ELI Paper
Words: 24,400
9.12.01
Emancipating Labor Internationalism
(from the C20th working class, unions and socialism)
Peter Waterman
Global Solidarity Dialog
waterman@antenna.nl
www.antenna.nl/~waterman/
http://groups/yahoo.com/groups/GloSoDia
Abstract
The secular trinity of c19th socialism was Labour-Internationalism-Emancipation. As
early-industrial capitalism developed into a national-industrial-colonial capitalism, the
internationalism of labour became literally international, and simultaneously lost its
emancipatory aspiration and capacity. The dramatic – and labour-devastating –
development of a globalised-networked-informatised capitalism is raising the necessity
and possibility of a new kind of labour internationalism, capable not only of defence
against neo-liberal globalisation but also of an emancipatory challenge to such. This
implies self-liberation from the traditional (understanding of the) working-class, the
trade-union form and socialist ideology. Such an emancipation can be assisted by a
recognition of the actually-existing work and workers produced by a globalizednetworked-informatised capitalism. Positively it requires a close articulation of labour
with the global justice movement (a.k.a. 'anti-corporate' and 'anti-capitalist'), and serious
address to processes, discontents, movements and alternatives previously considered
marginal or irrelevant. It also requires reconsideration of the relationship between labour,
internationalism, socialism and utopia. The paper responds to the 'New Labour
Internationalisms' theme of an international research project on 'Rethinking Social
Emancipation'.
The Here
[Ecological awareness] leads to profound shifts in and threats to the power of
labour and its organized interests…[T]he labour movement becomes doomed by
what, in an earlier historical development, was a necessary precondition for its
social existence: the decoupling of the product, the legendary 'indifference' to
which the system compels and habituates waged labour, the ousting by the labour
contract of the question of the social purpose and usefulness of the product of
labour, and thus of one's own labor power […I]f the labor movement does not
intend to be elbowed out of history – and one would expect the future development
of democracy to depend substantially upon that – then one ought to start in good
time to formulate and implement an offensive, socio-politically orientated 'product
policy'…In other words, workers should not merely respond 'acidly' to ecological
and other critiques, but accept them actively, preventively – perhaps putting
themselves into unconventional coalitions at the vanguard of criticism…Such a
'greening' of the trade-union movement might well bring with it a new political
spring. (Ulrich Beck, 1995:151-2)
…and the Now,
[T]he dissolution of old identities does not always foreshadow movement. Far
from it. The unraveling of working-class identity among…workers leaves them
tripping in many directions…Unitary subjects splinter and then recombine in
hybrid forms. They congeal into movements when cemented by an imagination of
an alternative, better world […] Every step in the direction of flexible
accumulation, global-local mutuality, and new identities, calls forth a reaction, the
reassertion of Fordism, the state and old essentialist subjects. The dinosaurs of
Fordism are still around…Welfare states have not disappeared…The economy still
requires and receives ample regulation…Old identities have not dissolved in a
welter of hybridity…Blue collar workers still organize themselves in unions and in
some countries they even have parties […] Western global hegemonies cannot be
overthrown through violence. Instead, we turn to wars of position in which different
groups with multiple identities have to be woven together around universalistic
interests such as human rights or environmental justice…It is not so much a matter
of creating movements outside the hegemonic order but rather on its terrain,
radicalizing the meaning of democracy, appropriating the market, democratizing
sovereignty, and expanding human rights. (Michael Burawoy 2000:347-9)
2
Emancipation…
If we try to distil a minimum profile of emancipation as it emerges from
contemporary re-orientations, it includes, as regards aims, the concern with
autonomy, in terms of organization, a tendency towards network forms, and, in
terms of mentality, a tendency towards self-limitation. The main differences
between the modern and the postmodern emancipations appears to be that the
former situate themselves within the Enlightenment tradition and secondly that they
take an instrumental attitude to power, whereas the latter problematize power to a
much greater degree…In some respects the minimum profile of emancipation also
matches that of particularism, chauvinism and fundamentalism, which are likewise
preoccupied with autonomy. There remains a fundamental tension between
emancipations in a particularistic sense and emancipation in a general sense, or
between emancipations and emancipation […] A working definition I propose is
that emancipation refers to collective actions which seek to level and disperse
power, or seek to install more inclusive values than the prevailing ones. This means
that emancipation…involves a moral horizon. (Jan Nederveen Pieterse 1992:31-2)
…and Utopia
We think it important…not to forget the utopian tendencies that have always
accompanied the progression toward globalization, even if these tendencies have
continually been defeated by the powers of modern sovereignty. The love of
differences and the belief in the universal freedom and equality of humanity proper
to the revolutionary thought of Renaissance humanism reappear here on a global
scale. This utopian element of globalization is what prevents us from simply falling
back into particularism and isolationism in reaction to the totalizing forces of
imperialism and racist domination, pushing us instead to forge a project of
counterglobalization, counter-Empire. This utopian moment, however, has never
been unambiguous. It is a tendency that constantly conflicts with sovereign order
and domination. (Hardt and Negri 2000:115)
What is to be done, then? The only route, it seems to me, is utopia. By utopia I
mean the exploration by imagination of new modes of human possibility and styles
of will, and the confrontation by imagination of the necessity of whatever exists –
just because it exists – on behalf of something radically better that is worth fighting
for, and to which humanity is fully entitled. (Boaventura de Sousa Santos
1995:479).
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1. Introduction1
If it is true, as some critical left intellectuals and radical-democratic activists
believe (see overviews in Breitenfellner 1997, Munck Forthcoming, O'Brien 2000a,b,
Waterman 1998), that it is only with globalization that a single world of labor is at last
coming into (admittedly uneven and problematic) existence, then it should be possible to
see or create a new labor internationalism (NLI) within, or out of, contemporary evidence
and ideas on labor inter/nationally. Here then, is an experiment in re-thinking the NLI,
based on what is suggested by the project on 'Reinventing Social Emancipation' (RSE).
The project provides us with two major elements for reflection: on the one hand some
notion of emancipation revealed by the proposal as a whole; on the other, the papers
contributed to its theme on the New Labor Internationalism (NLI). Whilst this is an
evidently restricted base, RSE has the major advantage of articulating labor
internationalism with and within the project of social emancipation. Which is, after all,
where the idea of labor internationalism began in one small part of the contemporary
world, almost two hundred years ago. After carrying out this 'here and now' exercise, I
may will refer to other literature, and even to past writings of my own.
1
This working paper provides the basis for what will have to be a much shorter one. The customary
acknowledgements are made to the following, who, as customary, may be unable to recognise either their
comments or my response to such. I look forward, however to reading their reactions to this, or at least the
shorter, paper elsewhere later: Stuart Hodkinson (Leeds, UK), Massimo de Angelis (East London, UK) and,
as always, Gina Vargas (Lima, Peru).
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2. Four emancipations…
Let us first consider the RSE project as a whole. I here quote selectively from the
project proposal (www.ces.fe.uc.pt/emancipa/en/themes/index.html). This does not,
surprisingly, offer a definition of social emancipation: it offers, rather, an understanding
based on the articulation of the following elements.

Participatory Democracy
The twin crises of representation and participation are the most visible symptoms
of [a] deficit of credibility and, in the last instance, of legitimacy. On the other
hand, local, regional, and national communities in different parts of the world are
undertaking democratic experiments and initiatives, based on alternative models
of democracy, in which the tension between capitalism and democracy comes
alive anew and becomes a positive energy behind new, more comprehensive and
more just social contracts, no matter how locally circumscribed they may be…

Alternative Production Systems
Discussions about counter-hegemonic globalization…rarely focus…on the
economic…that is, on local/global initiatives consisting in non-capitalist
production and distribution of goods and services, whether in rural or urban
settings: cooperatives, mutualities, credit systems, farming of invaded land by
landless peasants, water systems, fishing communities, ecological logging, etc.
These initiatives are those in which local/global linkages are most difficult to
establish, if for no other reason because they confront more directly the logic of
global capitalism behind hegemonic globalization, not only at the level of
production but also at the level of distribution...They mobilize social and cultural
resources that make inter-thematic linkages a necessary condition of their success.

Emancipatory Multiculturalism, Justices, and Citizenships
The aspiration for multiculturalism and self-determination often takes the social
form of a struggle for justice and citizenship. It involves the claims for alternative
forms of law and justice and for new regimes of citizenship. The plurality of legal
orders, which has become more visible with the crisis of the nation-state, carries
with itself, either implicitly or explicitly, the idea of multiple citizenships
coexisting in the same geopolitical field and, often, the idea of the existence of
first, second, and third class citizens. However, non-state legal orders may also be
the embryo of non-state public spheres and the institutional base for selfdetermination, as in the case of indigenous justice.

Biodiversity, Rival Knowledges and Intellectual Property Rights
5
While technologically advanced countries seek to extend intellectual property
rights and patent law to biodiversity - there have already been attempts to patent
human gene sequences - some peripheral countries, indigenous peoples groups
and NGOs on their behalf are seeking to guarantee the conservation and
reproduction of biodiversity by granting special protection status to the territories,
ways of life, and traditional knowledges of indigenous and peasant communities.
It is increasingly evident that the new cleavages between the North and the South
will be centered around the question of access to biodiversity on a global scale.
We can reduce the four initial themes to this: the attempt to develop a post-capitalist and
post-liberal (even post-socialist) understanding of Democracy, Production, Rights and
Knowledge. I stress an understanding, rather than a condition or state (or State) – such as
traditional understandings of Socialism, Communism or Utopia. Perhaps what is being
proposed here is a change of direction, in which the destination is neither prescribed in
advance, nor even known, but is to be discovered with our fellow-travelers whilst
walking and talking. RSE articulates these four themes not with internationalism or
solidarity in general but with a new kind of labor internationalism in particular. It must be
said here that this articulation is unique. For in so far as there is a contemporary literature
articulating emancipation with internationalism, it tends to be with some new
cosmopolitanism, some new form of global governance or with some modest notion of
'transborder' or 'transnational' politics (Eschle 2001:Ch.5), rather than with a new labor
internationalism in particular.
6
3. …and one internationalism
The RSE theme on labor internationalism is specified thus (this time in full):

The New Labor Internationalism
As is well-known, labor internationalism was one of the most blatantly unfulfilled
predictions of the Communist Manifesto. Capital globalized itself, not the labor
movement. The labor movement organized itself at the national level and, at least
in the core countries, became increasingly dependent upon the Welfare State. It is
true that in our century international links and organizations have kept alive the
idea of labor internationalism but they became prey to the cold war and their fate
followed the fate of the cold war.
In the post-cold-war period and as a response to the more aggressive bouts of
hegemonic globalization, new as yet very precarious forms of labor
internationalism have emerged: the debate on labor standards; exchanges,
agreements or even institutional congregation among labor unions of different
countries integrating the same economic regional bloc (NAFTA, European Union,
Mercosul); articulation among struggles, claims, and demands of the different
labor unions representing the workers working for the same multinational
corporation in different countries, etc.
Even more frontally than alternative-production systems, the new labor
internationalism confronts the logic of global capitalism on its own privileged
ground: market economy. The success of the new labor internationalism is
dependent upon the “extra-economic” linkages it will be able to build with the
social initiatives and movements within the ambit of any of the other themes dealt
with in this project.
Now, I am not at all sure whether the articulation of the four with labor-internationalismin-particular serves them best, since each implies its own internationalism(s). It does,
however, do a potentially valuable service to a labor internationalism that has, even in its
most recent forms, tended to one or more of the following



Self-privileging in a traditional socialist, laborist or workerist sense (wage-workers as
the strategically-sited class under capitalism, labor as the vanguard of human
emancipation, unions as the most-democratic movement worldwide, the proletariat as
naturally, structurally or in 'the last instance' internationalist);
Articulating itself with conservative or reactionary forces favoring state-nationalism,
economic growth/competition and environmental destruction regardless of
consequences, internal repression and even local or international warfare.
Articulating itself with other interests, identities and projects that may be progressive
(critical of neo-liberalism, opposed to authoritarianism/ fundamentalism, to a
reassertion of the social against the economic) but not necessarily radical-democratic
(going to the roots of our present order, debouching onto an alternative civilizational
project).
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

Reproducing the center-periphery (empire-colony, dependency) relationship within
the labor movement by assuming that internationalism is represented (or most
advanced) at one of these poles, rather than recognizing the differences and
challenging the inequalities within the labor movement itself.
Conflating the international union organization with the international labor
movement, or privileging the former above the latter, and assuming the former to be
the immutable form of labor self-articulation inter/nationally. This in a period in
which the network appears to be the preferred form of articulation within global
solidarity movements.
In so far, however, as a new labor internationalism is understood as one amongst many
internationals and internationalisms (concerned with democracy, alternative
production/consumption, with rights, with knowledge) then RSE represents no obstacle to
re-articulating the original Marxist trinity, Emancipation-Internationalism-Emancipation,
in a manner appropriate for, against and beyond a globalized networked capitalist
(dis)order.
So much for generalities. As for the labor papers contributed to RSE, they are the
following:








Hermes Augusto Costa on European Works Councils and Portuguese Unionism
(Costa, Portugal and EWCs),
Leonardo Mello e Silva on Latin American/Brazilian unionism and the Mercosur
common market project (MeS, Brazil and Mercosur),
Francisco de Oliveira on who is singing 'The Internationale' again? (Oliveira,
Brazil and L'Internationale)
Roberto Véras on Metalworker unionism, the 'strike festival', and the possibilities
of a national collective contract (Véras, Brazilian Metalworkers)
Mauricio Romero on a Colombian banana workers union, citizenship and
internationalism (Romero, Bananeros),
Gabriele Dietrich and Nailini Nayak on the fishworkers movement in India
(henceforth D&N, Indian Fishworkers),
Elísio Estanque on the reinvention of labor unionism and the new challenges of
emancipation - from local despotism to global mobilization (Estanque, New
Challenges).
Rob Lambert and Eddie Webster on the Southern Initiative on Globalization and
Trade Union Rights (L&W, Sigtur).
In what follows they will be presented.
8
4. Eight papers: a presentation
Costa/Portugal and European Works Councils. The focus of Costa's piece is
divided between the EWCs and Portuguese union response to such. The EWCs come out
of 1994 legislation at European level, the intention of which was to allow for
worker/union consultation within larger multinationals (1,000+ employees) and with at
least 150 employees in two or more member states. They thus come out of various
European national traditions of consultation and bargaining, and the general European
tradition of social partnership. Their establishment was, of course, provoked by the
internationalization of capital (non-European companies are covered) on the one hand,
and the development of the European Union on the other. The EWCs were argued for by
the European Trade Union Confederation, with the aim of protecting and furthering labor
and union rights across frontiers, and of establishing industrial relations and collective
bargaining at a European level. Whilst almost 2,000 such companies (predominantly
German, US and British, in that order) do have such EWCs, their establishment and
powers are a matter of negotiation, thus differing by company and country, and
sometimes within companies according to country concerned.
