Gramscian Interpretations of the Competitive Transnational State

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1 1 Omer Moussaly Gramscian Interpretations of the Competitive Transnational State Historic Blocs and the Integral State in Contemporary Capitalism Contrary to the mainstream realist and neo-realist international relations theories, the neo- Gramscian approach does not focus on the state as the sole center of global politics. Although most neo-gramscians agree that the state still occupies a central position in world politics they view it in relational terms with other levels of social reality such as material production and transnational forces in the global economy. Robert W. Cox explains therefore that his historical materialist method, [C]onsiders the three levels of production, the state, and world political economy in their inter-relationships. 1 These three levels of socio-political reality are in constant dialectical relation and mutually influence each other in different ways at different times. They affect the state both from above through world order and from below through national and global forces of civil society. From this multilevel starting point Cox explains that the nature of the state is in large part defined by the classe structure on which it rests. This class division in a given state is a major element in the balance of social forces that determine the form it will take. As Cox writes The structure defining these tasks and limits [of the state], which becomes part and parcel of the state itself, is what Antonio Gramsci called the historic bloc. 2 The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci uses the term historic bloc to describe the complex way in which classes and factions of classes are related in society as well as the complicated relationship between economic, political and cultural aspects of reality. In his prison writings this concept replaces the simple notion of an economic base or structure giving rise to a political and ideological superstructure. For Gramsci, an historic bloc is specific to a national context in which a different historic bloc may be created under the leadership of a new social class. The hegemony of a class acts as the cement which binds together the various parts of an historic bloc. For Cox, in a hegemonic phase of history such as was illustrated by the Pax Britannica and the Pax Americana, the social classes of the dominant global state power entered into alliances with other dominant groups in less powerful states to form a relatively stable world order. These are two historical examples of successful historic blocs at an international level presented by Robert Cox. He often uses these two examples to illustrate several theoretical points about hegemonic world order. But before going any into further detail it would be important to explain another major concept developed by Gramsci, the concept of the integral state. Peter Thomas writes that the integral state is probably the most original of Gramsci s concepts. With it, according to Thomas, Gramsci tries to analyse the mutual interpenetration and reinforcement of political society and civil society (to be distinguished from each other methodologically, not organically, within a unified (and indivisible) state-form. 3 Civil society is viewed by Gramsci as the terrain on which classes struggle for social and political leadership, for hegemony over other classes. There is a constant shifting in the balance of forces. Through social struggle hegemony is eventually guaranteed or secured by the capture of political power in the State by a dominant class. Gramsci sees that from

2 2 the nineteenth century onward the state can no longer be viewed simply as a repressive apparatus. Thomas writes, The State was no longer merely an instrument of coercion, imposing the interests of the dominant class from above. Now, in its integral form, it had become a network of social relations for the production of consent, for the integration of the subaltern classes into the expansive project of historical development of the leading social group. 4 This distinction is important. It implies, in a certain sense, the development of modern day civil society where citizens, even as members of subaltern classes, can in principle participate within the legal limits provided since the bourgeois revolutions. Bourgeois hegemony was an expansionary movement that allowed for a certain degree of social mobility. It also conceded certain socio-economic benefits to certain elements of the subaltern classes. What Gramsci was trying to better understand was the whole terrain of complex superstructures which the subaltern classes can both participate in and radically contest, especially in times of crisis. Thomas writes, Hegemony, then, emerges as a new consensual political practice distinct from mere coercion (a dominant means of previous ruling classes) on this new terrain of civil society; but, like civil society, integrally linked to the state, hegemony s full meaning only becomes apparent when it is related to its dialectical distinction of coercion. Hegemony in civil society functions as the social basis of the dominant class s political power in the state apparatus, which in turn reinforces its initiatives in civil society. The integral state, understood in this broader sense, is the process of the condensation and transformation of these class relations into institutional form. 5 Thomas also points out that Gramsci does indeed distinguish between civil and political society 6 but he does so in order to indicate them as two constitutive moments of the integral state. It is the integral state that accordingly constitutes for Thomas, Gramsci s key political concept and his actuality in current debates on the nature of the capitalist state. Thomas also points out that it is Hegel s discovery of the moment of civil society as distinct from but integrated in the integral state that Gramsci tries to translate into Marxist and historical terms. He writes, Above all, against the pacific vision of an omnipresent state as the actuality of the ethical Idea in its universality, Gramsci s notion of an integral state emphasises its fundamental partiality, as the solidified, articulated structure of one particular class In both Hegel s and Gramsci s version, civil society is not an uncompromised pre-political real that lies beyond, or comes before, the state. Rather it is an ensemble of practices and relations dialectically interpellated by and integrated within the state. 7 During such hegemonic periods of history we can observe the formation of a common worldview emerging with bourgeois forms of the integral state that comes to dominant global relations. Cox describes this as the process in which [A]n incipient world society grows up around the interstate system, and states themselves become internationalized in that their mechanisms and policies become adjusted to the rhythms of world order. 8 When the historic bloc of the hegemonic state begins to erode through the historic development of its inner contradictions a long period of structural change and transition begins. A hegemonic historic bloc slowly disintegrates but rarely suddenly disappears. Though sudden change is possible, Gramsci points out that often there are social forces that have been slowly working towards a major transformation. The "integral historian"

