to enlist the help of Joseph D. Phillips, a statistical expert who subjected their thesis to systematic empirical examination. The result, published in the famous appendix to their book, was an empirical feat that Lenin could not even have fathomed. And yet, even Baran and Sweezy had to restrict their analysis to the United States, and particularly to its macro economy: national accounting were still far less developed in the rest of the world; organized statistics for corporations and financial intermediation were still in their infancy; and global databases were not yet on the radar screen. It was only in the 1980s, with the transnationalization of capital and the advent of cheap computing, that a global statistical picture, however imperfect, became a practical possibility. The purpose of this section is to use some of these new data to examine the most recent version of the nexus the theory of hegemonic transition. The examination is not exhaustive, but illustrative. It seeks to highlight the importance of empirical analysis both as a check on our theoretical speculations and as a catalyst for the development of new questions and new concepts. The argument is developed in steps. To put things in context, we begin by outlining the historical evolution of capital flow and transnational ownership; then we examine the shifting global distribution of profit between the different regions; and finally, we zero in on the process of financialization and its relation to hegemonic transition. Capital Flow and Transnational Ownership The highly publicized imperial misgivings of the United States make the hegemonictransition version of the nexus seem persuasive. But when we look more closely at the facts, the theoretical surface no longer looks smooth; and as we get even closer to the evidence, cracks begin to appear. Start with the cross-border flow of capital, the international manifestation of financialization. This process is often misunderstood, even by high theorists, so a brief clarification is in order. Contrary to popular belief, the flow of capital is financial, and only financial. It consists of legal transactions, whereby investors in one country buy or sell assets in another and that is it. There is no flow of material or immaterial resources, productive or otherwise. The only things that move are ownership titles.14 These changes in ownership, of course, are of great importance. If the flow of capital is large enough, the stock of foreign-owned assets will grow relative to domestically owned assets. And as the ratio rises, the ownership of capital becomes increasingly transnational. The history of this process, from 1870 to the present, is sketched in Figure 1, 52

where we plot the ratio between the value of global foreign assets and global GDP (both denominated in U.S. dollars). The figure contains two partly overlapping annual series: the thicker grey series, which covers selected years during the period 1870-2000, is taken from a study by Maurice Obstfeld and Alan Taylor; the thinner black series, which covers the entire period of 1970-2007, is from a study by Philip Lane and Gian Maria MilesiFerretti (with full references indicated in the footnote to the figure). Both series are estimated based on a changing sample of countries. The ratio is computed in three steps: first, by aggregating the foreign assets of the available sample of countries; second, by computing their combined GDP; and third, by dividing the first number by the second. In both series, the sample size increases over time; and as the number of countries grows, the estimates they provide serve to better reflect the actual global ratio. 15 Figure 1: Ratio of Global Gross Foreign Assets to Global GDP
NOTE: Gross foreign assets consist of cash, loans, bonds and equities owned by nonresidents. Both gross foreign assets and GDP are estimates based on a changing sample of
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countries. The Obstfeld & Taylor series (thick grey line) uses a sample that gradually grows from four countries in 1870, to seven in 1900, to 26 in 1980, to 63 in 2000. The Lane & Milesi-Ferretti series (thin black line) uses a sample that gradually grows from 101 countries in 1970, to 177 in 2000, to 178 in 2007. SOURCE: Thick grey line (1870-2000): Maurice Obstfeld and Alan. M. Taylor, Global Capital Markets: Integration, Crisis and Growth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 52-53, Table 2-1. Thin black line (1970-2007): Philip Lane and Gian Maria MilesiFerretti, The External Wealth of Nations Mark II: Revised and Extended Estimates of Foreign Assets and Liabilities, 1970-2004, Journal of International Economics, 2007, No. 73, pp. 223250 (with data updated to 2007 by the authors). Downloaded on August 8, 2009, from http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2006/data/wp0669.zip.
Admittedly, the raw numbers underlying these computations are not the most accurate. The data on foreign ownership are scarce; often they are of questionable quality; rarely if ever are they available on a consistent basis; and almost always they require painstaking research to collate and sometimes heroic assumptions to calibrate. There are also serious problems in estimating global GDP, particularly for earlier periods. Finally, the accuracy of the estimates changes over time, so temporal comparisons must be interpreted with care. But even if we take these severe limitations into consideration, the overall picture seems fairly unambiguous. The figure shows three clear periods: 1870-1900, 1900-1945 and 1945-2007. The late nineteenth century, marked by the imperial expansion of finance capital, saw the ratio of global foreign assets to global GDP grow from 0.47 in 1870 to 0.55 in 1900 (though keep in mind the inaccuracy and bias of the early estimates). This upswing was reversed during the first half of the twentieth century. The mayhem, isolationism and protectionism brought about by the two world wars and the Great Depression on the one hand and the emergence of domestic institutionalized waste on the other undermined the flow of capital and caused the share of foreign ownership to recede. By 1945, with the onset of decolonization under U.S. hegemony and the beginning of the Cold War, the ratio of foreign assets to global GDP hit a record low of 0.12. This was the nadir. The next half century brought a massive reversal. In the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher started to peddle the wonders of neoliberalism, the ratio of foreign assets to GDP was already soaring; and by 2007, after a quarter century of exponential growth, it reached an all-time high of 1.78.16 This final number represents a significant level of transnational ownership. According to recent research by the McKinsey Global Institute, between 1990 and 2006 the global proportion of foreign-owned assets has nearly tripled, from 9% to 26% of all world assets (both foreign and domestically owned). The increase was broadly based: foreign ownership of corporate bonds rose from 7% to 21% of the world total, foreign ownership of government bonds rose from 11% to 31% and foreign ownership of
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corporate stocks rose from 9% to 27%.17 Of course, numbers alone tell only part of the story. The issue here is not merely that foreign ownership is significant in size and rapidly growing. It is also that the attitude toward such ownership has changed radically. The following comparison illustrates this change. In 1987, Kuwait Investment Office (KIO) took advantage of the privatization of British Petroleum to buy 22% of the companys outstanding shares. At the time, the neoliberal Thatcher government was so horrified by this attack on its national crown jewel that it forced KIO to reduce its stake to a more acceptable 9.9%. By contrast, when in 2008 Sheikh Mansoor of Abu Dhabi bought 16% of Barclays Bank and then sold it less than a year later for a 70% profit nobody even blinked.18 The difference? Capital has become totally vendible, within and across borders. There are no crown jewels any more. With the exception of national-security companies and other such oddities, every asset is now fair game. During the recent crisis, the U.S. authorities all but begged sovereign wealth funds to buy U.S. assets (Heinrich, 2008). The Shifting Locus of Ownership Having outlined the global increase in foreign ownership and the accompanying change in attitude, the next step is to break the aggregate front and examine the distribution of this ownership. This is what we do in Figure 2, which compares the foreign asset shares of British and U.S. owners from 1825 to the present.
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Figure 2: Shares of Global Gross Foreign Assets
NOTE: Gross foreign assets consist of cash, loans, bonds and equities owned by nonresidents. The dotted series for both British and U.S. owners are based on sample data from Obstfeld & Taylor, with global gross foreign assets representing the aggregate for an unspecified number of countries in 1825, four in 1870, seven in 1900 and 26 in 1980 (with additional increments between these signposts). The solid series for both British and U.S. owners are based on sample data from Lane & Milesi-Ferretti, with global gross foreign assets representing the aggregate for 101 countries in 1970, 177 in 2000, and 178 in 2007 (with incremental increases between the signposts). SOURCE: Dotted series (1825-1980): Maurice Obstfeld and Alan. M. Taylor, Global Capital Markets: Integration, Crisis and Growth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 52-53, Table 2-1. Solid series (1970-2007): Philip Lane and Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti, The External Wealth of Nations Mark II: Revised and Extended Estimates of Foreign Assets and Liabilities, 1970-2004, Journal of International Economics, 2007, No. 73, pp. 223-250 (with data updated and extended to 2007 by Lane and Milesi-Ferretti). Downloaded on August 8, 2009, from http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2006/data/wp0669.zip.
The figure contains two sets of partly overlapping series: each country is represented first 56

by a dotted series for 1825-1980, and second by a solid series that partly overlaps with and further extends it for the period 1970-2007 (the data sources, along with the statistical caveats, are the same as for Figure 1). Note that the solid series are based on a larger sample of countries. Consequently, during the overlapping period of 1970-1980, these series show the shares of the two countries to be smaller than those measured by the dotted series. The chart shows two important differences between the earlier era of class ical imperialism dominated by Britain and the more recent neo -imperial period led by the United States. First, there is the pattern of decline. British owners saw their share of global assets fall from the mid-nineteenth century onward, but until the end of the century their primacy remained intact. The real challenge came only in the twentieth century, when capital flow decelerated sharply and foreign asset positions were unwound; and it was only in the interwar period, when foreign investment gave way to capital flight, that the share of British owners fell below 50%. The U.S. experience was very different. U.S. owners achieved their primacy right after the Second World War, when capital flow had already been reduced to a trickle and that position was undermined the moment capital flow started to pick up. In 1980, when U.S. financialization started in earnest, U.S. owners accounted for only 28% of global foreign assets. And by 2003, when record capital flow and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq prompted many Marxists to pronounce the dawn of an American Empire, the asset share of U.S. owners had been reduced to a mere 18%.19 Second, there is the identity of the leading owners. In the previous transition, power shifted from owners in one core country (Britain) to those in another (the United States). By contrast, in the current transition (assuming one is indeed underway) the contenders are often from the periphery. In recent years, owners from China, OPEC, Russia, Brazil, Korea and India, among others, have become major foreign investors with significant international positions including large stakes in Americas imperial debt. 20 Does this shift of foreign ownership represent the rising hegemony of countries such as China or is what we are witnessing here yet another mutation of imperialism? Perhaps, as some observers seem to imply, weve entered a (neo) neo -imperial order in which the Empire actually boosts its power by selling off its assets to the periphery? The Global Distribution of Profit Surprising as it may sound, such a selloff is not inconsistent with the basic theory of hegemonic transition. To reiterate, according to this theory, hegemonic transitions are always marked by a financial explosion that is triggered, led and leveraged by the core in a vain attempt to arrest its imminent decline. Supposedly, this explosion enables the
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hegemonic power to amplify its financial supremacy in order to (temporarily) retain its core status and power. And if retaining that power requires the devolution of foreign assets and the selloff of domestic ones, so be it. The question is how to assess this power. How do we know whether the cores attempt to leverage global financialization is actually working? Is there a meaningful benchmark for power, and how should this benchmark be used and understood? Unfortunately, most theorists of hegemonic transitions prefer to deal with general concepts and tend to avoid the data, so its often unclear how they themselves gauge the shifting trajectories of global power. But given the hyper-capitalist nature of the current epoch, it seems pretty safe to begin with the bottom line: net profit. Net profit is the pivotal magnitude in capitalism. It determines the health of corporations and their ability to borrow, it tells investors how to capitalize assets and it sets limits on what government officials feel they can and cannot do. It is the ultimate yardstick of capitalist power, the category that subjugates the social individual and makes the whole system tick. It is the one magnitude no researcher of capitalism can afford to ignore.21 Of course, the level of profit as such tells us nothing about power. Power is not absolute; it is relative. So in order to assess its extent and movement, our focus should be not the absolute magnitude of profit, but its differential size and temporal redistribution (see Nitzan and Bichler, 2009, Ch. 14). With this rationale in mind, consider Figure 3, which traces the changing distribution of global net profit earned by publicly traded corporations. The chart, covering the period from 1974 to the present, shows three profit series, each denoting the profit share of a distinct corporate aggregate: (1) firms listed in the United States; (2) firms listed in developed markets excluding the United States; and (3) firms listed in the rest of the world i.e. in emerging markets. In all three series, the underlying raw earnings are reported on a consolidated basis: they include the net profit of parent corporations, the earnings of domestic and foreign subsidiaries, and the earnings share in minority-held companies.
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Figure 3: Net Profit Shares of Listed Corporations (% of World Total)
NOTE: Net profit is computed as the ratio of market value to the price-earning ratio. Data for developed markets excluding the U.S. is calculated by subtracting from the profit of firms listed in developed markets the profit of firms listed in the U.S. Data for rest of the world is calculated by subtracting from the profit of all firms the profits of those listed in developed markets. Series display monthly data and are smoothed as 12-month moving averages. The raw earning data are reported on a consolidated basis, including domestic and foreign subsidiaries and the equity share in minority held firms. The last data points are for November 30, 2011. SOURCE: Datastream (series code: TOTMKWD(MV) and TOTMKWD(PE) for the market value and price-earning ratio of all listed firms, respectively; TOTMKUS(MV) and TOTMKUS(PE) for the market value and price-earning ratio of U.S.-listed firms, respectively; TOTMKDV(MV) and TOTMKDV(PE) for the market value and priceearning ratio of firms listed in developed countries, respectively).
The chart demonstrates a sharp reversal of fortune. Until the mid-1980s, U.S.-listed firms dominated: they scooped roughly 60% of all net profits, leaving firms listed in other
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developed markets 35% of the total and those listed in emerging markets less than 5%. But then the tables turned. During the second half of the 1980s, the net profit share of U.S.-listed firms plummeted, falling to 36% in less than a decade. The 1990s seemed to have stabilized the decline, but in the early 2000s the downward drift resumed. By the end of the decade, U.S. firms saw their net profit fall to 30% of the world total. The other two aggregates moved in the opposite direction. By 2010, the profits of firms listed in developed countries other than the U.S. reached 50% of the total (down from a peak of 53% a couple of years earlier), while the share of emerging market firms quadrupled to more than 20%. These numbers, of course, should be interpreted with care. First, note that our profit data here cover only publicly traded firms that are included in the Datastream universe of companies; they do not include unlisted firms, or listed firms that are not part of the Datastream universe. This fact means that variations in profit shares reflect a combination of three very different processes: (1) changes in the amount of profit earned by listed firms, (2) the pace of listing and delisting of firms, and (3) the adding of previously excluded stock markets to the Datastream universe. The two latter factors became important during the late 1980s and 1990s: Europe and the emerging markets saw their stock market listings swell as many private corporations went public, and Datastream added markets that were previously not part of its universe of companies this at a time when the number of listed firms in the United States remained flat. Second, the location of a firms listing says nothing about its operations and owners. Many firms whose shares are traded in the financial centres of the United States and Europe in fact operate elsewhere. And then there is the issue of ultimate ownership. Recall that currently nearly one third of all global assets are owned by foreigners (and perhaps more, given the opaqueness of international criminal ties and money laundering). This proportion is already large enough to make it difficult to determine the nationality of capital, and if it were to rise further the whole endeavour would become an exercise in futility. The theoretical implications of these caveats have received little or no attention from students of hegemonic transitions, and their quantitative implications remain unclear. But even if we take the nationality of capital at face value and consider the numbers in Figure 3 as accurate and representative of this nationality, it remains obvious that financialization has not worked for the hegemonic power: despite the alleged omnipotence of its Wall Street-Washington Complex, despite its control over key international organizations, despite having imposed neoliberalism on the rest of the world, and despite its seemingly limitless ability to borrow funds and suck in global liquidity the bottom line is that the net profit share of U.S.-listed corporations has kept falling and falling.22
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The Engine of Financialization Now, in and of itself, the collapse of the U.S. profit share much like the selloff of U.S. assets isnt at odds with the theory of hegemonic transition. To repeat, this theory suggests that the hegemonic/imperial power, having been weakened by its prior financial excesses (among other ills), will kick-start, promote and sustain a system-wide process of financialization. According to this theory, the latent purpose is to leverage this process in order to slow down the hegemons own decline but nowhere does the theory say that this strategy, whether premeditated or implemented on the go, has to succeed. Presented in this way, the story sounds historically compelling, logically consistent and empirically convincing but only if we can first establish one basic fact. We need to show that the global process of financialization indeed has been led by the United States. This is the starting point. Only if U.S. financialization preceded, was bigger than and propelled financialization in the rest of the world can we speak of the United States leveraging this process for its own ends. And only then can we assess whether that leveraging has succeeded or failed. So lets look at the evidence. Concepts and Methods: How to Measure Financialization? The initial step in this sequence is to measure financialization. Concep tually, the task may seem simple. All we need to do is calculate the share of financial activity in overall economic activity and then trace the trajectory of the resulting ratio. When this ratio goes up, we can say that the economy is being financialized; when it comes down, we would conclude that it is being de-financialized. But that is easier said than done.23 Begin with the term financialization. The concept is rooted in the classical debate on the source of productivity, a controversy that began with the French Physiocrats, if not earlier, and that continues to haunt economists till this very day. Situated in this larger debate, Marxists tend to identify economic activity as productive if it generates surplus value. Exploitation of workers in the production of commodities, they say, generates such surplus value and is therefore productive. By contrast, commerce and finance do not generate surplus value (but merely appropriate it), which makes them unproductive. The concept of financialization draws on this distinction. It denotes a shift of emphasis from industrial production to unproductive financial activity a process that is dominated by financiers, directed by financial organizations and governed by the logic of financial intermediation. The reality of this shift, though, remains elusive. One basic difficulty is that, unlike during the early twentieth century, when Rudolf Hilferding published his treatise
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on Finance Capital, the entity of finance can no longer be equated, however superficially, with banks, and not even with financial institutions more generally. Over the past half century, the process of conglomeration has created highly diversified corporate giants whose financial operations cannot be meaningfully disentangled from their productive and commercial dealings. And that is just for starters. Contemporary capitalism has become thoroughly mediated through discounting and capitalization, and that fact makes every mediated activity both economic and financial at the same time. In this context, discriminating between the veneer of financial mediation that is common to all market activity and activity that is purely financial becomes a Sisyphean task. The main stumbling block here is that, despite hundreds of years of theorizing and endless claims to the contrary, economists do not know how to identify productivity, let alone measure it. In the mainstream case, the productivity of an input is counted in terms of the universal utils the input generates. But utils are totally fictitious units. They have no objective existence, even on paper. So liberals have grown accustomed to going in reverse. Instead of measuring the util productivity of an input directly, they deduce it indirectly, by assuming it is revealed by income. According to this logic, if the CEO of Goldman Sachs earns 100,000 times more than an Exxon mechanic, he must be 100,000 times more productive. However, since their respective productivity can never be observed independently of the associated income, the above conclusion ends up hanging on nothing but faith. Sadly, Marxist computations do not fare much better. 24 Contrary to mainstream economists, for whom productivity is determined by the generation of utils, for Marxists it hinges on the production of surplus value. In this framework, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, by virtue of his financial function as a banking executive cannot generate surplus value and therefore is unproductive; by contrast, an Exxon mechanic, engaged in the industrial production of the oil, generates surplus value is therefore productive. But this argument, too, has a lethal glitch. Value and surplus value are denominated in universal units of socially necessary abstract labour, and these units are no more real than neoclassical utils. Marxists have never been able to objectively observe, let alone measure, them independently of prices, and this inability leads to a dead end: without a measurement independent of prices, there is no way to verify who actually generates surplus value and who does not; without knowing (rather than assuming) where surplus value is generated, there is no objective means of separating productive from unproductive activity; and without that separation, the decision of what constitutes a purely financial activity becomes arbitrary. One popular way around this obstacle is to associate productive activity with profit and financial activity with net interest (and in some looser versions, also with dividends, rent, excessive depreciation and amortization, taxes and other forms of so62

