Contents
Preface: A Journey of Discovery
List of Abbreviations
1 The Polanyi Problem and the Problem with Polanyi
The Polanyi Problem
The Problem with Polanyi
Researching Working Life
Part I Markets Against Society
2 Manufacturing Matters
Building the Nation
The Emergence of the Global Mega Corporation in White Goods
The Dynamic and Impact of Global Restructuring
Perils of the Dutch Disease
Conclusion: The Global Pursuit of Shareholder Value
3 The Return of Market Despotism
Changwon: Life is Good . . .
Orange: Nothing Sucks Like Electrolux . . .
Ezakheni: You Can Rely On Defy . . .
Conclusion
4 Citizenship Matters
Electricity Privatization in Victoria, Australia
Electricity Privatization and Public Accountability
Essential Service Privatization in South Africa
The Privatization of Electricity in South Korea
Conclusion
Part II Society Against Markets
5 Strong Winds in Ezakheni
The Place . . .
Employment and Insecurity
Households and Insecurity
Restructuring, Political Parties and Community
Conclusion
6 Escaping Social Death in Changwon
The Place . . .
Employment Relationships and the Growing Sense of Insecurity
Households
Restructuring, Political Parties and Community
Conclusion
7 Squeezing Orange
The Place . . .
The Employment Relationship and the Growing Sense of Insecurity
Households
Restructuring, Political Parties and Community
Spaces of Hope
Conclusion
Part III Society Governing the Market?
8 History Matters
Labour and Liberation in South Africa
The Legacy of Authoritarianism in South Korea
The Erosion of a Class Compromise in Australia
Explaining Difference
9 Grounding Labour Internationalism
Past Labour Internationalisms
Globalization and New Labour Internationalisms
The ‘Old’ Labour Internationalism
The ‘New’ Internationalism
SIGTUR
The Roots of Activism
Constructing a New Labour Internationalism
10 The Necessity for Utopian Thinking
Innovative Local Responses
Imagine . . .
Real Utopias
New Sources of Power
Conditions for the Emergence of a Counter-Movement
Notes
References
Index
Antipode Book Series
General Editor: Noel Castree, Professor of Geography, University of Manchester, UK Like its parent journal, the Antipode Book Series reflects distinctive new developments in radical geography. It publishes books in a variety of formats – from reference books to works of broad explication to titles that develop and extend the scholarly research base – but the commitment is always the same: to contribute to the praxis of a new and more just society.
Published
Grounding Globalization: Labour in the Age of Insecurity
Edward Webster, Rob Lambert and Andries Bezuidenhout
Privatization: Property and the Remaking of Nature-Society Relations
Edited by Becky Mansfield
Decolonizing Development: Colonial Power and the Maya
Joel Wainwright
Cities of Whiteness
Wendy S. Shaw
Neoliberalization: States, Networks, Peoples
Edited by Kim England and Kevin Ward
The Dirty Work of Neoliberalism: Cleaners in the Global Economy
Edited by Luis L. M. Aguiar and Andrew Herod
David Harvey: A Critical Reader
Edited by Noel Castree and Derek Gregory
Working the Spaces of Neoliberalism: Activism, Professionalisation and Incorporation
Edited by Nina Laurie and Liz Bondi
Threads of Labour: Garment Industry Supply Chains from the Workers' Perspective
Edited by Angela Hale and Jane Wills
Life's Work: Geographies of Social Reproduction
Edited by Katharyne Mitchell, Sallie A. Marston and Cindi Katz
Redundant Masculinities? Employment Change and White Working Class Youth
Linda McDowell
Spaces of Neoliberalism
Edited by Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore
Space, Place and the New Labour Internationalism
Edited by Peter Waterman and Jane Wills
© 2008 by Edward Webster, Rob Lambert and Andries Bezuidenhout
BLACKWELL PUBLISHING
350 Main Street, Maiden, MA 02148–5020, USA
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia
The right of Edward Webster, Rob Lambert and Andries Bezuidenhout to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks, or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
First published 2008 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
1 2008
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Webster, Eddie.
Grounding globalization: labour in the age of insecurity/Edward Webster, Rob Lambert and Andries Bezuidenhout.
p. cm. – (Antipode book series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-2914-5 (pbk.: alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4051-2915-2 (hardcover: alk. paper) 1. Anti-globalization movement. 2. Globalization. 3. Neoliberalism. 4. Labor movement. I. Lambert, Robert. II. Bezuidenhout, Andries. III. Title.
JZ1318.W433 2008
331.88-dc22
2007049846
The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have met acceptable environmental accreditation standards.
