Politics of today: The key to liberate masses

April 30, 2001

"...Everywhere the corporate world shall be faced with the demands for direct mass democracy. That is the prevailing political tendency in this particular period of globalisation..." That was the poignant point of last week's column.

Capitalism was from its inception a global system driven by a "global force". That entire period of European expansion and the supposed "discovery" and settlement of a "new world" came as a result of the necessities of capitalist formation, generation and accumulation.

It was capitalist generation that objectively required the outward push by European merchants, adventurers, speculators, brigands and bandits to "discover" and or create new markets, acquire fresh raw materials that would serve to deepen home markets and as well provide home economies with greater capacity to produce cheaper and better quality commodities. The politics as a result changed.

Feudal monarchies and feudal relationships had to be debunked in order to give way to the new system of economic activity. Kings were beheaded to give way to new players promoting "representative democracy" and constitution - the legal parameters of political and social conduct.

All this would have little to do with the fundamentals of religion though the strata of the intelligentsia would then extend, as a result of these new developments, way beyond priests and clergy who up to then had been the "thinkers".

Though, ironically, it was a Pope, with his papal edict or Bull, who had in fact signalled the process with his "imaginary line of division" separating the globe according to spheres of competing influence.

That period was the first phase of globalisation, marked interestingly by European nationalist fervour, representative democracy, and competing "closed economies", all intensified "to the max" by the wealth-generation capacity of the frontier lands of colonial slavery and King Sugar, the major fuel-commodity. The change from honey as sweetener to Caribbean slave-produced sugar transformed the entire social configuration of Western Europe.

We need to note that people do not first create or devise philosophy and then go out in everyday life to implement or enforce their predetermined, considered philosophical principles. The world does not work that way.

In the course of the activities of their daily lives, people, out of necessity, are forced to act in their own interests and in the interests of people like themselves. As a result of these practical activities, there come theoretical formulations and philosophical principles.

"Nationalism", "protectionism" (ie tariffs, duties, etc) and closed economies were the principles that were derived from the activity and demands of commodity production which is the production of goods and services for sale on the market and subject, of course, to the vagaries of market conditions.

The second phase of globalisation was marked by the very opposite necessity. Capitalism had come to the point whereby to further generate accumulation at another level, the closed-door policy had to come down internationally. International competition had to be open, so the principle required was free trade with markets open to all across national boundaries.

This led to the emergence of transnational corporations or multinational corporations, legal entities unto themselves that could possess and inherit and assign assets and properties, move capital resources to any part of the world where profits can be maximised without the hindrance of the whims and fancies and prejudices of individual owners - much unlike the joint-stock companies typical of the first phase. Corporate power would supersede all else and limit representative democracy to the board rooms and the professionals therein rather than extend the democratic process.

The objective requirements of the time demanded this. It was this period of intensified competition across national boundaries that would see two World Wars as nations and corporate organisations formed alliances and jostled each other over the balance of power within Europe (Western, Central and Eastern Europe) and over the control of markets and spheres of influence in the frontier outposts of the so-called New World.

The end of these conflagrations, which saw the wanton slaughter of human beings and even attempts at genocide, would bring a subjective and objective demand to order the affairs of humanity.

It would remove the barriers to the extension of the democratic process and control the madness of the markets and the machinations of competing regional blocs of capital which in some instances would at first appear to be ideologically different.

The integrated monetary system of Bretton Woods and the establishment of the United Nations, together with the emergence of multilateral agencies, would serve to keep the world relatively at peace and minimise the conflict of the commodity markets.

But we have now entered the third phase of globalisation or internationalisation of capitalist commodity production. In this time of relative peace, the prevailing tendency of capital is to seek to rid itself of any subjectivity, to seek to be a purely objective force totally divorce of any form of sentiment, divorced completely from any form of nationalism and sovereignty.

It seeks to move across the globe beholden to no one and nothing but its own dictates of further generation and accumulation, removing all artificial ideological barriers and deepening the markets to the farthest extremities (Russia, China, etc).

There are two major aspects of antagonistic contradiction that can be identified as drawbacks to this ongoing process. Firstly, the fact that all peoples are being reduced to a sameness, to a common denominator of capitalist commercialisation that is recognised first and foremost as "Americanisation" is forcing all and sundry to fall back on their cultural differences, even their ethnicity, as a last stance position from which to mount resistance.

Secondly, whereas sugar, cotton, and other exotics underlined the first phase of globalisation, and the export of surplus refined and manufactured goods and consumer items fashioned the second phase, it is the high-tech "informatics", the packaging of information technology, both hardware and software, that is the key commodity fuelling the present or third phase of globalisation.

But this is not an ordinary commodity. It is a commodity that is inherently social in nature. Its usage is not to feed or clothe or shelter physically, its use is educational and democratically nurturing.

It fosters dialogue and expression and allows for informed decision-making. Most of all, its appropriation is open to all and soon shall be as available as any "book" though much more far-reaching.

Whereas before the minority appropriated the social product generated by the key commodity, now the appropriation of "informatics", which soon will be readily available like any amenity, will release the masses from their thraldom and bring direct mass democracy. In other words, this is the commodity that will help to ensure, in time, social control of social capital.