called rentier income). From this perspective, the extent of financialization can be approximated by measuring the ratio of net interest to profit income (or some similar variant): the higher this ratio, the greater the financialization, and vice versa (see for example Krippner, 2005; Epstein and Jayadev, 2005; Crotty, 2005; Orhangazi, 2008, especially Ch. 2). This framework, though, can be very misleading, even by its own logic. To begin with, the ratio of interest to profit as such has nothing to do with financialization: it does not show the growing importance of financiers; it does not show the greater role of financial intermediation; and it does not show the increasing subjugation of society to the principles of financial calculations. In the national accounts, the magnitude net interest denotes the interest payments that private enterprises make to their creditors less the interest payments that private enterprises receive from their debtors. 25 This net interest, like profit, is a legal classification of capitalist income. In this classification, net interest is the return on debt, whereas profit is a return on equity. And thats basic ally it. Further, and more importantly for our purpose, there is no correspondence between interest and profit on the one hand and the type of production on the other. All corporations whether they are an Exxon (typically classified as industrial), a Mitsubishi Trading (classified as commercial), or a Goldman Sachs (classified as financial) are capitalized through both debt and equity and therefore pay both interest and profits. The result is that, all else being equal, the higher the debt/equity ratio in a society, the greater the ratio of net interest to profit regardless of what is being produced or how it is produced. And since both debt and equity are financial entities to start with, the ratio of net interest to profit can tell us nothing about the degree of financialization. The Inconvenient Facts But not all is lost. For the sake of argument, we can forgo our reservations and stick with the most basic conventions. And the convention at least among capitalists, investors and, increasingly, academic students of the subject is to treat finance as synonymous with the FIRE sector; i.e. with firms whose primary activities involve financial intermediation (banking, trust funds, brokerages, etc.), insurance or real estate. Based on this conventional (albeit theoretically loose) definition of finance, and given our specific concern here with capitalist power, it seems appropriate to proxy the extent and trajectory of financialization by looking at the distributive share of total net profit accounted for by FIRE corporations. The magnitude of this share would then indicate the extent to which FIRE firms have been able to leverage financialization for their own end, and the way this share changes over time would tell us whether their leverage has increased or decreased. This distributional measure of financialization is depicted by the two series in
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Figure 4. The first series shows the net profit of FIRE corporations as a per cent of the net profit of all U.S.-listed firms. The second series computes the same ratio for firms listed outside the United States. And here we run into a little surprise. Figure 4: Net Profit Shares of Listed FIRE Corporations (% of Region)
NOTE: Net profit is computed as the ratio of market value to the price-earning ratio. Total profit and FIRE profit for firms outside the U.S. are calculated as a residual, by subtracting from the world figures the corresponding figures for the U.S. The raw earning data are reported on a consolidated basis, including domestic and foreign subsidiaries and the equity share in minority-held firms. The last data points are for November 30, 2011. SOURCE: Datastream (series code: TOTMKWD(MV) and TOTMKWD(PE) for the market value and price-earning ratio of all listed firms, respectively; FINANWD(MV) and FINANWD(PE) for the market value and price-earning ratio of all listed FIRE firms, respectively; TOTMKUS(MV) and TOTMKUS(PE) for the market value and price-earning ratio of U.S.-listed firms, respectively; FINANUS(MV) and FINANUS(PE) for the market value and price-earning ratio of U.S.-listed FIRE firms, respectively).
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According to the theory of hegemonic transition, the engine of financialization is the United States. This is the black hole of the World System. It is the site where finance has been used most extensively to absorb the systems surplus. It is the seat of the all -powerful Wall Street-Washington Complex. It is where neoliberal ideology first took command and from where it was later imposed with force and temptation on the rest of the world. It is the engine that led, pulled and pushed the entire process. But the facts in Figure 4 seem to tell a different story. According to the chart, the United Sates has not been leading the process. If anything, it seems to have been dragged into the process by the rest of the world. . . . During the early 1970s, before the onset of systemic financialization, the U.S. FIRE sector accounted for 6% of the total net profit of U.S.-listed firms. At the time, the comparable figure for the rest of the world was 18% three times as high! From then on, the United States was merely playing catch-up. Its pace of financialization has been faster than in the rest of the world; but with the sole exception of a brief period in the late 1990s, its level of financialization has always been lower. In other words, if we wish to stick with the theory of a finance-fuelled red giant that has exhausted its own energy and is now slowly imploding as its peripheral liquidly runs out, we should apply that theory not to the United States, but to the rest of the world! Indeed, even the most recent period of crisis seems at odds with the theory. According to the conventional creed, both left and right, the current crisis is payback for the sins of excessive financialization and improper bubble blowing (Bichler and Nitzan, 2008; 2009). In this Galtonean theory, deviations and distortions always revert to mean, ensuring that the biggest sinners end up suffering the most. And since the U.S. FIRE sector was supposedly the main culprit, it was also the hardest hit. The only problem is that, according to Figure 4, the U.S. wasnt the main culprit. On the eve of the crisis, the extent of financialization was greater in the rest of t he world than in the U.S. And yet, although the worlds financiers committed the greater sin, it was their U.S. counterparts who paid the heftier price. The former saw their profit share decline moderately from 37% to 23% of the total, while the latter watched their own share crash from 32% to 10%. And when the market finally rebounded, FIRE in the rest of the world recovered to about 30% (not far from its all-time high), while in the United States it reached barely 18% (a bit over half of its former record). It seems that the gods of finance have their own sense of justice. Or maybe not? According to Michael Hudson, the conventional focus on profit, although adequate in most cases, can be very deceptive when applied to the FIRE sector. The reason is twofold. First, there is the issue of tax accounting. The process of financialization, he says, allows FIRE firms to leverage their political primacy over industrial companies by gradually reclassifying more and more of their profit as cost.
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They do that by claiming excessive depreciation and depletion allowances on their realestate assets; these allowances which far exceed what is needed to replenish the depreciation portion of the underlying real-estate serve to reduce their taxable income, often to nil; and that reduction greatly boosts their after-tax cash flow. The second part of the story has to do with international differences. According to Hudson, this tax minimization by the FIRE sector has been much more successful in the United States than elsewhere in the world. And since FIRE firms capitalize their entire after-tax cash flow, focusing on net profit only as we do in Figure 4 is likely to produce a misleading picture. Our data in this figure show the net profit share of U.S.-listed FIRE firms to have lagged behind the comparable share of FIRE firms listed in the rest of world. But if instead of net profit we were to measure cash flow i.e. net profit plus depreciation the results would have been the exact opposite: U.S. FIRE would be the leader and the FIRE sector in the rest of the world the lagger.26 We find these claims intriguing but unconvincing. The first difficulty is theoretical. It is certainly true that individual firms, investors and analysts often consider various measures of cash flow, particularly in short-term matters of mergers, acquisitions and divestments. But in general, and especially over the longer term, the ultimate yardstick that guides accumulation is not the shadow measure of cash flow, but the legally sanctified entity of reported net earnings. The second difficulty has to do with the facts. Regardless of whether one uses net profit or cash flow, the conclusion seems to be the same: U.S.-listed FIRE firms are laggers rather than leaders. The relevant data are presented in Figure 5. The chart compares two series: the first series shows the cash flow of FIRE corporations as a per cent of the cash flow of all U.S.-listed firms; the second series computes the comparable ratio for FIRE firms listed outside the United States. Now, unlike the data for net profit, those for cash flow are more jumpy, perhaps as a result of the often arbitrary nature of depreciation allowances, occasional changes in tax laws and the absence of temporal smoothing when monthly observations are interpolated from quarterly and annual reports. But the overall trajectories of the cash-flow series are not much different from those of net profit: in both cases, the FIRE share is larger outside than inside the United States, and in both cases the overall trend has been for U.S.-listed firms to play catch-up with the rest of the world, rather than vice versa.
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Figure 5: Cash Flow Shares of Listed FIRE Corporations (% of Region)
NOTE: Cash flow is the sum of net earnings and all non-cash charges or credits. Normally cash flow consists of net profit before preferred dividends, depreciation, amortization, reserve charges, provision for loan losses for banks and provision for future benefits for insurance companies; it excludes extraordinary items and changes in working capital. Cash flow is computed by dividing market value by the price-to-cash-flow ratio. Total cash flow and FIRE cash flow for firms outside the U.S. are calculated as a residual, by subtracting from the world figures the corresponding figures for the U.S. The last data points are for November 30, 2011. SOURCE: Datastream (series code: TOTMKWD(MV) and TOTMKWD(PC) for the market value and price-to-cash-flow ratio of all listed firms, respectively; FINANWD(MV) and FINANWD(PC) for the market value and price-to-cash-flow ratio of all listed FIRE firms, respectively; TOTMKUS(MV) and TOTMKUS(PC) for the market value and price-tocash-flow ratio of U.S.-listed firms, respectively; FINANUS(MV) and FINANUS(PC) for the market value and price-earning ratio of U.S.-listed FIRE firms, respectively).
And since we have already broadened the vista, it is worthwhile to extend the examination
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to cover the entire flow of non-labour corporate income. Figure 6 offers such a comparison by measuring the share of listed FIRE firms in EBIT a shorthand for earnings before interest and taxes. This measure, reminiscent of the Marxist surplus loosely measured in price terms, gives a broad view of capitalist income before it gets divided and appropriated by various capitalist and governmental entities. As before, one series in the chart measures the share of FIRE in the EBIT of all U.S.-listed firms, while the other measures the same share for FIRE firms listed in the rest of the world. Now, because it includes interest and taxes, EBIT is looser than net profit and cash flow, and as such it cannot easily be interpreted as a proxy for capitalist power. And yet here, too, the historical conclusion stands: the U.S. FIRE sector has lagged the rest of the world. Until the late 1980s, the share of FIRE in EBIT was higher in the United States than elsewhere but that was when both ratios were insignificantly small. However, once the two series started to rise, U.S.-listed FIRE firms consistently lagged behind their foreign counterparts. Figure 6: EBIT Shares of Listed FIRE Corporations (% of Region)
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NOTE: EBIT denotes corporate earnings before interest and taxes. Total EBIT and FIRE EBIT for firms outside the U.S. are calculated as a residual, by subtracting from the world figures the corresponding figures for the U.S. The last data points are for November 30, 2011. SOURCE: Datastream (series code: TOTMKWD(DWEB) and FINANWD(DWEB) for the EBIT of all listed firms and all listed FIRE firms, respectively; TOTMKUS(DWEB) and FINANUS(DWEB) for the EBIT of all U.S.-listed firms and U.S. FIRE firms, respectively).
In other words, regardless of the particular flow be it the quintessential measure of net profit or the wider indices of cash flow and EBIT the pattern remains the same: the process of financialization, assuming we accept its standard definition, appears to have been led not by the United States, but by the rest of the world. The End of a Nexus? Of course, this isnt the first time that a monkey wrench has been thrown into the wheels of the ever-changing nexus of imperialism and financialism. As we have seen, over the past century the nexus has had to be repeatedly altered and transformed to match the changing reality. Its first incarnation explained the imperialist scramble for colonies to which finance capital could export its excessive surplus. The next version talked of a neo imperial world of monopoly capitalism where the cores surplus is absorbed domestically, sucked into a black hole of military spending and financial intermediation. The third script postulated a World System where surplus is imported from the dependent periphery into the financial core. And the most recent edition explains the hollowing out of the U.S. core, a red giant that has already burned much of its own productive fuel and is now trying to financialize the rest of the world in order to use the systems external liquidity. Yet, here, too, the facts refuse to cooperate: contrary to the theory, they suggest that the U.S. Empire has followed rather than led the global process of financialization, and that U.S. capitalists have consistently been less dependent on finance than their peers elsewhere. Of course, this inconvenient evidence could be dismissed as cursory or, better still, neutralized by again adjusting the meaning of imperialism and financialism to fit the new reality. Undoubtedly, there are those who will hail such adjustment as evidence of strength and vitality, the hallmark of a theory flexible enough to account for new circumstances. But too much flexibility makes for irrefutability. So maybe it is time to stop the carousel and cease the repeated retrofits. Perhaps we need to admit that, after a century of transmutations, the nexus of imperialism and financialism has run its course, and that we need a new framework altogether.
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Notes
1
The first version of this paper was posted on The Bichler & Nitzan Archives in September 2009 (http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/267/). Subsequent to this posting, we had an exchange of letters with Michael Hudson and Joe Francis. The correspondence with Francis was posted in January 2010 under the title Imperialism and Financialism: An Exchange (http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/278/). The present version endorses some of the insights and criticisms of Hudson and Francis; it also offers additional empirical evidence and considerations. 2 As the article seeks to show, the precise terms are rather loose and their meaning varies across theorists and over time. Imperialism, empire and colonialism are used interchangeably, as are finance, fictitious capital, finance capital, financialization and financialism. Here we use imperialism and financialism si mply because they rhyme. 3 See Hilferding (1910, p. 228), Sweezy (1942, p. 271) and the entire thrust of Baran and Sweezy (1966). Later on, Sweezy (1974) would defend himself and Baran against allegations of betrayal: Monopoly Capital, he said, had no intention of abandoning Marxs labour theory of value. On the contrary, the book had taken Marxs theory for granted, trying to show how labour values were transformed first into competitive prices, and then into monopoly prices. However, as Howard and King (1992, p. 120) note, this defence was misleading and in fact unnecessary. Sweezy had always hailed the qualitative side of the labour theory of value, and that fact was worth reiterating; but to claim that he and Baran also took the quantitative aspects of that theory for granted was to contradict the gist of their own Monopoly Capital thesis. 4 U.S. National Security Council (1950). For a critical examination of Military Keynesianism, see Nitzan and Bichler (2006). 5 Classical Marxists interpret the role of waste rather differently. In their account, wasteful spending withdraws surplus from the accumulation process and therefore causes the pace of that process to decelerate. However, some classical Marxists, such as Kidron (1974), suggest that the deceleration may end up having a positive impact: by slowing the pace at which constant capital accumulates, waste lessens the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. 6 Perhaps the clearest advocate of this argument was the late Harry Magdoff, a writer whose empirical and theoretical studies stand as a beacon of scientific research (1969; 2003). Similar claims (minus the research) are offered by Meiksins Wood (2003). 7 According to Baran and Sweezy (1966, p. 105), foreign investment in developing countries serves to aggravate the absorption problem: the returns on such investment are not fully reinvested in the periphery, the leftovers flow back to the advanced countries and the surplus gets augmented instead of being offset. 70
The inverted commas in the referenced paragraph highlight concepts that the theory of unequal exchange can neither define nor measure. Since nobody knows the correct value of labour power, it is impossible to determine the extent of exploitation in the two regions. Similarly, since no one knows the true value of commodities, there is no way to assess whether export and import prices are too high or too low. This latter ignorance makes it impossible to gauge the degree to which the terms of trade are distorted and, indeed, in whose favour; and given that we dont know the magnitude or even the direction of the distortion, it is impossible to tell whether surplus flows from the periphery to the core or vice versa, or how large the flow might be. 9 The question of what constitutes a proper Marxist framework is highlighted in the debates over the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Important contributions to these debates are Dobb (1946), Sweezy (1950) and Brenner (1977; 1978). For edited volumes on this issue, see Hilton, ed. (1978) and Aston and Philpin, eds. (1985). 10 For more on the question of who is productive and who is not, see Nitzan and Bichler (2009, Ch. 7). 11 For a succinct summary, see Arrighi and Silver (1999). Building on Braudel and Weber, they outline a demand and supply theory of financialization (our term). On the capitalist supply side, profits that grow relative to stagnating investment opportunities give rise to soaring financial liquidity. On the government demand side, budget deficits caused by stunted growth force states to compete for liquid capitalist funds. All systemwide financial expansions past and present, say Arrighi and Silver, are the outcome of the combined if uneven development of these two complementary tendencies (32). 12 For the depletion thesis, see for example Melman (1970; 1974). A broader historical application is given in Kennedy (1987). The central role of finance in this depletion is emphasized in Hudson (2010). 13 On the history of the national accounts, see Kendrick (1968; 1970). 14 The generalization here applies to portfolio as well as foreign direct investment. Both are financial transactions, pure and simple. The only difference between them is their relative size: typically, investments that account for less than 10% of the acquired property are considered portfolio, whereas larger investments are classified as direct. The flow of capital, whether portfolio or direct, may or may not be followed by the creation of new productive capacity. But the creation of such capacity, if and when it happens, is conceptually distinct, temporally separate and causally independent from the mere act of foreign investment. The act of foreign investment consists either of transferring existing ownership titles from domestic to foreign residents, or of simultaneously adding foreign ownership titles to the liabilities side of the balance sheet and cash and/or securities to the asset side. In the latter case, the additional funds on
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the assets side can then be put to various uses: they can be used to build new capacity or to speculate in the commodities market; they can be used to pay dividends or buy back the companys share; they can be given to the government in return for short -term bonds or smuggled out of the country; etc. But the particular use, whatever it may be, is separate from the act of foreign investment and is entirely unrelated to whether that investment is portfolio or direct. 15 The sample data for the earlier years are not only more inaccurate; most likely, they are also systematically biased. The reason is that the ratio of foreign assets to GDP, particularly during the earlier years, was probably smaller in the countries excluded from the sample than in the countries included in it; and if that is indeed the case, the smaller the sample was, the more it overstated the actual global ratio. Obstfeld and Taylor compute a hybrid ratio between the sample foreign assets and the global (rather than the sample) GDP. The resulting estimates are lower than those reported in Figure 1, but their temporal pattern is the same. For a visual comparison of these two estimates, see Francis, Bichler and Nitzan (2010, Figure 2, p. 7). 16 The conventional view, at least until recently, was that global capital mobility is cyclical more than secular, and that the levels of foreign ownership reached at the end of the twentieth century still pale in comparison to those recorded at the beginning of that century (see, for example, Hirst and Thompson 1999, pp. 27-29). This conclusion, though, owed less to the facts and more to misleading calculations. Most analysts, having no access to the actual data on foreign assets and capital flow, relied on the indirect evidence offered by the current account. The logic was that countries that run current account deficits must cover those deficits with capital inflow, so if one sums up the deficits across all countries, the result must be equal, by definition, to the overall sum of global capital flow. This logic, though, is valid only if capital flows in one direction from countries with current account surplus to countries with current account deficit. But over the past half century, capital has been increasingly flowing in both directions; and with this two-way flow inward and outward the overall movement of capital and the level of foreign assets are no longer related to changes in the current accounts. For more on this issue, see Wallich (1984) and Nitzan (2001). 17 Farrell et al. (2008, p. 73, Exhibit 3.10). Not surprisingly, the United States, which still has the worlds largest pool of capitalized assets, exhibits the lowest levels of inward transnationalization. But these levels, although low relative to other countries, are by no means trivial: in 2006, foreigners owned 14% of all U.S.-listed equities, 22% of its listed bonds, and 20% of the combined value of the two up from negligible levels in 1990 (p. 74, Exhibits 3.11 and 3.12). 18 For the BP episode, see Bichler, Rowley and Nitzan (1989, pp. 5-6). For the Barclays Bank story, see Larsen (2009). 19 For the effect on these conclusions of a changing sample of countries, see the debate in 72
Francis, Bichler and Nitzan (2010, pp. 1-2 and 7-8). Joe Francis provides a further breakdown of global ownership by region (Francis, Bichler, and Nitzan 2010, pp. 14-15). 21 There are of course other important yardsticks for capitalist power, such as risk, hype and the normal rate of return. But these yardsticks are intimately related to profit, and given that our concern here is long-term tendencies, the use of net profit seems warranted. 22 Using the data from Figure 3, Joe Francis showed that there is a relatively tight correlation between the declining net profit share of U.S.-listed firms and the devaluating U.S. dollar. In principle, the dollars devaluation can impact the U.S. profit share in two opposite ways: on the one hand, nominal devaluation lowers earnings reported in U.S. dollars relative to earnings reported in other currencies (although with U.S. corporations earning more and more of their profits abroad, the effect of this process has been progressively mitigated); on the other hand, devaluation (after corrections for relative inflation rates), makes U.S.-made goods and services relatively cheaper, and that cheapening should enable U.S.-based firms to raise their global market share. Based on Joe Francis data, the former (negative) effect has completely overwhelmed the latter (positive) impact, suggesting that U.S. firms were unable to turn cheaper exports to their advantage. More broadly, and assuming one accepts the nationally based approach to capitalist power (which we, personally, do not), the very decline of the U.S. dollar should be indicative of the waning global power of U.S. capitalists. For more on this issue, see Francis, Bichler and Nitzan (2010, p. 3, Figure 1, as well as pp. 8-9 and 16). 23 For a detailed analysis of the associated difficulties and impossibilities that we discuss in this section only in passing, see Nitzan and Bichler (2009, Chs. 6-8 and 10) and Bichler and Nitzan (2009). 24 The reference here is only to classical Marxists. Neo-Marxists, at least those who have given up on the labour theory of value, lack any objective means of separating productive from unproductive activity to start with. 25 Note that private enterprises here include mortgaged home owners, and that the national statisticians subject many of the interest data to cruel imputations. 26 The argument regarding the key role of depreciation and depletion allowances is elaborated in Hudson (2010). His suggestion that the deprecation allowances of U.S.listed FIRE firms are much larger (if not infinitely larger) than those of FIRE firms listed outside the United States, and therefore that the data in Figure 4 are misleading, was made in a series of private communications with us in September 2009.
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References Amin, Samir. 1974a. Accumulation and Development: A Theoretical Model. Review of African Political Economy (1): 9-26. Amin, Samir. 1974b. Accumulation on a World Scale. A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment. 2 vols. New York: Monthly Review Press. Arrighi, Giovanni. 1994. The Long Twentieth Century. Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times. London: Verso. Arrighi, Giovanni , Po-keung Hui, Krishnendu Ray, and Thomas Ehrlich Reifer. 1999. Geopolitics and High Finance. In Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System, eds. G. Arrighi and B. J. Silver. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 37-96. Arrighi, Giovanni, and Beverly J. Silver. 1999. Introduction. In Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System, eds. G. Arrighi and B. J. Silver. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 1-36. Aston, T. H., and C. H. E. Philpin, eds. 1985. The Brenner Debate. Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Baran, Paul A. 1957. The Political Economy of Growth. New York and London: Modern Reader Paperbacks. Baran, Paul. A., and Paul M. Sweezy. 1966. Monopoly Capital. An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order. New York: Modern Reader Paperbacks. Bichler, Shimshon, and Jonathan Nitzan. 2008. Contours of Crisis: Plus a change, plus c'est pareil? Dollars & Sense, December 29. Bichler, Shimshon, and Jonathan Nitzan. 2009. Contours of Crisis II: Fiction and Reality. Dollars & Sense, April 28. Bichler, Shimshon, Robin Rowley, and Jonathan Nitzan. 1989. The ArmadollarPetrodollar Coalition: Demise or New Order? Working Paper 11/89, Department of Economics, McGill University, Montreal, pp. 1-63. Braudel, Fernand. 1985. Civilization & Capitalism, 15th-18th Century. Translated from the French and Revised by Sian Reynolds. 3 vols. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers. Brenner, Robert. 1977. The Origins of Capitalist Development: A Critique of NeoSmithian Marxism. New Left Review 104 (July-August): 25-92. Brenner, Robert. 1978. Dobb on the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism. Cambridge Journal of Economics 2 (2, June): 121-140. Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, and Enzo Faletto. 1979. Dependency and Development in Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Crotty, James. 2005. The Neoliberal Paradox: The Impact of Destructive Product 74
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Stagnation and the Financial Explosion, eds. H. Magdoff and P. M. Sweezy.

New York: Monthly Review Press, pp. 93-105. Magdoff, Harry, and Paul M. Sweezy. 1985. [1987]. The Financial Explosion. In Stagnation and the Financial Explosion, eds. H. Magdoff and P. M. Sweezy. New York: Monthly Review Press, pp. 141-150. Meiksins Wood, Ellen. 2003. Empire of Capital. London and New York: Verso. Melman, Seymour. 1970. Pentagon Capitalism. The Political Economy of War. 1st ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Melman, Seymour. 1974. The Permanent War Economy. American Capitalism in Decline. New York: Simon and Schuster. Nitzan, Jonathan. 2001. Regimes of Differential Accumulation: Mergers, Stagflation and the Logic of Globalization. Review of International Political Economy 8 (2): 226-274. Nitzan, Jonathan, and Shimshon Bichler. 2006. Cheap Wars. Tikkun, August, 9. Nitzan, Jonathan, and Shimshon Bichler. 2009. Capital as Power. A Study of Order and Creorder. RIPE Series in Global Political Economy. New York and London: Routledge. Orhangazi, zgr. 2008. Financialization and the US Economy. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar. Prebisch, Ral. 1950. The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems. Lake Success, N.Y.: United Nations Dept. of Economic Affairs. Rostow, W. W. 1960. The Stages of Economic Growth. A Non-Communist Manifesto. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1919. [1955]. Imperialism and Social Classes. Translated by Heinz Norden. New York: Meridian Books. So, Alvin Y. 1990. Social Change and Development. Modernization, Dependency, and World-Systems Theory. Sage Library of Social Research, Vol. 178. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications. Steindl, Josef. 1952. [1976]. Maturity and Stagnation in American Capitalism. New York: Monthly Review Press. Sweezy, Paul M. 1942. The Theory of Capitalist Development. Principles of Marxian Political Economy. New York and London: Modern Reader Paperbacks. Sweezy, Paul M. 1950 [1978]. A Critique. In The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism. Introduction by Rodney Hilton, ed. R. Hilton. London: Verso. Sweezy, Paul M. 1974. Monopoly Capital and the Theory of Value. Monthly Review 25 (January): 31-32. Tsuru, Shigeto. 1956. Has Capitalism Changed? In Has Capitalism Changed? An International Symposium on the Nature of Contemporary Capitalism, ed. S.
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Tsuru. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, pp. 1-66. Tuchman, Barbara Wertheim. 1962. The Guns of August. New York: Macmillan. Tuchman, Barbara Wertheim. 1966. The Proud Tower. A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914. New York: Macmillan. United States, National Security Council. 1950. NSC 68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security. A Report to the President Pursuant to the President's Directive of January 31, 1950. Top Secret. Washington DC, www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsc-hst/nsc-68.htm. Veblen, Thorstein. 1904. [1975]. The Theory of Business Enterprise. Clifton, New Jersey: Augustus M. Kelley, Reprints of Economics Classics. Veblen, Thorstein. 1915. [1966]. Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution. Introduction by Joseph Dorfman. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Veblen, Thorstein. 1923. [1967]. Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times. The Case of America. With an introduction by Robert Leckachman. Boston: Beacon Press. Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice. 1974. The Modern World-System. Capitalist
Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. Studies in Social Discontinuity. New York: Academic Press. Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice. 1980. The Modern World-System II. Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600-1750. Studies in
Social Discontinuity. New York: Academic Press. Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice. 1984. The Politics of the World-Economy. The States, the Movements, and the Civilizations. Cambridge, New York and Paris: Cambridge University Press and Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme. Wallich, Henry C. 1984. Why is Net International Investment So Small? In International Capital Movements, Debt and Monetary System, eds. W. Engles, A. Gutowski and H. C. Wallich. Mainz: v. Hase & Koehler, pp. 417-437. Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan teach political economy at colleges and universities in Israel and at York University in Toronto, respectively. Most of their publications are freely available from The Bichler and Nitzan Archives (www.bnarchives.net).
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Architecture of Investment Climate, Haarstad (pp. 79-103)

ISSN 2040-8498 criticalglobalisation.com Article submitted 01 July 2011; article accepted 03 Aug 2011
The Architecture of Investment Climate Surveillance and the Space for NonOrthodox Policy
Hvard Haarstad
The purpose of this article is to take preliminary steps towards a critical theory of what is termed an architecture of investment climate surveillance. The paper outlines the contours of this architecture, which it suggests is made up of various private and public agents that have authoritative positions in the market for evaluating investment opportunities and risks. By way of illustrating basic linkages and mechanisms, it examines the way in which these agents read the implementation of a piece of non -orthodox policy: Bolivias nationalisation of gas. Though not unproblematic, Bolivias policy of nationalisation has significantly increased state revenue and allowed new social spending on poverty reduction. Yet despite these positive developmental effects, readings of this policy shift within the investment community have been highly critical, illustrating the investor-centred values on which these evaluations are based. The article concludes by suggesting that scholars of globalisation must pay more attention to whether and how such discursive responses are able to delimit the space for non-orthodox policy in the global South.
Introduction The effects of conditionalities embedded in structural adjustment and development finance have been at the centre of critical debates surrounding neoliberal globalisation. The principle of conditionality which makes the extension of credit and rescheduling of debt to governments conditional upon lender-specified reforms has been widely criticised for imposing blueprint policy models on borrowing countries. Partly in response to this critique, conditionality has been rethought within the international
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finance institutions. But the characteristics and importance of conditionality are changing for other reasons as well; some countries have prepaid debts to avoid conditionality, and development thinking increasingly stresses borrowing country ownership of policy reforms.1 When taken together, these trends indicate how governments in the global South are designing and implementing policy in a shifting external environment. The purpose of this article is to take some steps towards an analysis of how these changing forms of opportunities, pressures and constraints are shaping the policy space for governments in the global South. In particular, it aims to generate theoretical debate and empirical analyses of the diffuse mechanisms through which investment climate surveillance, and potentially other types of financial surveillance, delimit the range of policies and pathways that are deemed acceptable for developing countries to pursue. In order to do this, it introduces the concept of an architecture of investment climate surveillance, which indicates a variety of private and public agents involved in evaluating the opportunities and risks associated with investing in particular countries. There are existing contributions that can be drawn on in this respect, and some of these are discussed below.2 But to the knowledge of this author, investment climate surveillance has not previously been considered in this context, nor has any attempt been made to construct critical theory around it. In turn, the article points to linkages and mechanisms that should be subject to critical attention and suggests some starting points for such a theory. By way of illustration, the article examines the way in which investment climate surveillance agents read the implementation of a piece of non -orthodox policy: i.e., Bolivias nationalisation of gas. Investment climate surveillance has some similar characteristics to traditional conditionality, but its structures of accountability are more diffuse or even non-existent. There are few, if any, possibilities for democratic institutions to hold these agents accountable. The architecture of investment climate surveillance, through the particular values embedded in evaluations, might delimit policy spaces for governments by generating incentives for pursuing particular policy models, and imposing constraints on policies that diverge from the interests of international investors. It employs discourses that foster investor-centred values and disseminates these discourses through its agents authoritative positions as providers of rational market information, in a manner that is in many ways reminiscent of Michel Foucaults account of governmentality and disciplinary power. The way in which investment climate surveillance agents read the implementation of Bolivias nationalisation of gas illustrates the values embedded in such market information. Bolivias gas policy has during the past decade been formed in the context of increasing civil society mobilisation and critique, including the election of President Evo Morales on a platform of exploiting gas resources in ways that promise to benefit the population more broadly. Recognising that the gas sector needs foreign private investment, the Morales administration has attempted to balance popular 80

demands for full nationalisation with attractive opportunities for companies. Though not without its problems, the policy of nationalisation has significantly increased state revenue and allowed new social spending on poverty reduction, including a set of conditional cash transfer programmes, and it is therefore asserted that the developmental effects are positive (at least in the short term). In contrast to these developmental effects, investment climate surveillance readings of the policy shift have been highly critical. In the wake of nationalisation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned of potentially far -reaching consequences, Bolivia dropped almost 100 places in a ranking of investment freedom, and a trade preference agreement with the US was suspended. While it is difficult to establish direct causal links between investment climate evaluations and levels of post-nationalisation investment, the interpretive values that are employed in these readings point to the disciplinary mechanisms working to proscribe non-orthodox policy. This suggests that more critical attention should be paid to how the architecture of investment climate surveillance disciplines governments in the global South by promoting the discourse of investment climate, and thereby creating strong disincentives for non-orthodox policy. Policy Space, Investment Climate, and Disciplinary Mechanisms Globalisation has transformed notions of national sovereignty and the boundaries between the domains of national and international politics (Fraser, 2008). In the multifaceted and layered debate on these issues, one popular argument has held that national sovereignty has been undermined and increasingly replaced by a form of global governance that is less democratically accountable (Swyngedouw, 2000). It seems beyond reasonable doubt that the policy space for governments in general, and perhaps those of the global South in particular, has been affected by new rules and institutions at the global scale (Jayasuriya, 1999). Looking at the policy space for governments means focusing on the set of opportunities and constraints that shape the possibilities that these governments have for pursuing a particular type of policy. Tarrow (1988), Cerny (1995) and others have focused on the opportunity structures in politics that give rise to the choices that actors can make, and thereby lead political practices in particular directions. The importance of this perspective is that it recognises that public policy is not simply an object of choice for politicians and planners, and instead puts explanatory weight on how political practitioners manoeuvre within a complex field composed of multiple actors with diverse interests that enable and constrain options in a variety of ways. Policy is shaped, enabled and constrained by forces and mechanisms that operate across different scales (Spiller et al., 2008). Policy constraints at the global scale can arise from rules embedded in programmes of political and economic integration or from the need to attract
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investments, credit or aid. In the extant literature, authors have primarily looked at policy space in the context of free trade agreements such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), arguing that these agreements reduce flexibility for member countries to set national priorities, determine their own tariff levels or prolong compliance timetables (Hoekman, 2004; Khan, 2007). In its 2005 Human Development Report, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) laments that the WTO agreements in the Doha Development Round have severely restricted the scope for industrial and technology policy (UNDP, 2005, pp. 133-138). Beyond trade rules, policy spaces for developing countries are shaped by a wider set of multilateral institutions and state agents. Chang (2005) stresses the role of the United States (US) and its influence on institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, as well as its bilateral trade agreements. These institutional and state agents act as gatekeepers by putting in place and enforcing particular rules and practices, and by acting as the assessor of whether these rules are being complied with. It follows that gatekeeping comes with a great degree of formal and informal power gatekeepers influence a host of agents on investment decisions, financial transactions, determination of interest rates, aid flows and more. The IMF recognises to some extent the problem of gatekeeping, and has (by its own account) taken steps to increase the policy space of low-income countries in response to recent food and financial crises (IMF, 2009b). Of course, policy constraints are not necessarily negative. Countries comply with transnational rules in order to show their commitment to particular regimes of practices and to make others do the same, thereby encouraging stability, predictability and mutually beneficial systems and norms. Comprehensive trade rules can allow poor countries to negotiate in a single bloc rather than one-on-one against richer and more powerful countries. But critical attention must be paid to values embedded in these regimes, and the asymmetries between countries in shaping the values and entry criteria. Approaches in the critical geopolitics tradition have attempted to show how such regimes are socially and historically constructed through geopolitical power relations casting US and Western institutions as authorities on finance and development (Dalby, 1991; Popke, 1994). These approaches often draw on Foucauldian theories on discourse and governmentality that show how the power of government operates through diffuse and decentralised mechanisms that work to delimit what is considered as rational behaviour (Jessop, 2007; Lemke, 2002). Foucault described governmentality as a complex for m of power that arose with the emergence of modern government and its associated sciences of health, statistics, and economics. It is an ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow th e government to control and discipline the population (Foucault, 1991, p. 102). Disciplinary power cannot be described in terms of a theory of sovereignty, he stressed, for it is not exercised from a singular point or institution. Instead, it is a dispersed type of 82

power exercised through constant surveillance permeating society through multiple points (Foucault, 2004, p. 36). The power of government is therefore described not through the monopoly on the means of coercion, but as operating through a complex set of instruments, institutions and knowledge that normalise particular behaviours, actions, and ways of thinking. Hence, Foucaults work emphasises how power relations and socially constructed values underpin the very idea of rational practice, whic h includes the practices of states and governments. Writers in critical and political economy traditions have since taken up Foucaults insights into the informal power of gatekeeping, and have suggested that national governments are disciplined and sanctioned for pursuing progressive policy by a diffuse set of emerging global control mechanisms. Stephen Gill (1995b), for example, argues that the policy regimes promoted by international finance institutions were reinforced not just by a handful of easily identifiable institutions, but through the disciplinary effects of intensified surveillance mechanisms embedded in the structures of capital accumulation, which define the limits of what is possible for governments. He therefore points to the disciplinary power embedded within the diffuse mechanisms of neoliberalism rather than the sovereign power of traditional conditionality. In the context of information technology, these mechanisms favour internationally mobile finance capital and those seeking to liberalise financial regulation. The effect, in his perspective, is the subordination of state policies to the interest of large holders of capital (Gill, 1995a). For Atilio Boron (2008, p. 247), this framework can explain how governments coming to power in Latin America with a popular mandate to end further liberalisation are constrained from properly following through on that agenda; there is a persistence of traps and mechanisms that discipline unruly governments via a range of instruments. These mechanisms include preferential treatment agreements or other agreements needed to facilitate the inflow of capital and investment. Using these critiques as starting point, we can begin to approach the discourse of investment climate in a new light. Specifically, investment climate surveillance does not appear as a sovereign form of power, as traditional conditionality to some extent did through the policy prescriptions of the IMF and the rest of the Washington Consensus. Instead, it appears as a disciplinary form of power much like that described in Foucaults work on governmentality. Washington Consensus institutions such as the World Bank do still participate in the exercise of this power, but the discourse of investment climate both consists in and underpins a much broader architecture of surveillance and discipline.
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Investment Climates and Development Orthodoxy The importance of a good investment climate is now a central plank of development orthodoxy. As stated in the Monterrey Consensus, foreign direct investments (FDI) are vital components to national and international development efforts (UN, 2003, p. 9), and that liberalisation and minimal policy intervention are necessary to create a proper investment climate for FDI (World Bank, 2005). Conventional ideas about creating such an attractive investment climate are premised on the notion that government intervention poses a threat to investors and needs to be restrained (Moore and Schmitz, 2008). The World Bank report on investment climates, A Better Investment Climate for Everyone, provides a set of actions that governments should pursue in order to attract investment and reach development goals. The basic message is that governments should focus on delivering the basics such as property rights, contract enforcement and fostering a skilled workforce and that selective intervention in the market should be avoided (World Bank, 2005, p. 9). It is a discourse that emphasises the liberal, marketoriented view of development. What typically constitutes a good climate in the eyes of the investor are low tax rates, flexibility with regard to hiring and firing, low labour costs, an absence of local content requirements, and the provision of various types of economic incentives (World Bank, 2005). In order to foster a good investment climate, governments are encouraged to offer these conditions in a stable and predictable manner. As some have already argued, the stability of incentives and conditions may be more important than the conditions themselves (Spiller et al., 2008). The degree of stability influences the external credibility of government reform and policy which is, as Rodrik (1989) stresses, critical for the success of that reform or policy. Looking at post-communist countries, Hewko (2002) argues that investors perceptions of investment climates were central to whether investments were made, yet judgments about investment climates were rarely based on an in-depth understanding of local conditions. Instead, investors relied on visceral perceptions and the reports of external experts. There are however some contributions to the literature that argue that states need active policy to reap the benefits of foreign investments. Research on the link between FDI and development or poverty reduction suggests that absorptive capacity, a skilled labour force, and human capital are necessary ingredients in host countries (Borzensztein et al., 1998; Lall and Narula, 2004; Nunnenkamp, 2004). This means that governments need policy space to upgrade the capabilities of national firms, institutions and the labour force. As Gallagher et al. (2009) argue on the basis of a series of country case studies on FDI in Latin America, international agreements should leave developing national governments the space to pursue the domestic policies necessary to foster development through FDI. This policy space would allow governments and state institutions to act strategically in determining a regulatory framework for foreign 84