For further information on
Blackwell Publishing, visit our website at
www.blackwellpublishing.com
Preface: A Journey of Discovery
As we were finalizing this book in November 2006 in Perth, Australia, South Korean scientists revealed that they had found radioactive particles in the air. This, they said, confirmed that North Korea had indeed conducted nuclear tests. Australian troops remain in an occupied Iraq, which looks more and more like the history of Vietnam repeating itself in the farcical way many of us expected. In the region, the anti-terrorist campaign unleashed by the United States after 9/11 is increasingly being used in countries such as the Philippines to assassinate political opponents. Most striking is the deep anxiety over the need to preserve the environment, and water in particular, against the background of dramatic predictions of the impact of climate change. There were even news reports of central rivers running dry. In South Africa, crime is out of hand, with sociologists who attended the World Congress of Sociology returning to their home countries traumatized, not so much because of crime, but because the security guards at the doors of their hotels did not allow them to venture out to see the beautiful city of Durban on the Indian ocean with its cosmopolitan mix of African, Asian and European cultures. This state of siege and paranoia may be understandable when one considers the country’s painful history and the fact that the unemployment rate still hovers around a staggering 40 percent. Many South Africans have immigrated to Perth in Western Australia to escape South Africa’s high levels of violent crime. In short, we live in an age of insecurity.
Faced with insecurity, persons tend to retreat into the familiar – their country, their neighbourhood, their home, their family – and sometimes their ‘race’. Indeed, at times when the world faced similar levels of insecurity, we saw the rise of some of the worst atrocities of human history. One author who reflected on such times was Karl Polanyi, who wrote his major work at the end of the Second World War. At the forefront of his mind was the rise of fascism. Why do people turn to fascist leaders, and under what conditions does fascism become salient as a political ideology? It is no wonder that people are returning to Polanyi in order to make sense of current times of insecurity.
But a person’s sense of security or insecurity does not only relate to threats of terrorism, war and the pending environmental catastrophe. It also has to do with social and economic security: job security, household income, feeding children, improving current living conditions. Insecurity in these facets of existence is not new. Capitalist development produced dispossession and insecurity. The great depression of the 1930s undermined these very facets of human existence for millions across the globe. We will show that what is new is the strategy of neoliberalism to consciously manufacture insecurity as a strategy to undermine the collective power of civil society movements. To be sure, the two realms mentioned here are closely linked, as Polanyi showed shortly after the Second World War. This is where this book began; how societies respond to the restructuring of work – the global restructuring of work – and what possibilities there are for a democratic outcome. Polanyi called this the double movement; how under the impact of what he called the Great Transformation in nineteenth century Europe, societies protected themselves by subordinating the market to society.
We argue that the world is in the grip of a Second Great Transformation, a neoliberal project that is the dominant policy paradigm in the national affairs of all three countries that we have chosen to examine. But, just as Polanyi anticipated that the pendulum would swing against unregulated markets, our findings detect a similar shift from market fundamentalism towards the need to protect society and the environment against an unregulated market.
As we were writing this preface the then shadow minister for foreign affairs and now Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, wrote that John Howard, Australia’s conservative Liberal Prime Minister,
[was] in the process of unleashing new forces of market fundamentalism against youth workers; families trying to spend sufficient time together; and communities trying to negotiate with single, major employers experimenting with their new-found powers. Breadwinners are now at risk of working less predictable shifts, spread over a seven day week, not sensitive to weekends, and possibly for less take-home pay. The pressures on relationships, parenting and the cost and quality of child care are without precedent . . . Howard has never accepted that labour is different to any other commodity: it too is something whose value should be determined on a free market. (Rudd 2006: 49–50)
In what could be the beginnings of a more serious challenge to market fundamentalism in Australia, Kevin Rudd suggests that ‘the opportunity arises for Labour to reclaim the centre of Australian politics, thereby reframing the national political debate. Labour also now has the opportunity to form fresh political alliances with other groupings alienated by this new form of market fundamentalism, which is blind and indifferent to its social consequences’ (Rudd 2006: 50)
In Korea,1 at the time of writing this preface, such opportunities were being taken as 138,000 workers participated in a 4-hour ‘warning strike’ to stop, amongst other demands, the Irregular Workers’ Bill designed to further liberalize the labour market. In conjunction with this strike, trade unions from 40 countries participated in solidarity actions as part of an international day of action to support South Korean workers. This was followed a week later by a general strike in Korea.
In South Africa there are significant signs that government is shifting from its narrow focus on global integration and competitiveness to acknowledge that the state will have to redistribute resources actively in an effort to overcome the social crisis caused by poverty. This resulted, in 2004, in the announcement of an expanded public works programme which intended to create one million temporary jobs over a five-year period, a modestly increased budget deficit, and a shift in emphasis from privatization to the state’s role in stimulating economic activity.