Costa deals with the problems and possibilities for Portugal, as a small and
peripheral European country with an authoritarian history, and with two major national
union confederations - one of the social-democratic and one of the communist tradition.
There have been problems concerning the 'more-European' UGT, and the 'morePortuguese' GCTP, insofar as the social-democratic UGT has been more incorporated
into the social-democratic European structures, and the communist CGTP has been
stronger on the ground in Portugal. This tension seems, however, have been attenuated
along with the traditional ideological distinctions, as well as by the opportunities both see
for using advanced European unions and legislation to defend and improve worker
conditions in backward Portugal. Costa also considers that, in confronting obstacles to the
development of the EWCs, the worker cause can be advanced. These obstacles include:
employer imposition of worker representatives; the logic of union competition (UGT v.
CGTP); worker skepticism toward unions and participation at company level; the
understanding of EWCs in an economistic and instrumental manner instead of as a means
for increasing information, solidarity and influence. Costa sees the main advantages won
through EWCs for Portuguese workers as follows:
From among the main conquests made possible for the Portuguese
workers by the EWCs, I would emphasise the following: to be able to
share problems of national scope at transnational level (in a more
extended forum) so as to try and seek joint solutions for them; to have a
more concrete understanding of the type of involvement manifested by the
workers of a same multinational, albeit of different countries, regarding
the EWCs; to know the labour realities of other countries better, ensuring
a better communication and more visibility among all the workforce of a
same multinational; to learn about the trade union action strategies of the
country of the parent company regarding the trade unions of the countries
9
of the subsidiaries, thereby testing the transnational effectiveness of trade
union solidarity; to allow the access to initiatives or to information with
are not limited to a pure model of company management, etc.
In considering his case and coming to the above conclusions Costa takes recourse
to discussion on what may be called the dialectics of emancipation, as represented by
Boaventura de Sousa Santos (1995) in particular. From this and other sources Costa
draws the notion that there are multiple globalizations, or globalizations in multiple
spheres, as well as multiple spheres or dimensions of emancipation. As applied to the
EWCs, this means recognizing their contradictory aspects – the regulatory and the
emancipatory. As applied to the relationship between the national and the international, it
means recognizing that, for labor, the international terrain allows for the development of
'cosmopolitan coalitions', though these, too, are marked by continuing ambiguity. Finally,
Costa remarks on the problems of trade unions in producing an emancipatory discourse
that is adequate, effective and singular (held in common?). Whilst these notions might
seem to lead to skepticism, they nonetheless lead Costa to the modest optimism quoted
above.
Mello e Silva/Brazil and Mercosur. MeS focuses on the possibility of a new
working-class internationalism in relation to the cross-national union activities within the
developing common market in the Southern Cone of Latin America, the Mercosur. Here
he focuses primarily upon the case of Brazil and the Central Única dos Trabalhadores
(CUT, or United Workers Center). He considers the role played by unions there, as an
agent of democratization, and of the conflicts that arose as their institutional practices
became more radical and general. These national union practices, he argues, actually
undermine the classical labor movement dichotomies - defensive/offensive, reformist/
revolutionary, negotiation-oriented/mobilization-oriented (as well, he suggests, as
national/international). MeS extends his argument to the regional and then to the
hemispheric level, suggesting that the globalization of union contacts between Northern
and Southern regional blocks could prove more an opportunity for, than an obstacle to,
internationalism by helping to overcome the corporatist and authoritarian culture deeply
rooted in Latin American labor movements. Combined with such internationalism is the
possibility of a new relationship between the union movement and social movements, this
reinforcing the emancipatory potential within the world of work.
MeS suggests that after a long march through the period of monopoly capitalism,
the classical demand and expectation that workers of the world will unite, is reviving
under globalization:
The conditions for solidarity among labor movements of various countries
around the world based on their class situation, however 'universal' or
great the expansion of capitalist relationships around the globe might be,
changed noticeably since their most famous formulation. The reasons for
such a dramatic change are varied, though well articulated: the crisis of
super-accumulation and dysfunction among the sectors, the search for
new levels of productivity and innovation in the way in which work is
10
organized, the shift from a competitive model to a monopolistic model,
etc. Historically, this has usually taken place during the transition from
deregulated capitalism to regulated capitalism. However, the extension of
capitalistic relationships has continued to grow unchecked, increasingly
and incontestably. In that sense, at least one part of the predictions made
by socialist theoreticians showed itself to be on target and the wave of
financial capital valorization that can be observed in the present form of
market globalization confirms those forecasts.
MeS recognizes, however, that the other regional agreements within the Western
hemisphere (and within which unions have been attempting to carve out a space and
make an impact), such as the North American Free Trade Area, not only differ in form
and coverage, but can lead to accords which conflict with each other. It is this that leads
him to conclude that:
at least in principle, there would be no incompatibility between the prosocial movement position coming from the North and the union practices
of the CUT. On the contrary, cross-contamination between the two
cultures could instill radicalism among other changes greatly desired by
the most dynamic nucleus of Brazilian syndicalism [unionsm – PW]. The
fact that there has been more than a little resistance to the influence of
unions in Mercosur forums demonstrates that the manner in which those
actors have tried to address problems related to regional integration has
been conflictual and creative at the same time. Finally, to acknowledge
that the possibility of a working-class internationalism has its problems
does not mean that it is doomed to failure. The challenge of trying could
bring new meaning to an old and celebrated call.
In establishing his position, MeS refers to a wide range of meso-level Latin
American and other analytical literature, rather than to any macro theory. But his
standpoint seems to be largely that of the Brazilian CUT itself, seen as successfully
synthesizing what might previously have been thought of as contradictions within trade
unionism.
Oliveira/The Internationale in Brazil. Although apparently addressed to the
international and internationalism, this paper is primarily concerned with the past and
present of the Brazilian trade union movement, particularly the long-central
metalworking/auto workers unions, and particularly the process of struggle/negotiation
with the state and employers as Brazilian industry reels under the violent effects of neoliberalism on a world scale. Oliveira does, however, devote several pages to the past and
present of Brazilian and autoworker internationalism. He identifies three phases: 1) the
anarcho-syndicalist internationalism of the first generation of workers, brought to
Southern Brazil by immigrants from Southern Europe; 2) the party internationalism of the
Communists in the 1920s-30s, later opposed by US efforts at a pro-capitalist
internationalism - both marginal to the national-populist unionism of dictator Getulio
Vargas; 3) a factory-worker internationalism that began under the military dictatorship, as
11
Brazil became a major metal/motor manufacturer, and counterpart unions - particularly in
Europe - became interested in the increasingly militant unionism of the São Paulo ABC
region.
Oliveira argues that whilst, in the period of 'peripheral Fordism' (1950s-80s),
there was a certain interest and support from Europe, sometimes from oriented-oriented
NGOs, the European unions organizing Fiat, Volvo and Volkswagen workers made little
if any impact on these companies in their home countries:
It should be noted that…foreign companies in Brazil hardly felt the
pressure of the unions and the federations of their respective [home – PW]
countries to improve labor relations in Brazil. Fiat, Volvo, Volkswagen,
important carmakers in their own countries (Germany and Sweden being
symbols of the social-democratic pact) maintained repressive, unionbusting practices. Fiat was probably the worst of all, and, as far as we
know, the orientation of Italian unionism, which was at the time at it peak,
didn't change the repressive action of the Italian company one jot.
Oliveira notes the beginning of a new direction (a fourth period?), in which
diverse phenomena are appearing. The first is that of the internationalism of workers
within the same company, under the impact of privatization and foreign takeovers (e.g.
Spanish-Brazilian bankworker internationalism). The second is the increasing
relationship of North American and other unionism with the anti-globalization
movement. Oliveira proposes that these latter movements have to be understood rather in
terms of 'citizenship and survival' than in terms of the common material interests of
industrial workers. Whilst the latter kind of internationalism can be found in the
development of Mercosur unionism, such efforts 'are weak in terms of counterhegemonic projects'.
Reflecting further on the history of labor internationals and internationalism,
Oliveira criticizes both revolutionary and reformist theorists and proponents for failing to
recognize that national working classes are made, or make themselves, in ways that differ
according to traditions, relations with capital and state, religion, ethnic and even moral
identities. He also questions whether the current radicalization of labor in the abstract can
- given such continuing differences between countries and regions - provide a base 'for
the action of this supposedly universal working class'. He considers, rather, that what is
common to workers in general, is their increasing exclusion, and the attempt to make
their organizations superfluous. It is this grim international scenario that leads Oliveira
back to his main subject, the attempt of the metalworkers unions based on São Bernardo
(the B of the São Paulo ABC region) to impose a national metalworkers' contract that
challenges the casualization, 'greenfields' and anti-union efforts of the major auto
manufacturers within Brazil.
In his reflections on his subject, Oliveira draws on Gramsci and Critical
Sociology, as well as on labor historian Edward Thompson, and on contemporary radicaldemocratic theorists of democracy and globalization.
12
Véras/Brazilian Metalworkers. This is another paper focused on the industrial and
national struggles of Brazilian auto/metalworkers, and concerned with their efforts to reassert themselves nationally in the face of a neo-liberal globalization that has profoundly
changed the socio-political weight of the industrialized and unionized working class in
that country. Véras concentrates on the mobilization of workers for a national-level
collective contract for the auto sector in Brazil (see Oliveira above). He refers to the
attempts to develop a union presence within the Mercosur and union activity in relation to
the Free Trade Areas of the Americas (FTAA, see Mello e Silva above). He also
mentions the activities of the CUT to create new alliances at local, national and
international levels. The CUT has been active in relation to the environment, children's
rights, citizenship and education, and against the neo-liberalism of the Cardoso
government:
New alliances—particularly with social movements, NGOs, and political
parties opposed to neoliberal-inspired policies—have also been pursued at
the international level, through participation in demonstrations such as the
one in Seattle (at the WTO meeting, in 1999), in Washington (at the IMF
meeting, in 2000), and in Quebec (at the FTAA meeting, in 2001); in the
constitution of networks, such as the Continental Social Alliance…; and
in events such as the World Social Forum…[in Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2001
– PW]…CUT's discourse has been increasingly incorporating the
expression “citizen union” to designate (not without internal tensions), in
an adverse context, a union practice of a more ["propositional"] character,
that takes as its central issues the defense of employment and of social
rights, that seeks to expand its action to institutional spaces and have a
more direct influence on the formulation and execution of public social
policies, that seeks to construct closer links with other organizations and
social movements, at local (by focusing on the question of “local
government”), national (by discussing a “national project”), and
international levels.
The paper of Véras is of a less theoretical or speculative nature than earlier-mentioned
ones, drawing on the literature of labor relations and unionism, relating either to Brazil in
particular or Latin America more generally.
Romero/Bananeros in Colombia. Romero's paper is about banana workers in an
isolated region of north-western Colombia, on the border with Panama. It is primarily
concerned with the self-transformation of the workers there from 'subjects to citizens'.
Robero recognizes that Urabá represents an odd case, in so far as the citizenship relates
not so much to the national as the local state, and then to a political arena from which the
insurrectionary left has been more or less eliminated and in which counter-insurgent
vigilantes have consolidated their power. If the bananeros have nonetheless – along with
the post-insurrectionary left - established themselves within the region, this is because of
1) the perceived threat posed to both local capital and labor by the still-insurrectionary
FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), 2) regional interests in relation to the
13
central state, and even 3) the role played by the Presidential Peace Commission. The
conflict between the armed left and the political left for the loyalty of the bananeros
seems to have been won by the latter. The local elite has been prepared to give
recognition to the union and the political left in exchange for some protection of the local
economy and polity from the FARC.
The last section of the paper considers 'Social Unionism and Labor
Internationalism'. The social unionism has to do with the involvement of the union in
both local party politics and in creating schools and other services for the local
communities. The labor internationalism has to do with the involvement of Sintrainagro
with international organizations of banana and other agro-industrial worker unions, in
Central and South America, in Europe and – hopefully – in other Third World countries.
The organizing activities have been in connection with the Geneva-based International
Union of Food and Allied Workers (IUF). The motivation here has been to reduce or
avoid competition between banana workers (and banana-producers or producing
countries) in the face of the multinationals and an increasingly unstable and competitive
world market (which has led to an IUF-Chiquita agreement on basic labor conditions and
union rights in the region). The educational/social activities have been carried out with
the support of Scandinavian and Spanish unions:
These international alliances between Sintrainagro and progressive
European unions, and the labor activism of Sintrainagro beyond the
regional borders of Urabá, seem to contrast with the local public agendas,
focused on order and security. This is the context in which the union has
to operate though it appears contradictory. Knowing the strategic
capabilities of the Sintrainagro leadership and their allies, the possibility
can not be dismissed that this international activism is being used to
counteract the relative isolation of Sintrainagro on the national union
scene, and to construct alliances and supports vis-a-vis eventual changes
in the national political arena as a result of the peace process with the
FARC. Likewise, these international links can give Sintrainagro
autonomy in the face of dominant local powers supported by the
paramilitary groups.
In terms of theoretical approach, Romero refers to literature not so much on class and
unions as that on citizenship, representation and participation. He is, it seems, primarily
interested in the establishment within Urabá, and more widely, of some meaningful kind
of civil society, in which a life and death struggle - between traditional landholding and
other elites and the insurrectionary left and the poor - is surpassed by social compromise
and pacts (from the local to the international level), to the benefit of both sides. He also
considers that this kind of settlement provides the necessary base for any emancipatory
struggle.
Estanque/New Challenges. This study of a shoe and leatherworker's union in Sao
João de Madeira, Portugal suggests that a union of workers, in a traditional industry, in
one provincial community, can nonetheless confront globalization in both a practical
14
manner and in an emancipatory and internationalist spirit. The Union of Footwear, Bags
etc, of the Districts of Aveiro and Coimbra (henceforth: Footwear Union) comes out of a
particular history of union-community-international relations. Estanque first reveals the
general conjuncture within which this union finds itself:
As we know, Communist mythology has now collapsed and, as a result,
‘class unionism’ is today riven by innumerable problems and fragilities.
Not only have the strikes of the working class been ‘cannibalized’ by
capitalism, the administrative structures of the main trade unions have
also largely become instruments of state regulatory action. The trade
unions themselves have also contributed to this process, by
‘cannibalizing’ the old proposals of emancipatory action. In the midst of
all this, the conquests made by workers and by the traditional trade union
movement have largely given way before the pressures of co-option, and
have imperceptibly entered the dynamic of the system, becoming
absorbed by the rationale of regulation… However, alongside the
discrediting of the ‘old’ worker- and national-based trade unionism, there
are signs of revival, especially on the level of ideas and political debate.