investors, providing incentives and disincentives for particular types of economic practices, or putting in place requirements for the employment of the local labour force or use of locally produced goods. It has been argued that these are among the success factors in the case of the East Asian tigers (Narula, 2002) and the industrialisation of the Western developed countries (Chang, 2004). In turn, there is potentially a paradox here for countries attempting to use FDI to reach development goals; active policy is needed to get the most out of foreign investment, yet active policy damages evaluations of the investment climate and in turn the chance of attracting the investment needed. Hence, policy action intended to increase a countrys development outcome from foreign investment might actually hurt its investment climate, as conventionally conceived. At this point, two important caveats should be acknowledged. Firstly, international relations can of course open policy spaces for governments as well as narrow them. Stable aid flows, deepened financial markets or high international prices for natural resources and other exports can provide a government with greater room for manoeuvre (Ocampo and Vos, 2006). Second, there are many conditions besides perceived investment climates that influence where investments flow. As both Moore and Schmitz (2008) and Schultz (2001) point out, investment policies in China which is a state-driven and highly bureaucratic economy that bears little resemblance to those promoted by international institutions illustrate that investors are primarily attracted by business opportunities, not by particular policy models. In the case of natural resource extraction, much FDI goes to countries that are far from possessing exemplary investment climates. Nevertheless, the need to demonstrate commitment to an externally defined policy framework understood as a proper investment climate defined via appeals to credibility and economic rationality is a key determinant of the policy space available to governments in the South. But if such a discourse of investment climate is indeed operative, then we must look into precisely how its disciplinary power is exercised. Or to put it differently: What is its corresponding architecture of surveillance? The Architecture of Investment Climate Surveillance Investment climates are evaluated by a complex set of agents that derive influence from their status, legitimacy and perceived trustworthiness. Foreign investors base their investment decisions at least in part on information and analysis regarding host country outlooks, and this has created both a market and a governance role for the private agents and multilateral institutions that are able to provide such insight into potential host countries.3 Hence, an important element of the argument here is that the investment climate discourse is not disseminated from a single source or institution, but that it instead flows and circulates in a complex network of different actors and institutions. The following discussion outlines what I see as some of the central actors through which this
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discourse works (although it is by no means exhaustive). Public economic surveillance at the global scale is arguably an offspring of the Bretton Woods Agreement and the responsibilities it granted to the IMF. The IMF was conceived to oversee countries macroeconomic policies, and particularly those that would impact upon its balance of payments. It has evolved, however, and its surveillance of member countries economies has come to involve new policy areas, now coveri ng institutional and microeconomic reform, along with various social conditions that impact the implementation of economic policy (Braithwaite and Drahos, 2000, p. 115). Its annual World Economic Outlook, and the annual Article IV Consultations with member countries on which it is based, have become crucial indicators of how countries policy directions will impact economic conditions and competitiveness (James, 1995). While the IMF controls a significant amount of resources through its Special Drawing Rights, supplying information and analyses that affect capital markets have become a means through which the institution guides economic policymaking in its member countries and influences the access of governments to resources. The World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) also supply information to guide foreign investors. The Doing Business reports published by the World Bank quantify business regulations and their enforcement across countries, and their Country Profiles are based on surveys of firms experiences with conducting business in a particular country. These are then used to rank countries on Ease of doing business and to create statistical breakdowns of the business environment. 4 The OECD instead conducts peer review of competition policy in both member and non-member countries, but its aim is similarly to foster best practices and improve the business climate in the countries it reviews (OECD/IADB, 2006). Investment climate surveillance is at times tied to foreign policy as well. The US Department of State issues Investment Climate Statements on most countries, which are intended for US investors and firms operating abroad, and consist of qualitative evaluations of factors such as countries openness to foreign investment, trade policy, and levels of private property protection. Such surveillance is also embedded in inter-state treaties. Bilateral and multilateral trade agreements, and the international arbitrations that enforce them, provide a mechanism for surveillance on how involved states treat foreign investors. Such treaties and their related arbitration have flourished globally in recent decades. Latin American countries have historically been guided by the Calvo Doctrine, which states that firms are subject to the laws of the state where they do business. Recently, however, Latin American countries have come to accept international law and arbitration in relation to foreign investment (Cremades, 2006; Vallejo, 2007). This allows institutions such as the World Banks International Centre for Settlements of Investment Disputes (ICSID) to evaluate whether governments are granting foreign investors the rights and treatment that treaties afford them, which in turn makes the panels bellwethers of the countrys investment climate. 86

At the same time, certain private agents are among the most authoritative sources of judgments on economic conditions in countries namely, credit rating agencies. Moodys and Standard and Poors (S&P) are the two major firms in the credit rating industry. Their ratings of credit products increasingly include the bonds of states, which are given grades (AAA to D) according to their creditworthiness. This factor can be seen to serve as a proxy for general economic conditions in a country and the rationality of a governments economic policy. Yet as Sinclair (2005) argues, it is appraised against historically derived, often US-based norms and procedures (both Moodys and S&P are headquartered in the US). Among these norms is the separation of economic and financial policy, which is seen as belonging to the domain of independent central banks, from social and other types of policy, which are seen as belonging to the domain of political institutions more broadly. Another norm is the adherence to privatisation programmes. Senegal, for example, received a positive evaluation from S&P as a reflection of the expectation that the government would adhere to its programme of structural reforms, which includes selling many of the assets that still remain in state hands (Wallis, 2000). According to Hill (2004), investors automatically react to the upgrades and downgrades of credit rating agencies, knowing that markets will as well. Interestingly, however, in court cases in the US, where investors have sued Moodys or S&P after following their advice, the rating agencies analyses were deemed to be mere opinions. The Seventh Circuit court characterised reliance on an S&Ps rating as unreasonable (Hill, 2004). S&P upheld their top rating of Lehman Brothers right until its collapse, just as it did with Enron. Iceland, Spain and Ireland also enjoyed high ratings just before or even after their financial woes became public knowledge (Silver, 2011). Yet their ratings have remained a staple in the underpinning of investment decisions. Using either Moodys or S&Ps ratings, or both, in investment decisions has become expected practice in the capital market, and many financial products have embedded rules that require them to pull out of an investment object should the rating drop below a certain level. This in turn positions rating agencies as an important node in making the evaluations that shape the flows of investment capital. Further, there are private foundations and think tanks that have acquired prominence and legitimacy for their comprehensive data collection, and their analyses of information germane to the question of investment climate. For example, the Heritage Foundation based in Washington DC publishes annually its Index of Economic Freedom. The foundation has strong links to the Republican Party and the conservative base, and is known as a key architect of the policies of the Reagan administration. Yet the Index is published with the Wall Street Journal and has a broader readership. It covers 183 countries and ranks them by ten types of 'freedom', including 'investment freedom', measured on a score from 0 to 100. The freedoms are defined in relation to the idea that
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the state should tax citizens to provide a police force, contract enforcement and common defence, and that state intervention beyond this minimum corrodes freedom (see Heritage Foundation, 2009). These rankings are the basis for the Heritage Foundations analyses of which countries are moving ahead or falling behind in terms of economic freedom. Another such foundation is the Bertelsmann Foundation in Germany, which owns the transnational media corporation Bertelsmann AG, and publishes an annual Transformation Index and Country Reports of 128 countries defined as in transition. Here each countrys market economy is measured on a scale from 1 to 10, which is used in a ranking of all countries according to management capacity and transition status. The Institutional Investor magazine also publishes proprietary market intelligence for investors, including evaluations and rankings of countrys credit rankings. As a final example, the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Switzerland publishes annually the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook. The Yearbook ranks countries according to government efficiency, infrastructure, economic performance and business efficiency. As this brief outline of the different types of agents involved in investment climate surveillance illustrates, this architecture is composed of sets of different types of agents with different interests. These rely primarily on legitimacy accumulated over time, authoritative positions and perceived trustworthiness to make judgments about a countrys economic policy and outlook. Though this is a de centralised system, some agents have more formal influence than others. Rating agencies like Moodys and S&P have their positions in credit rating formalised by the practice that credit issuers have to obtain ratings, and favourable ones at that, in order for institutional investors to be allowed to buy their bonds. For institutional investors, a downgrade to a junk rating a rating agency often means that they are legally obliged to disinvest. An agent like the Heritage Foundation has no formal influence, but arguably influences informal perceptions by creating systematised and comparable indicators of 'economic freedom'. For all these agents, their power is limited by their need to continue providing what the relevant agents acting on their analyses consider accurate information and informed analyses (although the April 2010 hearings in the US Congress on credit ratings and the financial crisis brought to light how subjective and arbitrary credit ratings can be). So the point to be made here is not that these agents exercise discretionary power over the policy spaces of sovereign governments. Rather, the production of this information and its availability to investors forms a decentralised network of agents, and a comprehensive system of economic policy surveillance, that creates carrots and sticks plain to see for policy makers. Evaluations that warn against the effects of policies on investment can become self-fulfilling prophecies, since the market reads these evaluations as signals of future developments.
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The Latin American Context and Bolivias So-Called Nationalisation The architecture of investment climate surveillance seems to increasingly structure policy spaces for governments in the Global South, including in Latin America. While the 1980s and 1990s were characterised by a strong policy orientation towards global markets through neoliberal models, often pushed through via the traditional tools of conditionality (Green, 2003), Latin American countries have during the past years to a greater extent sought more state centred policy solutions and stronger regional alliances (Keeling, 2004). A range of presidents have been elected on left-leaning platforms in what many see as a reaction to neoliberalism and the blueprint models of the Washington Consensus (Barrett et al., 2008). Economic developments have been positive overall. External debt-to-GDP ratios have fallen significantly across the continent (IMF, 2009c), which has left governments constrained to a lesser degree than before by the conditionalities that the Bretton Woods institutions have tied to rescheduling and debt relief arrangements. Some of the new policy directions have been portrayed as a return to protectionism or resource nationalism in the business press and some academic literat ure (Gallagher et al., 2009; Manzano and Monaldi, 2008). Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia and other countries have used new macroeconomic conditions and high prices as opportunities to increase state participation in natural resource sectors. Yet they rely on the international market for the export of their main commodities (The Economist, 2010). Bolivias nationalisation of gas resources appears to be one of the few non orthodox policy initiatives on a larger scale, disregarding developments in Venezuela under Chvez. President Evo Morales announced on 1 May 2006 a presidential decree stating that all foreign companies in the gas sector would have to renegotiate their contracts with the state within six months, that the state enterprise would recover majority ownership in the sector, and that private companies would face increased tax and royalty rates. The nationalisation decree was the expected outcome of a widely popular election platform for the party Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS, Movement Towards Socialism) that had promised to overturn previous bouts of privatisation. President Gonzalo Snchez de Lozada left office in 2003 after massive popular dissatisfaction. President Carlos Mesa (replacing Snchez de Lozada) held a national referendum on the gas question in 2004 showing vast support for greater state involvement, and passed legislation for that purpose (Democracy Center, 2007). At the same time, Morales campaigned to take the natural resources back to state ownership and use these in ways that benefited the majority. Morales was elected with 53.7 per cent of the popular vote in December 2005, and has since carried a recall election (2008), a referendum on the new constitution (January 2009) and re-election (December 2009). Notwithstanding his success at the ballot box, Morales tenure has been fraught with
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aggressive opposition, particularly from the secessionist eastern departments. While popular demand provided much of the push for nationalisation, the policy framework of actually existing nationalisation has been to a significant extent highly shaped by Bolivias integration in the international economic arena, particularly the need to attract investment and maintain bilateral relations (Haarstad, 2009). The Morales administration recognised that the state enterprise Yacimientos Petrolferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) did not possess the capital, competence or technology to develop the sector without foreign investment. Therefore it has been a goal to balance the populist rhetoric with steps to maintain a climate for investment. The 2006 nationalisation did not expropriate the property of foreign companies, as previous nationalisations in Bolivias history have done. Instead it raised the nominal tax rate on private operators to 82 per cent and offered reductions for different types of investment activity, making the effective tax rate about 50 per cent. While investors immediately after the announcement threatened to bring cases before the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID, an arm of the World Bank), all 12 foreign companies in the sector eventually accepted the new terms and negotiated new contracts with the government. In turn, the new policy regime is not as radical as the label nationalisation would suggest, and it is actually conservative compared to that of Norway, hardly considered resource nationalist, which maintains tax rates between 80 and 90 per cent (Martinez, 2007). In the perspective of the Bolivian government, nationalisation represents an attempt to regain national sovereignty in relation to foreign investors and the international institutions, but it also represents an attempt to better utilise FDI for the benefit of the population. Morales mantra has been that the country seeks foreig n investment, but wants partners, not bosses. In an interview with the author in 2007, the Finance Minister stressed that despite nationalisation, the Bolivian government aggressively seeks foreign investment and is concerned about how its investment climate is evaluated externally. We dont have any loans or new loans and agreements, he said, but we maintain a close relationship because we understand that many donors still trust the IMF reports. The IMF is a well-known institution, with the [Article IV] reports.5 In 2007, however, Bolivia withdrew from the ICSID. Days before the withdrawal, Bolivia published along with Venezuela and Nicaragua a statement saying that they reject the legal, diplomatic and media pressure exercised by some multinatio nal companies by initiating international arbitration against national states for example within the ICSID, and that the countries had decided to withdraw in order to guarantee the sovereign right of countries to regulate foreign investment on their nati onal territories (ALBA-PTA, 2007). The nationalisation of the gas sector has contributed to an export boom and significantly increased the generation of state revenue. Boosted by high international commodity prices, total export receipts increased 230 per cent between 2005 and 2008, 90

and GDP growth in 2008 stood at 6.1 per cent. Average economic growth since the Morales administration took office (2006-2009) has been 5.2 per cent, the highest in 30 years (Weisbrot et al., 2009). This has enabled Bolivia to build up a comfortable buffer of reserves, turning one of the poorest countries in Latin America into a net external creditor in 2008. Gas sector revenue has been used by the government to fund a set of social programmes aimed at eradicating extreme poverty, including Renta Dignidad, a universal pension scheme for all Bolivians aged 60 and above; Bono Juancito Pinto, a conditional cash transfer programme aimed to reduce school drop-out; and Bono Juana Azurduy, a conditional cash transfer programme for pregnant women and young children. Bolivian authorities report significant positive results yielded by these programmes, including a drop in extreme poverty of 4.8 per cent in 2008, a school dropout decline from 5.2 per cent to 2.8 per cent, and a reduction in the illiteracy rate.6 The Morales administration stresses this close link between social programmes and nationalisation. In advertising its achievements, such as the Bono Juancito Pinto programme and its positive results, it is stated explicitly that the programme is made possible by the nationalisation of hydrocarbons. Bolivias nationalisation of gas is arguably one example of a non -orthodox policy that has helped generate significant positive macro-economic and povertyreduction results.7 Even though aspects of nationalisation have surely been problematic, given the outcomes it can reasonably be argued that the nationalisation model roughly corresponds with the countrys development objective and has had positive developmental effects, at least in the short term.
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Figure 1. Bolivia GDP growth (per cent), hydrocarbons revenue (mill BOL) Source: IMF, YPFB
Nationalisation and Surveillance Response Surveillance response to nationalisation makes visible a significant contrast in relation to its developmental effects and the way this architecture disciplines non-orthodox policy. A couple of weeks after the Nationalisation Decree was issued, the IMF Spokesman warned against potentially far-reaching consequences. In what may have been a self-fulfilling prophecy, it was said publicly that the country may lose access to foreign capital if it fails to compensate affected companies (IMF, 2006a). Though the IMF has been positive on the macroeconomic impacts of nationalisation and the social policies it helps finance, it has been highly sceptical of the nationalisation itself. The 2006 Article IV Consultation expressed unease about major uncertainties for private investment and the prospect of downside risks associated with institutional changes hinging on the constitutional assembly planned by the Morales administration (IMF, 2006b, pp.17). The 2008 Article IV Consultation, written in the context of the emerging hydrocarbons boom, stresses that improving the investment climate should be a top priority for Bolivia (IMF, 2009a). The Article IV Consultation the following year echoes this, recommending to the Bolivian authorities the benefits for private sector investment of removing expeditiously uncertainties in the legal framework, especially in hyd rocarbon and mining sectors (IMF, 2010, pp.1). Similarly, The Heritage Foundation is highly sceptical of the nationalisation. The rating of Bolivias investment freedom stood at 90 points out of 100, a very high
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grade, until the year prior to nationalisation. The evaluation had been that few restrictions remain in effect, and those that apply to the petroleum and mining industries are minimal. In 2005 Bolivia began a rapid downward decline on this scale, based on the increasing evidence that corruption and bureaucracy hinder foreign investment. In 2006, referring to the passing of the new Hydrocarbons law that was approved by a wide margin in a nation-wide referendum, the Foundation reported that the legislation follows growing hostility to foreign investment by radical elements, and that taxes on oil and gas were likely to increase sharply. The 2010 Index rates Bolivias investment freedom at 15 point out of 100, citing primarily nationalisation of hydrocarbons as the concern, as well as the possible nationalisation in other industries. In the wake of the Morales administrations nationalisation, Bolivia has dropped from a total country ranking of 50 in 2005 to 146 in 2010. Moodys downgraded the Government of Bolivias sovereign currency rating from B1 to B3 in April 2003, the first such downgrade since the governments first rating in 1998.8,9 This downgrade was maintained throughout the nationalisation process, despite stable economic growth and a boom in government hydrocarbon revenue. In September 2009, when Moodys decided that Morales position and the macroeconomic situation looked sufficiently stable, Bolivias rating was upgraded to B2. S&P issued a statement immediately after nationalisation saying that its previous low rating already accounted for the degree of uncertainty that nationalisation highlighted, but that it judged outlooks to be negative (S&P Credit Research, 2006). Similarly, nationalisation is a major concern for Bertelsmann in its evaluations of Bolivias transition process. T he 2008 Index held that foreign investment was threatened by the governments traditional interventionist policies of nationalisation, which has affected the gas and oil sector in particular. The Bertelsmann analysis acknowledges that there has been a long-term social pressure for a change away from the neoliberal model, that growth rates under the neoliberal model were not high enough to trigger a substantial reduction of poverty, and that there was a structural need for greater democratic inclusion of the indigenous majority. But it also claims that the changes implemented by Morales, and particularly the nationalisation of hydrocarbons, endanger the fundamentals of market-based competition, increase the tendency towards traditional state interventionism, undermine private property rights, and represent political limitations on private companies. The Bertelsmann Status Index, a composite score (1-10) of a countrys democracy and market economy, slipped from 6.3 in 2003 to 5.75 in 2008, increasing to 5.98 again in 2010 (Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2007; 2009). The US Department of State also changed its evaluation of Bolivias investment climate in the wake of the nationalisation. In its 2009 Investment Climate Statement, it warns potential investors against the increasing difficulty of doing business in Bolivia, and holds that all investors should take note of the legislative changes
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represented by nationalisation. It stresses that Morales move away from market -oriented economic policies and his pledge to empower the indigenous population, along with the resultant political and economic uncertainty, presents challenges for potential investors. Hence, it argues, companies considering doing business in Bolivia should carefully weigh the advantages and risks of potential investments, conduct extensive due diligence before committing funds, and retain competent Bolivian legal and other counsel (US Department of State, 2009). It also expresses concern for property and contractual rights, which may be subject to politically influenced enforcement and discretionary decisions. The US government has also made use of more direct pressure mechanisms, such as those in the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA) from 2002. The ATPDEA allowed Bolivia and three other Andean countries duty free and preferential trade treatments, subject to eligibility criteria. Bolivias ATPDEA designation was suspended by President Bush in 2008, and this suspension was upheld by President Obama in 2009. As reasons for the suspension, the presidential decree cites the nationalisation of the hydrocarbon sector and other moves to consolidate state control over the industry, in addition to inadequate counter-narcotics efforts. In summary, investment climate surveillance agents reacted negatively towards the shift in Bolivia's gas policy. Nationalisation is read as a return to a traditional state interventionist and populist model that threatens the rational governance of natural resources and market-based principles. In the perspective of these analyses, state intervention and regulations are primarily burdens on private sector activity, and the broader developmental effects of nationalisation and the public revenue it generates are not considered. There is thus a considerable contrast between the investor-centred values embedded in the investment climate analysis on one hand, and the social, political and economic impacts of nationalisation on the other. Though it is difficult to establish a causal relationship here, the tendency of the evaluations is to some extent reflected in the levels of FDI in the hydrocarbon sector. Decline in investments begins before nationalisation, but investment levels plummet to almost zero the year after nationalisation is announced. Although foreign companies renegotiated their contracts to stay in the country, investment has stalled. There are signs of a comeback in investments, but not to the levels seen before the beginning of political uncertainty surrounding the gas sector in 2003. According to the official investment plan for 2009-2015 (YPFB, 2009), foreign firms are planning to invest 3.5 billion USD in exploiting already developed reserves, which represents almost 90 per cent of planned investments in exploitation. But in the exploration, finding and developing of new reserves, foreign firms have made almost no new commitments. The only commitment in the plan is for 50 million USD from Brazils Petrobras, which represents less than five per cent of total planned investment in exploration. Total has since committed 70 million USD for exploration (Reuters, 2010). Exploration commitments still fall far short of the 11 billion in investments that the government has called for (Oil Daily, 2009). The vast 94

majority of investment commitments to secure future production come from various Bolivian state owned firms. In this way, the apprehensions of private investors have created difficulties for the Morales administration in achieving its planned development in the hydrocarbons sector, for Bolivia is dependent on heavy investments in the sector if it is to meet its contractual commitments of gas deliveries to Brazil and Argentina. Of course, no singular supranational institution can directly instruct the Bolivian government to overturn nationalisation, and the IMF has merely an advisory role. Yet the external evaluations of the countrys investment climate provide diffuse yet clear incentives to water it down. Whether investment climate surveillance has a causal effect on actual investment levels is partly beside the point. The Bolivian government is aware that nationalisation is interpreted as a hostile act, and contractual partners are expected to treat it as such. It is therefore the very dissemination of investment climate evaluations , along with the particular values embedded in them, which shape these incentives and structure the reactions of potential investors and contractual partners. The expectation of particular reactions to non-orthodox policy is primarily what forms incentives for governments to act in a particular way, and it is these incentives that discipline attempts at non-orthodoxy. At the same time, the operating companies already established in the gas sector have not fled, but instead accepted renegotiation of their contracts (Stanley, 2008). Bolivia certainly has a strong bargaining chip in its large deposit of a natural resource priced highly in the international market and the sunk investments made during the decade before Morales came to power. All foreign companies in the gas sector opted to stay in Bolivia and renegotiate contracts despite warnings of a deteriorating investment climate and analyses of negative outlooks. These investors have most likely recovered their initial entry investment, and have little to lose from m aintaining operational activity. Bolivia and other countries with large deposits of natural resources have a degree of policy space generated from the simple fact that highly capital and technology intensive firms need these resources for their operations (which is probably why oil and gas sectors are usually the first ones nationalised). Ideologically based regional alliances have also provided an environment in which some degree of non-orthodoxy has been accepted. Bilateral relations with Brazil and Argentina have been important to Bolivias gas exports, which may have increased Morales policy space somewhat. But these countries are now attempting to decrease their dependence on Bolivian gas. Brazil responded to nationalisation by cancelling planned investments in pipelines between the two countries and announcing the construction of two LNG (liquefied natural gas) terminals in the northeast. Peru and Chile are also developing their gas export capacities, which may enable them to eat into Bolivias export markets and foreign investments. Recently Venezuela, China and the Russian Gazprom have signalled that they are willing to invest, potentially filling some the
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void left by private investors. Nationalisation was designed to generate state revenues for social spending and to satisfy popular demands for (at least symbolic) national sovereignty, while at the same time attract the necessary foreign investment. The values embedded in the architecture of investment climate surveillance arguably make these goals less compatible. The evaluations seem to place high value on political and economic stability, which is understandable from the investors point of view. Political and economic stability is of course generally a public good, in the sense that instability undermines redistributive policy, democratic procedures and government planning. Yet for unconsolidated democracies, stability may also hide democratic deficiencies. In the case of Bolivia, and also other Latin American countries, a changing balance of power and a mobilised civil society could be seen as signs of democratic maturation (Kurtz, 2004). A longer-term perspective on investment climates might valorise such changes, as these may signal transition towards future democratic stability, but surveillance evaluations primarily adopt short-term outlooks. The non-orthodox policy that nationalisation represents has been interpreted as an attack on investors interests and a threat to the private sector ability to generate profit. In this particular case it can be argued that these evaluations have been off the mark; nationalisation was followed by a boom in the sector and significant economic growth, despite a drop in private investment. It can also be argued that the surveillance analyses overemphasise Morales political rhetoric aimed at a national electoral constituency hungry for symbolic action, and fail to see the underlying social and political trends in the country that may benefit investors in the long run. However, we also see an indication of the discursive constraints on non-orthodoxy imposed by a complex set of unaccountable surveillance agents. This is much more than a problem of arbitrary ratings, and it is embedded in the structures and power relations of the global economic system itself. Towards a Critical Theory of Investment Climate Surveillance This article has explored and problematised what has been described as an emerging 'architecture of investment climate surveillance'. Its intended contribution is to take steps towards a critical theory of how this phenomenon delimits policy spaces for governments in the global South. It was initially asserted that investment climate agents must be seen as gatekeepers of foreign investments and capital flows, and that they have similarities with traditional conditionality arrangements in the IMF but with a more diffuse structure and far less accountability. The discourse of investment climate and the complex network of investment climate surveillance agents exercise a more dispersed form of power attached to their authoritative positions as providers of rational market information. This points to the need to go beyond concepts of sovereign power and assemble this critical theory 96