3 3 should be aware of these forces, especially those emanating from subaltern groups. Generally speaking hegemonic orders are less stable in their peripheries but economic crises and other geopolitical disturbances such as wars can also destabilize core states. The class alliances and social forces on which the hegemonic order depend slowly unravel at the national and international levels. As one global order is undermined and another one has not yet been constructed, we enter into a more unstable and conflict-ridden phase of international relations. The interwar period of the first half of the twentieth-century can be viewed as an example of the transitory phase between the hegemonic orders of the Pax Britannica and Pax Americana. Concerning the various possible capitalist forms of state, Cox wishes to distance his approach from instrumentalist and economistic versions of Marxism. According to him the modern capitalist state cannot be simply considered as a mere tool in the hands of the ruling classes. Cox writes The state is an arena of class struggle, but it also comes to embody certain general principles bearing on the regulation of production that act as a constraint on class interests narrowly conceived. 9 Such for example was the case with what Cox termed the "welfarenationalist" state. This form of the capitalist state conceded social and economic benefits to the subaltern classes in order to maintain the hegemony of the dominant groups in society. It also served as a means to make a radical socialist transformation of the economy seem less appealing and unnecessary. This was especially necessary when many people who began to lose faith in capitalism s ability to function during the Great Depression. Cox writes, The nineteenth-century separation of politics and economics had been blurred by the experience of the Great Depression and the rise of Keynesian doctrines. Since states now had a legitimate and necessary overt role in national economic management, it became necessary both to multilateralize the administrative management of the international economy and to give it an intergovernmental quality. 10 Cox goes on to explain the neo-gramscian approach is therefore, in terms of its analysis of the state, quite different from neorealist international theory. Despite their vast knowledge of history, theorists such as Kenneth Waltz and many of his followers tend to view the state in an ahistorical manner and the Westphalian international system as a permanent feature of world order. In order to better understand the relations between states it is necessary to understand how these states themselves change over time. Cox writes The principal distinguishing features of such forms [of state] are the characteristics of their historic blocs, i.e., the configurations of social forces upon which state power ultimately rests. 11 By understanding the composition of these social and economic forces and their potential for transformation over time the social scientist is better equipped to appraise the possibilities of how a given world order can be preserved or radically changed. For his part, Cox identifies three world order structures since the French Revolution [T]he coming of the liberal international economy ( ), the era of rival imperialisms ( ), and the neoliberal order (post World War II). 12 According to Cox we are currently witnessing the long crisis of the neoliberal order since the 1970s. What he termed the "neoliberal" order is now slowly being replaced with what seems to be becoming a non-hegemonic "hyperliberal" global economy. This new hyperliberal order has not yet fully developed all of its potential and its contradictions are beginning to become more evident as time passes. The form of state corresponding to a hyperliberal capitalist economy can be viewed, at the most general level, as a state organized "passive revolution". By passive revolution Gramsci meant changes which take