These, which occur as much in academia as in the trade union domain,
point towards the emergence of a ‘new’ social trade union movement of
global or international character…
Estanque reveals the dramatic historical development of contradictory class and
communal relations that seem to have permitted this exception to the rule of nationalindustrial unionism in Portugal (as elsewhere!). Beginning as a region of pre-industrial
shoe production, where the putting-out system was practiced alongside farming, the Sao
João de Madeira (SJM) traders/capitalists were early involved with Brazil. As the area
industrialized in the 20th century, it became highly dependent on export production, and
Portugal itself the second-largest shoe exporting country in Europe. Most recently SJM
footwear has found (or been given) its place as an unlabelled subcontractor to major
North European multinationals. At the same time, whether under liberal or authoritarian
national conditions, the region appears to have developed a sharp sense of local identity,
through the paternalism of local entrepreneurs and/or autonomous associational selfactivity. It has been involved in major historical class and democratic struggles, industrial
and national. And, most recently, the union has had to juggle the tensions between 1)
practical and effective defense/advance of member's immediate interests, and 2) those of
a growing radical-democratic local, national, European and global community of which it
considers itself to be a constituent part.
The union takes part in the collective-bargaining-oriented European Works
Councils (Costa 2001) for unions in the shoe sector. It seems to have been in advance of
the Communist-aligned national CGTP-IN in joining European solidarity demonstrations
(union supported but not union controlled, precursors of what some are now calling the
Global Justice Movement or GJM). And, internationally, it has links with a dozen or
more organizations and networks, union or other, associated with the GJM. The latter
include union and rural labor organizations in Brazil, human rights and peace
15
organizations, solidarity networks for homeworkers and the unemployed (with contacts
also involving such countries as the UK, Spain, Australia, Thailand, Chile):
The emancipatory orientation of this perspective is based, therefore, not
only upon the construction of platforms and local alliances, but also upon
expansion to the global level of intervention; and this has been the
strategy underlying the actions of this union and its leadership over the
last decade. In other words, it is a strategy that brings together the
concerns of both the ‘old’ and new types of internationalism, which then
act as a vehicle for a kind of worker solidarity of the ‘revolutionary’ type
and also for a sentiment drawn from experiences that are not restricted to
union militancy. It is useful to bear in mind here that the main union
leader was in the past very active in party politics and other associations
involving cultural intervention…and membership of parties of the
extreme left…not to mention an identification with [shopfloor] union
currents…It is not surprising therefore, that his stance combines a
‘culturalist’ and [‘grassroots' orientation] with a great opening up in the
face of present movements of global solidarity. This is evident in his
discourse, which contains both radical criticism of capitalist globalization
and the profound conviction that nothing is achieved without the hard
work of organization and mobilization. It is thus a discourse that basically
links an updated and open form of ideological radicalism with a pragmatic
sense of immediate action.
For Estanque the case has, however, far greater significance, in so far as it appears to
provide empirical evidence for an extensive theoretical argument, largely but not solely
drawn from Sousa Santos (1995), concerning modernity and emancipation. Perhaps the
key understanding here is that concerning the emancipatory possibilities within highlyregulated relations of class, of community and, indeed, of the world. In such an
understanding, regulation and emancipation exist not (simply) as binarily opposed in
either time or space, but rather co-exist in tension. Such an understanding is perhaps
encapsulated in the subheading: 'From regulation to emancipation: between industry and
community, between the local and the global'. As with regulation:emancipation, the other
paired terms in these binary oppositions (which are understood both as institutional
practices and as discourses) are shown as contradictory and therefore unstable. If, he
suggests,
the footwear workers’ union could put into practice new forms of transnationalization and extend the international solidarity networks to which it
belongs, it could become the main mediator between the local and the
global, in a counter-hegemonic sense. In this way, trade union action and
the local movements with which it means to ally itself would effectively
function as brakes to the present rationale of hegemonic globalization (be
it under the form of localized globalism or of globalized localism),
opposing it with a new rationale of global solidarity promoted through
new emancipatory dynamics and new colligations and alliances, oriented
16
towards the defense of the dignity of work and the recognition of the
community.
Dietrich and Nayak/Fishworkers in India. Focused on the non-industrial
fisherpeople of Southern India, D&N reveal how their fate has been largely determined
by the inter/national capitalist market and both Northern and Indian state development
and/or modernization policies. Far from accepting this fate, however, fishworkers have
been attempting, for 30 years or more, to organize themselves both for defense, within
the existing structures, and processes and counter-assertion beyond such. Their struggles
have been rich, complex and even contradictory, since they have had to come to terms
with class identity/divisions, and with communal identities (ethnicity, caste, residence,
religion). They have also had to negotiate with the local and national state apparatus, and
with organizers/intellectuals from the church, parties, unions. In so far as Kerala has been
a progressive state within India, and that unions of the left have a major presence there,
the fishworkers have also had to confront the statist and developmentalist left:
The Left, while mildly supportive of the fishworkers struggle, had always
considered artisanal fisheries a dying sector and, adhering to Lenin's insight
that the Revolution consisted of electrification and workers councils, had
never entered the ecology and energy questions in deeper ways.
Nor the women's question, evidently.
Beyond India, the movement has had to find itself in relationship to inter-state
organizations (particularly the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization –
FAO), with their opposite numbers in countries as different as Senegal, Brazil and
Canada, and with (foreign-funded?) international/ist support NGOs. Within India their
movement has been an active member of the National Alliance of People's Movements
(NAPM), a body that is itself playing an active role within the anti-globalization
movement. D&N, activists long present within the local-national-international
fishworkers and allied movements, handle the complexities of this case study by drawing
selectively on theories/strategies from Marxism, Feminism, Environmentalism and other
sources. They conclude:
The most crucial question seems to be how to valorize the contribution of
the working class in the informal sector worldwide and to give it a unified
voice. This voice has to have a feminist perspective, as the mass of women
in the Third World or the Global South are working in the informal sector.
From this point of view, the experience of the NFF [National Fishworkers
Forum – PW] is encouraging, as its leadership has been willing to create
space for a feminist perspective on fisheries and the women involved,
despite much hardship, have also not given up on asserting themselves in a
heavily male dominated environment. However, this alternate perspective
on interaction with nature, energy use, subsistence production as base for
extended production, production of life and livelihood as central concern,
has not found support from any of the mainstream trade unions. This can be
17
explained by the fact that organized trade unionism had its origin in the
very concept of industrialism which has turned out to devastate the
resource base. Organized labor has the same insensitivity to the informal
sector and resource management as patriarchy has had towards women’s
housework and other subsistence labor. Even in Seattle, the unions of the
organized sector deflected the mass struggle against market fascism of the
WTO by demanding that the WTO include the social clause [the
inter/national union attempt to establish labor rights through the WTO –
PW]. The position in India is that social clause must be separated from
trade agreements.
They end with two final and inter-related questions: firstly, of whether the current crisis
of 'organized labor', and its incapacity to relate positively to the fishworkers and other
such working classes, might allow for the rebirth of class-conscious working class
organizations; secondly of whether a class- and ecologically-conscious women's
movement can – given they are the majority in the informal sector – help to impose the
production of life and livelihood as the central concern of production.
Lambert and Webster/Southern Initiative on Globalization and Trade Union
Rights. This paper deals with a particular attempt to create a new kind of union
internationalism, originating in and primarily oriented toward the South. ('South' is here
defined not geographically but politically, as a common project of 'some of the world's
most exploited working classes, many…denied basic ILO…rights') SIGTUR is a network
of old and new left or radical-nationalist unions, 'which would still claim to be fighting
for a socialist transformation'. Under the provocation of neo-liberal globalization, it is
taking direct and common action across, or regardless of, particular party-political
affiliations locally, or international affiliations globally. Rooted in the left and
internationalist traditions of Perth/Fremantle, in Western Australia, it began life around
1990, as an Indian Ocean network. It was, and is, most effectively linked at this ocean's
two extremes, the other one being Durban, South Africa. However, the network has
expanded, with growing links to Indonesia, the Philippines and South Korea. And then,
with a link to the Brazilian CUT (which has its own warm relations with South Africa's
COSATU), it adopted its present name. It has seen a series of effective solidarity
campaigns, including those of the South African and Indian with Australian workers and
unions. The network claims to combine the old (union institutions) with the new
(networking, campaigning, computer communication). L&W – both of them academics
long-involved with the South African and/or West Australian and international unionism
– set up an opposition between the Old Labor Internationalism (hierarchical, centralized,
bureaucratized, formal, diplomatic in orientation, workplace-focused, etc) with the New
Labor Internationalism (networked, decentralized, de-layered, oriented to mobilization,
focused on coalitions with new social movements and 'Southern'). SIGTUR is presented
as exemplifying the latter. Despite earlier opposition from the ICFTU internationally, and
from rightwing unionists or neo-liberal governments nationally, SIGTUR evidently meets
a common desire for leftwing unions confronted with globalization and aware of the
ineffectiveness of the existing internationals. Recognizing, on the one hand, the severity
18
of the neo-liberal offensive, on the other the commonly weakened condition of unionism,
SIGTUR is working out a modest and practical alternative:
At this point in history, where the power inequalities are so magnified, it is
difficult to provide a clear cut, confident answer… At this stage, SIGTUR
is attempting to formulate a minimalist program as the first building bloc in
a struggle for social emancipation. This program will attempt clear
alternatives with defined strategies in the following spheres: 1) lean
production, casualization, outsourcing, and the relocation of production to
union free zones; 2) The privatization of the state sector; 3) The WTO.
L&W establish the credentials of SIGTUR by reference to the classical socialist
values of international labor solidarity and social emancipation, to its chequered history,
and to recent social theorizing on globalization, the discontents it creates and the
movements it provokes. It is the last of these sources – or discussions - that is most
challenging since it leads them to criticize a common 'infatuation with new information
systems' in such theorizing, and to argue for the necessity of the new networked, global
and social movement to be based on, or grow within, the historical union institutions.
L&W also favor a 'grounded' approach to globalization and opposition to such, which
seems to mean a focus on 'globalization from below', as it expresses itself where people
live and work. They see this as both justifying their approach and expressed by SIGTUR
itself.
Following its 1999 conference in South Africa, SIGTUR undertook three
campaigns: for a common Mayday 2000, around the issue of jobs; a corporate campaign
against the anti-union Rio Tinto mining multinational (involving union cooperation with
environmental, indigenous and human rights campaigners), and a 'global unionism'
project. The authors report success on all three campaigns. The Rio Tinto campaign is of
particular interest in so far as it involved a traditional international labor organization, the
International Chemical, Energy and Mineworkers Federation (ICEM). By 'global
unionism' SIGTUR apparently means direct cross-national ties of intensive practical
exchange and solidarity, as here exemplified by an agreement between port/dockworkers'
unions in Durban and Fremantle. L&W recognize four present challenges: uneven union
organizational capacity and different local political traditions; the lack of resource
commitment to the network by even the stronger national confederations; the necessity
for unions to broaden their support base by organizing the casual, part-time and informal
sector workers, as well as forming structured coalitions with women's, ecological and
other such movements; and finding the right way of relating to the traditional
institutionalized union internationals.
19
5. Eight papers: a critique
I would like to consider these sometimes very different, sometimes overlapping
papers as a common database and then to search within this pool for issues. There are
reasons for this strategy. One has to do with the fact that whilst all the papers are written
'in the light of globalization', they may not refer directly to the RSE Project as a whole,
nor focus centrally on labor and/or union internationalism (not synonyms, as we will see).
Another has to do with my own 15-year engagement with labor internationalism, during
which I have obviously developed certain positions (which L&W directly challenges) and
a consequent desire to a) avoid polemic and b) attempt to rethink
internationalism/emancipation in the light of RSE.
Before starting the exercise, however, it might be useful to see what kind of fish
are in the pool - and what kind not. In considering this matter, some useful parameters
might be the following:





Object/Subject, in the sense of primary focus on: trade unionism; labor
organization in general; internationalism as such; labor as an actor in social
transformation;
Socio-Geographical (Sub) Regions, in terms of a primary focus on: the North;
South; and East (ex/Communist);
Union Level, Place or Space, in terms of a primary focus on: the industrial; local;
national; regional; international;
Work or Worker Type, in the sense of a primary focus on: the urban-industrial;
services; the rural; the 'a-typical' or 'informal sector'; women;
Conceptual reference, in terms of a primary frame; theory; author; type of
literature.
The categorization or typology in Table 1 can, obviously, only be approximate given the
generality of the categories and the multifarious nature of most papers. But it might be
nonetheless suggestive, and also possibly revealing. What is here focused on?





Labor Object/Subject: overwhelmingly trade unions, overwhelmingly nationally
or industrially defined.
World (Sub)Region: Overwhelmingly the South, overwhelmingly Latin
America/Brazil, and the South of Western Europe.
Political Levels, Interconnections: overwhelmingly national to regional, whether
the regional is defined in terms of the sub-continent, the hemisphere or the South.
Worker type: overwhelmingly the urban and/or industrial, and the male.
Conceptual reference: varied, though with a bias toward industrial relations and
labor relations studies, mostly of the left.
20
Table 1: Primary Foci of Contributions
Labor
object/subject
World/
subregion
North/
W.
Europe
South
America/
Brazil
South/
Colombia/
Political
levels/interconnections
National to
Regional
Worker
type
Conceptual
Reference
Urban
industrial
Industrial relations,
Labor studies
National to
Regional
Urban
industrial
Local to
Regional/
International
Rural
waged
Industrial relations,
Labor studies,
Internationalism
Citizenship,
representation,
participation
Costa: Portugal
&
European WCs
MeS: Brazil &
Mercosur
Trade union
Romero:
Colombian
Banana unions
Trade union
Oliveira:
Brazilian unions
&
internationalism
Véras: Brazilian
Metalworkers'
contract
struggles
Dietrich &
Nayak: Indian
Fisherpeople
Trade union
Brazil
National to
International
Urban
industrial
Gramsci, Critical
sociology and
globalization
Trade union
Brazil
National
Urban
industrial
Labor studies,
Critical globalization
Labor
Organization
South/
India
National to
International
Pettycommodity
Feminism,
Environmentalisml,
Socialism
Estanque: New
Challenges
Trade union
Portugal
Urban
industrial
New emancipatory
theory
Lambert &
Webster:
Southern trade
union
internationalism
(Sigtur)
New
international
union network
South
Local to
Regional/
International
National to
Regional
Urban
industrial
Marxism,
Socialism,
Critical globalization
Trade union
21
What is here absent or under-represented (in relation to a concern with labor
internationalism and emancipation under conditions of globalization)?