on the basis of Foucauldian concepts of disciplinary power and governmentality. Foucault described governmentality as a type of power that operates through a complex set of instruments, institutions and knowledge that normalise particular behaviours, actions, and ways of thinking. This is echoed in the way that the investment climate discourse, circulated by a complex set of agents, embeds particular investor-centred values in development orthodoxy and limits policy spaces for non-orthodox policy. On the basis of these preliminary theoretical reflections, the article has attempted to illustrate some of the basic mechanisms at work by examining reactions to Bolivias nationalisation of gas. This is not just to show how reactions were negative, which is to be expected, but to illustrate the evaluative framework and show the contrast between the investor-centred values promoted by the evaluations and the developmental effects of non-orthodox policy. Broader developmental effects or underlying structural changes, which may be beneficial for a country in the long run, do not seem to be part of the evaluative framework. While Bolivian nationalisation has resulted in a significant increase in state revenue and funds for poverty reduction programmes, investment climate evaluations have been negative across the board. Investment climate evaluations are articulating the short-term interests of private investors, and reward policy models that satisfy these interests. It would be difficult to prove that investment climate surveillance has a causal effect on actual investment levels, and this article has not attempted that. Instead, the point is that it is the investment climate evaluations and the particular values embedded in them that shape incentives and structure reactions of potential investors and contractual partners. It is primarily the expectation of particular reactions to non-orthodox policy that form incentives for governments to act in a particular way. As traditional conditionality is rethought and restructured within the IMF, World Bank or other development finance institutions, the gatekeeping of investment through investment climate surveillance appears as an emerging mechanism that channels policy in particular directions. But Thomas Friedmans suggestion that there are two superpowers in the world USA and Moodys (cited in Sinclair, 2005) is not particularly accurate. Agents of surveillance do not exercise discretionary power over perceptions on investment climates, and these agents do not control flows of resources in a direct way. Instead, these agents are in different respects dependent on the authority, competence and trust that capital markets confer onto them, factors that grant them particular positions in the architecture of surveillance. Authoritative legitimacy can be lost if evaluations fail to provide investors with precise and relevant surveillance. This does not mean that there are sufficient checks and balances on this architecture. These agents will maintain their position to the degree to which they manage to provide intelligence that is in the interest of private international investors. Compared to the traditional conditionality system, this decentralised system of investment climate surveillance is less
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subject to oversight. In fact, it is difficult to imagine this system being subject to any form of oversight and accountability at all, short of critical attention. There are multiple directions such critical theorisation and research can take. There is clearly scope for building on the preliminary theoretical reflections here to further conceptualise the forms of power that investment climate and other types of financial surveillance takes, and the types of disciplinary mechanisms through which it operates. There is also scope for statistical and econometric work to assess correlations between quantifiable investment climate evaluations and actual levels of investment, in order measure the effects that negative evaluations have on investment levels. This can be paired with attempts to develop more precise and less ideologically based indicators of economic risk. Further, the recent downgrade of the US credit rating by S&P, along with the subsequent stock market volatility, suggests that more work needs to be done on the politicised and subjective nature of rating agencies and their evaluations. A lot of media commentary is now focused on this issue, and much of it pointing to the apparent arbitrariness of the credit ratings of S&P and Moodys. Theoretical work should take this one step further by conducting more structurally oriented analyses of the broader architecture of financial surveillance; the economic interests in which it is embedded, and its effects on spaces for non-orthodox policy. More generally, critical debates on globalisation should pay attention to how the architecture of investment climate surveillance disciplines governments in global South by promoting a discourse of investment climate to create strong disincentives for non-orthodox policy. This deserves attention because investor-centred models are not necessarily overlapping with development objectives of governments in the South. Creating incentives for investors can certainly be in the interest of development but there are also situations where higher tax rates, more interventionist government policy and episodes of political instability are necessary steps on a countrys development path. It is also a challenge to democracy if agents of investment climate surveillance can narrow the policy space for governments while themselves remaining unaccountable to democratic governance structures. Notes
1
For background on this issue, compare IMF (2009b) with various articles published by the Bretton Woods Project (www.brettonwoodsproject.org). 2 Previous contributions have highlighted how trade agreements delineate spaces for national level policy (Chang, 2005; Gallagher et al., 2009; Hoekman, 2004; Khan, 2007), and how finance institutions discipline this policy (Boron, 2008; Gill, 1995a). 3 These agents do not necessarily use the term investment climate explicitly, although most do. In cases where they do not, I consider them relevant if they use a cognate term or perspective. 98
4 5
See www.doingbusiness.org, www.enterprisesurveys.org. Finance Minister Luis Arce, in interview with the author on 12 January 2007 in La Paz, Bolivia. 6 Bolivian authorities, cited in IMF (2010). 7 Positive economic results in the Bolivian gas sector can also be attributed to private investments made in the sector prior to nationalisation, and to the high international price of gas. I do not intend to downplay these factors here, but I focus here on the effects of policy shifts under Morales. 8 Standard and Poors have only two relevant ratings on Bolivia, both in 2003, so these are not drawn into the analysis here. 9 All B ratings are considered speculative (junk) and subject to high risk. B3 is the lowest B rating, one notch over CAA (or subject to very high risk.) References ALBA-PTA, 2007. Press release, 2 May 2007. Available at: http://www.cadtm.org/Bolivia-Venezuela-and-Nicaragua. Barrett, P., Chavez, D., & Rodrguez-Garavito, C., 2008. Utopia Reborn? In Barrett, P., Chavez, D. & Rodrguez-Garavito, C. eds., 2008. The New Latin American Left: Utopia Reborn. Amsterdam: Pluto Press. Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2007. BTI 2008: Bolivia Country Report. Gtersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung. . 2009. BTI 2010: Bolivia Country Report. Gtersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung. Boron, A., 2008. Promises and Challenges: The Latin American Left at the Start of the Twenty-First Century. In Barrett, P., Chavez, D. & Rodrguez-Garavito, C. eds., 2008. The New Latin American Left: Utopia Reborn. London: Pluto Press. Borzensztein, E., De Gregorio, J., & Lee, J.-W., 1998. How Does Foreign Direct Investment Affect Economic Growth? Journal of International Economics, 45(1), pp. 115-35. Braithwaite, J., & Drahos, P., 2000. Global Business Regulation. Cambridge: Cambrige University Press. Cerny, P., 1995. Globalization and the Changing Logic of Collective Action. International Organization, 49(4), pp. 595-625. Chang, H.-J., 2004. Regulation of Foreign Investment in Historical Perspective. The European Journal of Development Research, 16(3), pp. 687-715. . 2005. Policy Space in Historical Perspective - With Special Reference to Trade and Industrial Policies. Paper presented at Tufts University on the occasion of the award of the 2005 Leontief prize, 27 October 2005. Available
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at: http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/about_us/leontief/Chang_remarks.pdf Cremades, B., 2006. Resurgence of the Calvo Doctrine in Latin America. Business Law International, 7(1), pp. 53-72. Dalby, S., 1991. Critical Geopolitics: Discourse, Difference, and Dissent. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 9(2), pp. 261-83. Democracy Center, 2007. Interpreting Bolivia's Political Transformation: A Democracy Center Review of "Bolivia on the Brink" by Eduardo A. Gamarra. Cochabamba, Bolivia: Democracy Center. The Economist. (2010). So near and yet so far: A special report on Latin America. The Economist, September 11. Foucault, M., 1991. Governmentality. In Burchell, G., Gordon, C. & Miller, P. eds., 1991. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. . 2004. Society Must Be Defended. London: Penguin Books. Fraser, N., 2008. Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World . Cambridge: Polity Press. Gallagher, K., Chudnovsky, D., & Porzecanski, R., 2009. FDI and Sustainable Development in the Americas. In Gallagher, K. & Chudnovsky, D. eds., 2009. Rethinking Foreign Investment for Sustainable Development. London: Anthem Press. Gill, S., 1995a. The Global Panopticon? The Neoliberal State, Economic Life, and Democratic Surveillance. Alternatives, 20(2), pp. 1-49. . 1995b. Globalisation, Market Civilisation, and Disciplinary Neoliberalism. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 24(3), pp. 399-423. Green, D., 2003. Silent Revolution: The Rise and Crisis of Market Economics in Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press. Haarstad, H., 2009. Globalization and the New Spaces for Social Movement Politics: The Marginalization of Labor Unions in Bolivian Gas Nationalization. Globalizations, 6(2), pp. 169-85. Heritage Foundation, 2009. 2009 Index of Economic Freedom. Washington DC: Heritage Foundation. Hewko, J., 2002. Foreign Direct Investment in Transitional Economies: Does the Rule of Law Matter? East European Constitutional Review, 11/12(4), pp. 71-9. Hill, C., 2004. Regulating the Rating Agencies. Washington University Law Quarterly, 82(1), pp. 43-95. Hoekman, B., 2004. Operationalizing the Concept of Policy Space in the WTO: Beyond Special and Differential Treatment. Paper presented at the Third Annual Conference on Preparing the Doha Development Round: WTO Negotiators
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Meet the Academics, held at the European University Institute, 2-3 July 2004. IMF, 2006a. Press Briefing. 18 May 2006. Transcript available at http://www.imf.org/external/np/tr/2006/tr060518.htm. . 2006b. Bolivia: 2006 Article IV ConsultationStaff Report. Country Report No. 06/270. Washington DC: International Monetary Fund. . 2009a. Bolivia: 2008 Article IV Consultation - Staff Report. Country Report No. 09/27. Washington DC: International Monetary Fund. . 2009b. Creating Policy Space: Responsive Design and Streamlined Conditionality in recent Low-Income Country Programmes. Washington DC: International Monetary Fund. Strategy, Policy and Review Department. . 2009c. Latin America's Debt. Finance & Development, 46(1). . 2010. Bolivia: 2009 Article IV Consultation - Staff Report. Country Report No. 10/27. Washington DC: International Monetary Fund. James, H., 1995. The Historical Development of the Principle of Surveillance. IMF Staff Papers, 42(4), pp. 762-91. Jayasuriya, K., 1999. Globalization, Law, and the Transformation of Sovereignty: The Emergence of Global Regulatory Governance. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 6(2), pp. 425-55. Jessop, B., 2007. From Micro-Powers to Governmentality: Foucault's Work on Statehood, State Formation, Statecraft and State Power. Political Geography, 26(1), pp. 34-40. Keeling, D., 2004. Latin American Development and the Globalization Imperative: New Directions, Familiar Crises. Journal of Latin American Geography, 3(1), pp. 121. Khan, S. R., 2007. WTO, IMF and the Closing of Development Policy Space for LowIncome Countries: A Call for Neo-Developmentalism. Third World Quarterly, 28(6), pp. 1073-90. Kurtz, M. J., 2004. The Dilemmas of Democracy in the Open Economy: Lessons from Latin America. World Politics, 56(January), pp. 262-302. Lall, S., & Narula, R., 2004. Foreign Direct Investment and its Role in Economic Development: Do We Need a New Agenda? The European Journal of Development Research, 16(3), pp. 447-64. Lemke, T., 2002. Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique. Rethinking Marxism, 14(3), pp. 49-64. Manzano, O., & Monaldi, F., 2008. The Political Economy of Oil Production in Latin America. Economia, 9(1), pp. 59-103. Martinez, N., 2007. Bolivia's Nationalisation: Understanding the Process and Gauging
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the Results. Washington DC: Institute for Policy Studies. Moore, M., & Schmitz, H., 2008. Idealism, Realism and the Investment Climate in Developing Countries. Institute for Development Studies, Working Paper Series, No. 307. Brighton: IDS. Narula, R., 2002. Switching from import substitution to the 'New Economic Model' in Latin America: A case of not learning from Asia. LAEBA Working Paper No. 4. New York: Inter-American Development Bank and Asian Development Bank. Nunnenkamp, P., 2004. To What Extent Can Foreign Direct Investment Help Achieve International Development Goals? The World Economy, 27(5), pp. 657-77. Ocampo, J. A., & Vos, R., 2006. Policy Space and the Changing Paradigm in Conducting Macroeconomic Policies in Developing Countries. Paper presented at the at the FONDAD-UN/DESA seminar on Policy Space for Developing Countries in a Globalized World.
OECD/IADB, 2006. Competition Law and Policy in Latin America: Peer Reviews of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Peru. Paris: OECD/IADB. The Oil Daily, 2009. Bolivia seeks foreign investment to boost gas production. The Oil Daily, 12 October 2009. Popke, J. E., 1994. Recasting Geopolitics: The Discursive Scripting of the International Monetary Fund. Political Geography, 13(3), pp. 255-69. Reuters, 2010. Total starts natgas exploration project in Bolivia, Reuters, 9 February 2010. Rodrik, D., 1989. Promises, Promises: Credible Policy Reform via Signalling. The Economic Journal, 99(September), pp. 756-72. S&P Credit Research, 2006. Credit FAQ: Bolivias Nationalisation Decree on Energy Activities: The impact on Sovereign And Corporate Ratings. New York: Standard and Poor's. Schultz, B., 2001. Poverty and Development in the Age of Globalization: The Role of Foreign Aid. In Wilson, F., Kanji, N. & Braathen, E. eds., 2001. Poverty Reduction: What Role for the State in Today's Globalized Economy? London: Zed Books/CROP. Silver, N. 2011. Why S.&P.'s Ratings Are Substandard and Porous. New York Times Blogs, 8 August 2011. Available at: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/why-s-p-s-ratings-aresubstandard-and-porous/ Sinclair, T., 2005. The New Masters of Capital: American Bond Rating Agencies and the Politics of Creditworthiness. London: Cornell University Press. Spiller, P., Stein, E., & Tommasi, M., 2008. Political Institutions, Policymaking, and Policy: An Introduction. In Stein, E. & Tommasi, M. eds., 2008. Policymaking in Latin America: How Politics Shapes Policies. Washington DC: Inter102
American Development Bank. Stanley, L., 2008. Natural Resources & Foreign Investors: A tale of three Andean countries. Working Group on Development and Environment in the Americas: Discussion Paper Number 16. Medford, MA: Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University. Swyngedouw, E., 2000. Authoritarian Governance, Power, and the Politics of Rescaling. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 18(1), pp. 63-76. Tarrow, S., 1988. National Politics and Collective Action: Recent Theory and Research in Western Europe and the United States. Annual Review of Sociology, 14(August), pp. 421-40. UN, 2003. Monterrey Consensus on Financing for Development. International Conference on Financing for Development, 18-22 March 2002. Monterrey, Mexico: United Nations. UNDP, 2005. International Cooperation at a Crossroads: Aid, Trade and Security in an Unequal World. Human Development Report 2005. New York: UNDP. US Department of State. 2009. 2009 Investment Climate Statement - Bolivia. Available at: http://www.state.gov/e/eeb/rls/othr/ics/2009/117852.htm Vallejo, A., 2007. Expansion of International Arbitration in Latin America. Mealey's International Arbitration Report, 22(3), pp. 1-3. Wallis, W., 2000. Senegal first in ratings game. Financial Times, 18 December. Weisbrot, M., Ray, R., & Johnston, J., 2009. Bolivia: The Economy During the Morales Administration. Washington DC: Center for Economic and Policy Research. World Bank, 2005. World Development Report 2005: A Better Investment Climate for Everyone. New York: The World Bank/Oxford University Press. YPFB, 2009. Plan de Inversiones 2009-2015. [Investment Plan 2009-2015]. La Paz, Bolivia: Yacimientos Petrolferos Fiscales Bolivianos.
Hvard Haarstad is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of Geography, University of Bergen. His current research focuses on the political economy of natural resource governance in Latin America, and he is preparing an edited collection on the topic with Palgrave Macmillan. He can be reached at Havard.Haarstad@geog.uib.no
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Introduction: #OCCUPYIRTHEORY?1
Nicholas J. Kiersey
The idea for this special commentary forum emerged out of a conversation with a number of friends and colleagues concerning the question of whether or not we were, as scholars of International Relations (IR) and International Political Economy (IPE), at all equipped to teach our students about the significance of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movements. During this conversation, the thought emerged that OWS might be taken as a kind of cue for us to check in and think about the relevancy of our work, and our relationships with the world of political activism. In becoming career academics, we had all been guided by the hope that we were doing something good for the world. As we quickly learned, however, this was not an easy or straightforward proposition academia has its way of letting us know what sort of things we can and can't do if we want to be secure in our positions. As we followed the news about OWS over various networks and, where possible, ventured out to the General Assemblies from Berlin to Dublin to New York to Columbus, OH we felt a sense of embarrassment. For while we were busy pursuing our careers, out on the streets there were people often including our students who were risking so much to express their indignation. As many in IR and IPE will attest, we live in a global regime full of particularity and nuance: meanings are constructed, and political power is multi-modal, ever contingent. But the occupiers on the street are finding solidarity in a common language which speaks of shared experience in the face of austerity, collapsed public services, shortterm contracts, stagnant wages, anti-union legislation, ridiculous bank bailouts and profiteering, not to mention a host of associated psychological and physical conditions brought on by the stress of this hardship. As scholars, are we immunized against any of these concerns? Universities, our immediate places of work, are under attack. Many who labor in academia enjoy little in the way of job security or benefits. Tuition is increasing, often by stealth. And this all in the context of a low-wage economy that presupposes the enablement of consumption through expansion of debt, and a culture ever more intent on normalizing the risk-oriented mindset of neoliberalisms entrepreneur of the self. In such times, the injunction to maintain the Weberian distinction between teaching and doing politics becomes suspicious to say the least.
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Introduction to Occupy IR Symposium, Kiersey

Is there a way we can express solidarity with the 99%? Obviously, as individuals, one of the best ways is to spend time with the occupiers themselves. As scholars, however, other answers to this question also present themselves. We do certain things well, and other things not so well. In this volume we wish to ask, simply, what might it mean to #occupy IR and IPE? The short essays and critical fragments that follow all constitute efforts to answer this question. Some are more theoretical in nature, exploring how OWS imagines world politics, and how its categories relate to our own. Others are more empirical, exploring the movement in terms of its significance for world politics, and its relation to other social movements. Should #occupyirtheory stop here? Writing close to the end of 2011, with many of the larger occupations now broken up by the police, and colder weather settling in, it is hard to make any predictions as to how the movements will fare in 2012. Yet it is equally hard to imagine that energy dissipating altogether. The rhythm of our own academic calendar will bring many of us to conferences, and put us in conversations with colleagues and friends, new and old. We will discuss issues, ideas, and plan collaborations. Might we not use these occasions as opportunities to give the discipl ine its very own mic check? For some, such conversations might involve thinking about how we should incorporate the challenge of OWS into the textbooks we write for our students. For others, a public lecture or teach-in at one of our major conferences (or, perhaps more powerfully, an invitation to local occupiers to come lecture us) might be in order. Others still may prefer to forgo conferences altogether and use the time to engage in their own locality. Either way, in the weeks and months ahead, communication will be key. If you are a Twitter user, you might note the existence already of a #occupyirtheory hashtag, and include this in your conference tweets (i.e., #ISA2012) or publication notices. Note too the existence of a ninety-strong Facebook group (search for #occupyirtheory/ipe), where conversations about occupying IR and IPE have been underway already for some months. Finally, there is an open WordPress blog where you can sign up for an account and publish your thoughts more publicly at http://occupyirtheory.info/. It is hoped eventually that this site will be the host for a common statement by interested scholars, in solidarity with the occupations. It also features a growing blogroll listing a range of related sites. As the below list will attest, other academic disciplines are having similar discussions: anthropology, philosophy, economics, and political science. We are not alone. Something has changed. A creative space has been opened. OWS has catalyzed a long overdue conversation about how wealth is created and distributed in the global political economy. If the short pieces that follow help to provoke a greater engagement
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with it on our part, then we will think this project a success. On behalf of all the contributors, thank you for reading. Links to academic sites examining OWS issues Living Anthropologically: http://www.livinganthropologically.com/2011/10/22/anthropology-moral-optimismcapitalism-four-field-manifesto/ NewPolitics: http://newpol.org/node/546 Occupy Philosophy (blog): http://occupyphil.org/ Occupy Economics (statement): http://econ4.org/statement-on-ows Occupy History (blog): http://occupyhistory.tumblr.com/ Note
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This project would not have been possible without the support and enthusiasm of a number of people, including Wanda Vrasti, Lucian Ashworth, Elisabeth Chaves, Asli Calkivik and Anna Agathangelou. A very special thanks to Amin Samman and the team at the Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies for the offer to publish this collection on such short notice.
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Three Thoughts, Jackson
Three Thoughts About What #occupyirtheory Might Mean

Patrick Thaddeus Jackson
It is a basic principle of a broadly pragmatist approach to theoretically analyzing politics of all kinds that the important innovations emerge in worldly practice before they show up in academic writings. Theory and theorists follow along behind overt political action, extracting and systematizing insights in such a way that they become more widely available than they would if they simply remained in their original context. In so doing, theory and theorists provide conceptual instrumentsincluding explicit visions of alternate futures that may have been only implicit in worldly practice that can inform future political practice, albeit in ways that belie or even contradict the abstract, idealized purity of the kinds of theoretically-informed explanations produced by academics. Theory and theorists must therefore be open to learning from events, because we have to listen before we can speak. What might we theoretically-informed scholars of world politics learn from the #occupy movement, and especially, from #occupywallstreet (or #ows) itself? 1) To occupy in the #ows sense means something like assembling constitutively, and thus calling attention to the contingency of whatever is being occupied. Rousseau captured something of this spirit when he argued that when the people assemble as the sovereign, the jurisdiction of the government ceases; #ows carries something of this primal kind of claim to sovereignty, but its ambit is much greater because every social arrangement, and not just the government, is subject to being disclosed as contingent. Contingency here is two-fold: historical contingency (it didnt have to be like this) and contingency on social action (its only this way because of how we (re -) produce and sustain it). This means, broadly speaking, a radically social constructivist scientific ontology: the world is (to borrow a phrase from Nicholas Onuf) a world of our making, a world that we have produced collectively and historically, and a world that we continue to produce and reproduce through our tacit consent, as well as sometimes through our explicit activity. Thus, occupied IR and IPE theory should be neither essentialist nor determinist, but should seek to highlight all the ways that social arrangements stem from ongoing activity
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and processactivity that can be disrupted, and process that can be redirected. Probably not through the simple desire to do so, however, which is where a precise and systematic account of how apparent stability and solidity is produced and reproduced in practice can prove particularly useful. 2) #ows occupying Wall Street means embodying the assertion that the organizations of high finance should be accountable to the public, and should not be allowed to make decisions that affect vast numbers of people according to putatively technical or selfinterested calculations. Or: that the economy is the creation of the people instead of the peoples master, and should as such be treated as a means to an end rather than an end in itself; and that that end, in turn, is a moral end, rooted in cultural practices and the experiences they codify rather than in transcendent laws. Thus, occupied IR and IPE theory should always be evaluated according to the effects it has on peoples lives, and perhaps especially according to the values it enshrines and advances. This means, among other things, that neither IR nor IPE theory should be about the exclusion of scholarly voices, but should be about articulating pluralist standards for scholarship that can fulfill the vital function of forging conceptual tools out of the hurly-burly and blooming, buzzing confusion of everyday life. 3) The hashtag is important. Among other things, it indicates an embrace of novel modes of expression (for scholars, beyond the peer-reviewed article and the top-10 academic press book) and novel forms of sociality (for scholars, beyond the academic department and the professional conference, even beyond the bar at the professional conference). Which is not to say that occupied IR and IPE theory involves abandoning scholarship or refusing to engage in traditional academic activities like publishing books and articles or attending conferences, but it is to say that occupied IR and IPE theory should not confined to those traditional activities. As the practices of everyday life morph and change, the sources for vital theory evolve in surprising and unexpected ways, so the best we can do is to watch where things are heading, and engage as appropriate. Do not fear the hashtag, the tweet, the status update and the blog; rather, use these novel modes of expression in service to the classic scholarly vocation of making sense of the world in ways that might benefit others by providing what Weber once called the ploughshares to loosen the soil of contemplative thought contemplative thought from which action eventually springs. Patrick Thaddeus Jackson is Associate Professor of International Relations at the School of International Service in American University, Washington, DC, where he is also Director of General Education. He previously taught at Columbia University and New York University. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University in 2001. In 2003-2004, he served as President of the International Studies Association108
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Northeast; in 2012-2013, and he will do so again. He is presently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Relations and Development, and Series Editor of the University of Michigan Press' book series Configurations: Critical Studies of World
Politics.
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Occupy Wall Street and IPE: Insights and Implications1

Elizabeth Cobbett and Randall Germain
The academic discipline of International Political Economy (IPE) is a hard-nosed and empirically-oriented field of study. The usual subjects of IPE often include the organization of international trade, global finance, transnational production, national welfare and competitiveness, productivity levels and of course state actions and expenditures. The actions of a handful of protestors such as the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement rarely attract academic attention. In this case, however, we should take note. In our view, the actions of OWS provide further clues that we are entering an era of significant transformation in the organization and structure of world order. The insights generated by reflecting on this movement suggest that the inter-subjective mentality at the heart of global capitalism is no longer coherent, with the implication that we are at long last about to leave behind a half century of American hegemony. Where IPE considers developments in the organization and structure of world order, it rarely considers issues associated with subjectivity, or the ideational and intersubjective core of a world orders dominant ethos. Yet, it can be argued that absen t a consideration of subjectivity, namely the collective production of self-understanding and its role in directing human activity, it is difficult to generate a comprehensive account of the strength or weakness of any given structure of world order (Germain, 2011). OWS reminds us of the need for an ontology able to apprehend the changing inter-subjective dynamics that buttress world orders. The work of Robert W. Cox provides such an ontology. His particular version of historical materialism understands historical structures and human agency to emerge out of historical processes that frame, shape and promote or impede civilizational change (Cox, 2002; cf. Germain, 2011). We can use his framework as a useful vantage point from which to reflect on the significance of the OWS movement. It is important to note first that the OWS is not simply a North American movement. We can trace its origins to the food riots throughout 2007 and 2008 in Africa, the Indian Sub-continent and East Asia. In Europe, unrest has been simmering and boiling over since 2010, especially in Greece and Spain. OWS also builds on historic movements against capitalism such as the Stop the City demonstrations of 1983 and 110
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1984, when the financial district of London was targeted. And of course the Arab Spring began as local reaction in Tunisia early in 2011 but has acquired a solidity that has affected political developments in a number of North African and Middle East states. The common elements of these protests include the pressures being brought to bear on what Fernand Braudel has identified as the arena of material life (Braudel, 1973 [1967]), and the crisis in political representation exemplified by the loss of faith in how political institutions operate to channel and address societal problems. These waves of resistance and confrontation are now lapping at the feet of Wall Street. We see the relevance of OWS to be twofold: (1) it is a manifestation of the declining legitimacy of the institutions most clearly linked to the current organization of world order; and (2) it is occurring at the core of global financial power, where the fit between ideology and practice should be tightest. OWS is both the expression of this disconnect and a catalyst for making it authentic and organic. As Cox reminds us, it is the agency associated with already structured patterns of social relations that produce the world we live in. Yet this agency is always in a condition of development, and is open to new conceptions or interpretations of existing circumstances. As a physical statement of a disconnect between the financial practices of an elite sector of the global political economy and the living standards of the majority population, OWSs activities represent an attempt to shift an established inter -subjective (or popular) view about capitalisms (dys-) functionality by reconfiguring the social world through assembly and speech. It brings a material practice occupation to bear on our collective consciousness, which is in part how we understand our social being to develop. Occupations are about bodies; bodies being and bodies staying and claiming space and change. Self and collective selves are the site for protest; bodies create the material happening of public protest as a means to bring forward some kind of desired transformation. At this very material level, then, we can agree with Judith Butler (2011) that OWS might be viewed as a struggle for creating a public space for occupation. This continual struggle for and claim over public space is accompa nied by a struggle over those basic ways in which we are, as bodies, supported in the world a struggle against disenfranchisement, effacement, and abandonment (Butler, 2011). The body is political and it is guided by changing ideas and a consciousness about self and the world and our place in this world. The occupation of a limited number of spaces/bodies is changing our collective conversation about how we understand capitalism to work. 1% of the population owns 60 percent of the wealth ... there is no sense in trying to live the American dream (OWS, 2011). The very clear realization that the people are oppressed became the front line of shaping the meaning of OWS as it spread to ever widening audiences. The press tried to contain this extension through condescension: What did these foolish, ignorant youth (and a few elderly women) know about the economy? Did they have any positive program? Were they disciplined?
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(Wallerstein, 2011). One blogger on the OWS site points to this counter effort to discredit the movement: I was listening to WOR 710 am this morning and one of the issues that keeps surfacing making us look like kooks is that there is no realistic message and plan to facilitate implementing the message (OWS 2011, 9th comment). But this lack of a realistic message is seen as mirroring the true nature of finance: OWS is being portrayed as incoherent and Wall Street as coherent; there is nothing coherent about Wall Street since the firms of finance are often in conflict and have interests that are in conflict with each other (Facebook post 1, 2011). An important element of the protests for me is that they are repeatedly saying the impossible, demanding the impossible. The dominant paradigm says capitalism is good and it's the only system that works. Anything else is impossible. Occupy is reflecting it back: capitalism is impossible (Facebook post 2, 2011). This play of possible and impossible and coherence as opposed to the incoherent demands of the occupiers unsettles the rationalities used to justify finance and the political structures that underpin it. We might reflect that the power of OWS lies in part in its incoherence, in its spontaneous reactions to a declining legitimacy of the present orders key institutions. Here its importance does not lie in measuring the singular coherence of its own acts, but rather in the generalizability of the thought processes that lie behind the acts (Germain, 2011). This is the point that links subjectivity to world order: t he current system has lost its self-evidence, its automatic legitimacy, and now the field is open (iek, 2011). This loss of automatic legitimacy can be seen to represent a significant corrosion of the current world orders dominant inter-subjective ethos, and it is being enacted through the occupation of a symbolic space at the center of global capitalism. It might be seen to constitute one important element of civilizational change of the kind suggested by Cox, although not of course the only one. The implication of this insight for IPE is that we need to focus on understanding what motivates historical agents to undertake actions that so starkly reflect a disconnect between what leading institutions (economic, political, social) promise, and what they deliver. It is these actions conceived of as the logical end points of definite and concrete thought processes which can shed light on the formation (and dissolution) of inter-subjective formulations that stand at the heart of structures of world order. OWS is telling us something important about the current formulation of this ethos and its future. We would be remiss if we failed to listen.
Note
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Special thanks to Jacques Labont, Sarah Martin and Ajay Parasram who contributed their thoughts and ideas for the first draft.
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References Braudel, F., 1973 [1967]. Capitalism and Material Life: 1400-1800, Trans. M. Kochan. New York: Harper & Row. Butler, J., 2011. Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street [Internet]. Available at <http://www.eipcp.net/transversal/1011/butler/en>. Accessed on 21 November 2011. Cox, R. W., 2002. The Political Economy of a Plural World: Critical Reflections on Power, Morals and Civilization. Intro. Michael G. Schechter. London: Routledge. Germain, R., 2011. New Marxism and the Problem of Subjectivity: Towards a Critical and Historical International Political Economy. In Stuart Shields, Ian Bruff and Huw Macartney (eds.), Critical International Political Economy: Dialogue, Debate and Dissensus. New York: Palgrave. Occupy Wall Street. 2011. Right Here All Over [Internet]. Available at <http://occupywallst.org/article/right-here-all-over/> Accessed on 23 November 2011. Wallerstein, I., 2011. The Fantastic Success of Occupy Wall Street [Internet]. Available at <http://www.iwallerstein.com/fantastic-success-occupy-wall-street/> Accessed on 23 November 2011. iek, S., 2011. Slavoj iek: Capitalism with Asian Values. Al Jazeera [Video]. Available at <http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/talktojazeera/2011/10/2011102813 360731764.html%29> Accessed on 23 November 2011.
Elizabeth Cobbett is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Her research explores the different ways in which global finance seeks profitable opportunities within localized social structures. Randall Germain is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Carleton University, Canada. His most recent book is Global Politics and Financial Governance (Palgrave, 2010).
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.
Authoritarian Neoliberalism, the Occupy Movements, and IPE