4 4 place without much popular initiative. He also frequently uses it to describe specific historic developments such as the establishment of an Italian nation-state. For Gramsci it is a mainly a style of politics which preserves control by a relatively small group of leaders while at the same time instituting economic, political and ideological changes. The politics of austerity and conservatism today can be viewed as current examples of Gramsci s conception. Cox writes, Apart from caesarism, the second major feature of passive revolution in Italy Gramsci called trasformismo Trasformismo worked to co-opt potential leaders of subaltern groups The concept of passive revolution is a counterpart to the concept of hegemony in that it describes the condition of a nonhegemonic society, one in which no dominant class has been able to establish hegemony in Gramsci s sense of the term. 13 The transition from a neoliberal to hyperliberal order began after the consolidation of the Pax Americana. According to Cox, The Pax Americana created a world hegemonic order in which a world economy of international production emerged within the existing international economy of classical trade theory. 14 This new global division of labor led to the transnational production organizations [W]hose component elements are located in different territorial jurisdictions. 15 This growing internationalization of production has had as a main effect the destabilization of the power of labor and reinforced the social power of transnational elites. Cox writes The overall effect of the internationalizing of production has been to emphasize the disparities in the conditions of workers subject to different modes of social relations of production. 16 In most developed capitalist countries around the world the dominant social classes have therefore adjusted state policies in order to conform to the new methods of transnational production. This has led to what Cox describes as the "internationalizing of the state". He writes, The internationalizing of the state is the global process whereby national policies and practices have been adjusted to the exigencies of the world economy of international production. Through this process the nation state becomes part of a larger and more complex political structure that is the counterpart to international production. 17 The economic downturn of the 1980s led Cox to believe that the social compromises of the postwar period were gradually being undone. It began what he describes as the rise of the hyperliberal alternative. As Cox writes, The social contract that had been the unwritten constitution of the neoliberal state s historic bloc was broken in all the advanced capitalist countries in the years following The hyperliberal tendency within capitalist states restructures the labor force, dismantles the state sector and, according to Cox, encourages [T]he expansion of the new enterprise-labor-market type of employment in short-term, low-skill, high-turnover jobs. 19 We have been witnessing an acceleration of many of these tendencies in recent years. The hyperliberal model still seems to be gaining steam and organized resistance to its mechanisms is a long and protracted process. At the ideological level the hyperliberal project sustains itself by support from wealthy minorities and by an atomization of the rest of the population that finds it difficult to mount a counterhegemonic offensive. Subaltern classes are disorganized both politically and socially. Patriotism and other forms of mystification hide what is a contradictory and highly unstable economic situation for the majority of the population. Faced with increasingly difficult economic circumstances subaltern classes sometimes turn towards underground economic practices that are

5 5 tolerated and sometimes even indirectly encouraged by hyperliberal ideologues as a form of "free enterprise". At the dominant class level of the hyperliberal state, deregulated international finance has been a particularly lucrative source of wealth and power. It has greatly contributed to the widening income gap between the 1% and the rest of the population. As Cox writes International financial management has become of growing importance Finance is the principal mechanism for enforcing class dominance over the world economy within an order maintained by military strength. 20 Those hardest hit by the latest economic crisis are not those at the top of the capitalist food chain but middle class wage-earners and other vulnerable social groups who have lost their jobs and their savings. Understanding changes in the global economy and their effect on international relations is therefore necessary for a better understanding of current world order. Cox also notes that it was Criticism of the "state centric" approach has led to definition of a "transnational" approach that would take into fuller account of non-state factors in relations among peoples, notably economic relations and movements of people and ideas. 21 He also remarked that the distinction between state and non state factors is not so easily made as it may at first appear and therefore needed to be closely studied. For example Cox, as well as other neo-gramscians, view transnationalism as a departure from developmentalism that [S]hifted the emphasis from developing growth-oriented public services and public policy to the supposed engines of growth themselves, the multinational corporations. 22 In pursuing a better understanding of factors in political decision making, the neo-gramscian approach also suggests studying the influence of special interest groups that transcend national boundaries. Cox therefore proposes to distinguish between private- and public-interest group [A]s transnational and transgovernmental relations respectively. 23 The weight and influence of each group in particular states may give researchers a better understanding of power relations and decision making processes. The power of transnational corporations and has grown tremendously in the last thirty years. Their influence on national and international policies cannot be treated as outside of the domain of international politics simply because we are not speaking about a state actor. The neo-gramscian approach also helps to demystify the ideological use of terms such as transnational and competitive that tends to mask a [H]egemonic corporatist structure of power with a national base and international extensions. 24 These elements will be partially examined in the second part of our paper. Hegemony, Past and Present The notion of hegemony and social consensus in Gramsci can be traced back to two origins. The first are the debates within Marxism in which the term hegemony took on several meanings. The other source of inspiration for Gramsci in conceptualizing hegemony was the writings of Machiavelli. Cox writes, [T]he Gramscian idea of hegemony came all the way from Machiavelli and helps to broaden even further the potential scope of application of the concept. 25 During the fifteenth century, in his famous work The Prince, Machiavelli was already writing about the possibility of a hegemonic and civic form of political power. He described it as a type of principality where consensus amongst the citizenry was more important than brute force. Machiavelli writes, [W]e now come to the case where a citizen becomes a prince not through crime or intolerable violence, but by the favour of his fellow-citizens, which may be called a civic principality. 26 This, and other passages from Machiavelli s work helped the twentieth-century communist thinker Antonio Gramsci, develop his own positive ideas about the possibility of creating a