Labor Object/Subject: 'a-typical' labor – the casual, part-time, service, pettycommodity, unemployed, homeworker, domestic.
World (Sub)Region: The (ex)Communist, North American, North European,
African, East Asian.
Political Levels, Interconnections: the global level, the inter-state unions and
organizations dealing with labor (International Labor Organization, international
financial institutions), the area of culture, media, communication – particularly
that represented by computers and cyberspace.
Worker Type: peasants, women, petty-producers, etc (see Labor Object…).
Conceptual Reference: the contemporary critical or left literature centrally
concerned with work, post-industrialism, with emancipation, with
internationalism.
These absences/silences are, to my mind, obstacles to a rethinking of labor
internationalism in the era of a globalized, networked, services and financial capitalism
(GNC). But they are also, it must be recognized, reflective or expressive of not only most
contemporary labor studies but of the inter/national union movement itself, as 1) shaped
by a century of National Industrial Colonial Capitalism (NICC) 2, and 2) impacted and
effectively sidelined by a revolution within capitalism for which traditional union forms,
practices and theories did not prepare it.3 Emancipation and internationalism, moreover,
are not add-ons that can be bolted on to the national-industrial tractor to carry out tasks
for which it was not originally designed. And even if they can be considered as part of the
original toolbox of labor – as they indeed are or were – they cannot simply be drawn out
of storage, or the museum, since the capitalism to which they were originally addressed
was a largely pre- or early-industrial one. The full nature and trajectory of contemporary
2
When I say here 'colonial', I do not wish to oppose 'imperial' or 'core' capitalism to 'national' or 'periferal'
capitalism in a traditional socialist or thirdworldist way. Capitalist and statist development during this
period was universally expressed in terms of the invasion, despoliation and exploitation of pre- or noncapitalist enclaves whether abroad or at home. Moreover, the 'socialist' or 'nationalist' development projects
of the past reproduced much of the rhetoric of capitalist development, even where it failed to achieve such.
More on this in respect of the trade unionism of the period in Footnote 18 below.
3
For one extreme case of the impact of a globalized neo-liberalism on the labour movement, we could
consider Peru, where the 'class unionism' of the 1970s-80s was first reduced and later wiped out by the
Fujimori regime of the 1990s – with the approval of the international financial institutions. The traditional
working class of the private and public sectors was decimated, incomes fell dramatically, social security
was reduced, casualization rose, union rights and labour security was abolished and collective bargaining
more or less disappeared (Verdera 2000). With unionisation rates down to one percent of the Lima
working-class, it is unsurprising that any earlier interest in any kind of labour internationalism was reduced
to tokenism, and marked, in one prominent case, by corruption (Jakobsen 2001). It is only since around
2000 that a revival of interest and engagement with international issues can be observed. This has begun,
significantly, with labour support groups, and in connection with the broader social justice movement in
Latin America (PLADES 2001).
22
capitalism could not be predicted (despite brilliant insights by the early Marxists), and is
only becoming evident as it unfolds itself and is subject to fresh analysis.
It seems to me, indeed, that if we want to rethink labor internationalism and
emancipation for our times, the most difficult place to start from might be that
circumscribed by 1) the industrial/clerical worker in large-scale private or state
employment, 2) the inter/national trade union, and 3) left or socialist theory! What we are
therefore confronted with, I would suggest, is what is concealed in the title of this piece:
the emancipation of labor internationalism…from all three!. This is a radical position,
even an extreme one, but I would like to hope it is more than a polemical one (though
even this could serve as a stimulus to movement within a situation of stagnation,
deadlock, or – since September 11, 2001, even retreat). There are, nonetheless, within
these studies, numerous suggestions of the new capitalist realities, and of the strategies
necessary to confront them, as there are within the RSE Project as a whole. And it is to
these that we must now address ourselves.
23
6. Discussion within the parameters of the RSE project
I am going to here generalize about the papers, singling out for later treatment
Dietrich and Nayak (Fishworkers), Estanque (Challenges) and Lambert and Webster
(Sigtur) as those that address the RSE problematic most directly.
In so far as RSE suggests that emancipation springs out of the articulation of new
forms of Democracy, Production, Citizenship and Knowledge with a New Labor
Internationalism, then it represents a major challenge to most of the labor movements and
labor studies with which we are here confronted.
The studies certainly reveal the unions as either defenders of worker and
democratic rights under neo-liberal or global attack, or as proponents of a deeper or more
extended democracy. The attachment to democracy, the attention to citizenship, the
extension of those addressed from union members to working people, women, children
and others – all these are new, notable and valuable. In many cases, however, what the
unions are trying to establish is a meaningfully liberal democracy in situations where this
does not yet exist. Given the multiple shortcomings of liberal democracy, as revealed yet
again by its globalized war against Afghanistan, this is a utopia turning into a distopia:
islands of political democracy in oceans of social fascism - as Sousa Santos somewhere
declares) – with the implication that the two spheres are inter-dependent. Even where the
talk is of 'counter-hegemony', this is mostly in recognition of its non-achievement. And,
even where it is seen as being achieved, such 'counter-hegemony' does not seem to
amount to either the old socialism, nor a post-capitalist political alternative - nor even the
old union utopia of the welfare state! The issue of 'international', 'cosmopolitan' or 'global
democracy' does not arise here. Moreover, the extension or transformation of democracy
within the trade unions is hardly (if at all) mentioned, though this has been recognized as
the problem of unionism ever since the classical formulation of the 'iron law of oligarchy'
early in the last century (Michels 1915).
In relation to production, most of the studies go little further than a concern with
the issue of, first, employment, second public ownership, and, third, some uncertain kind
of national or regional autonomy from a) the global market, b) rapacious multinationals
and c) authoritarian international financial institutions. These are defensive postures and,
as such, the essential base for anything more assertive. But the papers do not envision, far
less propose, inter/national relations of production, distribution, exchange and
consumption that might challenge the hegemonic forms and discourses.
The question of citizenship is raised directly by at least one of the papers and less
directly by others. The re-assertion that the labor movement is a citizenship movement
(and the suggestion that citizenship theory is relevant to union strategy) is a welcome
rediscovery and claim (Johnston 1999). There is also the occasional suggestion that a
regional/international union power or identity could reinforce (and/or re-empower?)
national ones. But no major issue is made of women's, indigenous or ethnic minority
24
identities and rights, even where these are significant within the democratic movements
of the countries concerned.
It is no surprise that knowledge sources, rights or claims should remain unaddressed in these cases/studies, given that this aspect of emancipatory struggle is not
only the newest but the furthest from traditional (not classical) labor concerns. The labor
movement used to have its own knowledge – various socialist theories and ideologies –
many addressed to the areas raised by the RSE Project. It also had its own means of
knowledge-production and conservation – schools, papers, journals, colleges, archives.
The shortcomings of the old theories, the collapse of Communist, Social-Democratic and
Populist projects, and the frontal assault by (neo-)liberalism, seem to have provided the
coup de grace to any independent notion of labor knowledge, to its classical values and to
any self-confident identity.4 Whilst the contemporary movement might make gestures, or
preserve rituals, referring to classical labor traditions, it can hardly be expected to be
sensitive to new and unfamiliar issues, claims and challenges to raison du capital positivist, instrumental, consumptionist, technocratic and possessive-individualist.
Finally, a new labor internationalism. An awareness of the shortcomings of the
old internationalism(s), and the possibility of a new one, is present in the papers to a
greater or lesser extent. There is considerable reference to new levels of international
union action (regional), to new inter/national alliances (with other social collectivities in
the anti-globalization movement), to the actuality or potential of such forces or fora in
protecting or extending national/local union action. There is also awareness of the
contradictory nature of the new extra-national (regional) institutions, as well as possible
contradictions between national or regional unionisms. What this awareness points to is
the necessity for an understanding (critical, innovatory), and an ethic (solidarity), that
might allow for the negotiation and settlement of such differences. But this necessity
receives no recognition (cf. Wills 2001 on European Works Councils). In so far,
moreover, as the inter/nationalisms are beyond the immediate region, they seem to be
rather understood as something from which Southern unions can benefit than something
that they have invented, constructed or could project together with others.
Now for the papers that relate most fully to the Project.
Estanque/New Challenges. This is a study of an exception: a traditional
industrial trade union, but one of an apparently internationalist and emancipatory
orientation. It is, however, not clear from the case study whether its squaring of the circle
might be due to the preservation of 1) considerable autonomy from the Portuguese
national arena in general and 2) even from the national trade unions in particular. The
latter, according to Costa (2001), seem to be rather in the square of national-industrial
union internationalism at European level, than in the circle of a growing and spreading
global justice movement! Nor is it clear whether the existence of this rather
internationalist labor-community unionism might not be due to the work of one
4
Thus when the USA's AFL-CIO invented (or commissioned at great expense?) the logo of 'Working
Families' this represented less a reaching out to wives, partners and children than a re-branding of an old
product in terms consistent with the neo-liberal discourse of 'family values'.
25
remarkable labor leader, with a background in local community and cultural activity, and
experience in left activity at national level. Nor, for that matter, whether it might not be
due, as Estanque reveals, to SJM having missed or jumped over the stage of Fordism.5
Be this all is it may, the union is heavily involved in a wide range of community
and/or cultural activities from the local to the global. The existence of what appears to be
a quite dramatic exception to the general rule of unionism, even outside the capitalist
core, gives the lie to the notion that the union form makes such impossible (as
distinguished from unlikely). The study is also a provocation to further analysis in an
attempt to establish the extent to which this orientation has been internalized by union
and community members locally. And, for that matter, of whether its exceptional
character is known to and valued by the union's existing and potential partners globally. 6
A question also remains in my mind about the extent to which the activities of the
Footwear Union within the traditional 'regulatory' bodies of European or international
union relations are informed by the activity and discourses of the 'emancipatory' GJM, or
whether these activities are not carried out in parallel, without the one infecting the
other!
I have suggested earlier that this is an extensively theorized paper. What the
theorization does, it seems to me, is to make an exceptional - and possibly momentary experience available for possible emulation, for discussion and therefore, eventually for
further generalization and theorization.7 Estanque recognizes in his text the role played
by academic work in the advance of labor internationalism. Given the (self-)
marginalization of many such experiences, given the continuing failure of such
movements to communicate with each other, to practice self-reflectivity, and to generate
their own theory (or, at least, generalization, speculation, propositions), then the role of
the sympathetic academic becomes also that of a channel of information as well as a
5
Fordism, which itself combined conveyer-belt production with detailed division of tasks, and with wages
that enabled the working class to also become a significant consuming class, was commonly accompanied
by Keynesianism, which implied state-manipulated investment, wage and social security benefits. Whilst
neither of these was restricted to the national, they were historically combined with the development of
national-industrial capitalism in the 20th century, and thus with the transformation of unions from a force
for universal class emancipation to one for national-level regulation, and acceptance of the state-national as
the primary or sole parameter of union action. The question therefore arises of whether the leap over this
stage did not preserve a capacity of the SJM shoeworkers to both protect/project a community identity and
to articulate the local and cosmopolitan without the customary state-national regulation – political or union.
6
This actual and potential world is likely to be as ignorant of the SJM experience as I was before reading
the paper! This itself may be due to a lack of internet presence, suggested by my unsuccessful web
searches, in two or three languages, using a range of search words. Since around 1995, the web has become
the privileged medium for the communication of both labor and general internationalism. (Waterman
2001e).
7
This is an understanding I came to whilst writing an earlier study of another such 'local/ized
internationalism', that of the dockworkers of Barcelona (Waterman 1993). That 'premature' attempt at an
emancipatory labor internationalism declined, with little record of its existence. I therefore had the temerity
to suggest that it might be only through my own intellectual intervention that this experience would remain
available to the labor movement internationally. See further Footnote 9 below.
26
source of theory. This is in no way an ideal situation, since an emancipatory labor
internationalism must imply a development of communicational and reflective practices
as close to the center of the movement as possible. Unless and until this occurs, of course,
the academics will need to develop their own capacities for communication – this here
implying popularization and education as well as networking.
Dietrich and Nayak's paper makes the most dramatic possible contrast to not only
that of Lambert and Webster but the collection as a whole. It also opens up the matter of
an emancipatory labor internationalism beyond the class, the national and the union form
that gave it historical shape. This is not only because of its foci but also of its approach,
in so far as this is synthesized, as earlier suggested, from Marxism, Feminism,
Environmentalism and other contemporary sources.
The case of the Indian fishworkers seems to reveal, one after the other, all the
self-limitations of modern national industrial trade unionism. The authors' approach
similarly reveals the limitations of those for whom the national-industrial working class
and union provide the parameters. Concepts of the 'traditional sector', the 'informal sector'
and of 'a-typical employment' are here revealed to be highly-ideological and increasingly
conservative. In India, the proportion of the economically-active population in the
'informal sector' grew, 1978-1998, from 89 percent to 92 percent! The percentage in this
sector, across the world in 1998, varied from 15 percent in high-income countries to 80
percent in the low. Given that the bulk of the world population, and of the working
classes (plural) live in this third zone, it is clear that it is the 'a-typical' workers of the
world who are the typical ones (Gallin 2001:532-3)! And becoming more so, even at the
capitalist core. A new labor internationalism cannot simply add-and-mix the growing
number of women workers or those indirectly waged. It has to be rethought in a manner
that no longer considers the traditional worker and union as the norm.
The fishworker case also reveals, in open and dramatic form, most of the
problems that have been ignored, or concealed, or marginalized by the modern labor
movement: the multiple identities of workers, women-workers/working-women, complex
and conflicting notions of community, the search for work and production in harmony
with nature, the increasing centrality of the international sphere, the necessity of
simultaneously building up an international community of workers+communities and, on
this base and in function of their empowerment, negotiating with inter-state institutions.
Particularly interesting for us is the manner in which, and the form within, which
their internationalism is being created. Excluded, by traditional unionism, from
membership of the institutionalized union internationals, the fishworkers have found their
internationalism with the support of an international/ist NGO, and in the form of a
network.
In terms of approach, too, the study suggests the value of combining traditional
Marxism (analysis of capitalism, national and international, the notion of class identity
and struggle), Feminism (recognition of gender as a fundamental social structure; the
necessity of gender-sensitive analysis), valorization of autonomous women's organization
27
and struggle), and Environmentalism (analysis of the destructive dynamic of industrial
capitalism, struggle for environmentally-friendly products, production methods and labor
relations).