Ian Bruff
In the absence of any kind of hegemonic aura, neoliberal practices have proved increasingly unable to garner the consent, or even the reluctant acquiescence, necessary for more normal modes of governance. Of particular importance in the post -2007 crisis has been the growing frequency with which constitutional and legal changes, in the name of economic necessity, are seeking to reshape the purpose of the state and associated institutions. This attempted reconfiguration is three-fold: (1) the more immediate appeal to material circumstances as a reason for the state being unable, despite the best will in the world, to reverse processes such as greater socioeconomic inequality and dislocation; (2) the deeper and longer-term recalibration of what kind of activity is feasible and appropriate for non-market institutions to engage in, diminishing expectations in the process; and (3) the reconceptualisation of the state as increasingly non-democratic through its subordination to constitutional and legal rules that are necessary for prosperity to be achieved. This process, of states reconfiguring themselves in increasingly nondemocratic ways in response to profound capitalist crisis, is what I view as the rise of authoritarian neoliberalism. Authoritarian neoliberalism does not represent a wholesale break from earlier neoliberal practices, yet it is qualitatively distinctive due to way in which dominant social groups are less interested in neutralising resistance and dissent via concessions and forms of compromise that maintain their hegemony, favouring instead the explicit exclusion and marginalisation of such groups. However, the global crisis has intensified the crisis of legitimation already confronting various capitalist states for instance, declining voter turnout and party membership, greater electoral volatility, growing mistrust of the political elite meaning that authoritarian neoliberalism is simultaneously strengthening and weakening the state as the latter reconfigures into a less open and therefore more fragile polity. As a result, the attempted authoritarian fix is potentially a sticking plaster rather than anything more epochal. The question, therefore, is whether the contradictions inherent to authoritarian neoliberalism especially with regard to the strengthening/weakening of
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the state will create the conditions in which a more progressive and radical politics can begin to reverse the tide of the last three decades. As things stand, the crisis has ambiguous implications for radical/progressive politics of the Left, not least because radical politics is often being practised most successfully by radical Right movements and parties. This is the case if one considers the rise of xenophobia and racism in Europe, the Tea Party in the US, or indeed the more general anti-party dominance of charismatic figureheads such as Putin in various countries. However, the occupy movements have proved to be a welcome corrective to the pessimism that the above observations encourage (regarding Putin, too, as we have seen in recent weeks). In particular, they have forced onto the agenda a fundamental challenge to the dominant narratives of the crisis, which combined with the decline of mass political parties and the imbrication of all main parties with a system in crisis has made the state an increasingly direct target of a range of popular struggles, demands and discontent. This is crucial, because the state and its associated institutions have often been viewed as somehow inherently more progressive and democratic than the market. As a result, Left politics has frequently been guilty of taking the law to be somehow neutral, ignoring in the process how non-market social forms have been central to the rise of neoliberalism and thus the growing inequalities of power which characterise the world in which we live. This was expressed vividly in the clearing of Zuccotti Park in New York, which not only displayed clearly (despite the attempts to herd journalists into one part of the park) the brute coercive capacities of state power, but also the denial of the constitutional right to expressive protest in the name of democracy. However, it is not an isolated case, with justifications of police violence and the mobilisation of juridical power against the occupy and other movements being a routine part of events across the globe (see for example the rather different response, compared to several months earlier, by the Egyptian security apparatuses to the occupation of Tahrir Square in late 2011). In consequence, the occupy movements have exposed the authoritarian neoliberal state to protest and struggle, and its continued delegitimation, from a radical/progressive perspective that continues to affirm the values embodied in notions of solidarity, equality and cooperation. This alerts us in a more expansive way to how inequalities of power are produced and reproduced in capitalist societies, enabling us to consider how other, more emancipatory and progressive, worlds are possible. So what of IPE? As with many aspects of the broader discipline of Political Science, IPE has been comfortable with dividing our world into distinct spheres, each with their own intrinsic properties and norms. Therefore, now would be the time to overcome these artificial dichotomies and reinvigorate the study of the international political economy; even if the scholar in question is not interested in emancipatory issues, then surely the need for more adequate, holistic analyses is now necessary as well as desirable. Apparently not: journals and conferences continue to talk of the market over
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Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012) here and the state over there, interests over here and values over there, economic crisis over here and political responses over there, democracy over here and authoritarianism over there. I could go on... As things stand, IPE asks interesting
questions about the world, but it is increasingly unfit for the purpose of exploring these questions.
Ian Bruff is Lecturer in International Relations in the Department of Politics, History and International Relations at Loughborough University. He has been Chair of the Critical Political Economy Research Network of the European Sociological Association since 2009, and a member of the Steering Committee for the Standing Group on International Relations of the European Consortium for Political Research since 2010. He recently joined the editorial team for the Routledge/RIPE Series in Global Political Economy, and from 2012-14 will be the Chair of the Book Prize panel of judges for the International Political Economy working group of the British International Studies Association.
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Reconciliation or Bust?, Chaves
Reconciliation or Bust?
Elisabeth Chaves
Mainstream economics posits the economy as a disembedded sphere generally governed by its own rules and principles. In reality, the economy is comprised of social relations, and conflicting interests configure those relationships. As a result, our political economy is the outcome of that conflict, a reconciliation between democracy and capitalism, variously termed democratic capitalism, embedded liberalism, or the welfare state. Any reconciliation though is temporary, and democratic capitalism, as it has existed since World War II, has managed a number of attempts to resolve conflicts between labor and capital.1 Wolfgang Streeck (2011, p. 7), in his recent New Left Review article, describes democratic capitalism as a political economy ruled by two conflicting principles, or regimes, of resource allocation: one operating according to marginal productivity, or what is revealed as merit by a free play of market forces, and the other based on social need or entitlement, as certified by the collective choices of democratic politics. Under democratic capitalism, governments are theoretically required to honour both principles simultaneously, although substantively the two almost never align. This ongoing tension is what Streeck calls the normal condition of democratic capitalism. More importantly, crises are the byproducts of these reconciliation efforts. Therefore, crises are also the normal condition of capitalism. A brief and simplified outline of past resolutions is helpful, and what follows is borrowed from Streeck. The organized working classes first accepted capitalist markets and property rights in exchange for political democracy that included social security and a rising standard of living in the growth period following World War II. The welfare state provided labor with the right to collectively bargain, allowing them to negotiate a higher wage. By also guaranteeing full employment, in keeping with the Keynesian model then adopted, the state leveraged labors bargaining power. As growth began to stall, the government continued to protect employment, with rising inflation as a byproduct. Inflation and stalled growth resulted in the stagflation of the 1970s. The Reagan
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administration targeted inflation by sharply raising interest rates. Increasing unemployment resulted and was made more feasible politically by breaking union power. However, inflation and unemployment put more demands on the state to provide social benefits, including fulfilling the promises (social entitlements) made in previous negotiations with labor, that had exchanged wage moderation for unemployment insurance, social security, and the like. Public debt was the byproduct this time. As that too became untenable, for political and economic reasons, the proposed solution was the deregulation of financial markets.2 This led to an increase in private debt as financial firms found ever new ways to offer credit. They amplified the money supply for this credit through complicated processes of securitization. However, deregulation accompanied by an ever-riskier use of securitization and derivatives resulted in the financial crisis of 2008 and its accompanying fallout. To prevent another Great Depression, states spent money, once again contributing to a large public deficit. As Streeck notes, every compromise lasts only so long. In fact, Streeck goes so far as to argue that any lasting reconciliation between social and economic stability in capitalist democracies is a utopian project (2011, p. 24). In periods of stability, the anomaly rather than the rule, reconciliation appears feasible and lasting. That is why each crisis comes as such a shock. Despite the regular and increasing appearance of crises, theorists, whether economists, political scientists, or sociologists, continue to argue that reconciliation is possible. Those that ignore the tension between capitalism and democracy are even more in the dark. Gabriel Almond, a former president of the American Political Science Association, believed in reconciliation. In an interesting lecture that reviewed the relationship between capitalism and democracy, asking whether one supported or subverted the other, Almond pointed to evidence that democracy supported capitalism through the very tension that needed resolving. He argued that social demands on the market economy produced a form of democratic welfare capitalism that prevented capitalisms demise. Other theorists, usually of a more Marxist persuasion, have made similar arguments. In essence, capitalism is reformed by adopting and adapting to its critique. Almond (1991, p. 474) claimed that [d]emocratic welfare capitalism produces that reconciliation of opposing and complementary elements which makes possible the survival, even enhancements of both of these sets of institutions. It is not a static accommodation, but rather one which fluctuates over time, with capitalism being compromised by the tax-transfer-regulatory action of the state at one point, and then correcting in the direction of the reduction of the intervention of the state at another point, and with a learning process over time that may reduce the amplitude of the curves. Almonds portrayal of democratic capitalisms reconciliation is akin to mainstream 118
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economists description of the business cycle. There are fluctuations, growth spurts and recessions, but the cycle, as our policy tools improve, can be managed and smoothed out. Barry Eichengreen makes a similar claim for a lasting reconciliation in his analysis of the international monetary system. In his book, Globalizing Capital, he asks whether Karl Polanyis (2001) basic thesis stands the test of time: Can the international monetary history of the second half of the twentieth century be understood as the further unfolding of Polanyian dynamics, in which democratization again came into conflict with economic liberalization in the form of free capital mobility and fixed exchange rates? Or do recent trends toward floating rates and monetary unification point to ways of reconciling freedom and stability in the two domains? (Eichengreen, 2008, p. 3) Eichengreen concludes that the flexibility and stability of floating exchange rates and monetary unification as seen in the Eurozone may feasibly offer such a reconciliation. The recent crisis and its magnitude, not to mention the potential implosion of the Eurozone, highlight the naivet of such arguments. However, our attempts to respond to the current crisis demonstrate the continued faith in reconciliation. Many believe that this crisis, which they name a financial crisis, can be wholly blamed on the greed of Wall Street and financial liberalization.3 They then believe that it can be resolved through greater financial regulation. But how lasting will this reconciliation be, even if it is politically feasible? As Streeck argues, the arenas of distributional conflict have become more remote from popular politics as more and more political power appears privatized. Movements like Occupy Wall Street are an understandable response to the resulting democratic deficits. The necessary question becomes whether sufficient political power can be returned to the public within todays capitalist economy.
Notes
1
These competing tensions predate World War II and are fruitfully explored in Karl Polanyis The Great Transformation (2001). 2 What makes public debt untenable, or when is public debt too large, is a contentious question. Those economists and politicians who try to simplify it by calling for balanced budgets may mask certain interests served by such claims. The better question to ask then is who gains and who loses when public debt grows. 3 As Chris Harman wrote, [m]ajor economic crises almost invariably involve crashes of
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banks and other financial institutions as well as the bankruptcy of productive firms and rising unemployment for workers. It is easy then for people to misunderstand what is happening and to blame finance, the banks or money for the crisis, rather than the capitalist basis of production (2010, p. 67). These simple conclusions, Harman argued, produce simple solutions, i.e., that the way to prevent future crises is through greater regulation of finance. References Almond, G., 1991. Capitalism and Democracy. PS: Political Science and Politics, September, 467-474. Eichengreen, B., 2008. Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System (2nd ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Harman, C., 2010. Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books. Polanyi, K., 2001. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Streeck, W., 2011. The Crises of Democratic Capitalism. New Left Review, 71, 5-29.
Elisabeth Chaves is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Government and International Affairs in Virginia Tech's School of Public and International Affairs. Her research focuses on the literary political economy of scholarly communication, and the nexus of political theory and writing practices.
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Mic Check, Vrasti
Mic Check/Reality Check

Wanda Vrasti
Over the past couple of months history has been unfolding with dizzying speed. The #occupy model of leaderless, demandless direct action, which in the beginning no one with only a slim understanding of how capitalism works thought could become anything more than a facile if charming jab at anti-corporate activism, has gone viral. Every morning we wake up to new reports about occupying X, where X can be anything from cities, campuses, boardrooms, buildings, highways, and public events, all the way to academic disciplines. What originally seemed like a romantic fantasy about temporary autonomous zones now feels like history. And no one likes to find themselves on the wrong side of history, especially not intellectuals, let alone intellectuals in the business of explaining global politics. To IR professionals the #occupy movement feels a bit like the fall of the Berlin Wall or like what the 2008 financial crisis must have felt to economists, both watershed events these experts were supposedly trained to predict or at least explain. The somewhat facetious answer LSE economists gave Queen Elizabeth when asked about this very problem is correct: It was a collective failure of imagination. But that does not make matters any less embarrassing. It is precisely because IR scholars cannot explain, understand or even imagine radical change, despite our professional training and despite the noble ambitions that have inspired many of us to go into academia (and stay there against all odds), that we are now acting like temporarily embarrassed intellectuals trying to do something of a reality check about what it is that #occup y can teach us about our work and our impact in the world. The nagging feeling that academics have lost the ability to contribute to real life struggles and that the university is no longer the birth place of radical thought and action is not something endemic to IR. It plagues all social sciences and humanities and dates back to the rise of post-68 critical theory and the corporatization of higher education, two events which are strangely linked to one another. The goal of the university has always been to train workers for the changing needs of capital. But at least during the Golden Age of embedded liberalism, a fortuitous mix of steady economic growth, cheap housing, and abundant cultural funding, all of which were indirectly sustained through worker repression at home and imperial interventions abroad, allowed intellectuals to exist on the fringes of the university and of capitalist economy in general. People like Herbert Marcuse, C. Wright Mills, Antonio Negri, Jean-Paul Sartre, Guy Debord, all of whom
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were instrumental in channeling the democratic excess of the 1960s into revolutionary action against the oppression and alienation of the military-industrial complex, had more in common with the bohemia than with the professional managerial class. The neoliberal counter-revolution to follow would make this kind of collaboration nearly impossible. Post-68 continental theory, the kind that travelled from France into the US only to become dogma in all respectable social science and humanities departments (IR included) across the Western world, has been both uninterested and unable to forge an intimate relation between Left intellectuals and revolutionary struggle. For all its youthful enthusiasm and situationist flair May 68 left a sour aftertaste. T he de-Stalinization of Russia under Khrushchev, the historic compromise between French and Italian Communist Parties and reformist bourgeois regimes, and the growing gulf between workers determined to secure the comforts of consumer capitalism and students dismissive of this acquiescent gesture suggested that finding a veritable alternative to capitalism had become utopian in the worst sense of the word. The response was a mass exodus from revolutionary struggle into the high plains of theoretical mysticism, from bodies in politics into a politics of aesthetics and representations, from the streets into the university. What small gesture of opposition remained was limited to making impossible demands upon an institution the revolutionary Left never trusted in the first place: the welfare state (iek, 2011). From within the university, French continental theory has been very skilled at unpacking the self-evident nature of what 68ers referred to as the system. Theory can serve a similar function for the #occupy movement today, which at times is too quick to attribute the present crisis of capital to some conspiratorial ploy about the 1% controlling the 99% or a morality play about financial markets having lost touch with the real economy. These images might work well on banners, but as analytical approaches they are factually flawed and politically futile. Both markets and the financial and managerial elites running them are socially embedded institutions that could not exist without ideological and institutional support, without having in place well-seated conventions, norms and social relations that reduce all human values to market value (Cahill, 2011). Neoliberalism would never have survived so many rounds of crisis had it not been for the fact that we are all perpetuators and beneficiaries of capitalism, even those fighting against the system tooth and nail we all consume, we all work, many of us employ or manage, we all participate in hierarchies of race, class gender and privilege. No one is a pure victim in this economic system, though almost everyone is ultimately a loser (Haiven, 2011a). This is precisely what critical theory teaches us when it insists that social reality is constructed, power is everywhere, and emancipation is complicated. But this critical lucidity can also serve as a sophisticated cover for the political nihilism, cynicism even, plaguing post-68 theory. All Revolutionary thought is haunted by the terror of repetition, the fear that revolutionary action will not be able to make a clear break with the past but 122
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will end up restoring the logic and structure of the ancient rgime (Starr, 1995). The most fearsome enemy of the politics of emancipation is not the repression by the established order. It is the interiority of nihilism (Badiou cited in iek, 2011). This is in fact the same nihilism occupying us all, the hopelessness that every act of resistance will be recuperated or will reproduce more of the same, that we are not doing enough to change things or we are doing the wrong things, that we are living in a mess of contradictions or have no meaning to live for at all (Haiven, 2011a). While this nihilism may be justified, we need to understand that in killing the radical imagination we are doing the work of capital, which has a lot of resources invested in having this machine of hopelessness prevent us from imagining alternative worlds (Graeber, 2011a). There used to be a time when we could still take comfort in the marginal position of critical theory, as if marginality were a guarantee for radicalism. But this is no longer a tenable position. In doing the work that the university -as-Edu-Factory has forgotten how to do (Haiven, 2011b), #occupy is making clear that critical theory is neither as dangerous nor as innocent as we would like to think; the expansion and corporatization of higher education since the 1970s has turned critical theories on race, gender and sexuality into brands of profitable resistance. If they are still kept on the fringes of academia it is because every discipline needs its margin to inject the university with public legitimacy (Nickel, 2009; Jacoby, 1987). At the same time, funding cuts, tuition increases, and the overall professionalization of higher education have made the university into a laboratory for new forms of exploiting and monetizing living labor. There is no better way of keeping people away from politics, especially the timeconsuming, face-to-face kind of politics practiced in #occupy assemblies, than work. And work is what both students and faculty do most of. For students it means working parttime jobs, doing free internships, learning foreign languages, participating in campus clubs and sports teams, volunteering and travelling, which together produce the disinterested student professors like to complain about. For academics work implies researching, publishing, attracting funding, basically spending endless hours alone in front of the computer, which inevitably reproduce the clich of the aloof academic. Critical theory lends itself well to this production model because, having written off the possibility of radical change as nave or illusory, it can devote more energy to winning arcane theoretical debates in academic journals than to establishing a relation with the social world we share in common. The #occupy model does exactly the opposite: it takes radical theory out onto the streets to show us what the university could have, ought to and maybe some day will be again (Haiven, 2011b). Trying to come to terms with the #occupy movement is probably more painful for International Relations scholars than for most, not because it somehow reveals the irrelevancy and anachronism of our professional concerns, but because it shows just how conservative our theories are in allowing us to appreciate or encourage political change.
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Critical IR, with its relentless critique of the hypocrisies and transgressions of sovereign power, something which is a direct influence of post-68 continental theory on the discipline, seems to have been particularly well-poised to help an anarchist movement such as this off the ground but has failed to do so for the reasons related to the nihilism of critical theory and the corporatization of the university discussed above. I am not suggesting that IR should have somehow predicted or prefigured this movement. This is not the role academia in supposed to play. But it is disappointing, to say the least, that a body of scholarship that has dedicated so much attention to debunking the imperial, militaristic and domineering nature of state power has missed out on the nefarious relationship between sovereign police and parliamentary capitalism that drives this year of rage. One possible reason for this neglect is the disciplines self -chosen insularity from other social areas, like economics, history, domestic politics and culture. Another more damning explanation, not unrelated to the first one, is that IR, even critical scholarship, has internalized the liberal separation between politics and economics, where the former is as a socially negotiated realm of domination and contestation, while the latter is a supposedly self-governing field of production and distribution. According to liberal economic theories, what makes capitalism superior to feudalism is precisely this separation because it allows for surplus extraction to happen independently of sovereign power. Even when markets require governmental support, be it in terms of supply-side policies or more subtle biopolitical strategies, for capitalism to function sovereign power has to govern through rights and freedoms, not coercion and force. Taken to its extreme this logic implies that every time sovereign power abuses its legal prerogatives, like in the War on Terror or the surveillance, detention, and mass incarceration of suspect populations, it actually hinders capital accumulation because capitalism functions best under democracy. This is clearly the work of ideology. An overaccumulated capitalist system like ours can no longer generate profits through the production and consumption of mass goods because it has reached certain economic and ecological limits of growth. Instead, it has to extract value through what David Harvey (2003) calls accumulation through dispossession, which means that capital must increasingly rely on sheer force to reproduce itself. What home foreclosures, bank bailouts, debt bondage, austerity measures, financial technocrats replacing elected politicians, military urbanism, imperial wars, and countless other acts of sovereign exception demonstrate is that capital accumulation is being sustained through an ever more intimate alliance between police and profits. So contrary to the lament about the erosion of sovereign power in times of economic globalization, the state is back in full force, not the state as democratic representative of the people but the state as police. This is not to say that capital does not also operate on the more subtle and complex terrain of identities, social relations and institutions, but that the means through which this work of social reproduction is accomplished has become a blatant contradiction of even the most 124
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basic principles of liberal democracy, let alone our more substantial democratic aspirations for universal inclusion and social justice. Indeed, we have come to such a pass that anarchists, pagan priestesses, and tree-sitters are about the only Americans left still holding out for the idea that a genuinely democratic society might be possible (Graeber, 2011b). This might sound ridiculous to many critical ears who view occupiers as romantic hippies, at best, or trust fund babies, at worst. But one reason why so many people have caught the bug of prefigurative politics is because the protesters are enjoying themselves to the chagrin of the observers, and in so doing, they are reclaiming something that has been either banned from the private sphere or forgotten entirely: living in common. References Cahill, D., 2011. Beyond Neoliberalism? Crisis and the Prospects for Progressive Alternatives. New Political Science, 33(4): pp. 479-92. Graeber, D., 2011a. Hope in Common. Revolutions in Reverse: Essays on Politics, Violence, Art, and Imagination. London: Minor Compositions, pp. 31-40. . 2011b. On Playing by the Rules: The Strange Success of OccupyWallStreet. Naked Capitalism [Internet], 19 October. Available at <http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/10/david-graeber-on-playing-bythe-rules-%E2%80%93-the-strange-success-of-occupy-wall-street.html> Harvey, D., 2003. The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Haiven, M., 2011a. From NYC: Occupy Wall Street Has No Agenda Is an Alibi for Apathy. Halifax Media Co-op [Online], 13 October. Available at <http://www.mediacoop.ca/blog/max-haiven/8378> . 2011b. From NYC: Oct 15 - Massive Marches, The University in the Streets, and Overcoming the Arrogance of the Left. Halifax Media Co-op [Online],15 October. Available at <http://halifax.mediacoop.ca/blog/max-haiven/8418> Jacoby, R., 1987. The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe. New
York: Basic Books. Nickel, P. M., 2009. Public Intellectuality: Academies of Exhibition and the New Disciplinary Secession. Theory & Event, 12(4). Starr, P., 1995. Logics of Failed Revolt: French Theory after May 68. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. iek, S., 2011. Only Communism Can Save Liberal Democracy. Australian Broadcasting Corporation [Online], 3 October. Available at <http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/10/03/3331164.htm>
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Wanda Vrasti is Humboldt post-doctoral fellow at Humboldt University in Berlin. Her current research, a book examining the intersection between governmentality and cognitive capitalism through an ethnography of volunteer tourism in the Global South, is currently under contract with Routledge. Her previous work has been published in Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Review of International Studies , and Theory & Event.
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Street Politics, Shapiro
Street Politics
Michael J. Shapiro
I write from Prague, where, unlike in most urban formations, the main city street plays an iconic role; it references a history of political protest. However, before elaborating on the protest iconography of the Prague street, Vaclavske nam, I want to locate the ways in which the design of urban space is actualized in everyday life in the cities of the world. Three functions stand out; the first involves dwelling, the second seeing, and the third moving. With respect to the first function dwelling the design partitions and coordinates residential, commercial and leisure functions. At times these are organized to segregate different classes (Robert Moses redesign of much of New York stands out with respect to the segregation function). With respect to the second function seeing the design of urban space is allegiance-inspiring; it involves sightlines that afford urban dwellers and visitors views of iconic buildings and statues, which reference key founding moments in the past and/or authoritative political functions in the present (Here, LEnfants design for Washington DC stands out as exemplary. Its manifest intention was to make the buildings housing executive, legislative and judicial functions visible from many vantage points). Rarely are the streets themselves iconic. Their dominant role is involved with the effectuation of movement. As for this third function: As Lewis Mumford famously points out, streets were once part of an asterisk design, radiating out from an exemplary, often spiritual center. In modern times, though, the streets are designed in a grid-like form in order facilitate the finding of addresses, and to create the efficient circulation required to move labor forces and consumers in ways that enable commerce. As a result, most of the time spent dwelling, seeing, and moving in urban space involves the rearticulation of those proprieties that constitute its proprietary, allegiant and commercial functions. It follows, then, that to violate the everyday phenomenology in which these three functions are being rearticulated is to engage in an exemplary act of politicization. The political force of the Occupy Wall Street sit-in is clearly derived in part from its disruption of the familiar phenomenology of the street. We could render the effect in the terms Jacques Rancire suggests. Such political acts involve a repartioning, or a change in the way that political is portioned-off from the non-political. However, unless some unusual markers are left behind to reference the event of the protest, that repartioning is unlikely to endure. It is for this reason that I evoke the Czech experience.
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Returning from a visit in the Czech countryside, I left the Prague train station on foot and tried to orient myself on the city map in order to find my way back to my hotel. In a short period of wandering, I was able to find my way because of the visibility of the Wenceslas statue at the top of the long city street, Vaclavske nam (mentioned above). However, while the statue of a Czech saint, associated with allegiance to an early founding period, commands respect for an early period in the historical consolidation of the people, the street also references and valorizes protest. When Soviet tanks invaded on August 21, 1968, to quell a national uprising, the bullets fired from the tanks left pockmarks in the national museum just above the Wenceslas statue. The Czechs have purposely left those pockmarks on the building to commemorate the street protests. On November 17, 1989, that same street was again a site of protest, part of the Velvet Revolution that freed Czechoslovakia from Soviet domination. To mark that episode, flowers are frequently laid at the foot of the Wenceslas statue. Hence, in the Czech case, the phenomenology of the street includes enduring markers of the politics of the street. Michael J Shapiro is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawai'i. Among his recent publications are Cinematic Geopolitics (Routledge, 2009) and The Time of the City: Politics, Philosophy and Genre (Routledge, 2010).
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The Human Chain, Hughes
The Human Chain Is Not About Holding Hands

Nicole Sunday Hughes
As the celebratory mood of global interconnectedness wears thinner and thinner, the compression of space-time makes more apparent that we share across the planet an increasing exclusion from the official political and economic decision-making processes that have jurisdiction over our lives. At the same time, the temporal compression of the global and local is forging alternative collectivities that are often overlooked by those in the business of explaining and predicting political outcomes. Arjun Appadurai makes note of these relationships in his work on grassroots activism and the research imagination, reminding us that debates within the academy still set the standard of value for the global professoriate (2000, p. 2). Following this sentiment, recent event s around the world should impress upon us that academic research influences policy debates over issues such as climate change, global trade relations, labor migration, and terrorism, which in turn shape the politics that inform the daily lives of both those who have access to these debates and those who do not. For academics committed to deep pluralism, how can we creatively translate the tactics of the Occupy movement so as to bring its concerns to bear upon global studies and the discipline of International Relations? One particularly visible and historically resilient strategy used by protestors is the human chain, which has been employed as more than a mere display of political solidarity from the Civil Rights Movement to the Baltic Way, and recently in Tahrir Square where Christians and Muslims formed circles to protect one another while praying during demonstrations. The gripping of hands and arms does not simply make up a line of interlinked individuals. Gastn Gordillos (2011) insightful essay on Occupys use of the human chain against the striation of state space illustrates how this bodily assemblage materializes the multitude as a physically interlocked entity made up of multiplicities. In other words, the individuals in the chain become a whole with properties that are not reducible to the sum of its parts. The tactic is meant to disrupt what on the surface appears to be the flawless
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functioning of state-corporate spaces by blocking intersections, access to buildings, slowing down the flow of arrests but perhaps most importantly, by politicizing consumer spaces and showing how apparent public space is regularly appropriated by the state for corporate means. The deployment of the human chain is not non -violent, an apt description (although not for the reasons he thinks) used by UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. The chain is neither violent nor non-violent; it is not non-violent in the sense that non-violence has been reduced in contemporary politics to a placeholder for well-behaved discontent. Unlike the well-rehearsed picket lines of protest politics, the human chain is an obstinate refusal to accept the given order. Rather than go along peacefully, the dead weight of linked people makes perceptible the systemic violence that allows for the smooth functioning of the neoliberal alliance between states and markets by disrupting the spaces in which the alliance operates. That is, the chain invites police to follow through on what their training and armaments were designed for: the violent dispersal and control of bodies behaving badly. Municipal governments declared war on public space long before the Occupy movement. More than a decade before the NYPD used LRAD sound canons on peaceful activists, cities partitioned public benches to deny the homeless a place to sleep, passed laws against camping on public land, and required hard-to-obtain permits for public protests, all so as not to obstruct the byways of commerce and tourism. Similar to the ways in which public space has been taken over by states and corporations, we might consider how the intellectual spaces of social science have been colonized by particular methodologies and dominant forms of knowledge that eschew ethical sensibilities as peripheral to rigorous scholarship. Method wars are never just battles over methodology, they represent a fight over what can be seen, said and heard. Years of aspiring to a climate of tolerance within the field of IR has done little more than sustain a thin sense of inclusion and superficial diversity within a space that is still dominated by militaristic and economized ways of knowing and seeing the world that obscure the political stakes of our research. To borrow a phrase from Michel Foucault, we need a lack of respect for the traditional hierarchies of what is important and fundamental (1990, p. 328), and these include those set standards of value in the social sciences that are hostile to the work of critical scholars. One question the Occupy movement should inspire is that of where we can come together to disrupt these spaces of knowledge production, and how we can restructure accepted methodologies to enable new visions for the scientific study of politics. However, rather than protest the arbiters of knowledge, we should try to foment an affirmative movement that sees politics and ethics as their goal rather than as a symptom of biased or polemical research. To be clear, it is not a movement toward inclusion. Years before the Occupy movement, William Connolly (2002) presciently insisted that a truly democratic politics would increasingly require an ethos of agonistic engagement. Such an ethos can inform the way we envisage our own movement as one 130
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that embraces a heterogeneity that finds resonances and affinities because of its productive differences and antagonisms, rather than in spite of these differences. Where this will lead I dont know, as this is only one tactic conceptualized in its initial stages. However, what is all too clear is the insufficiency of inclusion and tolerance, and the need for further reflection on how we might insist that scholarship be responsible for the politics and ethical commitments that underwrite its legitimacy. We should stop insisting on just getting along as if it were simply a difference of opinion or perspective. The human chain is not about holding hands. References Appadurai, A., 2000. Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination. Public Culture, 12(1), pp. 1-19. Connolly, W. E., 2002. Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press Gordillo, G., 2011. The Human Chain as a Non-Violent Weapon. Space and Politics. Available at: <http://spaceandpolitics.blogspot.com/2011/11/weapon-ofoccupy-movement_23.html>. Accessed on 28 November 2011. Kritzman, L. ed., 1990. Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984. New York: Routledge. Nicole Sunday Hughes is a doctoral student in International Relations at Johns Hopkins University. Her work focuses on popular politics and the materiality of organization and resistance in Egypt and the Gulf states.
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Occupy Wall Street: From Representation to Post-Representation