The World Social Forum, established in 2001 as a counter to the neoliberal World Economic Forum, is the clearest example of the double movement in action. A network of NGOs, social movements, and as yet hesitantly, the labour movement, it presents a global challenge to the domination of multinational and financial capital. Indeed, the ‘rediscovery of poverty’ by the international financial institutions, the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals by the United Nations and the shift from market-led structural adjustment to Poverty Reduction Strategies could be seen as a classic example of Polanyi’s notion of the pendulum swinging on a global scale against market fundamentalism. But, as the ILO argues:
The economy is becoming increasingly global, while social and political institutions remain largely local, national and regional. None of the existing institutions provide adequate democratic oversight of global markets, or redress basic inequalities between countries. The imbalances point to the need for better institutional frameworks and policies if the promise of globalization is to be realized. (ILO 2004: 3)
Researching and writing this book has been a long journey. We draw on Polanyi to go beyond him, to locate his problematic in the context of globalization. It has been said that the true voyage of discovery is not to travel to foreign places, but to see reality through new eyes. This is indeed true of our journey: our most exciting discoveries have not derived from visiting unfamiliar places, but through gaining new insights into the contemporary world. What are these insights?
The journey began in 2000 when two of the authors were invited to contribute to a study on what was far-sightedly titled Reinventing social emancipation: studies in counter-hegemonic globalization. Rob Lambert, who doubles up as a professor at the University of Western Australia with the role of International Affairs Officer of Unions Western Australia, had in 1990 initiated a response to Australia’s rapid liberalization that brought together democratic unions in the global South to promote trade union rights. It was called the Southern Initiative on Globalization and Trade Union Rights (SIGTUR) and we, that is, Rob Lambert and Edward Webster, contributed to this project on SIGTUR as an example of the new labour internationalism (Lambert & Webster 2003, 2004, 2006; Webster & Lambert 2004).
Our analysis of the new labour internationalism was to decisively shape the direction of this book. In the first instance it became clear to us that transnational movements will not work without being embedded, or grounded, in local society. Foregrounding place drew us into the exciting intellectual work of the new labour geography. We were delighted when we were invited to contribute to a special volume of the radical journal of geography Antipode on the new labour internationalism (Lambert & Webster 2001; Waterman & Wills 2001). The publication of this article led to an invitation to contribute a book-length manuscript to the new Antipode Book Series, which aims to ‘further geographical scholarship that takes issue with the existing order of things’. Our contribution to radical geography is our focus on work and place, and the relationship between corporate power, scale and space; in particular the opportunities opened up by this approach for constructing a global counter-movement. It led us to ground the study in three distinct places, the towns of Ezakheni in South Africa, Orange in Australia, and Changwon in South Korea.
A second impact was the identification of new sources of power. Labour’s traditional sources of power are being eroded by the new employment relationships and labour law reforms introduced under the political project of neoliberalism. This led us to the exciting new labour scholarship emerging in the United States and its use of the concept of social movement unionism. It also confirmed our view that the restructuring of the world of work was the lens through which we could best interrogate the Polanyi problem in the age of globalization. Fortunately both Andries Bezuidenhout and Rob Lambert had recently completed in-depth studies of the restructuring of the white goods industries in South Africa and Australia (Bezuidenhout 2004, 2005b; Lambert 2005; Lambert, Gillan & Fitzgerald 2005; Lambert & Gillan 2007). Both studies revealed a common process of restructuring and growing concentration of the global white goods industry. We decided to include South Korea as LG, one of the leading white goods transnational companies globally, is an example of a successful lateindustrialiser that has generated strong opposition in recent years in its attempt to create a more flexible labour market.
What emerged from a more careful reading of Polanyi were major gaps in his account of the double movement, in particular his undertheorizing of how a counter-movement is constructed. This led us to our third insight: the absence of a theory of social movements in Polanyi. Fortunately, transnational activism has become a subject of serious study in recent years and we were able to draw on this work, and Sidney Tarrow in particular, to identify the processes through which transnational activism emerges.
A final and quite fundamental insight was the need to rethink labour studies. What has been missing from the study of labour in the global economy is the impact of global restructuring on the non-working life of workers. The reconfiguration of the employment relationship – through the growing casualisation of work, downsizing and retrenchment – impacts directly on workers’ households and the communities of which they are part. To understand labour in the global economy, we need to change the way we study labour. Labour studies should not be an analysis of the workplace only; we need to examine workers as a totality, workers in society. To understand these responses we surveyed workers not only in the workplace, but also their households and communities. Through following workers into their homes and communities, the real differences in the working lives of those in Ezakheni, Orange and Changwon emerged.