Let us here avoid two possible misunderstandings that could follow from the
above commentary, if not from a careful reading of the original text. One is that we have
discovered the way to emancipation, national and international, the other that we have
discovered the vanguard thereof. These two errors, customarily combined, have been
common to the left historically. And they reveal the continuing legacy of 1) ancient
ideologies of human emancipation (that the last shall be the first, that there is a chosen
people), 2) of the modern Marxist one (the most oppressed modern class as the bearer of
international emancipation, the socialist intelligentsia as its guide and teacher). It is not
because the fishworkers are the most oppressed (or the most marginalized, or that they
represent the majority, or that they accumulate within their community the major forms
of alienation under capitalism), that they suggest the future of labor emancipation and
internationalism. It is rather that systematic reflection upon these matters, made possible
by collaboration with critically-minded and socially-committed intellectuals, can lead to
the surpassing of previously concealed truths or ingrained misunderstandings. There is,
finally, no guarantee that such emancipatory visions, desires or capacities, would survive
any of the following assaults: 1) increased repression on the part of the state, inter-state
policies and practices; commercial aggression on the part of inter/national capital; 2) a
sophisticated and extensive reform policy by the same powers; 3) a similarly
sophisticated proposal of marriage by an otherwise un-emancipated trade union
movement, national or international (i.e. one still insisting on the male superior position);
4) a substitutionist, instead of an empowering, role by the intellectuals/professionals
supporting (or leading!) the movement, whether at local, national or international level.
Lambert and Webster directly address the issues of both social emancipation and
internationalism, theoretically, historically, analytically and strategically. Although these
levels/types of intellectual practice are not clearly distinguished (thus leading to a
conflation of types or moments of intellectual practice), they nonetheless make a
challenging and provocative contribution to the growing dialogue on the meaning of a
global social movement unionism.8 It is because of the combination of these elements in
address to a new kind of labor internationalism that L&W must receive the most detailed
attention.
What L&W are writing about is a particular attempt to create a new labor
internationalism in and from the South. The project is independent of the traditional
international trade union organizations and of the traditional inter-state instances
(regional or international). In so far as Sigtur is a horizontal network of Southern trade
unions, it combines the traditional union form with certain principles and practices of the
8 In their contribution, Lambert and Webster make explicit reference to, as well as take specific issue with,
earlier writings of mine. This is one of a couple of ongoing exchanges between Rob, Eddie and myself,
going back 10-15 years. In so far as our dialogue is directly relevant to the RSE Project, there is no reason
why it should not continue here. Indeed, it would be quite difficult to avoid it.
28
so-called new social movements.9 L&W also make considerable reference to classical
Marxist thinking and the socialist tradition. They see socialism as the alternative to
capitalism. They also refer to and use some of the contemporary critical literature on
globalization and internationalism, particularly to argue for a 'grounded' approach to
globalization, and to a globalization from below that will lead to the development of a
'global unionism'.
What L&W are simultaneously arguing for, trying to promote, and claiming
evidence of, is a model of a new labor internationalism built from what I have called 'the
most difficult place' - the industrial working class, national-industrial unionism and
socialist theory! How they do this is by extending from classical socialist theory and
strategy toward those offered by contemporary critical understandings of global society
and social movements. Sigtur comes out of their account as an original experiment,
requiring considerable leadership qualities in balancing off the various national union
traditions, and then these with the various new movement, and conceptual/strategic
elements at play. What is evidently thus required by them as researchers on Sigtur is
awareness of such tensions, as well as of the relevant global context; and what is needed
from them as Sigtur activists is relevant action based on such an understanding. Given the
two roles are personified by the authors, this raises further problems (are they analyzing
or propagating?) and possibilities (e.g. of making collective self-reflection part of the
political project). Let me now raise some more specific problems.
First, the 'South' of L&W and Sigtur. There is a certain paradox in the use of this
socio-geographic specification only to then state that it is a 'political' rather than a
geographical term. Whether this re-formulation is intended to allow for South Korea (on
the same latitude as Portugal – but far more industrialized) or not, it still conceals the
'North' within their South. I refer here to Australia, which was the place of origin, and is
still apparently the base, of the network. The relationship Australia/Rest would, surely, be
better made explicit, and a matter for reflection, than obscured in their 'South'. If I am
here implying that their South may be too big, I will now suggest that it is simultaneously
too small. Because there is no substantial reference to other new, autonomous, Southernbased or Southern-inclusive international labor and social movement networks, such as
those mentioned in other contributions to the RSE Project – and which share many of the
political criteria L&W employ for self-definition.
Secondly, 'fighting for a socialist transformation'. I identify here two problems.
One is that whilst the project could, from its activities, be characterized as militant or
radical, one cannot find anything specifically socialist in Sigtur analyses or proposals.
The other problem is that the socialism of the Sigtur affiliates includes Leninism/Maoism
9
It therefore bears some comparison with the earlier-mentioned network of West European dockers, that
was effective in the 1970s-80s. Based on the Coordinadora of Spanish dockers, particularly in the Port of
Barcelona, this drew from the tradition of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism and of dockworker communalism
and internationalism. This innovatory but (self-)isolated project foundered in the inhospitable industrial and
social climate of the time, as well as on the failure of its leaders to look forward and outward, rather than
backward, for inspiration. (Waterman 2001a: Ch. 4).
29
at one extreme and a New Social Movement variety at the other. The first of these
socialisms is a traditional statist, nationalist one, expressed through a 'nationalist
internationalism', in which (competing) national union centers lay claim to sovereignty
over 'their' working classes (members or not of their organizations - or of any unions at
all?), and act, at international events as do - or did - state-socialist diplomats at the
General Assembly of the United Nations. The second kind of socialism is both informed
by and addressed to the new social movements and civil society, and is more at ease in
relating to such movements and NGOs.10
Thirdly, the aim of 'global unionism'. Despite its exemplification by the PerthDurban relationship, this concept remains undefined and undisguised. There is, in my
mind, a tension between an admirable but modest example of a direct and horizontal
relation between unions/communities, and the somewhat grandiose title. 'Global
Unionism' is surely intended to evoke something more than this, and beyond
'international unionism' (as a traditional set of inter-state union relations with related
institutions and practices). But there is also another problem here, in so far as the
traditional international unions are now using similar language. There is a Global Unions
Website (http://www.global-unions.org/), which includes many if not all of the traditional
International Trade Secretariats.11 And there is a new merged international 'skills and
services' confederation, Union Network International, which is acutely aware of
globalization and informatization, and is addressing itself energetically – if ambiguously to a globalized and informatized world order (http://www.union-network.org/). UNI is
also highly computer-conscious and active. The question therefore arises of whether the
'new' Sigtur concept of global unionism is distinct from that of a traditional but
modernized trade union internationalism.
Fourthly, there is the centrality to Sigtur of the traditional working class and
traditional union organization. In the case of India, for example, the two major Sigtur
affiliates, the All-Indian Trade Union Congress, allied with the Communist Party of
India, and the Congress of Indian Trade Unions, allied with the Communist Party
(Marxist) of India, represent perhaps two to four percent of India's workers. Their
members are concentrated in the large-scale and public industrial and service sectors,
currently being undermined by neo-liberal globalization. In the case of India,
furthermore, the Sigtur relationship with such union centers would appear to be an
obstacle to a relation with the labor organizations representing some sectors from the
growing majority of 'a-typical workers' (such as the fishworkers mentioned above).
10
This evaluation is based on participant observation at a Sigtur conference that took place near
Johannesburg, South Africa, 1999 (Waterman 1999).
11
It occurs to me, indeed, that Global Unions, which exists only as a cyberspace network, may now
represent the highest level of international union expression and cooperation! There has even been some
suggestion, as part of the ICFTU's 'Millennial Dialogue' (now beginning to be reported on the ICFTU
website), that the World Confederation of Labour, a formally-Catholic international, and not part of the
ICFTU family, might be given space here. If so, then one could imagine a moment at which autonomous
networks, such as SIGTUR, might themselves be provided with space!
30
Fifthly, the theoretical/conceptual preference of L&W for a 'grounded' approach
to the new labor internationalism, and to a strategy of 'globalization from below'. This is
contrasted with the position of others (such as myself?) whom L&W see as overidentified with the global level and with cyberspace. If they are here arguing that a new
labor internationalism has to be built from the ground up, then the question is whether
this means, in practice, the ground of the old industrial capitalism, manned (literally in
most cases) by the traditional industrial working class, organized by the traditional
national-industrial union, inspired by the 20th century socialist utopia. If so, I would say –
for reasons suggested above and spelled out further below – this can today be only one
ground. As for their suspicion or skepticism of the global level and the cyberspatial
arena, these are likely to become decreasingly distant or ethereal to workers,
communities, unions and internationalists. Globalization and informatization are not only
'up' or 'out' there, they are also in here: 'Don't call us', they say, 'We'll call you!' (for the
interpenetration of global and local, see Massey 1991).
Within Sigtur, it is true, globalization is experienced primarily as a threat to be
resisted, rather than a terrain on which to struggle. This is understandable particularly for
those industries, workers and unions that provide the base of Sigtur. Millions of
contemporary working people, however, have never been part of the unionized or
unionizable working class. And millions of others are becoming 'information workers',
already familiarizing themselves with computers and cyberspace. The notion of
globalization making a local call is converted into reality when one knows that there may
already be 20,000 workers in the 'call center' industry in India, with 10 times that figure
predicted over a seven-year period (BBC World Service and Indian press). So whilst this
new extended working class might join unions, or call their associations unions, they may
have other experiences of, orientations toward and expectations concerning the
international than their predecessors (Hale and Shaw 2001, Wright 2001).
It is, moreover, increasingly meaningful to characterize the new internationalisms
(there are many, even amongst workers) as 'communications internationalisms', in the
sense that they operate within the sphere of the electronic media, are culturally active
there, and see cyberspace as an increasingly central and disputable terrain. It is here
notable that whilst L&W claim that Sigtur is electronically active, this activity referred, at
time of writing, only to email – the earliest and most limited mode of computer-mediated
communication (CMC). Unlike an increasing number of internationalist labor, or
labour+social-movement projects, Sigtur not only has no website but also has an
extremely limited web presence. This despite the relatively high web activity of national
unions within three major Sigtur affiliates, Australia, South Korea and South Africa.12
Finally, it should be noted that rapid innovations, and even internationalist
initiatives in the international labor movement, are coming from the old inter/national
trade union organizations! This is precisely because of the relative (but only relative)
12
The situation changed, at least temporarily, with the Sigtur conference in Seoul, South Korea, November
2001. The Korean Congress of Trade Unions then set up a site for Sigtur,
http//:nodong.org/sigtur/English/html/time.php.
31
freedom of the internationals from the remains of the old national trade unions and
industrial relations, legal and welfare systems. It may also be due to a certain awareness
that the old institutional ground on which the internationals stood (particularly the ILO) is
being marginalized or dissolved by international financial institutions in which labor does
not even have a token position.
None of the above devalues what Sigtur is or does. What it does mean is that
Sigtur has to be situated and evaluated within a more general terrain of international and
internationalist labor activity – particularly that of the growing number of international/ist
labor (and related-related) communication, rights, education and cultural projects. And
also in relation to the traditional international trade union institutions. And that its own
understandings of solidarity, socialism and of a global social movement unionism need to
be discussed amongst its members, and exchanged with other such networks. Otherwise it
might find itself squeezed out of existence between the more powerful union
internationals on the one side, and the less-workerist global justice movement on the
other.13 I will return to such matters below.
13
On November 19, 2001, the global day of union action against the WTO, November 9, the existence of
Sigtur was recognised publicly for what I believe to be the first time, on the ICFTU and Global Unions
websites, http://www.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?Index=991214082&Language=EN. Recognition, if
continued, may face Sigtur with greater dilemmas than invisibility or rejection. This was the experience of
a number of the autonomous international labour support projects set up in the 1980s.
32
7. On emancipating labor internationalism, but from what?
So far I have been engaged in commentary and critique. It is time to adopt a direct
statement on labor, internationalism and emancipation. So far I have also largely
restricted myself to my original mandate: of re-imagining labor internationalism on the
basis of the RSE project materials. Below I go beyond this mandate, whilst still
attempting to keep the relevant literature in the bibliography rather than on the page.14
I have already suggested that the most difficult position from which to develop a
new internationalism is that circumscribed by 1) the traditional industrial working class,
2) the national-industrial trade union and 3) traditional socialist theory. I will continue by,
first, detailing what internationalism has to be emancipated from, and second, what it has
to be emancipated for.
The traditional industrial working class. Although, particularly in its period of
formation, this class certainly displayed internationalist attitudes and proclivities, this was
as much to do with the early period as with its proletarian status. The remarkable
concessions it later wrung out of national capital and the nation-state guaranteed for most
of the 20th century that it would consider these as the parameters of its thought and action.
So, despite Marx's assumptions or hopes, there is no reason to assume that this class is or
will be the permanent and privileged bearer of internationalism and emancipation:
…why should the forms of community produced by capitalist industry be
any more solid than any other capitalist product? Might not these
collectivities turn out to be…only temporary, provisional, built for
obsolescence?…[I]f this is so, then [worker] solidarity, however
impressive at any given moment, may turn out to be…transient… The
workers may sustain each other today on the assembly line or the picket
line, only to find themselves scattered tomorrow among different
14
One lengthy exception. I find it difficult to here do justice of the much-discussed new work of Michael
Hardt and Antonio Negri (2000), and just as impossible to ignore it. Hardt and Negri (H&N) propose a new
vocabulary for understanding globalization and advancing internationalism. Of the three or four major new
critical attempts to understand and surpass our new world disorder, their book is the only one to devote
much space to the critique of what I call national internationalism, and to recognition of the new terrain on
which it has to operate (43-59). At the same time, however, they offer us, as an alternative to the protean
concepts of 'imperialism' or 'globalization' the even more protean concept of 'empire'. For the 'proletarian'
and/or the 'people', they offer us the singular, if complex, figure of the 'multitude'. The expansion of the
Marxist concept of exploitation (referring to class) to the biopolitical (the colonization of nature and the
body) is as subversive and provocative as it is problematic. In attempting a single-factor explanation, and
offering a single agent, or force, of emancipation, both rooted in political-economy, H&N may be unable to
address the specificity of contemporary aspects of globalization, or of its discontents, or of the movements
against such. On the other hand, their argument that proletarian struggle was, unintentionally, the motive
for capitalist globalization, has to be understood as potentially empowering: if this was an unintended
result, what could not be achieved with an intentional address to neo-liberal globalization? These thoughts
should be taken only as a first, superficial, response, to this masterwork and therefore as an encouragement
to others to work out its implications for labor, emancipation and internationalism. Such an address to
H&N could begin with the distinction they draw from Marx between emancipation (from pre- or noncapitalist relations?) and liberation (from capitalist ones?) (363).