Simon Tormey
Trying to assess something as recent and dynamic as Occupy Wall Street (OWS) presents problems for political analysts. There is always a danger that by the time one has written in judgement the event-movement will have morphed into something quite different. For this reason alone we need to be careful about offering too definitive a judgment on what it represents, about what we think is new in the phenomenon as well as what we think presents linkages to the past. On the one hand, OWS is still in the process of becoming-something. On the other hand, though, we can see the outline of more or less familiar characteristics that might help orientate us towards something that is being greeted as a new departure. OWS is, it seems, a non-affiliated, non-programmatic, disorganised set of protests, interconnected virtually through a variety of social media, drawing attention to gross inequalities of wealth and power (we are the 99%). The first half of the description should give us the clues we need to trace the lineage and ancestry of the initiative. In particular it tells us what OWS is not, namely a political party or a single issue social movement with a neat hierarchy and formal structure, or a published manifesto outlining clear aims and objectives that will address inequities and injustices. Its an odd stance at first glance to define oneself by what one isnt, as opposed to what one is. How do we make sense of the gesture? Firstly, history is littered with disaffiliated, non-programmatic groups who wanted to contest inequality in quite general terms. Groups such as the Ranters and Levellers, which sprang up during the English Civil War in 1600s, display many such characteristics. Some of them such as Gerrard Winstanleys True Levellers even occupied space in ways that resonate with OWS that is, through occupation as a political act whose intention was to draw attention to inequalities of wealth and income (Hill 1975, pp.132-9). Many of the early resistances to the enclosure of the commons, to clearance of land for improvement, and to capitalism more broadly, had this quality to them, and not just in Britain. However, with the emergence of organised politics over the course of the nineteenth century in the form of political parties, elections, the free press and the rest of the paraphernalia of liberal-democracy direct action as a style of politics receded (even if it didnt disappear entirely). Representation thus became paradigmatic of the political, even when that 132
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politics was oppositional or counter-hegemonic. Political parties came to represent classes, needs, interests. Governments represented nations, the People. Representation thus consecrated what Hardt and Negri (2004, p. 241) term a disjunctive synthesis: the creation of aggregate entities through a process of separation a separation of elites from masses, of governors from the governed, of those with power from those without power. Politics became bureaucratised, normal, serious, rational. For mainstream politics, this meant putting clear water between the wayward emotions of the mob and the wisdom of the political class. For counter-hegemonic politics, the party guaranteed that those with the correct analysis of the line of march would keep the trade union or reformist instincts of the masses in check. Politics thus became the preserve of the few, the oligarchs. Organised politics of this kind dominated the period of social democracy, the birth of the welfare state, and of cradle to grave entitlements. Political docility mirrored domestic docility, all built on a cosy compact between citizen and state (you let us govern and well guarantee jobs and prosperity). Yet just as economic wealth underpinned the consolidation of organised politics, so too did economic uncertainty, unrest and crisis fuel more grassroots and disorganised forms of politics. 1968, the year of disorganised revolts and insurrections, is an important way marker for change in the nature of the political. It marked the first step in the decline of the representational paradigm, and the re-emergence of non- or post-representative political repertoires: direct action, squatting, affinity groups, protests, carnivals. Many of these initiatives are sparked by a self-conscious rejection of normal or mainstream political processes. They turn their face on parties, elections, and manifestos in favour of the immediacy of action, of doing, in the here and now not saving our energies for some scripted crisis of capitalism. The 1970s and 1980s were periods when much of this kind of activity was subsumed within what became known as new social movements, which included movements against war, the nuclear bomb, environmental degradation, race and identity discrimination. They were immediate, direct, and dis -organised in the sense of not being tied to a permanent bureaucracy or set of offices. Often leaderless, acephelous, sometimes spontaneous, unruly and difficult to predict. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari (1987, p. 22) famously coined the term rhizomatic to describe subterranean underground initiatives of this kind. The rhizome makes us distinguish between the liminal and the subliminal, between what expert commentary sees abo ve, and what lurks beneath the surface. Even when nothing seems to be happening, rhizome-networks can be growing, developing, readying themselves for the next opportunity to push through the surface and emerge in unpredictable ways. Such has become the pattern of post-representative, disorganised politics over the past four decades.
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So in the current conjuncture the representative paradigm reigns, just about. And we still have periods where nothing seems to be happening outside of the mainstream political process, voting, elections and politicians. It is at this point when it becomes easy for commentary to lament the apathy and boredom of the young, our disengagement from the political process, reluctance to participate etc. Then, suddenly, there will be an eruption from below, from the subterranean stratum, that reminds us that politics is not just about politicians. Sometimes this kind of politics has an immediate and radical impact. The fall of communism in Eastern Europe looked much like this. The Arab Spring has a similar epoch-making aspect to it. Sometimes such politics is easy to write off as ineffectual or gestural as in the Seattle Protests, the protests against the G8, Reclaim the Streets, the World Social Forum, the Clandestine Insurrectionary Revolutionary Clown Army (CIRCA). Sometimes we can wait for months or years before knowing what kind of resonance or longer-term impact an initiative will have. How much impact has the Zapatista insurrection had, or the Narmada Dam protests, or the uprising in Nandigram, or the rise of the Indignados? Difficult to tell. OWS is part of this story. It offers further evidence that the paradigm of representative politics, the politics of political parties, elections and voting is on the wane. Participants in OWS proclaim that they not programmatic, that it has no answers, even that it is not politically affiliated. It contrasts itself with the style and manner of forms of representation that by contrast proclaim an analysis, an ideology, a programme, an organisation representing distinct interests, viewpoints and actors. OWS challenges this paradigm, directly. It tells us that no form of representative politics, no political party, can change the basic coordinates of the liberal-democratic capitalist system. In this horizon only a disorganised repertoire of direct and immediate political actions enables people to be heard as opposed to being subsumed within the machinic meta -mobilism of normal politics. Not in my Name is an emblematic expression of this winding back of the representative paradigm. It says that I will not be annexed for a larger purpose. I must myself speak to and embody the changes we need in order to address inequality. This however is the easy part, for a paradoxical feature of post-representative politics is that it does not, as the post- prefix reminds us, escape the pragmatics of representation; it brings it into question. We are the 99% is after all a quintessential representative claim (We are you, a slogan borrowed from the Zapatistas, is another equally direct example). Here we see also a potential immobilising quality of OWS, one that infects all post-representative initiatives. If it cannot but represent, then how to do this without becoming itself a symptom of the politics it so sets its face against i.e. representative politics (Saward 2010)? How does OWS escape the trap of opposing representative modes of political engagement in a non-representative way? How to escape the apparently futile and self-denying gesture of post-representative representation? Not an easy question, which is why, as many commentators have argued, 134

immobilism and inefficacy seem at one level built into OWS; this point has even been raised by those who are sympathetic to the movement. Think of Slavoj ieks appeal to OWS to repeat Lenins question: What is to be Done? (iek 2011). However, this is to look at OWS through the lens of those whose logic is itself queried by the OWS initiative those who see politics as a sovereign activity in which power is deployed to achieve ends in a narrow, instrumental and exclusionary way. How to escape the cul-de-sac? Several possibilities present themselves to those who valorise OWS and wish to see it develop as a style and form of politics: 1. Accept the very event-ness of the event-movement. As McKenzie Wark (2011) reminds us, the Situationists urged us to think of politics not in linear terms, but in terms of intensities for the participants as well as for the bystander. Those who take part in the event of OWS will never be the same again: they are changed, angered, energised, despondent, angry, alienated, joyous. Those who encounter OWS may display complete indifference, or they may be affected. Somehow. Something might resonate. They may ask themselves a David Byrne type question: How did I get here? Mini -micro political gestures. But sometimes large-scale change comes from micro-gestures the first step on a long journey, to paraphrase Gandhi. 2. Accept the positioning of OWS as one amongst a series of resonances and gestures that collectively add up to something more than a gesture-less politics. As my comments above indicate, OWS is one kind of resistance that represents in its post-representativity the response of those at the margin of wealthy countries of the metropolitan centre; the Zapatista insurrection (to take a contrasting example) is another kind of resistance, one characteristic of the needs and resources of groups at the global periphery. They are both concerned with the same issue: the monopolisation of power and wealth in the hands of the few. They are both pertinent to the contexts and capacities of people on the ground in a particular time and space. They resonate in different ways, they have different effects, but their concerns are very similar. 3. Accept that OWS is a stance of what Hardt and Negri would no doubt label refusal, as opposed to affirmation. This is not to say that it cannot prefigure or point at alternative forms of organisation, and being-together. It self-consciously positions itself as a puzzle, as a no without a yes. Lest it be forgotten, refusal can be just as potent a means of change as affirmation. Gandhi saw this, Havel saw it, and so have the millions of campaigners who have collectively refused colonial, racist or exclusionary policies and practices, and who have therefore become agents delegitimating them. It might strike us as odd to see weapons of the weak (to mobilise James Scott) being exerted under m ature democratic conditions (Scott, 1985). We are perhaps unused to the idea of the vote-wielding citizen
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as weak, as dispossessed, and as having to call upon similar tactics to those at the global periphery who live in non- or sub-democratic conditions. But then here is the larger issue. Liberal-democracy is being hollowed out by the growth of often-unaccountable global institutions and processes, such as the IMF, the World Bank and most recently the bond markets. In this sense, OWS is not just a gesture in opposition to representation. It is a gesture marking the slow yet seemingly inexorable collapse of representative democratic governance as a practice and as the paradigmatic end of history. Representative governance is, on the contrary, incre asingly seen as complicit in the emptying out of democracy, and in the perpetuation of gross inequalities. OWS is part of the generalised revolt against representation. It asks to re-imagine democracy as an instrument of the 99% as opposed to something that operates as the handmaiden of global capitalism, and the 1%. As my comments above indicate, such a gesture should not be seen as in itself novel or radically different to the demands of myriad individuals and groups throughout modernity. What is perhaps novel is the globality, the speed, and resonant effects of such a gesture. It is now evident that it is not just global financial transactions that travel at the speed of light, but the righteous indignation of the many millions subject to the capricious, over-arching power of the plutocrats and those lined up to represent them and their interests. References Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. London: Continuum. Hardt, M. and Negri, A., 2004. Multitude. New York: Penguin. Hill, C., 1975. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Saward, M., 2010. The Representative Claim. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Scott, J., 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven: Yale University Press. Wark, M., 2011. This Shit is Fucked up and Bullshit. Theory & Event [Online], 14(4). Available at <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v014/14.4S.wark.html> Accessed on 12 December 2011. iek, S., 2011. Occupy First, Demands Come Later. The Guardian [Online], 26 October. Available at <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/26/occupyprotesters-bill-clinton> Accessed on 12 December 2011.
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Simon Tormey is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Sydney. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including most recently, Agnes Heller: Socialism, Autonomy and the Postmodern (Manchester University Press, 2001), Anti-Capitalism (Oneworld, 2004) and Key Thinkers from Critical Theory to Post-Marxism (Sage, 2006, with Jules Townshend). He is currently working on a monograph tentatively entitled Not in My Name: The Crisis of Representation and What it Means for Democracy .
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#Occupy: Strategic Dilemmas, Lessons Learned?

David J. Bailey
What is #Occupy? For William Connolly, it is better described as the 99% movement (Connolly, 2011). But even this is potentially too narrow as it refers only to those explicitly adopting the 99% slogan. In the UK, the Uncut movement has arguably gained more traction. Outside of the Anglo-sphere, we witness the Spanish indignados, and the General Strikes in Greece, along with related demonstrations in Syntagma Square. There is, then, on the one hand a narrowly-defined #Occupy movement, and on the other hand a more broadly defined movement seeking to challenge through popular mobilisation, direct action, and/or civil disobedience the austerity measures that are being introduced in the wake of the post-2007 global economic crisis. In each case, we witness the strategy of occupation as a means of highlighting popular dissatisfaction; of presenting an illustration of the disruptive potential of the dissatisfied; and of prefiguring modes of social organisation preferable to those being opposed. If we focus too narrowly on the #Occupy movement as the form of mobilised, extra-parliamentary, resistance to the current restructuring of advanced industrial democracies, then there is a risk that we lose sight of the broader movement of which this is a part. The (more broadly defined) extra-parliamentary movement purports to highlight, mobilise against, and offer potential alternatives to, the global systemic inequality that produced the latest iniquitous crisis. Weve been here before! We might expect, then, that the extent to which we fail better (iek, 2009) this time around will reflect the ability of the extra-parliamentary anti-austerity movement to navigate three strategic dilemmas that have typically plagued preceding emancipatory movements with similar aims.
Dilemma 1: Between Marginalisation and Co-optation

At the heart of the debates that exercised the Second International was the dilemmatic choice between, on the one hand, ideological purity and the risk of marginalisation, and, on the other hand, the making of compromises considered necessary to engage with (and
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change) the institutions that formed the status quo , with a related risk of co-optation. Whilst revisionist socialists (grouped around Jaures and Bernstein) sought ministerial posts that would allow them to manage capitalism in the interests of their working class voters, more orthodox socialists (under the influence of Guesde and Bebel) repeatedly refused to agree to what they feared would amount to a capitulation to, complicity in, and therefore co-optation by, the institutions of social domination (Berman, 2006, pp. 54-7). A similar dilemma faces the contemporary extra-parliamentary anti-austerity movement. On the one hand, outright opposition to any austerity measures risks the appearance of being out of touch with both popular sentiment and economic necessity; whilst a more reasoned approach that might set out a feasible and affordable budget to limit austerity measures risks the discovery that advanced industrial democracies might not be affordable. If advanced industrial democracies are to compete with a globallyintegrated Chinese economy that has less regulated, less well paid, and a more intensively and extensively exploited labour force, then it is not entirely clear that workers in advanced industrial democracies can maintain existing labour market regulations or (social) wages. Unless, of course, the structure of the global socio-economic itself can be altered. The Occupy movement has been noted (and criticised) for straddling this dilemma through the absence of any concrete demands or proposals. In the words of Jules Lobel (2011), it presents a Narrative, World View or Declaration not specific demands. In the UK, in contrast, the Uncut movement has adopted a slightly different response, setting out both opposition to austerity measures and highlighting the alternative option of funding public spending through a firmer enforcement of corporate taxation (particularly focusing on high-profile cases of unpenalised tax avoidance). Indeed, the merits of the UK Uncut strategy lie in its ability to enable activists to at once rebut any charge of utopian ideological purity, whilst at the same time making demands that are sufficiently unlikely to be met, thereby (so far) avoiding the potential for cooptation.
Dilemma 2: Between Vanguardist Organisation and Disorganised Decentralisation

Perhaps the strategic debate most replayed amongst the extra-parliamentary left in recent years is that between (supposedly vanguardist) centralised organisation and (arguably disorganised) decentralisation a debate which also has its roots in earlier movements. The First International split between Marxists claiming that any revolutionary movement required authority and centralization (Engels, cited in Carter, 2011, p. 246); and anarchists grouped around Bakunin, who feared that centralised authority had too great a potential for abuse, and thus preferred social unity in the form of a free association of autonomous groups. (see Braunthal, 1966, p. 183). Likewise, Paris 1968 ended with
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accusations targeted at orthodox communist parties for their role in managing/stifling the mobilising potential of the people. In the words of the Cohn-Bendit brothers, it is true to say that Communists, and also Trotskyists, Maoists and the rest, no less than the capitalist State, all look upon the proletariat as a mass that needs to be directed from above. As a result, democracy degenerates into the ratification at the bottom of decisions taken at the top, and the class struggle is forgotten while the leaders jockey for power within the political hierarchy. (Cohn-Bendit and Cohn-Bendit, 1968) #Occupy, and the wider extra-parliamentary anti-austerity movement, have generally adopted principles of decentralisation, direct democracy and autonomous struggle. These follow in the tradition of horizontalism and grassroots mobilisation, with roots in the alter-globalization movement. Yet, (so far) the problems predicted by those advocating more centralised and coordinated activity dont appear to have emerged. This, in part, reflects the scale (nascent?) and purpose (symbolic?) of activity thus far evinced, but also reflects what is arguably becoming a consensus, that leaderless politics is the appropriate mode of extra-parliamentary mobilisation. Whilst much focus is placed on the (doubtless) increased capacity for decentralised mobilisation that results from the emergence of social media and so on, we might also recognise the more mundane effect of historical learning. No-one appears to be repeating the German environmentalist Petra Kellys call for an anti-party party. Likewise, the enthusiasm for another long march through the institutions is markedly absent. The question, obviously, is the extent to which the contemporary extra-parliamentary anti-austerity movement can continue to mobilise without a clear and centralised leadership. The answer to which is probably that it depends on what the movement is hoping to achieve, which raises a third dilemma.
Dilemma 3: Between Domination-challenging Direct Action and Opinion-shaping Delayed-action

The first wave of feminism witnessed the suffragette movement attempt to force the nation to accept that ordinary life could not continue until suffrage had been granted (Smith, 2010, p. 51). In contrast, the second wave of the womens movement in the 1960s and 1970s focused on consciousness-raising and the need to study, identify and explicate patriarchy prior to engaging in action against it. These divergent strategies reflect the commonly noted dilemma: to undertake domination-challenging direct action or opinion-shaping delayed action? A war of manoeuvre or war of position? This is perhaps the defining question for the extra-parliamentary anti-austerity movement, with a clear attempt at present to position itself between the two. Occupation as a means of both raising awareness of the injustices associated with austerity, and as a means of prefiguring 140
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alternative modes of social organisation. This has enabled the movement to produce something of an underlying media hum, that routinely disrupts any aspiring there is no alternative (to austerity measures, to private property and a privatised existence, to representative democracy, to whatever) logic that otherwise seeks a hegemonic position within the public debate. It is probably in this sense that the extra-parliamentary anti-austerity movement has been most effective forcing an anti-austerity agenda into public debate through an organisational form that prefigures (and in doing so highlights the possibility of) horizontal social formations. This, in turn, permits a (hopefully mutual) cross fertilisation and legitimisation of ideas and practices in more established (and more vertical) institutions that also have the potential for resistance (trade unions, NGOs, community and civil rights groups, maybe even some welfare and public service institutions). Whilst the (broadly-defined) occupation movement is obviously not yet ready to function independently of more established social institutions, likewise, existing progressive institutions are too engrained in the structure of advanced industrial democracies to offer an effective standalone response to the current round of global socio-economic restructuring. The task, for now at least, is to seek some kind of alliance between the two forms of (potential) resistance, in a way that both avoids co-optation and contains the potential to generate future possibilities for more substantive emancipation. If this all sounds a bit dual power, then lets hope weve learned enough for it to fail better this time around! References Berman, S., 2006. The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europes Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Braunthal, J., 1966. History of the International, Volume 1: 1864-1914. London: Nelson. Carter, A., 2011. Anarchism: Some Theoretical Foundations. Journal of Political Ideologies 16(3). Connolly, W.E., 2011. What is to be done? Theory and Event, 14(4), Supplement. Cohn-Bendit, D. and Cohn-Bendit, G., 1968. It is for Yourself that You Make the Revolution. In Robert Graham (ed.) 2009. Anarchism: A Documentary
History of Libertarian Ideas. Volume Two: The Emergence of the New Anarchism, 1939-1977. Montral: Black Rose Books.
Lobel, J., 2011. Birthing a New Society: The Future of the Occupy Movement. Counterpunch [Online]. Available at <http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/06/the-future-of-the-occupymovement/> Smith, H.L., 2010. The British Womens Suffrage Campaign, 1866-1928. London,
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Pearson. iek, S., 2009. First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. London: Verso.
David J. Bailey is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham. His research and teaching focuses on left parties and protest movements, comparative political economy, and the governance of the European Union. He has recently published articles in the Journal of International Relations and Development, British Journal of Politics and International Relations , and Journal of European Social Policy.
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Position Blindness, Gagyi
Occupy Wall Street? Position-Blindness in the New Leftist Revolution

Agnes Gagyi
The following I write as an Eastern European sociologist and activist, departing from the basic question of how local movements in my region might connect with Occupy Wall Street (OWS). By this time, it is evident that OWS has made an indelible mark on present-day discussions on globalisation and world order. Immanuel Wallerstein (2011), for example, has spoken directly of an ongoing transformation in world economy, asking whether the present crisis in the dominant model of capitalism-cum-democracy will be resolved through a shift towards a less democratic and more unequal system, or whether global social movements might help bring about a more equal and democratic social order. Keeping in sight the controversial lessons of the alter-globalism movement in Eastern Europe, I will argue that certain characteristics of the OWS movement themselves pose an obstacle to the development of a truly global social movement. By this I do not seek to blame OWS activists for failing to represent the whole globe, but instead wish to add a voice from the semi-periphery to this new and much needed debate over global equality. The hegemony of 1968 OWS mobilised a general support that transcends the ranks of its actual organisers. Nonetheless, the organisers of OWS do not represent the 99% of the global population (Cordero-Guzman, 2011; Shoen, 2011). They are a highly educated and politically active social group, with an exceptional influence upon framing the movement. Moreover, these frames which have tended to prioritise participation over concrete demands reach back through the rich soil of alter-globalism to 1968. Organisers and star-interpreters of the alter-globalist movement support OWS shoulder-to-shoulder with the soixante-huitards who raised the alter-globalist generation. This permanence of the post-68 tradition among the movements ranks makes it easy to treat the movement as a vindication or justification of theories springing from the same tree: as multitude, biopolitics of citizens bodies, etc. Indeed, main clichs of the alter -
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globalist movement such as the role of the internet and the efficacy the swarm are presented as new movement logics, just as they were ten years ago. Even without a detailed analysis of the OWS links to the post -68 tradition, it is clear that its basic vision and repertoires follow from this tradition rather than the present situation of crisis-stricken America. For the future of the movement, however, the crucial question is how this tradition will enable activists to address and influence the actual structures of the present. Class-blindness and the 99% More pointedly, the question is that of how a movement initiated by an educated and politically active base might relate to other social groups in less favourable positions. This was a challenge faced by the alter-globalists and the soixante-huitards before them, and it remains an unanswered one for OWS. As a contemporary of 68, Pierre Bourdieu argued that the demands of 68 were defined by the class ethos of the new bourgeoisie (Bourdieu, 1984, pp. 187 -194). Reflecting their social position, this ethos dismissed existing social hierarchies, and promoted the ideal of the autonomous creative personality. But by contemplating the social world through the prism of the creative personality, the new bourgeoisie interpreted all according to the dialectics of fun vs. complexes; it personalised the political, and made the personal political. It had a taste for everything that escaped social categories it favored the illusion of social flying, or the defiance of social positions and their gravitational pull. One of the reasons why revolutionary students of 68 did not get more allies from the working class was that they formulated their political program in the language of this ethos, which did not resonate well in a working class context. Building on the 68 tradition, new anarchist and autonomist movements went on to produce complex repertoires of basic democratic procedures, centered on the value of personal freedom. It is these techniques that the OWS carries on, and fixes as a condition for joining the revolution. But these techniques do not acknowledge that the development of individual opinions are formed through education and social practice, and thus are shaped by the social positions of the individuals in question. To define individual opinion as a baseline for participating in a revolution for equality is to effectively to universalise intellectuals relationship to politics i.e. that of a small set group who govern their own means of opinion production, and who have no reason to delegate to others this power to produce opinion. Moreover, the positioned ethos of creativity, biopolitics, or personal freedom might exclude those who come from other social contexts, who dont face limits to creativity as a daily problem, and who are less capable of elevating themselves to the disinterested stance required by the ethos of social flying. Hence, by translating the structural conflict of the 99% into this ethos,
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there is a risk that the OWS movement might become a movement reliant on the emotional enthusiasm and preferences of a small group, thereby reflecting a field structured and bounded by social positions, but remaining incapable of responding to them. World revolution without a global program While OWS gave out a call for world revolution, and identifies the Arab Spring, the Spanish indignados, the London rioters as its predecessors, it makes no admission of the underlying differences between the geopolitical positioning of these various movements. Regarding the Tahrir square demonstrations, there is no significant reflection upon the First Worlds role in the Arab Spring. Meanwhile, international occupy demonstrations are added up as global, while even on the movements own maps, these demonstrations overwhelmingly take place in North America and Western Europe. A more fundamental problem, then, is that the OWS does not formulate its themes within the framework of a global context. Only a few of the various lists of demands and grievances of the OWS relate to problems outside of the USA. These are: war for profit, protection of the planet, outsourcing, immigration and debt or, as it is sometimes put: colonisation within and outside of American borders. Some of these demands claim to preserve the USAs position within world economy. They want China and other trading partners to end currency manipulation. They want to change immigration law, so the worlds brightest People to stay and work in our industries and schools. Other demands are framed as problems common to Americans and the rest of the world. Environmental problems, war, debt, colonisation once these are fixed, they argue, there would be no significant structural relationship between the USA and the people of the world. This idea, of course, does not acknowledge how these very issues relate to the position of the USA within global power structures. Thus, none of these demands touch upon the fact that the losses which fuel the indignation at the base of OWS are positioned within a geopolitical structure of power relations, and as such, are not in every respect universal. In the context of a transforming world system, sinking living standards in the USA do not only have to do with local capitalism and democracy. With the Euro-Atlantic centre losing its dominant position, and other players, especially China, gaining power, a process of leveling among enormously unequal living standards began. And however far yet from the world remains from a state of equality, this leveling process is already impacting upon the population of the First World in painful ways. In the case of the OWS, though, it is at least awkward that it poses as the voice of global indignation against inequality, but does not address the question of how its demands to raise living standards in the US would affect other regions
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in the world. It does not make any reference to the fact that so far, it was the dominant position of the US that could guarantee that its living standards remain comparably high in relation to other regions. There are no signs of a global program that would point beneath the universalised demands of its own base. Thus, when viewed from another position such as that of Eastern European it would seem that OWS has been speaking in our name, but not necessarily for us. How do we come into the picture? On the one hand, the Occupy movement has played a role in criticising the crisis management of global capitalism applied in Eastern Europe. Addressing a suffering public in the First World, it succeeded in mobilising support beyond its base. On the other hand, though, the movement is dominated by a specific ideology and set of norms, based on a culture of taste and political opinion-production that might prove inaccessible for those who are not in possession of the requisite cultural capital. Furthermore, it lacks a global program, and it does not pay adequate attention to important differences in the global positions of various actors. In Eastern Europe, the Occupy movement was taken up by small groups that were aware of the 68 tradition, that paid attention to news of OWS, and that understood its language. In Warsaw, Prague, Bratislava, Bucharest, Budapest, Belgrade and Sofia, a few hundred people reacted to the call to world revolution, and dissipated afterwards. In Hungary, a civil movement against current right-wing government, called Milla, that brought more than 80,000 people to the street on 23 October 2011, made mention of OWS, and mutual declarations of solidarity were issued. Milla resembles the OWS in that it does not wish to enter party politics, but aims to enhance civil engagement. Ironically, though, many of the movements organisers come from a network of liberal intellectuals who never spoke up against the neoliberalisation of socialist infrastructures after 1989, and who occupied key positions all through those years while the bulk of grass roots civil activity was undertaken by right-wing movements. The last time a global revolution for equality reached Eastern Europe, it was in the form of the Eastern enlargement programs of the alter-globalist movement, a decade ago. Back then, Eastern Europeans invited into the horizontal process of the alterglobalist movement could not even raise the topic of really-existing socialism to the level of a real dialogue within the European movement. This left Eastern European activists alone with leftist slogans of anti-globalism in post-socialist countries where the same slogans resonated differently than in Western countries. Despite this, however, Eastern European activists were motivated to stick with the global agenda because it promised them an equal position within the movement, unlike the mainstream hierarchical discourse of post-socialist transition, which framed any local social problem as a shameful mark of Eastern inferiority. 146