To take labour seriously in the era of globalization is, then, to take society seriously. As Burawoy argues, ‘the post-communist age calls for a Sociological Marxism that gives pride of place to society alongside, but distinct from, the state and the economy’ (Burawoy 2003: 193). For Polanyi, the expansion of the market threatened society, which reacted by reconstituting itself as ‘active society’, thereby harbouring the embryo of a democratic socialism. But our findings on society – its segmentation, its racism, its criminality and its patriarchy – are at odds with Polanyi’s solidaristic notion of society. As Burawoy observes: ‘For Polanyi the battle between society and the market is a battle of the Gods, between good and evil’ (Burawoy 2003: 248).
It would be remiss if we were not to acknowledge the key role that engaged intellectuals make in the construction of a counter-movement. It was the activist-scholar Richard Turner, banned and later assassinated in 1978 by the Durban security police, who first persuaded us of the importance of utopian thinking and it is to his ideas and life’s work that we dedicate this book. We draw on Turner, not out of nostalgia, but as an example of an activist-scholar, who was able to combine utopian thinking with practical social action. Indeed, he was a forerunner of what is celebrated today as public sociology.
For us, the journey is not over; what we identify in this book is a potential counter-movement to the hegemony of neoliberalism. We have provided a theoretical framework for taking this project forward, not a blueprint for action. We focus in this book primarily on the commoditization of labour, not the commoditization of nature and the ecological crisis that this is generating. This most critical of issues must be left to another occasion, but what needs to be emphasized is that, like Polanyi, we identify different responses to the commoditization of social life. Retreat from the market is one; mobilization against it is another. What form such mobilization will take remains for us an open question.
However, what is unequivocal is that the liberal argument that the rising density, since around 1980, of economic integration across national boundaries and the ideological shift towards neoliberalism with its foregrounding of market-led development over social equity, is not creating a global ‘level playing field’. The percentage Gross National Product (GNP) per capita as a percentage of the core’s GNP per capita income declined between 1960 and 1999 in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, North Africa and West Asia (Wade 2003: 26). The only part of the world where incomes have risen is East Asia, where countries such as South Korea went against the policy paradigm of market-led development. The twin processes of intensified economic integration and ideological neoliberalism, what has become known as globalization, has increased social inequality within developed and developing countries alike, creating a heightened sense of insecurity.
In this study we examine three paths from the periphery where the state has facilitated industrialization: Australia, an advanced industrial resource-based country with a growing service economy; Korea, a late industrialiser, based on the export of consumer and capital goods; and South Africa, an enclave economy, founded on a dual logic of inclusion and exclusion, based, as with Australia, on resources with a growing service economy.
The most difficult challenge this book presented is the process of writing itself. This is not a book written by three separate authors; it has been written most of the time by three authors together. Of course at times it has been written separately, and we have communicated with each other in cyberspace, but mostly it has been written face to face by all three of us together. Writing collectively can be emotionally demanding, as authors contest the form and content of the written word, but it undoubtedly added enormous value to the final product. This is because it brought together not only three different intellectual biographies, but the interaction between them, thereby adding a fourth author, the outcome of the interaction itself. It is this creative synthesis between us that has been the most difficult but unquestionably the most rewarding part of the project. Perhaps one of the most influential insights to emerge out of these encounters was a recognition of the distinctiveness of the counter-movement concept as a social phenomenon greater than simply trade unions in search of re-empowerment. We came to envisage the counter-movement as a creative synthesis of different types of social movement, potentially generating a new social force requiring a new form of politics. We concluded that there is no more critical task than the active engagement of intellectuals, within and outside of the labour and other social movements, in defining the form and character of such a movement.
We have accumulated a number of debts on this journey. Our findings and insights on Korea would not have been possible without Yoon Hyowon whom we employed from September to November 2005 to undertake a survey of the LG plant in Changwon. Fortunately, we were able to work with him in Johannesburg in November that year to write up the results of his survey. Yoon also conducted field work on privatization and the anti-privatization struggles in Korea. We would also like to thank Michael Burawoy for helping us clarify the structure of the book at a crucial stage in ordering our analysis. We have also drawn the first part of the title of our book, ‘Grounding Globalization’, from the concluding chapter of his edited volume Global Ethnography (see Burawoy et al. 2000).
Khayaat Fakier and Lindiwe Hlatswayo assisted us in undertaking the survey of households and communities in Ezakheni. Maria van Driel provided us with a valuable report on privatization in South Africa. We would also like to acknowledge the assistance of Janaka Biyanwila for researching privatization in Australia and Mike Gillan on researching restructuring of the white goods industry in Australia. We thank Noel Castree for inviting us to contribute to this series and Hannchen Koornhof, Jack Messenger and Jacqueline Scott who guided the book through to production.
We gratefully acknowledge South Africa’s National Research Foundation (NRF), which provided the real financial capacity to realize this ambitious comparative project, as well as the Australian Research Council for its contribution to this project, which enabled empirical work to proceed in South Africa, Australia and Korea, enriched by face-to-face encounters by the authors in South Africa and Australia on three separate occasions.