33
collectivities with different conditions, different processes and products,
different needs and interests. (Berman 1983:104).
Written 20 years ago, long before the appearance and recognition of a globalized,
networked capitalism, and without reference to the international, this reads like a
prediction of what a GNC is producing – as recorded in the introductory quotation from
Burawoy. And neither of these quotes really captures the fact that what is also produced
by capitalism has been workers marked by multiple non- or cross-class interests,
identities and cultures, particularly that of a state-defined nationalism. It would seem
infinitely more realistic to recognize that the industrial working class is neither the
essence of the working class, nor is its internationalism that of all the working classes.
And that working-class internationalisms (for there have been many historically, and
there are many across the world today) are not necessarily more advanced than those of
other classes or categories. This can be confirmed by historical research, by empirical
research - or by simple observation of, for example, the contemporary anti-globalization
(now anti-war) internationalisms. Even, finally, when and where workers may be more
internationalist, or lead such contemporary movements, there is nothing in traditional
industrial wage labor that ensures that such leadership will be reproduced elsewhere in
space or time.
The national-industrial trade union. This is my generic term for a type of
unionism that has spanned the 20th century, and which underlies the many politicaleconomic phases and political-ideological tendencies that the literature identifies to
explain the limitations of working-class internationalism. The construction of this form
was another historical achievement of the working-class that also resulted in a plateau or prison - for internationalist consciousness and action. The general problem of 20th
century unionism is that:
Throughout the 20th century, unions, as the historical form of worker
representation, have developed a variety of social functions. Such
functions have varied from representing the aspirations and claims of a
relatively homogeneous social group – creating its identity, framing its
solidarity and integrating its members into a society which excluded them
– to contributing to the system's social regulation by transforming
individual interests into collective ones and the latter into suitable
proposals for collective bargaining. (Catalano 1999: 27-8).
Ana-Maria Catalano argues that, due to the rapidly-changing nature of production, this
form of union representation is now in crisis.
What we need to add is one general feature of the trade union – which becomes
even more ambiguous at the international level. The general feature is the union form,
with 'form' understood in the literal sense: a hierarchical, formally representativedemocratic, organization, both addressed to and limited by the capitalist (or would-be
capitalist, or collective capitalist) state. This form and parameter ensured that union
internationalism created a higher level to the pyramid, within which unions represented
34
nationally-defined working classes. The 'iron law of oligarchy' (Michels 1915),
discovered within national working-class organizations, meant that the bottom-up flow of
representation and power was largely reversed, with the leaders now controlling the
members. At the international level, this meant not only a more-distant level but one at
which the working class was represented as much in state-national as in class or
category terms. This became the norm, with national union leaders acting within interstate bodies like diplomats, using such power and wealth as they might possess, to
impose their particular ideas and interests within the internationals.15 And this
customarily behind the backs, or out of sight, of a largely demotivated or demobilized
working class. The internationals also helped construct and then fitted themselves into the
a liberal-democratic inter-state organization, the ILO, within which they accepted a
subordinate status (25 percent of the votes) and a lobbying role.16 At inter-state level,
moreover, the flow of union information and solidarity was largely determined by the
shape of this 'pyramid without a base', in which local or national worker initiatives had to
flow up past two or three gatekeepers, then down before they reached the fellows with
whom they wished to exchange information or express solidarity. Finally, as is well
known, there was not just one such inter-state pyramid, there were three competing
15
A longterm involvement with and heavy commitment to any set of hegemonic institutions and
procedures almost inevitably leads to several, if not all, of the characteristics that Kohn (1992) considers an
obstacle to social change: Limited Vision, Adaptation, Self-Interest (narrow, if collective), Realism and
Rationalisation. Interestingly, Kohn is a specialist on education and is concerned with the damage that
competition does to learning. We might wish to therefore consider whether it is not adaptation also to the
world of the market, to a market rationality and calculation of the possible, that disqualifies unions from
acting as agents of emancipation under liberal-democratic capitalism.
16
The ambiguity of international unionism is revealed starkly even as it tries to respond to globalisation. I
am here thinking of the way in which the international organisations are hoisting the national-level
partnership to the regional or international level. The ICFTU and ITSs are heavily committed to the UN’s
‘Global Compact’, being energetically promoted by UN General Secretary, Kofi Annan. This has been
forcefully criticised, by one liberal-democratic specialist, as dramatically furthering the subordination of
the UN to the corporations (Judge 2000). ‘Social partnership’, on the national or European level, has been
promoted by (retiring) ICFTU General Secretary, Bill Jordan, ever since he was a British national union
leader (Jordan 1984:xiii-xvii). The ICFTU/ITSs are now deeply commited to this global social partnership
project, and attempting to further it by international-level agreements negotiated with major MNCs. Either
despite, or because of, its Third Way, public relations, language, the interests and intentions of such
corporations are quite unambiguous. Says a Vice President of the Norwegian Statoil corporation, about
such a pact with the International Chemical, Energy and Mineworkers Federation (ICEM):
The pact with the ICEM "makes good business sense"… Complying with and furthering
the Global Compact is "part of securing our 'license' to operate internationally”…."If you
are in business in challenging areas of the world, you absolutely want and need to act
ethically, sustainably and socially responsibly. It changes the terms of the debate from
whether or not you should be in a country to how you should act in that country." […]
The stakeholder dialogue aspects of the Global Compact -- which encourages civil
society, labor and business to not just set standards but meet face-to-face to work out
solutions to common problems -- is particularly valuable to business…"The unions as
well as the NGOs are globe spanning knowledge-based organizations"…"They give us
early warning of problems we should be aware of, and allow us to take early action to
mitigate risks."
(UN News Service, New York, March 23. Compare:
www.icem/update/upd2001/upd01-13.html)
35
against each other for the right to represent workers – who generally did not (and do not)
know they exist.
Socialist theory. Traditional socialist theory, left, right or center, has also been
workerist, nationalist and institutionalist. This means that – in so far as it has been
critical of union internationalism, or international unionism – this has tended to be in
terms of ideology ('revolutionary' versus 'reformist', 'class' versus 'populist'), of strategy
('confrontation' versus 'partnership'), of 'bureaucracy' (which is only the human face of
the structural problem), or of 'trade union imperialism' (a notion which ignores or justifies
the state-nationalism of peripheral capitalist unionism). Even when and where involved in
the creation of independent union networks, socialists tend to consider as the norm the
internationalism of, for example, auto-industry workers (Moody 1997). They also tend to
give priority to the capitalist nation-state as the privileged terrain or level of struggle.17
(And to be therefore skeptical or suspicious of both computerized communication and of
networking as a relational form).
None of the above should be taken as implying the abandonment or dismissal of,
say, the 157 million workers in unions formally affiliated to the ICFTU. What it means is
that we (who favor an emancipatory internationalism) see them as a problem or a
challenge. The unionized industrial working class is no more (and no less) naturally or
tendentially internationalist than your average wo/man in the street! The traditional
working class may still, indeed, occupy a strategically significant place within the
17
For a not-untypical example, take the book by the respected Trotskyist academic, Michael Löwy (1998)
on nationalism and internationalism, historically and contemporaneously. Five of the six chapters are
addressed to nationalism. The one that is not, is addressed to internationalism but only in relation to the
main subjects of the chapter - nationalism and imperialism. Possibly 90 percent of the 125 references are to
works on nationalism. None are to those on internationalism. In the last two paragraphs of his book, Löwy
makes a gesture towards the internationalism of the new social movements and ideologies. But this is
without telling us of what this consists, and why they have become the leading force for contemporary
internationalism, with labour trailing notably behind. But, then, he nowhere in the book defines
internationalism, far less theorizes it.
The attachment to/dependency on the state-national, and post-1968 discourses and forms, is still apparently
dominant in the Argentinean labour and left movement (Bergel 2001), despite a dramatic wave of protest,
often by new actors, against the disastrous effects of globalisation (OSAL 2001) that have elsewhere been
the stimulus to new internationalisms.
I cannot here resist mentioning the most bizarre recent expression of nationalist internationalism, even if it
is supported by a somewhat limited number of unions. This was the establishment, in September 2001, of
an International Council for Friendship and Solidarity With Soviet People (www.northstarcompass.org).
This body, endorsed by 100 organisations from 50 countries – including the Libyan state - is concerned to
re-establish the Soviet Union of Stalin. Solidarity is expressed with peoples (who have not noticeably
requested such), by the recreation of an imperial state that simultaneously imploded and exploded - due to
its non-socialist, chauvinist, militarist, incompetent and undemocratic characteristics. I propose this be
characterised as a Posthumous Nationalist Internationalism, a previously non-existent category. Lovers of
the bizarre should note, further, that the ICFSSP takes the form of a network and exists on (and thanks to?)
the internet! Which does not prevent one repeating the thought of Marx in relation to the attempt to restore
the Napoleonic Empire in France: the first time is tragedy, the second time farce
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852-18b/ch01.htm.
36
political-economy, but one cannot read off consciousness, or predict future behavior,
from position within the political-economy, any more than one can read women's off
from the status of women within an increasingly global gender system! Nor can one
assume that the unions' strategic place within the international political economy is some
kind of guerilla foco, within which a counter-hegemony can be constructed, since this is
also a fortress of relative privilege and can – like the foco – function as an isolation cell.
37
8. On emancipating labor internationalism: but how? for what?
I will now consider emancipation not from (the easier part) but for. I propose to
do so by trying to answer the following three questions. If certain concepts have been
above expressed as critique, they will here be expressed positively.
1. How are we to understand globalization in relation to labor?
I have used the concept of a globalized networked capitalism (GNC) and want to
explain the relevance of this in particular reference to labor (c.f. Waterman 2001a:204-7).
Whilst I myself see globalization, as multi-determined, in so far as its aspects - economic,
productive, organizational, military/ policing, cultural and gender/sexual - are mutuallydetermining (so that its victims, movements and imagined alternatives need to be, and
can be, increasingly seen to interpenetrate, inform each other and be mutually
supportive), I do consider that the importance of wage-work and unionism has until
recently been under-emphasized within the new social movements. Exceptions here are
the women's movement, because of its concern with work in all its forms, and the human
rights movement, because of its concern with labor rights.
A globalized capitalism increasingly confronts labor globally. The rapidity of
change in waged work; in its relative growth or decline; in its nature; in its separation by
labor market; in the balance and distribution of such nationally, regionally and globally;
in the nature of its products – all this requires us to radically rethink labor movement
strategies, from the local to the global level. The key to the contemporary transformation
of the global capitalist economy and waged work is the leading role played by knowledge
and information. In the form of information technology, or computerized equipment
(both in production and as product), it is connected with a reduction in the total demand
for labor, a shift in control within the labor process from the machine operator to the
technician, from economies of scale (mass production) to those of scope (batch
production for 'niche' markets), from production to services, with decentralization of
production (whilst retaining central managerial or financial control), and with networking
relations between such central controllers. I would therefore see this process as
simultaneously undermining an identity based primarily on (wage) labor and creating the
basis for a new cross-class movement, questioning the continuing subordination within
and enslavement by work, the nature of products, the ethic of competition, consumerism,
growth, etc. This suggests the necessity for the existing labor organizations, national and
international, to convert themselves into a global social movement around work, but
intimately articulated with those on the new social issues (an argument developed below).
2. How are we to understand the emancipation of labor in relation to a globalized
and networked capitalism?
Andre Gorz (1999a) continues earlier arguments for liberation from what he calls
a 'wage-based society', but now in address to a globalized and networked capitalism – one
that simultaneously is abolishing conventional wage-work and the working class, and
introducing third-world conditions of labor into the first world:
38
A new system has been established which is abolishing 'work' on massive
scale. It is restoring the worst forms of domination, subjugation and
exploitation by forcing each to fight against all in order to obtain the
'work' it is abolishing. It is not this abolition we should object to, but its
claiming to perpetuate that same work, the norms, dignity and availability
of which it is abolishing, as a norm, and as the irreplaceable foundation of
the rights and dignity of all. […] 'Work' must lose its centrality is the
minds, thoughts and imaginations of everyone. We must learn to see it
differently: no longer as something we have – or do not have – but as
what we do. (Gorz 1999a:1. His stress)
Gorz (1999b/1989) earlier identified the kinds of work that exist in addition to 1)
conventional wage labor, these including 2) domestic labor, 3) self-employment
(primarily the additional task of women), and 4) autonomous activity (artistic, relational,
educational, mutual-aid, etc). He here argued for a movement from the first (waged) to
the fourth (autonomous) kind, and for the second and third kind to be increasingly
articulated with the fourth, rather than subordinated to the first. In his more recent work
he emphasizes the two inter-related tendencies of what we might call capitalist-definedwork. One is computerization, under which 'millions of clerical or technical workers',
along with 'a majority of service providers' (2) do not produce anything tangible (in the
sense that a pre-industrial craft worker, or even an industrial production worker might).
The other is the sub-proletarianization familiar in the third world:
This is how…a historically unprecedented mass of capital obtained
historically unprecedented rates of profit; and how that capital managed to
achieve growing volumes of wealth-production while consuming less and
less labor, distributing less and less in wages, paying less and less in
taxes…ceasing to finance the social and environmental costs engendered
by production… (5).
Gorz continues and talks of a world civilizational crisis, marked by anomie, barbarism
and warfare – a vision that has become more general following S11 (September 11,
2001). There is, he says, no point in trying to get back to the old world of capitalist wagelabor (which is what the international trade union movement is largely trying to do). This
would be a matter of seeking 'subordinate reforms' (7), whereas what we need is
'revolutionary reforms', in the sense of those unlimited to the arena of capitalist wagework – old or new.
Going beyond the wage-labor society requires, in the argument of Gorz, three
things: 1) rejection of the capitalist discourse of work (which is also that of the
international union movement) and consideration of the implications of other forms of
productive cooperation, exchange, solidarity and life; 2) recognition of the manner in
which capitalism is not only destroying its conditions of existence but also producing
conditions for its own transcendence, and 3) increasing the distance between capitalism
and society – the spaces in which other forms of work and life can be produced (78-9).
39
The three principles that Gorz considers as made both possible and necessary by
contemporary capitalist development are 1) the guaranteeing of a sufficient income for
all; 2) combining a redistribution of work with individual and collective control over
time; 3) the encouraging of new forms of cooperation and exchange, through which new
post-capitalist social relations could develop. The principle on which Gorz's (life)work is
based is an original aim of the labor movement. This was not so much 'a fair day's pay for
a fair day's work', as 'the abolition of the wage system'. As its eventual aim, the latter was
even recognized by Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor
(AFL) and an American nationalist, militarist and fierce opponent of even reformist
socialism! Whilst this early notion of waged work as something to be emancipated from
faded and disappeared as labor and unionism were socialized into national industrial
colonial18 capitalism, there now arise – at this end of capitalism – new demands for the
reduction of wage-working time, the egalitarian redistribution of that which continues,
and (more marginally) for forms of production, trade, services, care and consumption
subversive of the centralizing, competitive, hierarchical and dictatorial raison du capital.