Crucially, though, this global escape route from the hierarchy of postcommunist transition clashed with the peripheral position of the region within the alter globalisation movement itself. In the context of Eastern European alter-globalism, autonomy became a daily practice of dealing with the movements detachment from the local context, and of proving to be part of a movement that barely had any infrastructure locally. This largely determined the nature and dynamic of horizontal contacts with the Western core. Differences became so suppressed that in 2008, when Western activists invited Romanian groups to organise a NATO counter summit, none of the parties even considered adapting counter summit models to the Romanian context, leading to a severe defeat. Unable to feed back on local conditions, alter-globalism remained the imaginary movement of a small activist elite, while the anti-globalist anger of the population got channeled by the extreme right. A tight loop of self-reflection between intellectual commentators quoting Western trends and movement groups acting out those trends contributed to the almost total neglect of this bifurcation. In Eastern Europe, to join the OWS project in its present form could only mean that an elite group of activists establish a small local example of it, while abolishing their own society in a double way: by speaking a language they do not speak, and by joining a cause that is not defined in their own interest. For us, to join a global revolution requires that we do the work of occupying our position, instead of abolishing it, and add our voice to the global debate from here. References Bourdieu, P., 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cordero-Guzman, H. R., 2011. Mainstream support for a mainstream movement. Occupywallst.org, 10 October. Available at: http://occupywallst.org/media/pdf/OWS-profile1-10-18-11-sent-v2HRCG.pdf, Accessed on 30 November 2011. Shoen, D., 2011. Polling the Occupy Wall Street crowd. Wall Street Journal [Online], 18 October. Available at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020447950457663708296 5745362.html, Accessed on 30 November 2011. Wallerstein, I., 2011. Upsurge in Movements Around the Globe: 1968 Redux? Iwallerstein.org [Online], 3 November. Available at: http://www.iwallerstein.com/upsurge-movements-globe-1968-redux/, Accessed on 30 November 2011.
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Agnes Gagyi is External Lecturer at Corvinus University Budapest and Moholy-Nagy University of Arts and Design Budapest, where she teaches on the sociology of communication and social movements. She was active in the Romanian and Hungarian alter-globalist movements between 2003-2008, and is currently preparing a book on the topic. She can be contacted at agnesgagyi@gmail.com.
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Return to the Real, Hozic
Return to the Real

Aida A. Hozic
If there is a message in the #occupy movement for IR and IPE scholars in the United States, it is the warning that the last two decades of academic political abstinence are no longer sustainable. There is no way around it. Co-opted by liberal triumphalism of the post-Cold War era (Barder and Levine, 2011), US academia has not only failed to raise its voice loudly and clearly against the increased militarization of a Wall Street-led casino capitalism, whose violence which has been embedded deep in the fabric of everyday American life; it has also basked in its benefits. Until the financial crisis of 2008, elite American universities were reaping unprecedented increases in their endowments, facilitating the sale of their classrooms to corporate interests, leading the charge for globalization and democratization (which masked conditions of perpetual warfare both inside and outside of the United States), and willingly, as David Harvey (2011) notes, participating in the production of an Orwellian new-speak which transformed all political/economic questions into cultural/ideational/identity ones. A series of new programs by the Department of Defense from the Human Terrain System and Minerva (Der Derian, 2008; Gusterson, 2008, 2010; Ilieva, 2011; and Forte, 2011) to the more recently written-up Grand Strategy Programs (Horn and Ruff, 2011) has brought social scientists back to the National Security State and mended the rift between the Pentagon/U.S. alphabet agencies and the academic community created by the Vietnam War. The simultaneous attraction of American IR scholars to European critical theory and continental philosophy has hardly generated a viable political opposition to Americas economic and military adventures. Despite persistent Republican attacks on universities as the bastions of liberal intellectualism and anti -Americanism, American campuses remained eerily quiet through a series of American military interventions from Grenada to Libya. While the most serious and vocal critics of American foreign policy were either traditional Leftists like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn or rather conservative realists like Chalmers Johnson, Andrew Bacevich, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, constructivist and critical IR theorists satisfied themselves with expressions of indignation at always-well-populated panels in much-too-small rooms at annual conventions of the International Studies Association. Some even advised the U.S. military while still viewing themselves as card-carrying critical IR theorists. As Italian
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philosopher (and openly-gay mayor of Venice in the 1990s), Gianni Vattimo (1989), noted years ago, after a visit to the United States during the First Gulf War: While we in Italy discuss pacifism in abstract terms, young Americans have to come to terms with the imminence of new wars. And yet, confronting the pressures of these objective problems, stands an intellectual radicalism completely devoid of any concrete politics, subversive theoretical constructs which ultimately confirm traditional roles, and as could be expected an avant-garde so pure and rigid that it ends up looking like sheer decoration. Thus, as police violence arrives on the few U.S. campuses where students have dared to organize, the #occupy movement punctures the favorite fantasies of the salaried professoriate; that our Disney-fied universities are the sites of critical thinking; that teaching is more than disciplining students for a capitalist labor market (including the academic one); that pursuit of truth(s) rather than careerism governs our inquiries; that courage displayed in classroom discussions or conference presentations about torture, exploitation of others, or willful killing of those who are deemed non-human, are all acceptable substitutes for political action. I remember a colleague, who considered himself a radical, telling me a few years ago that politics would never again be about bodies in the streets. Politics, my colleague argued, was about bits and digits, images and representations, not material and/or distributive questions. It no longer required physical aspects of power in movement. I remember another colleague telling me that she had never thought that the issue of rape in warfare could be different from the issue of rape in warfare as seen on American TV screens. I remember a post-colonial scholar making a powerful claim that voting was an irrelevant act in the United States. I remember a well-known human-rights constructivist telling a group of young, female graduate students that they had to understand that they would never be able to have it all in the academe she, for instance, had not been able to make it to the gym for weeks. I remember myself believing that for as long as I was a non-citizen, I did not bear responsibility for U.S. foreign policy and then continuing to believe so even after I got the right to vote in 2004, on the very day when Donald Rumsfeld was testifying in Congress about Abu Ghraib. It used to be easy to entertain such beliefs for as long as one could forget that real political power still mobilized resources, occupied territories and (democratic) institutions, moved armed bodies and machines around the world, produced inequalities and thrived on particular material conditions. It used to be easy to believe this, so long as the grounds on which academe itself was standing did not begin to shift, and so long as the bodies did not appear in our streets. There is thus a dirty little secret amidst academic fascination with the #occupy movement: it speaks to our current plight. The battle is no longer about the ethnic 150
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character of new wars, Islamic fundamentalism, womens rights in Afghanistan, the rise of China or methodological underpinnings of IR scholarship. It is about our mortgages, our status as (public) employees, employment opportunities of our students and our children, our tenures. The apparatus that the IR scholarship has so willingly sustained by turning away from the issues of economic inequality and material power has come back to haunt us. Even if gainfully employed and privileged by all measures of the current crisis, we are as powerless vis--vis the 1% and the ruling power as the rest of the 99%. I cannot at this point speculate what the #occupy movement is to become, how long will it last, what political effects it might have. Perhaps the most fascinating aspects of the movement are precisely its Situationist roots; its amorphous, malleable nature; its anarchist trust in diffusion and dissolution of power; its carnivalesque features a lived experience of space and time that could be otherwise; its belief in process rather than outcomes; its embodiment of non-instrumental action; its promise of politics as poiesis. But I also cannot see it in any other terms than as a wake up call to those of us who have surrendered our dreams about alternatives to the comforts of complacency. The time to hibernate has run out. As one of the first #occupy posters said this revolution will not be televised. It most certainly will not take place in our classrooms, at academic conferences or within associations where we dutifully pay our membership fees. The #occupy movement calls upon the salaried professoriate to step out into the streets, be counted and confront the Real. We owe it to the 99% that we have helped to create. The movement may not deliver but is that a reason to stay on the sidelines? Ask the people of the Tahrir Square. Or better ask the ghosts of the Blair Mountain in West Virginia where corporate thugs and the US Army crushed the coal miners attempt to unionize in 1921 and where union folks and environmentalists, to this day, fight to protect the mountain from further exploitation. References Barder, A. and Levine, D., 2011. The World is Too Much With Us: Reification and the Depoliticizing of Constructivist IR. Paper presented at the 40th Annual Millennium Conference entitled Out Of The Ivory Tower: Weaving the Theories and Practice of International Relations. London School of Economics, 22-23 October. Der Derian, J., 2008. The Desert of the Real and the Simulacrum of War. International Affairs, 84 (5): pp. 931-948 Forte, M. C., 2011. The Human Terrain System and Anthropology: A Review of Ongoing Public Debate. American Anthropologist, 113 (1): pp. 149-153 Gusterson, H., 2008. Unveiling Minerva. The Social Science Research Council Website, 9 October. Available at
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http://essays.ssrc.org/minerva/2008/10/09/gusterson/ . 2010. Do Professional Ethics Matter in War?The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists [Online], 4 March. Available at: http://www.thebulletin.org/webedition/columnists/hugh-gusterson/do-professional-ethics-matter-war> Harvey, D., 2011. The Party of Wall Street Meets its Nemesis.Verso Blogs [Internet], 28 October. Available at: http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/777 Horn, S. and Ruff, A., 2011. Defunct War Strategy Program May Still Overshadow University of Wisconsin-Madisons History of Dissent. Truthout [Online], 29 November. Available at: http://www.truth-out.org/defunct-war-strategyprogram-may-still-overshadow-uw-madisons-history-dissent/1321653274 Ilieva, E., 2011. Courage, Fearless Speech, and the Scholar-Soldier of the Human Terrain System. Paper presented at the 40th Annual Millennium Conference entitled
Out Of The Ivory Tower: Weaving the Theories and Practice of International Relations. London School of Economics, 22-23 October. Vattimo, G., 1989. I Filosofi Negli USA. LEspresso (translation in text by author).
Aida A. Hozic is Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at the University of Florida. She is the author of Hollyworld: Space, Power and Fantasy in the American Economy (Cornell University Press, 2002). Her current work focuses on the relationship between states and crimes in the Balkans.
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Exposing the Orthodoxy, Manokha and Chalabi
#Occupy IR: Exposing the Orthodoxy

Ivan Manokha and Mona Chalabi
The #occupy IR/IPE initiative was created in response to the #occupy movement, whose own roots can be traced backed to the latest crisis of global finance. In this contribution, we link #occupy and the crisis in a different way. We argue that we must occupy IR/IPE because of the disciplines failure to apprehend and acknowledge the crisis itself, just as the Occupy movement is calling for their overarching authorities to notice and help address the social and economic inequalities produced by this crisis. More precisely, we argue that the dominant academic orthodoxy, via a series of continuously reproduced dichotomies, has rendered IR/IPE incapable of dealing with a phenomenon as complex as the financial crisis. IR textbooks tend to construct the historical development of the discipline as having gone through so-called great debates which have constituted key turning points for some, and even paradigm shifts for others (cf. Burchill et al., 2005; Griffiths, OGallaghan and Roach, 2007; and Brown, 2005). Presented in this way, the history of the discipline gives the impression of a profound pluralism in terms of epistemological, ontological and methodological assumptions that various protagonists have advanced in the course of the disciplines development. This, however, is far from the case. Despite the efforts of the post-positivist critics, whose challenge to mainstream IR theories is commonly seen as being at the heart of the third great debate, the discipline is still characterised by a dominant orthodoxy which conditions the manner in which international relations are studied. The orthodoxy continues to structure the discipline around the analysis of political relations among state actors, totally separating them out from economic relations, and treating the international in a near clinical isolation from the domestic. As John Maclean (2000, pp. 29-30) argues, disputes between the idealists and the realists, between the traditionalists and the scientists or, recently, between all these and the post-positivists, present the orthodoxy as though it is a domain of continuous debate or heterodoxy. This tends to conceal the necessary contribution these disputes make to the very confirmation of the boundaries [of IR] as given. This is not to say that the contribution of post-modernists, feminists or constructivists
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has had no impact whatsoever. Rather, it is to suggest that the state the key unit of analysis that the orthodoxy has identified continues to be taken for granted and treated as a unitary actor, with an exclusive focus on its external behaviour, which in turn is examined in terms of its political, military, legal or ethical aspects, at the expense of economic issues. Following on in the spirit of Kenneth Waltz who once observed that states, despite their divergent internal constitution, have behaved similarly externally the orthodoxy sees no need to open up the State and to ask questions about whose interests it was brought into being to serve, about what kinds of antagonisms it seeks to remedy, or about how state institutions are related to the social relations of economic production. As a result, IR renders itself incapable from the outset to explain foreign policies of states, except on the basis of dubious claims about the selfishness of human nature or international anarchy. By emptying the state of its social content, IR is incapable of understanding why certain policies are chosen over others in any given case. Furthermore, by categorically separating the domestic from the international and by privileging the latter, IR is equally incapable of understanding how the two realms constantly affect each other. So what of IPE, a discipline born from attempts to explain and reverse the divorce between Politics and Economics? IPE scholars have made important progress in terms of incorporating the economic into their analyses. However, they have often continued to focus on external behaviour, leaving the black box state relatively unscathed and IRs dichotomies largely intact. Most imp ortantly, politics and economics remain two notionally separate fields, which do not constitute one social totality, but instead only occasionally interact. The relationship is not seen as one of mutually reinforcing causality, or organic unity, but one of externality and randomness, whereby a relation can be observed and said to exist at one time, but then become unobservable and thus apparently non-existent at another. Furthermore, IPE is increasingly developing its own tradition, rooted in Economics and mirroring established neo-classical orthodoxy. As Wade observes, to the extent that normal science in international political economy (IPE) has come to be rooted in the liberal paradigm, in statistical techniques, and in mathematical models, it has come to resemble neoclassical economics (2009, p. 106). This conception of science biases conclusions towards the following: the virtues and prevalence of self-adjusting systems; an anodyne notion of power; and functionalist explanations. In this manner, the orthodoxy diverts attention from inequalities of income and wealth, and structural forms of power. The inadequacies inherent in IR and IPEs orthodoxy have been exposed by the current financial crisis. While the crisis hit the world economy with a credit crunch tsunami (Greenspan, 2008), it has barely attracted the attention of IR scholars. It would seem that the orthodoxy of IR renders the discipline incapable of joining the dots between the bubble in the real estate sector in the US (itself connected to the massive income inequalities among American citizens), and the development of global 154
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imbalances resulting from a new global structure of production and distribution. It simply cannot see how serious the implications of this are for its key objects of study the state and the international system. Indeed, the last comparable crisis the Great Depression and the mass unemployment, political upheaval and protectionist policies that it resulted in were followed by the bloodiest conflict in human history. Given this fact, it would be legitimate to expect IR scholars to show some interest in the crisis, at the very least to enquire about its potentially destabilising impact on international relations. However, the majority of IR academics have continued business as usual; after all, they might say, no international political conflict has erupted, so why expend analytical energy? Without examining the domestic and the economic, they are incapable of seeing the triggering of processes which could be detrimental to international stability, which is, after all, what they define as their legitimate object of study. It is therefore urgent for critical IR scholars to liberate the discipline from this ontological straightjacket. It is only by overcoming the dichotomies that have developed within the discipline (state/non-state, politics/economics, domestic/international, theory/practice, subject/object, etc.) that a holistic and truly explanatory analysis can be developed. Critical IR has to move from the margins of the discipline to its centre and offer a real alternative to the mainstream. The financial crisis is not only a golden opportunity to do so but, indeed, as the #Occupy movements grab centre stage with their formidable critique of global power relations, it is an increasingly urgent one if the discipline is to remain relevant. References Brown, C., 2005. Understanding International Relations, Houndmills: Palgrave. Burchill, S. et al., 2005. Theories of International Relations, Houndmills: Palgrave. Greenspan, A., 2008. Financial crisis 'like a tsunami. BBC News [Online], 23 October. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7687101.stm Griffiths, M., O'Callaghan, T. and Roach, S., 2007. International Relations: The Key Concepts, New York: Routledge. Maclean, J., 2000. Philosophical Roots of Globalization: Philosophical Routes to Globalization. In R. Germain (ed.) Globalization and Its Critics: Perspectives from Political Economy, Hampshire: Macmilllan. Wade, R., 2009. Beware What You Wish For: Lessons For International Political Economy from the Transformation of Economics. Review of International Political Economy, 16 (1): pp. 106121.
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Ivan Manokha is Vice-Dean of the Graduate School of Sciences Po, Paris and is an associate research fellow at CERI. He has taught at the University of Sussex (2000-2003), at the ESSEC Business School (2004-2005), at the London School of Economics (20052006) and has been teaching at Sciences Po since 2006. Ivan holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Sussex. Mona Chalabi is currently developing Transparency International's Government Defence Integrity Index. She has worked on a range of human, political and economic security issues at the International Organization for Migration, the Economist Intelligence Unit and Al Jazeera. Mona completed her Masters in International Security at Sciences Po, Paris in 2011.
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Why IR Theory Needs a Mic Check!, Kiersey
Occupy Wall Street as Immanent Critique: Why IR Theory Needs a Mic Check!
Nicholas J. Kiersey
The recent movements that have emerged across the world to occupy various public spaces present an immanent critique of the contemporary arrangements of global politics one that theorists of International Relations (IR) and International Political Economy (IPE) should reflect on with some urgency. Emerging from a complex intertext including, but by no means limited to, anarchist and neo-Marxist frameworks, the movement has called for a recognition and appraisal of the communism of everyday life. Resonating with arguments made in Hardt and Negris Commonwealth (2009), as well as David Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011), the movements appear to wish to draw attention to a dominant capitalist ontology which denies the highly distributed and social nature of the way in which real value production takes place today. In this context, they argue, the burden of debt that the 99% must endure merely to maintain a dignified standard of living bespeaks the erosion of any semblance of democracy in the allocation of social wealth. The premium that Occupy Wall Street (OWS) places on ontological engagement is revealed clearly in their strategy of social intervention. However, this proposition is significant not simply in its relation to the struggle of OWS to engage the power of speculative capital and high finance. It is significant, too, for IR theory and IPE, two closely related disciplines that historically have tended to engage with the world in a manner both compatible and complicit with the global capitalist imaginary. In these short comments, I have two simple goals. My first is simply to give the most basic outline of this ontology, and some of the reasoning behind it, insofar as it highlights a certain narrowness on the part of IR and IPE. My second goal, however, is to suggest that this implicit ontology also has something important to teach about the production of energetic solidarities an area of research where IR and IPE scholarship has yet to tread in any meaningful way. Of course, if the strategies of OWS reveal anything at all it is that the 99%
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have a far more sophisticated understanding of contemporary social relations than do most IR and IPE theorists. To pick just one axis of this understanding, the identification of the state and the market as two somehow essentially discrete agents or forces in social life has long been the subject of social criticism (Marx, 1992). Despite this, as Ian Bruff has recently argued, by assigning different normative properties to each of these categories, mainstream IR and IPE continue to work within this framework (Bruff, 2011, p. 83). The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement rests on two strategic imperatives which, together, evince its critique of the social relations that comprise both the contemporary market and state. The occupation movements have eschewed making political demands as traditionally understood but, rather, through the occupation of public spaces in a celebratory and radically democratic organizational form, their interventions have had as their objective a disruption of the socio-imaginative fabric which they believe has occasioned the financial crisis in the first place. In this sense, on the one hand, they have displayed a characteristic understanding of the state. As Theda Skocpol (1979) famously argued, theories of revolution tend to focus on the state as a site of political change without considering the conditioning influence of the prior regime over its basic mode of operation. Thus, even with the best of intentions, revolutionary success in seizing the machineries of state power can also end up reproducing characteristic aspects of the prior regimes state. By making no demands of the state then, the occupy movements try to evade this risk by refusing to engage the category of the state as the essential space where politics should take place. Instead, they have identified the apparatus of the state as merely one of a number of technologies of power which both discipline individuals and solicit sociocultural energies from populations in the context of contemporary capitalism. That this linkage between the state and wider social relations is in fact so obvious and foundational to the movement attests mightily to its relevancy for students of world politics as they struggle both for concepts to assess the nature of the crisis, and for ways to re-imagine and remake their worlds. But this is not to say that OWS makes no demands at all. As Adbusters (2011) wrote in the early build up to the occupations, we zero in on what our one demand will be, a demand that awakens the imagination and, if achieved, would propel us toward the radical democracy of the future. The basic ontology of OWS is thus one that takes seriously the radical transformations of social life wrought by contemporary capitalism: the emergence of a new, global financial class (the 1%) that has largely displaced the traditional bourgeoisie as the party on behalf of which the governmentalizing powers of the state are set to work; the expansion of the domain of the market to encompass, and discipline, forms of human activity that were previously considered out of bounds (that is, forms of activity associated with language and caring, the bases of so-called immaterial labour); and, moreover, the emergence of a 99%, or a multitude, of people around the 158
Why IR Theory Needs a Mic Check!, Kiersey

world who have been dispossessed and left submerged in debt by the conditions of increasing precarity in which they find themselves under neoliberalisms global shock therapy regime. As an immanent critique however, OWS is an intervention within the object of its own analysis not simply at the level of its formal theorising but also within the practices and habits that sustain that object in the first place. No less should be obvious from the fact that the initial meetings from which OWS emerged were organised by selfavowed culture jammers (Yardley, 2011). But what might have started simply as an ironic advertising campaign has evolved into something much more powerful quite precisely because of the radically democratic or horizontal manner in which the OWS camps have structured themselves. Commentators have identified this horizontality in characteristic OWS innovations such as the open mic (Kimmelman, 2011). For some, this is a multitude form of social organizing (Hardt and Negri, 2011). For others the term communitarian anarchism is apt (Barber, 2011). In their commitment to such practices, the occupiers demonstrate not only their disdain for the corrupt simulacrum of democracy that the present order offers up but, more interestingly, they inspire hope that, indeed, another world is possible. But the emancipatory potential of OWS is not limited simply to its declarations of alternative rationalities of solidarity and democracy. For Protevi (2011), one of the great political obstacles of our time is the enduring sense of shame and personal failure with which todays subjects of neoliberal responsibility are saddled. Following Deleuze and Guattari however, Protevi notes that neoliberal shame is not ideological in nature. Sentiments of shame affect groups of neoliberal subjects not as sets of thinking individuals but, rather, as aggregations of feeling. Shame, in this sense, is a sort of collective mood or rhythm. What sort of political strategy can best address these sorts of affective structures? For Protevi, the advantage of the OWS camps is that they bring people out to show their face, to be among like-minded others. The protestors were forced to adopt their open mic technique when the police banned their bullhorns. But the knock on effect has been the achievement of an intermodal resonance between the identity of the 99%, their democratic practices, and their joyful, shameless disposition (Protevi, 2011). This is not to say that the struggle takes place solely on an emotional plane. For IR and IPE, however, the upshot is that OWS is not simply a superior theoretical account of what is and what is not legitimately on the table as world politics. Rather, in becoming the household name that it now is, OWS has demonstrated a competency in provoking a very different feeling about this account among those who share it. A feeling that they are not alone, that they are energized, and that they might be able to change things.
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References Adbusters, 2011. #OCCUPYWALLSTREET. Adbusters [Online], 13 July 2011. Available at: http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbustersblog/occupywallstreet.html, Accessed on 1 August 2011. Barber, B., 2011. Occupy Wall Street: We Are What Democracy Looks Like! Logos [Online], 10. Available at: http://logosjournal.com/2011/fall_barber Accessed on 1 December 2011. Bruff, I., 2011. Overcoming the State/Market Dichotomy. In Stuart Shields, Ian Bruff and Huw Macartney (eds.), Critical International Political Economy: Dialogue, Debate and Dissensus. New York: Palgrave. Graeber, D., 2011. Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House. Hardt, M. and Negri, A., 2009. Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Harvard. . 2011. The Fight for 'Real Democracy' at the Heart of Occupy Wall Street. Foreign Affairs [Online], 11 October. Available at: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/98542?page=show Accessed on 17 October 2011. Kimmelman, M., 2011. In Protest, the Power of Place. New York Times [Online], 15 October. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/sundayreview/wall-street-protest-shows-power-of-place.html Accessed on 5 December 2011. Marx, K., 1992. Critique of Hegels Doctrine of State. In Livingstone R. and Benton, G. (eds.) Karl Marx: Early Writings. London: Karl Marx: Early Writings. Protevi, J., 2011. Semantic, Pragmatic, and Affective Enactment at OWS. Theory & Event [Online], 14. Available at: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v014/14.4S.protevi.html, Accessed on 4 December 2011. Skocpol, T., 1979. States and Social Revolutions. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Yardley, W., 2011. The Branding of the Occupy Movement. New York Times [Online], 27 November. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/business/media/the-branding-ofthe-occupy-movement.html?pagewanted=all, Accessed on 5 December 2011. Nicholas J. Kiersey is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ohio UniversityChillicothe. He has published research on world state theory; scale and biopolitics in the War on Terror; and the politics of the ongoing financial crisis. His current research focuses on discourses of neoliberal capitalist subjectivity, and the debate about empire in IR theory.
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Riot, why wouldnt you?, Wight
Riot, why wouldn't you?