It is impossible to go into the detail of Gorz's proposals. Suffice it here to say that
his is no rural or local utopianism – though it would certainly increase the autonomy and
power of both – but a thoroughly urban and urbane one, conscious also of the possibilities
or necessities of long-distance and international economic relations. Indeed, he seems to
consider that globalization, computerization and informatization make his proposals both
more necessary and more possible:
The spread of computerization gives a constant boost to the potential of
co-operative networks. Computers can be used to make their management
transparent and easy to monitor by all the members […] The cooperative
circle may thus lead gradually to the collective appropriation of the new
technologies, including…flexible computerized manufacturing systems
which would be acquired…on a hire-purchase basis, or which its members
would ‘put together’, in much the same way as computer and mechanical
equipment is recovered in the shanty towns of Africa or South America
and ‘cannibalized’ to meet local needs. There is now no longer any great
gulf between the performance of the brand-marked production tools of
industry and the tools a local community can use for self-producing…
(107)
18
It occurs to me that unionism-as-we-know-it has also been colonial as well as national and industrial. I
wish to hereby suggest 1) that it took shape in the capitalist core alongside and as a condition for what has
been called 'social imperialism' – the creation, through the granting of rights, of social reforms and
chauvinist propaganda of a working class literally fit for, and oriented toward, if not identified with, the
imperial state; 2) that the model was exported to the capitalist periphery, where the collectivebargaining/welfare seeking, partnership-oriented, state-identified union exists or has existed, as reality or
ideal, for much of the working class. Such trade unionism has customarily been complicit with the internal
colonialism of local capital and state – not to speak of their sub-imperial projects or resource wars with
neighbouring states (and working classes).
40
The direction in which Gorz is looking is consistent with more general left theoretical and
political activity.
For the first we can consider the socialist-feminist-ecological argument of Diane
Elson (1999:83), who also deals with three ways of getting from 'here' to 'there':
The first is to strengthen the movements demanding greater
accountability in the use of economic power… The watchword is
democratizing the economy… The second is to strengthen movements
that are seeking in various ways to transform markets, to embed them in
egalitarian social relations, through social entrepreneurship and through
participatory setting and monitoring of social standards. The third is to
build links between the realization of human rights, the right to enjoy
common property, and the exercise of collective rights over corporate
property.
For the second we can consider the draft list of workshops for the World Social
Forum,
taking
place
in
Porto
Alegre,
Brazil,
early
2001
(http://inscricoes.forumsocialmundial.org.br/content/index.php). One of the several major
themes was to be on Production of Wealth and Social Reproduction. Within this there
were to be eight sub-themes on such subjects as trade, MNCs, control of finance capital,
debt, solidarity economics, alternative economic models, and desirable models of labor
relations (each of these sub-themes being further sub-divided). There were, when I made
a rule-of-thumb count, November 2001, over 100 proposed topics within the theme as a
whole (mostly at this time from Brazil). There were 14 proposed topics in the sub-area of
solidarity economics – an anti- or post-capitalist notion. The union proposals tended, of
course, to concentrate in the labor relations area – one almost inevitably assuming the
parameters of the capitalist wage-labor relationship. (So, whilst alternatives to capitalism
will be discussed at Porto Alegre, it is possible that it will see a reproduction, rather than
a surpassing, of the old union understanding of work, the economy, and of worker
interests within the wage relationship).
It might be worthwhile considering a general understanding of emancipation that
goes beyond the wage-labor relationship (or, rather, is blissfully unaware of such). As we
have seen from the introductory quote, Jan Nederveen Pieterse (1992:31-2) understands
emancipation under contemporary conditions as implying a
concern with autonomy.. a tendency towards network forms, and…
towards self-limitation. The…postmodern emancipations…problematize
power to a much greater degree […] A working definition I propose is
that emancipation refers to collective actions which seek to level and
disperse power, or seek to install more inclusive values than the
prevailing ones. This means that emancipation…involves a moral horizon.
Given the extent to which trade unions embody enlightenment notions of emancipation
and 19th-century notions of how to achieve such, this definition is challenging - if not
41
subversive. Autonomy would imply not only that of unions from capital, state and
political parties, but also of worker collectivities within unions, and of the autonomy
from union domination of struggles of working people outside the unions. Networking
would imply a fundamental questioning of the traditional trade union form, that of a
hierarchical organization - shame-facedly, if not proudly, based on the 'iron law of
oligarchy' - and a recognition and even incorporation of the principle of networking as
one more appropriate for confronting a GNC. Self-limitation might be no problem for a
union movement that has long abandoned any notion of labor remaking society, but it
does for those still-influential union or socialist radicals, whose notions of emancipation
imply a society and state defined and controlled by workers. The problematization of
power, too, would be a major challenge to unions whose notion has always been that of
concentrating within themselves at least a 'countervailing power' that would in some
sense balance off or challenge that of capital and state. The idea that one needs rather to
dissolve or disperse power (not only within or against capitalism but also within the
unions) is not common to the labor movement – left, right or center. Nor is the question
of new, more inclusive values, or a moral horizon. Such a moral horizon, has either faded
or been lost to unions that see themselves, or anyway behave, as an interest or pressure
group; or that are themselves heavily identified with or oriented toward capital, state, or
interstate instances subordinate to such; or to a unionism that expresses itself in terms of
a quantifiable increase or reduction of what is available within the parameters of
capitalist economies increasingly out of control. Such a moral horizon is today rather
offered by the global justice movement (GJM), in so far as it proposes and sometimes
demonstrates universalizable (not universalistic) values, which certainly address also the
interests of unionized workers.
3. How are we to understand a new labor internationalism in relation to both
globalization and the emancipation of labor?
I want to here offer a general understanding of what I prefer to call a new global
solidarity unionism (NGSU), followed by a specification of how I would see this
expressed on the specific issue of labor rights.19 In both cases I would consider that the
orientation is both emancipatory and practical. But if the first could be considered to be at
the end of a long road, the second is intended to bring it right up to the front door.
What I call an NGSU consists of a number of elements or requirements:
A fundamental critique of, and attractive alternative to, our new globalized
networked capitalism (GNC). Critique of the negative effects of globalization is now
familiar within the trade union movement internationally, and we could even witness the
system being publicly named/shamed by US union leaders, at Seattle, 1999, as ‘corporate
capitalism’. In so far as it is so recognized, we need to specify an alternative to such
(rather than a return to a failed previous stage/strategy, or mere regulation/reform of the
present one, leaving intact the underlying economic and political dynamic, and its
continuing ethic of possessive individualism). We need to remember Gandhi’s
19
The first theme is drawn from Waterman (2001b), the second from Waterman (2001c)
42
(apocryphal) answer, when asked what he thought of Western civilization: ‘I think it
would be a wonderful idea!'. It is only by developing civilizational alternatives, based on
current global human needs, capacities and desires, that we could
challenge/threaten/force (inter)state bodies and transnational corporations into even
considering serious reforms. Such ‘green, socialist, feminist, radical-democratic’
alternatives are being increasingly spelled out, as has been suggested, within the GJM.
A new understanding of international solidarity. This means a multi-faceted
solidarity (of Identity, Substitution, Reciprocity, Complementarity, Affinity and
Restitution), on multiple axes (North-South, South-South, etc), in multiple directions
(therefore also South to North, East to West), of increasing scope and depth, owned and
controlled by working people of all kinds, at shopfloor, grassroots, and community level
(Waterman 2001a:235-9). By ‘global solidarity’ is implied that it addresses global issues,
of which relations between nation-states, and unions or workers so identified, are but one.
The notion that solidarity is multi-faceted is crucial, given the absence of classical left
and labor theorization, and the virtual absence of the concept in the 'alternative' literature.
Each of the aspects of global solidarity as above identified carries part of the meaning,
each on its own has its limits. Thus, for example, an Identity Solidarity ('Workers of the
World Unite!) obviously carries part of the meaning but excludes non-workers – however
identified. A Restitution Solidarity (the righting of past wrongs, a solidarity with the past)
can be expressed in financial terms without addressing the moral or emotional issues that
need to be confronted. Such a complex understanding could not only aid analysis but also
future strategy. This would mean by developing a multi-faceted solidarity strategy,
expressing many of these aspects and certainly avoiding reduction to one.
Establishing a positive, dynamic, dialectic and dialogue within unions, between
unions, and beyond unions - locally, nationally, regionally, globally. We see such taking
place increasingly, as inter/national union leaders and organizations begin to respond
assertively or even aggressively, rather than defensively, to the union-threatening impact
of a GNC. Pragmatic and momentary responses need, however, to be transformed into
matters of principle and an on-going practice. This new kind of relationship requires
recognizing the limitations of ‘the union organization’ and the advantages of ‘the labor
network’ - in terms of speed, flexibility and creativity. It also requires that those with
power (international unions, union leaders) make room and create space for those without
it (those at the institutional, social or socio-geographic margins).
The necessity of international labor movement activity at multiple levels and in
multiple spaces, with a similar dialectic between them. In so far as it is recognized that
emancipatory thinking and action are not confined to a particular space or level (e.g.
shopfloor internationalism v. institutional internationalism), then we need to develop
strategies that positively and dynamically integrate such. This means that international
unions and officers, traditionally concentrating attention on international negotiations and
lobbying, and, indeed, largely excluded from direct address to the workers represented by
their members (national unions), have to re-think their role in terms of what stimulates,
expresses, informs, inspires and moves the (hypothetical) local internationalisms of
ordinary working people.
43
The necessity for the union movement to be culturally/communicationally active
internationally. This follows from the above, in so far as, for example, the International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), with 155 million members, has virtually
no international media presence and impact, when compared with bodies like Greenpeace
and Amnesty, with one or two millions. In an increasingly informative world, in which
the political sphere is moving from parties and parliaments to the media, and in which
information, ideas and values are increasingly central, the international union movement
has to move from an organizational to a communications internationalism if it is to be
effective.
Toward a new global civil-society compact. Even today the international trade
union movement understands a ‘social contract’, ‘social compact’ or ‘partnership’ in
terms of a specific compromise or long-term settlement with capital and state, and then
on the model of such as developed within the nation-state during the NIC phase now
passing. These are compacts in the sphere of the ‘economic’ and the ‘political’, rather
than the ‘social’ (civil society). In relation to capital and state labor is in the
inferior/dependent position. A ‘social contract’, ‘compact’ or ‘partnership’ today needs to
be first with society. This means with(in) civil society, with other radical-democratic
social movements and organizations. And it has to be global - for the creation of an
increasingly civil global society. Future compromises made with (trans)national capital
and (inter)state organizations should be called compromises. They should also be seen
and presented as temporary or momentary truces, rather than permanent understandings,
values or institutions, since the mobility and rapidity of capitalist transformation today
hardly allows for more than this. Such compromises have, moreover, to be publicly
justified and understood as relevant to later and further advances in social consciousness
and struggle. And they will have to be made - if unions are to avoid the self-isolation of
the recent past - in the light of global solidarity and civil society, and in accord with other
radical-democratic bodies and voices.
From debate to dialogue in labor and social movement exchanges on
international labor and labor internationalism. I understand debate, or polemic, as an
attempt to destroy the argument of the other; discussion as a listening to the argument of
the other; and dialogue as learning from the argument of the other. These three could be
seen as representing a scale in the civility of discourse. As far as labor movement selfexpression is concerned, they could also be seen as rhetorical modes, voices or styles
related to different stages of capitalist development (Waterman 1995??). I see, in any
case, a relationship between an early, simple, railway-age capitalism (forward/backward)
and a political and moral manicheanism: worker/capitalist, capitalism/socialism,
dictatorship/
democracy,
reform/revolution,
parliamentary/extra-parliamentary,
for/against, within/without, local/global, vice/virtue – or, of course, virtue/vice). I see a
similar relationship between a complex information-age capitalism and a dialectical
logic, requiring dialogue. This is not only because a simple capitalism has become a
complex one. It is also because of the logic of feedback built into computers, thus
allowing for (if not requiring) exchanges which allow for (if they do not require) selfeducation and learning.
44
Be all this as it may, it is both my perception and experience that there is taking
place a movement from debate to dialogue on international labor questions. It is also my
hope that this should be so. What I am primarily concerned with here is to persuade
people of the particular suitability of dialogue to the advance of labor's interests, and the
development of a flexible and creative personality, in and against a complex capitalist
order.20 Here, I suggest, a binary logic and polemical expression are increasingly counterproductive.
So much for the general statement. Now for an emancipatory strategy as applied
to the immediate and central issue of international labor rights.
Whilst it is clear that
a general strategy is needed, it also seems to me that the matter of labor rights has
particular salience:





it begins with an existing and growing inter/national union recognition;
It articulates this with the needs and demands of non-unionized and even ‘nonunionizable’ labour;
human rights discourse is one that has been both expanded and deepened over the
last 50 years, and been found profoundly empowering and effective by both
indigenous and women’s movements;
human rights discourse has widespread cross-cultural legitimacy - at least
amongst those denied such;
human rights discourse is capable of infinite future expansion.
The proposal below grows out of a critique of the Social Clause strategy of the
traditional institutionalised union internationals. This attempt, now 15 years old and
considered unlikely to be achieved during the next 25, is one of establishing core labour
rights within the WTO. This has been primarily a lobbying activity, carried out
20
The beginning of one such a dialogue can perhaps be perceived in the response to S11 on the
international English-language left/labour websites and lists. I will confine myself to Eric Lee's
LabourStart, http://www.labourstart.org/, since he created a space for this on October 11, 2001. This was
still attracting contributions over one month later. In so far as Eric Lee identified himself with the 'War On
Terrorism' (as he even named the discussion site), its creation alone reveals that at least one 'Northernoriented labour internationalist' is not simply recognising but even stimulating exchanges on what is a
highly-controversial matter. And this despite the fact that 1) his position is closer to that of the dominant
inter/national unions, whilst 2) the majority of contributions are anti-war ones. Whilst the style of the
exchange varied along the debate-dialogue spectrum, it seemed to me to move from the one end toward the
other over time. The case is worthy or further investigation and reflection.
45
Table 1: Three Strategies for Advancing International Labour Rights
1. The Northern-based strategy of the ICFTU and major affiliates
1.
▬►
2.
Development of
social clause
strategy over
last 15-25 years
by ICFTU/ITSs
and Northern
affiliates
▬►
Sub-regional
activities in the
South, to
galvanize support
for the social
clause campaign
3.