Colin Wight
Christine Lagarde: And l clearly remember telling Hank [Paulson]: 'We are watching this tsunami coming, and you're just proposing that we ask: "which swimming costume we're going to put on."' (Inside Job, 2011) All systems have their own logics. One logic of capitalism is exploitation. Let us be clear about this: Marxs labour theory of value might have its problems but the essence of the theory is sound. Capitalism is a system in which small groups of people (the 1%) systematically exploit large groups of people (the 99%). We all know this, and we are all aware of the consequences, yet we seem unable to do anything to change it. Perhaps the Occupy Movement is the beginning of the beginning when the 99% say enough is enough. Of course, it is far too early to say whether we are entering a new stage of political activism, or perhaps a new form of politics itself. But what we do know is that levels of public disenchantment with politics are high. We can see this disenchantment spreading like a virus, engendering open protest and revolt in the Middle East, riots in Greece, looting and disorder in London and major cities in the UK, student protests in Chile, and producing peaceful protest under the banner of the Occupy Movement across the globe. Something is happening, the question is what? What does it all mean, and where will it all end? Are we witnessing the beginning of the end for the capitalist system? Or, do these various forms of protest merely represent the final and tragic last vestiges of resistance against a system that is finally and relentlessly squeezing the life out of its constituent elements? Glass half empty or glass half full? Pessimist or Optimist? It may be misguided of me, but optimism is surely the only option that one can sensibly choose, otherwise nihilism beckons. One thing is clear, irrespective of how it will all end, the Arab Spring, looting in London, riots in Greece, wars across the Middle East and beyond, the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), and the Occupy Movement are all connected in some way. What connects them is a corrupt, degenerative, immoral, sexist, and racist global capitalist political-economic system. And one does not have to be a Marxist to see that this is the case. Stand up anyone prepared to argue that the current structure of the global economic and political system produces outcomes that are equitable! Exactly.
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Moreover, the GFC of 2008 was simply the most visible manifestation of a system in crisis. But crisis for the system is not always something to be concerned about. Most pundits today accept the argument that what we are witnessing in the Eurozone in 2011 is not the beginnings of a new crisis. No, there is simply one crisis, and 2011 is a continuation of 2008. Although better than the two-crisis model this analysis is still incomplete. It is incomplete because crisis is one of the contradictions of capitalism. Crisis is both a constant threat to the system, but also one of the mechanisms through which the system exercises control. Crisis is simply the language of the system through which fear, acquiescence, subordination and compliance are produced. In capitalism, crisis is permanent. Robert Gnaizda: Addressing Obama and, quote, 'regulatory reform' - my response, if it was one word, would be 'ha!' There's very little reform... It's a Wall Street government. (Inside Job, 2011) Currently head of the IMF, Christina Lagardes pithy comment on Hank Paulson's complacency is telling. Those at the heart of the system could afford to be complacent, they really had nothing to lose, and they already knew that even if they did there was no chance of them losing it. As the logic of capitalism had inexorably unfolded throughout the 20th century, politics and markets became fused as, of course, Marx had always insisted was the case. Anyone who has seen Charles Ferguson's brilliant the Inside Job can attest to the symbiotic and incestuous relationship between Wall Street and government. In fact, that is the wrong way of putting it, and the and is redundant in this context. It really is Wallstreetgov.com, and given the interconnected nature of the global economy, it is a form of governance that exercises control beyond that of national governments. Nothing illustrates this better than the takeover of failing governments in the Eurozone by technocrats. Here democracy has truly ended, we have just not realised it yet. What, after the GFC, possessed anyone to put bankers and economists in control of anything, let alone governments in Greece and Italy; have they not heard the old joke about the fox in the henhouse? New Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti was EU commissioner for the Internal Market, Financial Services and Financial Integration, Customs, and Taxation; hardly sectors that come with a ringing endorsement after the GFC, and Lucas Papademos, the new Prime Minister of Greece was a former Vice President of the European Central Bank. They may as well have offered both jobs to former Lehmans CEO Richard, S. Fuld Jnr. When former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou attempted to take the EU bailout plan to a referendum, the consequences, we were told, would be disastrous. However, Iceland has done it twice now, its public rejecting the pleas of its politicians for Icelandic citizens to shoulder the losses of a private bank. Obviously, we do 162

not know what the long term consequences will be for Iceland having taken such a stance, but they can hardly be much worse than those that emerged as a result of the GFC. More to the point, at least the people of Iceland have been allowed a say in the decision. Moreover, it is not only the fact that no one has faced charges for their wrongdoing in the run up to 2008, but that the major players were simply reshuffled into different positions in the Obama government that really demonstrates that this is Wallstreetgov.com. Larry Summers, Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner all argued against increased regulation of financial markets; yet all would go on to play pivotal roles in the Obama administration. And again, let us also be clear about this; the optimism that followed Obama's election helps explain the current wave of protests sweeping the globe. I am not blaming Obama here, he is as much a product of the system as any of us, but the audacity of hope that followed his election was as misguided as the belief that the banking system would finally be subject to tighter regulatory control by governments. When did turkeys last vote for Christmas? Of course, Wallstreetgov.com was not going to place controls on Wallstreetgov.com. Hence the audacity of hope was misguided because it failed to see how Obama was already embedded within a structural context that severely limited how much change could be produced. Often described as the most powerful man on the planet, the US president confronts the global capitalist system nonetheless. This does not mean that optimism is always necessarily nave, or even wrong. But it does mean that optimism without power allied to a more comprehensive explanation of the nature of capitalism will always lead to more of the same. And in this context, the same means massive bonuses and pay offs for abject failure. I t is not a problem if you get it wrong, governments will pick up the bill and pass the invoice on to the public. George Soros: Chuck Prince of Citibank famously said: 'That we have to dance until the music stops.' Actually, the music had stopped already when he said that. (Inside Job, 2011) The band plays on and Chuck (Charles) Prince is still waltzing his way around Wall Street. He is currently a Senior Counsellor to Albright Stonebridge Group and serves in the influential trade group the Financial Services Forum, as well as being a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, and the Business Roundtable. Prince, who left his post as CEO of Citigroup after saying the bank would need an additional $8 billion to $11 billion in subprime-mortgage-related write-downs, left with a pension, stock awards and stock options worth a total of $29.5 million. He was also entitled to a year-end bonus valued at about $12 million. Oh, and just in case you are tempted to feel sorry for him, he also got an office, a car and a driver for five years. Of course, Chuck Prince is hardly the
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worst in this respect, and Stanley O'Neal retired from Merrill Lynch with a $160 million pay check. Richard Grasso, head of the New York Stock Exchange, took $140 million in deferred compensation. Stephen Fuld Jnr, Lehman's CEO, took $485 million and the CEO of the AIG, $315 million. Did they not realise that when Michael Douglas (Gordon Gekko) said greed is good in the film Wall Street, he was acting? Yet, of course, in a system that makes possible, even encourages, such greed, why wouldn't one take advantage? But that surely applies to riots as well. If the message that is being sent is when you can take advantage, do so! then one can hardly blame the looters in London for acquiring a new plasma TV if the opportunity arises. Michael Capuano: You come to us today telling us "We're sorry. We won't do it again. Trust us". Well I have some people in my constituency that actually robbed some of your banks, and they say the same thing. (Inside Job, 2011) One of the most common criticisms of the Occupy Movement is the lack of a coherent set of demands or a political programme around which the movement might converge. This criticism is misguided. It seems to me that the movement has a very clear idea of what it wants even if this can't be articulated as a particular political programme with a clear end goal. Moreover, why would anyone expect a coherent political programme from the protestors? Are they expected to do everything? We are constantly being told that most of these protesters are anarchists, so it would be rather foolish to expect groups of anarchists to come up with a political programme that had embedded within it a wellstructured account of how politics should be administered. Equally, what the protesters want is abundantly clear; more equality, a more just distribution of resources, greater control over banking and financial sectors, more say for publics in decision-making, and perhaps one or two of those complicit in the production of the financial crisis being subject to punishment of some or other kind. After all, when did it become the case that the greater the crime the less chance there was of being held to account for it? I would throw in a few extra suggestions. First, if publics are expected to shoulder the burden of the banks profligacy then they may as well be in public ownership in the first place. Why are shareholders allowed to gain from banking profits in the good times if publics pick up the tab when it all goes wrong? Second, bring the ratings agencies under IMF, World Bank, or UN control. Yes theyd lose some independence from political interference, but since by their own admission they only provide opinions not guides for investors, what would we lose anyway? And whilst on the subject of crime: It might be tempting to view the Occupy Movement as a legitimate form of protest and the riots that took place in London and other cities in the UK as simply being criminal activity. Let us separate good protest from bad protest. Indeed this was the common interpretation at the time of the riots. The London riots, so the story goes, were not embedded in political dissatisfaction, but 164

represented blatant opportunist criminal activity. Images of burning cars, devastated shopkeepers and rampant feral hooded youths all combined to produce the impression that this was nothing other than young hooligans running amok. Even Slavoj iek (2011) has suggested that this was the case. Yet poverty was clearly a factor (Younge, 2011). Figures from the UK government suggest that almost two-thirds (64%) of the rioters lived in the poorest areas. Moreover, youth unemployment in Britain is currently at 21.9% (Allen, 2011). But much like the Occupy Movement, the absence of any demands, organisation, or even slogans, meant that the politics of the riots was difficult to discern. But this does not mean that they were devoid of a politics. When placed within the context of rising unemployment in the UK, government cutbacks, rising student fees, MPs expenses scandals, bankers bonuses, public bailout of banks, the looting makes perfect sense. Looting is opportunistic, but then so is insider trading, and the greed that accompanies the acceptance of extravagant severance payouts. Lets be honest with ourselves here; who wouldnt take a multi-million dollar bonus if offered it? In the context of all this and a rampant capitalist system, the looters had perfect role models. If bankers can cook the books and MPs take cash for questions, and can fiddle their expenses, what could this underclass of youth do to further their own interests? How could they get their noses in the trough? What options did they have? In the context of everyone already opportunistically abusing the system to serve their own ends, the question/slogan should have been; Riot, why wouldnt you? I am not suggesting that the Occupy protests should follow the example of the London rioters, but it may well be the case that the violence produced by the global economic system on the 99% may well only be overturned by more direct and overt forms of action. Protest needs a voice and riots are a class phenomenon that expresses that voice. As long as the 1% can continue to dance the night away they wont listen to anything but the music. Ind eed: riot, why wouldnt you? References Allen, K., 2011. Youth Unemployment Hits 1 Million. The Guardian, [Internet] 16 November. Available at : http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/nov/16/youth-unemploymenthits-1m-uk, Accessed on 23 November 2011. Inside Job. 2011. Written and Directed by Charles Ferguson, Sony Pictures Classics. Younge, G., 2011, Indifferent Elites, Poverty and Police Brutality: All Reasons to Riot in the UK. The Guardian on Facebook, [Internet] 5 December. Available at: http://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/commentisfree/2011/dec/05/reaso ns-riot-uk-protest-study, Accessed on 5 December 2011.
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iek, S., 2011. Talk to Al Jazeera: Slavoj iek, YouTube, [Internet] 29 October. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Qhk8az8K-Y, Accessed on 5 December 2011. Colin Wight is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on the philosophy of social science, social theory and international relations theory. Selected publications include Scientific Realism and International Relations (co-edited with Jonathan Joseph, Routledge, 2010), Agents, Structures and International Relations: Politics as Ontology (Cambridge, 2006) and Realism, Philosophy and Social Science (co-authored with Kathryn Dean, John Roberts and Jonathan Joseph, Palgrave, 2006). He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of International Relations.
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Reviews
Perspectives on the Global Financial Crisis

The Spectre at The Feast: Capitalist Crisis and the Politics of Recession by Andrew
Gamble, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009, pp. 184, ISBN 978-0-230-23074-3, 55.(hbk.)
The Great Credit Crash by Martijn Konings (ed.), London: Verso, 2010, pp. 398, ISBN
978-1-844-67433-6, 19.95 (pbk.)
Crisis in the Global Economy: Financial Markets, Social Struggles, and New Political Scenarios by Andrea Fumagalli and Sandro Mezzadra (eds.), Cambridge (MA): MIT
Press, 2010, pp. 301, ISBN 978-1-584-35087-3, 12.95 (pbk.) By Alex Andrews In a famous passage of his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes remarks that in order to stimulate economic activity the government should take any decisive action, not limited to burying money in bottles and getting businesses to dig them up. Clearly the global publishing industry decided to take matters into its own hands in the aftermath of the 2007 global financial crisis, with the sheer number and variety of accounts, theoretical reflections and practical suggestions published surely counting as a stimulus package of sorts themselves. The three books under review represent three excellent complementary accounts that provide a grounding in the causes of the crisis and possible alternatives to the structure of capitalism that might offer a solution. Andrew Gambles The Spectre at The Feast: Capitalist Crisis and the Politics of Recession is a straight forward, level headed critical account whose virtues are its brevity and clarity. Indeed, if one were to offer a layperson an account of the crisis, one would likely not do any better than Gambles account, though scholars should not feel that its relative simplicity is a problem. Though at the same time the hand holding may grate, this book would make an excellent framework for any scholar to then flesh out each element of the crisis in turn - its lacks and omissions feel like a provocation to further work rather than being an irritant. Structurally, Gamble employs a very simple format. He examines the most recent crisis, places it within a history of capitalist crises since the South Sea Bubble of 1720, examining the theories of crisis from Marxist and Austrian
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perspectives, discusses the ideological content (globalisation and neoliberalism), the political consequences and then finally examines possible future directions from a variety of perspectives. Each aspect is given its own chapter and therefore sufficient breathing space. For Gamble, the proximate cause of the financial crisis was the US housing bubble that was a result of the finance backed booms since the 1980s. The longer term cause, however, in contrast to more liberal accounts that have simply stressed some kind of moral profligacy on behalf of financial traders, is the reconstruction of capitalism after the stagflation crisis of the 1970s and the movement from public Keynesian of government intervention, to the private Keynesian of low taxes , the credit card, and the model of financial growth that relied extensively on speculation on financial markets. Gamble is perhaps, however, far too confident that the efficient markets hypothesis, embodied in a number of financial models, is buried while simultaneously maintaining that the arguments in favour of neoliberalism (p. 90) will likely mutate and remain the dependency of one upon the other is somewhat underrated. In terms of defining the often abused term neoliberalism in the ideologically focused chapter, Gamble does significantly better than other commentators in giving an accurate account of its origins and ideational dispersal, highlighting tensions in the academic debate regarding its definition that avoid the problematic conceptual overreach that this concept is plagued by. For example, he correctly highlights the role of Alexander Rstow, the Mont Pelerin Society, and the plurality of neoliberalisms within the family concept of neoliberalism (as opposed to its pure unsullied creation as a simple doctrine, its crucial difference from a simple return to Manchester laissez-faire and so on). However, frustrating is the lack of joining the dots between the earlier discussion of Austrian theories of capitalist crisis and then the ideational vectors of neoliberalism and then the later discussion of the anarcho-capitalist response to the crisis. The fact is that Austrian economics has developed since the early 1930s in parallel and as a strand of neoliberalism. The omission of the fact that both Schumpeters Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy and Polanyis The Great Transformation were two of the three books, alongside the aforementioned Keynesian classic General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money that caused Hayek directly to found the Mont Pelerin Society and to take up arms in the war of ideas against the encroaching forms of collectivism. In the closing chapter, Gamble assesses the positions of five possible responses to the credit crisis and considers their prospects: market fundamentalism, national protectionism, regulatory liberalism, cosmopolitan liberalism and anti-capitalism. This conceptually useful schema could well be employed by others. Yet, Gambles reading of the anti-capitalist position is rather mixed, though this is perhaps because this position is itself sometimes confused and contradictory and the movement between it and the supposed regulatory liberal position is fairly fluid. This is clear in the fact that a figure like, say, Naomi Klein, a supposedly explicit anti-capitalist, cites someone like Joseph Stiglitz, a clear regulatory liberal. 168
Reviews Where Gamble has omissions, the edited collection, The Great Credit Crash fills these gaps in knowledge. The book is fairly remarkable in the way that, despite being an edited volume from various authors, it feels like a quite cohesive account, with missing elements from one chapter being picked up in subsequent ones. Refreshingly cutting through the verbiage, despite internal diversity, the authors largely agree with many aspect of Gambles account. Yet they add the crucial, orthodox Marxist point that the movement of money from labour to capital as a result of the neoliberal reforms of the 1970s resulting in the stagnation of wages and the need to provide for basic needs by the use of credit resulted in a not dissimilar situation to the stock market crash of the 1920s, except for the crucial difference that the option of solving the crisis, moving the economy from capital to labour, is no longer politically plausible. This is the thesis of the directly comparative chapter regarding the Great Depression, James Livingstons Their Great Depression and Ours. These accounts should have a familiar tone to those familiar with the work of David Harvey, whose own account of the crisis in the context of broader capitalist development is contained in his book The Enigma of Capital. Quite tight US centralism of the opening chapters would be a flaw if not complemented by a European account like Gambles. Particularly worthy of highlight in an excellent volume are Johanna Montgomeries careful essay on the racial dimensions of the financial crisis and the replacement of social security with the plastic safety net, and Susanne So ederbergs detailed work in demonstrating the continuity of policy in international financial institutions and regulators, who were completely unchanged by the crisis despite rhetoric to the contrary.
Crisis in the Global Economy: Financial Markets, Social Struggles, and New Political Scenarios turns the conceptual armoury of the post-workerist perspective onto
the financial crisis. Thus, readers familiar with the conceptual schema at work in postworkerism, popularised in the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, will find many points here quite familiar such as the notion of a serious transformation of capitalism between Fordism and post-Fordism (largely underplayed by more orthodox Marxist accounts such as those found in The Great Credit Crash), the notion of a crisis of value in capitalism related to the concept of immaterial labour drawn from Marxs Fragment on the Machines, the idea of the common being the basis of a new politics of communism that separates itself from traditional understandings of state control of the economy now defined and opposed as socialism, and concentrates on the notion of the common (i.e. common cooperative human production). However for readers outside this conceptual field, the books approach might seem more alien and more difficult to understand than the other two books. Simply put the approach here is that whereas numerous accounts of the financial crisis stress that, through a process of severe abstraction from the manufacturing base of the so-called real economy (a process even accepted by the UKs pro-market Conservative party) the problem at the centre of the
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crisis was a sort of hyper modernity of financial instruments resulting in the constructions of pure fantasies without grounding in reality, this book senses that first, financial capitalism is in fact a return to a more primitive, antique and vicious form of exploitation rent and that second, this financialisation is simply an aspect in the more general tendencies of class composition that transformed the relationship between capital and labour since the 1970s and moved from Fordism to Post-Fordism. Perversely, for the authors in this volume, contemporary finance is not some form of shiny modern capitalism writ large but a return to rent, a regression even from the perspective of the early champions of capitalism who supported the productivity of profit making capitalist over the unproductive rentier. The point here is quite subtle, best expressed by Carlo Vercellones essay The Crisis of the Law of Value and the Becoming-Rent of Profit. The stakes of the struggle are stated by Negri in his concluding afterword, taken in combination with The Violence of Financial Capitalism (which he later expanded to the book of the same name) by Christian Marazzi. This subtlety is because it is not enough to say that financial elements of the economy are akin to rent in that they operate without contribution or production and are parasitic on the real economy. For Vercellone, this is an inadequate analysis. This is also what Gamble might term the regulatory liberal position, though this bleeds certainly into allegedly anti-capitalist accounts: the problem was lack of regulation and the bubble. Under this proposed solution, we would not gain inflated housing bubbles (or any bubble), and the law of value in capitalism would allow things such as houses to be properly assessed because they would be removed from financial speculation which cares nothing for their true market value and allowing immediate consumers access through. However, for a variety of reasons this is false, in the most part because financialisation is but one element of the deep changes as a result of the transformation from Fordist to post-Fordist or immaterial means of production. The presence of finance is found at every stage of the modern economy, and not simply as a kind of additional layer. Indeed, the composition of the worker under capitalism has been entirely reconfigured the subject of cognitive capitalism has been created the cognitariat. The crisis of contemporary capitalism is then primarily a crisis of capitalisms ability to evaluate and measure itself. Tiziana Terranovas contribution New Economy, Financialization and Social Production in the Web 2.0 is a fascinating in this regard, linking the attitudes of financial traders to their peculiar sociality that mixes Web 2.0 interaction with the high testosterone world of computerised financial trading. Even from this short explanatory sample of some of the arguments made it should be clear that in comparison to the other accounts under consideration Crisis in the Global Economy is the most theoretical and perhaps obscure, yet, in a group the book proffers a single joint statement in Nothing Will Ever Be The Same: Ten Theses on the Financial Crisis. What makes this book interesting is that this perspective is actually that of activists surrounding the international Edu-Factory group, whose work opposing the 170
Reviews post-crisis austerity, summed up in the slogan, we wont pay for your crisis is one of the responses contained in actually existing politics since 2007 (and for example, in the recent student protests and occupations of major Italian landmarks). Certainly this work therefore represents not simply a theoretical reflection, but also one of the primary sources for understanding the international struggles against austerity in the aftermath of the crisis currently taking place.
Globalisation and Democracy

The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World by Dani Rodrik,
New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2011, pp. 346, ISBN 978-0-393-07161-0, 16.99 (hbk.) By Louise Gonsalvez Democracies have the right to protect their social arrangements, and when this right clashes with the requirements of the global economy, it is the latter that should give way. (Rodrik, 2011, p. xix) In The Globalization Paradox, Dani Rodrik argues that globalization, or more exactly hyperglobalization, presents an undeniable and untenable trilemma, situated between democracy, national self-determination, and economic globalization. Given the difficulties of combining these, he believes that economists and civil society alike must make a choice, urging that the democratic voice should trump global tendencies. Entertaining, anecdotal and humorous, Rodrik presents insights into the historical makings of globalization, starting as far back as the East India Company that engineered its own army, distribution, and marketing schemes. He includes discussions about voyageurs in Canadas colonial past, Adam Smith, Bretton Woods, the gold standard, and the Washington Consensus. In doing so, he creates an engaging text most suitable for people who seek to not only understand the economic drivers of today, but to also shape them. Rodrik, who is a professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, claims that a new narrative is necessary in the financial free market economy, which favours deregulation, and recommends that a more moderate globalization replace the ongoing hyperglobalization that has fed the elite, and disenfranchised outliers in the marginalized zones. The title of
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the book, however, is somewhat misleading, as the author really focuses on the irony of his deduction the solution would be global governance but the answer lies in using the democratic voice to protect the unique features and needs of the state. Rodrik claims that the nation state is the glue that still binds economies, societies, and cultures together, in spite of the technoscapes, ideoscapes, and mediascapes that continue to lure us towards a new way of being. Thus he argues that the nation state has been, is, and will continue to be a pillar of economic stability and growth: The nation state is pass. Borders have disappeared. Distance is dead. The earth is flat. Our identities are no longer bound by our place of birth. Domestic politics is being superseded by newer, more fluid forms of representation that transcend national boundaries. Authorities are moving from domestic rulemakers to transnational networks of regulators ... And yet look at the way events have unfolded in the recent crisis of 2007-2008. Who bailed out the global banks to prevent the financial crisis from becoming even more cataclysmic? (p. 207) Unfortunately, the author glazes over the global governance issues as though it were a futuristic scenario, rather than acknowledging existing elements of expression in the form of transnational corporations, free trade agreements, and 21st century resource imperialism (e.g. Shell, outsourcing and maquiladores, the Niger Delta). He presents global governance too simplistically, not considering that it is not only at the mercy of democratic choice, but also at the same time subject to the agency of elite groups (e.g., corporate, state, and wealthy elites/and or conglomerates). But he does provocatively raise a serious question. How much longer can we allow globalization to underscore democracy? Rodrik draws upon a 7th Century fox and hedgehog analogy to describe how economists dabble with securities. According to the Greek poet Archilochus, as cited by Rodrik, The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing (p. 114). Rodrik states: The distinction captures neatly the divide within economics between the hedgehogs who think freeing up markets is always the right solution (the big idea) and the foxes who believe the devil is in the details. Foxes believe in markets too they are economists, after all but they believe real world complications require a much more cautious approach that is sensitive to context. (p. 114) In other words, hedgehogs like to play more often in the unfettered highly de-regulated global market, while the foxes tend to act more cautiously as does domestic finance which 172
Reviews is underpinned by common standards, deposit insurance, bankruptcy rules, court enforced contracts, a lender-of-last-resort, a fiscal backstop, and an alphabet soup of regulatory and supervisory agencies (p. 113). In effect, hedgehogs are highballers who never look back in the rear view mirror of their jets and yachts because they are racing forward at lightning speed, flying too far above the clouds, or they just dont care about the aftermath of destruction that trails in their wake. I recommend reading this book as it is informative, entertaining, and enlightening. It has its shortcomings but ultimately it captures the heart of global economics today, and it often does so in a refreshing and humorous way. Rodrik steps outside the box to critique not only globalization, but also the future of democracy and the economists who play a central role in determining the narrative that will be followed in the future. He reasons that we cant compromise on democracy, and argues that state democracy remains a pillar of economic growth.
Violence: Capitalism, Language and Physical Force

Violence. Six Sideways Reflections by Slavoj iek. Profile Books, 2009, pp. 218, ISBN
978-1-84668-027-4, 8.99 (pbk.) By Charles Barthold Slavoj iek is omnipresent within Anglophone academe, even though he lives and works in Slovenia. He is one of the most influential of radical contemporary philosophers along with other figures such as Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancire and Toni Negri. iek overtly defends communist ideas, as the conference which he organised with Costas Douzinas on the idea of communism in 2010 clearly displayed. His two main intellectual sources of inspiration are Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis, even though he draws on a considerable philosophical repertoire, including German idealism, (in particular Hegel), phenomenology (Heidegger, Husserl) and contemporary philosophy (Postmodernism, Sloterdijk, New Philosophers). iek is mostly very critical of the approaches of Postmodernist philosophy, as they would be fascinated by the dynamic of late capitalism. However, iek does not only produce psychoanalytical or philosophical commentaries, as he also analyses film, series and popular culture generally speaking. In other words, iek mingles serious references
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with low brow ones in order to provide a critical analysis on contemporary societies and late capitalism. Turning to Violence, in the introduction the author constructs his intervention as a conceptual one, which should avoid an exaggerated empathy with victims: My underlying premise is there is something inherently mystifying in a direct confrontation with it: the overpowering horror of violent acts and empathy with the victims inexorably function as a lure, which prevents us from thinking. A dispassionate conceptual development of the typology of violence must by definition ignore its traumatic impact. (p. 3) Therefore, iek makes clear that he wants to understand violence as a phenomenon rather than drawing a purely moral condemnation of it. Actually, the victims of violence in particular extreme cases violence such as the Holocaust would not be able to analyse the phenomenon, precisely because they were traumatically involved in it (p. 4). iek refuses the argument of the urgency of violence, which would demand intellectuals to act and not to think. Accordingly, it is always necessary to think and understand prior to displaying an agency. Therefore, iek mentions the example of Lenin, who was studying Hegels Logic during the First World War (p. 10). In the first chapter (SOS Violence), iek distinguishes several types of violence. The first one is violence that is produced systematically (Were talking here of the violence inherent in a system: not only direct physical violence, but also the more subtle forms of coercion that sustain relations of domination and exploitation, including the threat of violence (p. 8)). This consists in the violence needed in order to reproduce the status quo and its social structures. Capitalism represents one of the most important forms of systemic violence within contemporary societies (p. 11). iek draws an analogy between capitalist systemic violence (theological mad dance of commodities) and the Lacanian Real (p. 11). Secondly, iek defines as subjective violence the most commonsensical forms of violence produced by identified subjects, that is to say visible violence such as insults, killings (p. 9). Additionally, according to iek, there exist s a symbolic violence of language based on the master signifier (p. 1). In a later chapter (Antinomies of Tolerant Reason) iek confronts the issue of multiculturalism. Accordingly, there would be an antinomy of the tolerant reason displayed by the debates on the caricatures of Muhammad (p. 89). This means, the arguments of both camps are valid: free speech against the respect of a particular culture. In fact, the multiculturalist ideology would hide a covert racism (p. 97). Accordingly, the only way to treat Muslims as serious adults responsible for their beliefs would be to criticise their religion (p. 118). Notable also is ieks discussion of Sloterdijks condemnation of revolutionary violence. From the point of view of Sloterdijk, the latter constitutes a kind 174
Reviews of resentment against the organisation of society (p. 160). Against this, iek provides a defense of the notion of resentment, which constitutes a refusal to normalise the crime, to make it part of the ordinary/explicable/accountable flow of things (p. 161). This reasoning allows iek to advocate the notion of emancipatory violence producing a kind of political miracle (p. 169). All in all all, Violence does not constitute a systematic philosophical treatise on the question of violence. It is characterised rather by a series of reflections, which are not necessarily linked. Therefore, generally speaking some points seem more convincing or developed than others. Moreover, iek never thoroughly justifies his fundamental theoretical approaches, namely Marxism and Lacanism. For instance, one could criticise the Structuralist position of the Lacanian triad (Imaginary-Symbolic-Real) from a Poststructuralist perspective or one could dismiss psychoanalysis from a Deleuzian standpoint. Nonetheless, ieks project consists in analysing violence from a Marxist and Lacanian perspective and not to defend Marxism and Lacanism against its critics. iek describes three types of violence, namely symbolic, systemic and subjective. However, there is never a clear definition of what violence is. Indeed, it is quite difficult to use the same concept to talk about the master signifier and the fact a language imposes its order on the world (symbolic violence), the coercion entailed by the reproduction of social relations (systemic violence) and straightforward physical violence (subjective violence). After all, the only violence which we can experience is the subjective violence exercised on bodies, as would claim a phenomenological approach. Furthermore, the systemic violence enhances the subjective violence, as for instance the capitalist fetishism of the commodity crystallises a relation of domination and violence between classes, which is materialised on the body of the workers. Then, strictly speaking the systemic violence is not a violence but the condition of possibility of the reproduction of violence within a certain social context. Similarly, the symbolic violence could be deemed as a condition to implement violent relations on dominated bodies. For instance, a phallocratic language would be the condition for a violence exercised on the gendered bodies of women, or a colonisers language would be the condition for a violence exercised on the bodies of subalterns. Nonetheless, the interest of ieks reasoning lies in the fact that he demonstrates the link between the dynamic of capitalism, language and the physical violence exercised on bodies. Against Postmodern liberals, he politicises the question of culture and endorses the potential for a revolutionary or progressive violence. In other words, iek brings an interesting complexity to the question of violence, going beyond the commonsensical moralistic rejection of it.
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JOURNAL OF CRITICAL GLOBALISATION STUDIES

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 Imperialism, Finance, #Occupy (2012)

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Globalising Resistance against War? , Seppl (pp. 5-23)

Globalising Resistance against War? , Seppl (pp. 5-23)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Globalising Resistance against War? , Seppl (pp. 5-23)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Globalising Resistance against War? , Seppl (pp. 5-23)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Globalising Resistance against War? , Seppl (pp. 5-23)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Globalising Resistance against War? , Seppl (pp. 5-23)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Globalising Resistance against War? , Seppl (pp. 5-23)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Globalising Resistance against War? , Seppl (pp. 5-23)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Globalising Resistance against War? , Seppl (pp. 5-23)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Globalising Resistance against War? , Seppl (pp. 5-23)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Lessons from #Occupy in Canada, Kilibarda (pp. 24-41)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Lessons from #Occupy in Canada, Kilibarda (pp. 24-41)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Lessons from #Occupy in Canada, Kilibarda (pp. 24-41)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Lessons from #Occupy in Canada, Kilibarda (pp. 24-41)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Lessons from #Occupy in Canada, Kilibarda (pp. 24-41)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Lessons from #Occupy in Canada, Kilibarda (pp. 24-41)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Lessons from #Occupy in Canada, Kilibarda (pp. 24-41)

Lessons from #Occupy in Canada, Kilibarda (pp. 24-41)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Lessons from #Occupy in Canada, Kilibarda (pp. 24-41)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Imperialism and Financialism: A Story of a Nexus1

Imperialism and Financialism, Bichler & Nitzan (pp. 42-78)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Imperialism and Financialism, Bichler & Nitzan (pp. 42-78)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Imperialism and Financialism, Bichler & Nitzan (pp. 42-78)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Imperialism and Financialism, Bichler & Nitzan (pp. 42-78)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Imperialism and Financialism, Bichler & Nitzan (pp. 42-78)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Imperialism and Financialism, Bichler & Nitzan (pp. 42-78)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Imperialism and Financialism, Bichler & Nitzan (pp. 42-78)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Imperialism and Financialism, Bichler & Nitzan (pp. 42-78)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Imperialism and Financialism, Bichler & Nitzan (pp. 42-78)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Imperialism and Financialism, Bichler & Nitzan (pp. 42-78)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Imperialism and Financialism, Bichler & Nitzan (pp. 42-78)

Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 5 (2012)

Imperialism and Financialism, Bichler & Nitzan (pp. 42-78)