▬►
National-level
lobbying for
government
support linking
trade to labor
rights
4.
Union/state
lobbying
transforms
World Trade
Organization
(within next 25
years)
2. A Southern-based supplementary/alternative strategy
1.
▬►
2.
South takes the
lead in
establishing
social clause
strategy,
supported by
North
▬►
Alliances with
churches and
NGOs for broad
and systematic
Southern
campaign in
streets and
lobbies
3.
▬►
Shift in public
opinion affects
government
positions, North
and South
4.
Union/state
lobbying
transforms World
Trade
Organization
(within next 25
years)
3. An emancipatory global solidarity strategy
1.
▬►
Global dialogue
on international
labor rights, at
all union levels,
with all working
people, on all
sociogeographic
axes, with all
other democratic
civil society
forces
2.
▬►
Global alliance
and campaign,
linking social
movements at all
levels, on all
axes, using
streets, dominant
and alternative
media (real and
virtual), North,
South and East
3.
▬►
Targeted at an
International
Labor
Organization
with greater
union and labor
movement (prolabor NGO)
participation,
and greater
powers
4.
Linked to demand
that any future
‘world trade
organization’ be
subordinated to
human rights and
needs, under a
United Nations,
open to civil
society, and with
powers of
enforcement
[Adapted and extended from Anner 2001]
46
behind the backs or over the heads of the workers it is supposed to defend. 21 Mark
Anner, who accepts the parameters of the Social Clause strategy, nonetheless reveals
these shortcomings. Anner appears to identify himself, however, with certain Southern
union criticisms of the Social Clause campaign (from South Africa and Brazil in
particular) and proposes a Southern-based strategy intended to either supplement or
surpass such shortcomings. He appears to endorse the demand of these major Southern
unions that the Social Clause strategy be articulated with development issues (c.f.
Diamond Forthcoming). This is on the grounds expressed by a South African union
leader, to the effect that ‘We have not succeeded in making the social clause a demand of
the South’ (Anner 2000:21).
My proposal would be an alternative to both the present Northern strategy and a
hypothetical Southern alternative. I see the Northern-based strategy as counter-productive
in so far as it articulates labour rights with capitalist free-trade discourse, and makes
labour rights dependent on the international capitalist institution at the vanguard of their
destruction – the WTO. And whilst I understand the Southern-based reaction, I would
consider it an error to articulate labour rights with development/dependency discourses
that have themselves accompanied the continuing under-development of the South over
the last half-century! If, it seems to me, we are seriously concerned about the advance of
international labour rights in the era of neo-liberal globalisation, then what we need is an
emancipatory strategy – one surpassing the discourses and practices of either core or
peripheral capitalism. It would be one that was neither Northern-based nor Southernoriented but which would, rather, be a locally-informed global social movement strategy
intended to meet the needs of both – not to speak of the East.22 The alternative strategies
are summarised in Table 1. Let me expand on the third one.

In so far as the assault on labour rights is global, the response has to be both
international and internationalist; in so far as repression is being globalized, Core
21
My proposal comes, more specifically, out of reflection on the evaluation of an ICFTU campaign on the
Social Clause, commissioned by the Norwegian trade union confederation (LO-Norway), and authored by
Mark Anner (2001). The LO-N had arranged for the ICFTU to get some $350,000 of Norwegian state
development funding in order to campaign for the Social Clause in the period leading up to the Seattle
WTO meet, late-1999. The whole process is replete with contradictions. In so far as the Social Clause was
meant to be in the interests of the Non-West, rather than the West, why was it campaigned for only
amongst unions in the supposedly interested world area? In so far – as the LO itself admits – as Norwegian
unionists themselves did not ‘fully understand’ the Social Clause they were supposedly supporting on
behalf of Non-Western unions, why was the campaign not also carried out in Norway? One is obliged to
conclude that this was a strategy that 1) if not protectionist, was at best substitutionist (one way solidarity
from above and outside); 2) was developed by inter/national union officers, independently of, and above
the heads of, rank-and-file workers and unionists in the North.
‘Locally-informed’ is becoming more complex day by day. Thus one can find powerfully-argued
positions, coming from either India (Banaji 2001) or the US (Pope, Kellman and Bruno 2001), which whilst
innovatory, seem inspired by or directed at specific national circumstances or strategies. In neither case are
international implications worked out – which will be an increasing requirement in the future. However,
such assertive and forward-looking national proposals would certainly need to be taken account of in
working out the internationalist strategy I outline here.
22
47




Labour Rights have to be expanded to include at least a) the right to strike, b) the
right to international solidarity action;
In so far as an increasing proportion of the global labour force is un-unionized
and/or non-unionizable (houseworkers, homeworkers, petty-commodity sector),
the campaign has to focus on labour rights generally rather than union rights
narrowly, to address all labouring people, to involve those representing the nonunionizable;
The fundamental ‘social partnership’ with capital and state, of the NIC period, has
to be replaced by a fundamental partnership, at all socio-political levels and
scales, with the human rights and global justice movements, and with democratic
civil society;
Rather than suggesting that lobbying is sufficient for Northern unions, but that
social movements are unavoidable for Southern ones, it needs to be recognised
that in all cases lobbying and negotiation must be subordinated to movement
needs, and have to be articulated with other relevant strategies;
Rather than accepting the inevitability of international financial institutional (IFI)
hegemony, it is necessary to a) shift decision-making on labour back into the ILO,
b) demand the ILO receive the powers equivalent to those granted to the IFIs, c)
campaign for a new ILO composition (adding pro-labour NGOs) and an increased
proportion of labour votes (up from the 25 percent of 1919 to…33 percent?…50
percent?…by 2019?).
It seems to me that such a radical-democratic proposal is compatible with the strategies
being argued for or developed by a number of inter/national labour-oriented networks,
whether based in the North or the South. Indeed, it is in part inspired by such (John 2001,
International Centre for Trade Union Rights 2000, Women Working Worldwide 1996).
And, whilst, of course, it is inspired by an emancipatory rather than an ameliorative
vision, and therefore contrasts dramatically with the Social Clause strategy, it seems not
wildly utopian (in either the positive or pejorative senses). Whilst drawing from the
'revolutionary reform' orientation mentioned earlier, it is, I think, a proposal that could
speak to traditional labour internationalists, of both right and left.
Even if the proposal can be challenged as being too radical, (or too reformist by
radical laborists of the 'either/or' school), it would seem to have high threat value, with
respect to those globalizers whose institutional/ideological hegemony over labour is still
largely unchallenged, and high provocation/stimulation value, with respect to the broad
international labour movement, left, right and centre.
Neither of the two above statements makes a direct address to the issue of 'work',
which I have earlier suggested must be the core of any new emancipatory labour strategy.
All I can suggest here is that the general argument immediately above would allow for
discussion on 'work' to take place. But it contains no guarantee of such. As for the
hegemonic international labour rights strategy, it seems to be entirely addressed to
'capitalist-defined-work'. I do not have the time, or space, or ability, to develop this
further here. But perhaps we need to explore the notion of 'taking labour out of
48
competition', on the same grounds as doing so with health, education and public utilities.
I offer the notion to better-qualified colleagues for reflection and development.23
23
Myron Frankman (1998) argues for a global 'citizen's income' but does not specify what form this would
take, whether it would vary internationally, or how it would be implemented.
49
9. The new internationalism, a future utopia24, and the old mole
In one of the initial quotations to this paper, Sousa Santos seems to be suggesting
that we are today more or less condemned to being utopian. Yes: things are this bad…
and this good! Talking about utopia is another way of talking about emancipation, but is
more explicitly future-oriented and addressed more directly to desire and the imagination.
I would like to therefore complete this essay with consideration of an attempt to relate –
re-relate – labor, internationalism, utopia and Marx's Old Mole (socialism), nibbling
away at the foundations of capitalism.
I am referring to the millennial issue of the international, Canada-UK based
annual, the Socialist Register, devoted to the subject of utopia (Panitch and Leys 1999).
The editorial piece by Panitch and Gindin (P&G), subtitled `Rekindling the Socialist
Imagination', ends with one of those lists of 'what is to be done' that are so useful for
focusing an argument. As modest Marxists, they only offer us 10 Theses:
1. Overcoming alienation;
2. Attenuating the division of labor;
3. Transforming consumption;
4. Alternative ways of living [the feminist one - PW];
5. Socializing markets;
6. Planning ecologically;
7. Internationalizing equality;
8. Communicating democratically;
9. Realizing democracy;
10. Omnia sint communia ['all in common', the ancient egalitarian one - PW]
This list, with its underlying arguments, certainly rekindles the imagination and
challenges the intellect.25 It nicely combines old labor and socialist aims with those of the
new radical-democratic movements. It overlaps with the RSE Project at many points. It
could, I think, also appeal to labor activists and offer the more universal and utopian
perspective that they often lack or lose. How do P&G address such fellow-travelers on
the road to utopia as I have mentioned above: Labor, Internationalism, Computers and
Culture?
24
For an interesting discussion of a range of contemporary utopias, with particular reference to Latin
America, see Salamea (2000).
25 It is so rarely the case nowadays that I find socialists providing a model for feminists, rather than vice
versa, that I feel obliged to point out the following case. In a Peruvian feminist work entitled To the Rescue
of Utopia (Macassi and Olea 2000), one can find complaints of the loss of feminist utopianism, as well as
calls for its return, but not even 10 points about what this might consist of, nor of where or how it might be
found. Indeed, the book is so designed, with sections on women and the state, institutionalised politics, the
health sector, local government and 'inter-institutional accords', as to subvert any such rescue attempt as the
title proposes! Here, as with most inter/national union politics, an excess of attachment to the here and now
seems to condemn the movement concerned to rather completing the unfinished tasks of capitalist
modernity (which I find necessary but insufficient) than to surpassing it, even in thought. I recommend to
them – in the spirit of emancipatory internationalism - the work of their socialist and feminist compañer@s
in SR2000.
50
Labor. P&G have, I think, an ambiguous attitude toward labor and unionism in
relation to utopia. On the one hand they appear to endorse the classical notion that labor
is 'strategically positioned to lead the struggle for universal liberation' (13). On the other
hand they propose a 'new unionism' (17-20) - informed by understandings developed in
the kind of movements mentioned above. It would seem to me that in so far as they
recognize both the limitations of actually-existing unionism, and the extension of labor
beyond their reach, it makes no sense to prioritize unionism in surpassing capitalism.
Elsewhere, curiously, they actually limit unionism to engagement with the `local and
national state' (20). This is at the very time when it is precisely the impact and
engagement with the global (e.g. Seattle) that is renewing union thinking worldwide!
Internationalism. The above limitation is due to the P&G vision of
internationalism as a relationship between nations and, therefore, between nationally
defined classes and struggles. The language here belongs to the period of (opposition to)
a NICC rather than the contemporary GNC. But, then, P&G seems to understand
globalization more as the highest stage of imperialism than as a new capitalist site and
scale, providing a radically-different space (i.e. the cyber one), upon which labor and
other struggles must be fought out and for which utopias must be thought out. Even less
do they recognize it, as does Manuel Castells (1996:327-8) the information society as
representing a social transformation as profound as the invention of the alphabet in
Greece 2,700 years! In a text on globalisation attributed to Norbert Lechner, the
expression is 'less an epoch of change than a change of epochs' (PNUD 2000). It may be
difficult – especially for socialists – to conceive of a development within capitalism being
simultaneously a change of epoch, but I am convinced that we need to do so.
Cyberspace. If P&G misinterpret globalization, they fail to even mention
informatization. Yet this (ICT, the Internet, computerized production of computerized
consumption and services, the Web, multimedia) is transforming not only the world of
work and workers but the nature of the world. The Web must be understood as
simultaneously a tool (an instrument for undefined purposes), a place/space (Castells'
'real virtuality') and…as utopia (a place that does not exist; a good place; one still to be
created). Increasing numbers of unions and socialists are recognizing its potential for a
new kind of global solidarity and for creating some kind of globalized networked
unionism. This requires us, in distinction from P&G, to confront the two major
constraints on labor self-emancipation: its structuring into hierarchical organizations;
their state-national definition and address.
Culture. P&G's inclusion of 'communicating democratically' on their list is a
welcome addition. And they understand this as the creation of space for the development
of a new culture. They even recognize both the absence of such an understanding in
Marx, and the priority of a socialist (utopian?) culture to inform moments of popular
rebellion. I may be doing them an injustice in suggesting that P&G, nonetheless, have an
instrumental understanding of culture - as that which informs something else. My feeling
is that we live (exist, experience) in an increasingly mediated and culturally-determined
world. As an apocryphal saying from a woman slumdweller in Rio has it: 'I would rather
51
have a TV than a fridge because there is always something en (on/in) the TV'. Seattle was
not only organized largely through the net. It was a media event. It was broadcast,
perceived - and is being inevitably interpreted - through the dominant and alternative
media. It was because of the failure of the US unions to understand the increasing
centrality of culture and the media that half of the participants in Seattle (workers brought
by unions) were almost invisible in dominant media coverage. The media may have
referred to the 'Teamsters-Turtles Alliance', and the meetings or statements of the AFLCIO, but it was the turtles and the streets that got the coverage.
There is not too much else in P&G on labor as movement and, I think, nothing
on unions as bearers of social emancipation and a post-capitalist future. This is in striking
contrast to the number of items on women or by feminists, which certainly deal with
labor but not with unions. The silence reveals more eloquently than words the continuing
problem unions pose for socialists, particularly for those of utopian bent. So let me here
expand on the above. I think we need to concentrate on union structure and union
relations.
We need to reinvent the mode of articulation (joining together/expression) for
labor struggle to make it relevant to an informative globalized capitalism. The computer
industry, labor and its products bear within them utopian post-capitalist potential. A
networked globalized movement around work (waged or not), based on a general ethic of
solidarity, itself networked with other radical-democratic social movements, engaged in
permanent and open dialogue both across locales (of which the national is but one), up
and down the necessary levels of activity, could release this potential, making it available
also for those without access to information technology.
11. Conclusion: it is impossible to build utopia in one country
There was once a Soviet joke (meaning, of course, an anti-Soviet joke) in which
the question went: 'Is it possible to build socialism in one country?' And the reply went:
'Yes, but it's better to live in another one'. Today there is no 'other' country. It is for this
reason that we in the labor movement, under a GNC are condemned to a global solidarity
ethic, culture and political activity. We may start with the imagination of another
workplace, another locale, another nation but a workplace, local or national utopia
uninformed by a global one is obviously going to have limited reach, appeal and effect.
And it is going to have little relationship with either classical socialism, traditions of
labor internationalism, or any kind of future I could forecast, imagine or dream of.
52
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