6 6 "modern prince". In his prison writings, the "modern prince", according to Gramsci, could perhaps take the form of a renewed and hegemonic communist party capable of waging a war of position against bourgeois rule in Italy. This would entail the slow dismantling of the dominant group s historic bloc. Cox writes, Machiavelli, in the fifteenth century, was concerned with finding the leadership and the supporting social basis for a united Italy; Gramsci, in the twentieth century, with the leadership and supportive basis for an alternative to fascism. Where Machiavelli looked to the individual prince, Gramsci looked to the modern prince: the revolutionary party engage in a continuing and developing dialogue with its own base of support. Gramsci took over from Machiavelli the image of power as centaur: half man, half beast, a necessary combination of consent and coercion. 27 Gramsci also wrote that the new party should be formed by a democratic and creative collective power with the participation of elements of all the subaltern classes of Italy. He viewed with suspicion strategies that thought political action could only be from the top down without input from the people whose lives would be transformed. Only by discrediting the worldview of the capitalist class and its allies could a revolutionary party hope to be successful in advanced capitalist social formations. In such formations there exists a complex network of institutions within civil society that actively support the bourgeois state. The party would need to discredit these and rally the subaltern forces of society behind during a protracted war of position. For Gramsci, the "modern prince" is a modern phenomenon. It can only develop in certain conditions that express both the frustration of the subaltern classes with the status quo as well as propose constructive elements towards the building of a new social order. He believed, for example, that fascism could not bring about real qualitative change that would satisfy the needs and hopes of the working class and its potential allies. It did not contain a real transformative program of the socio-economic base in society. It left bourgeois hegemony largely intact while protecting it through a repressive state machine. For Gramsci, a popular and mass-based strategy was needed to truly change the situation in Italy. Contrary to fascist propaganda about the myth of charismatic leader Gramsci specifically wrote, [T]hat the modern prince, the myth-prince cannot be a real person, a concrete individual. It can only be an organism, a complex element of society in which a collective will, which has already been recognized and has to some extent asserted itself in action, begins to take a concrete form. 28 Though times have greatly changed since Gramsci wrote those lines, I believe that many of his insights are still relevant today. I strongly believe that for the past twenty years, a new form of collective will has slowly been forming around anti-globalization forces. These social forces have yet to successfully counter the tendencies of the hyperliberal state identified by Cox but could eventually be the basis for an alternative form of state and world order. I therefore propose to discuss the rise of what Stephen Gill termed the "postmodern prince" based on the writings of Gramsci and neo-gramscians. The "postmodern prince" can be understood as the coordination on a global scale of various social and political movements on the left who are slowly trying to unite in order to resist neoliberalism (or what Cox originally termed hyperliberalism). Neoliberalism can be broadly defined as a political and economic reinforcement of corporate and class power within contemporary states as well as globally. It has played a large part in the

7 7 process Cox describes as the internationalization of the state. Ideological forces also play a significant role in the construction of a neoliberal worldview. As Gill writes, [T]he notion of a hegemonic ideology which serves the class interests of capital relative to those of labour. At the heart of this are the ideas that private property and accumulation are sacrosanct, and that without the private sector growth would be endangered In Britain, Thatcherism involved not just a change in policies but a conscious effort to change ideas and expectations about the appropriate role of government, the importance of private enterprise and the virtues of the market. 29 Instead of protecting national economies and populations as the welfare state attempted to do, states are transforming their policies to fit the needs of a neoliberal world order. The current crisis has polarized social classes and put into question the legitimacy of the neoliberal order at several levels. Civil Society, Protests, and the Formation of a New Collective Will Despite the progressive dismantling of the welfare-state social a variety of forces have been resisting the internationalizing of the state according to neoliberal doctrine. For example, the protests against the ministerial meeting of the WTO in Seattle in 1999 brought major international attention to how the global economy of advanced capitalism was being managed by transnational elites. A combination of repression and ideological justification of the neoliberal agenda was the first reaction by dominant social classes facing these popular forms of resistance. Many individuals and groups felt that the decisions made by their governments were not in the interests of the majority of the population. In a neo-gramscian perspective we can read such events as a slow but definite crumbling of the legitimacy of what Robert Cox called the hyperliberal form of state and the kind of policies it advocates at the national and international levels. This process works itself out through the dual process of the internationalization of production and the internationalization of the state. As Cox writes, The analysis of globalization must begin with the internationalization of production. The internationalization process results when capital considers the productive resources of the world as a whole and locates elements of complex globalized production systems at points of greatest cost advantage. The critical factor is information on how to combine most profitably components in the production process A second major development is the internationalizing of the state. Throughout most of this century, the role of states has been conceived as a buffer protecting the national economy from disruptive external forces so as to be able to encourage internal levels of economic activity sufficient to sustain adequate domestic employment and welfare. In the past couple of decades, the priority has shifted to one of adapting domestic economies to the perceived exigencies of the world economy. 30 More recently, events such as the Occupy Movement, the Indignados in Spain the student protests in Quebec or the G20 summit in Toronto witnessed both peaceful and violent protests against what is seen by activists as the restructuring of the world economy according to corporate interests. As early as 1965, Nicos Poulantzas 31 and, later on, Jürgen Habermas wrote about the new problems arising from rapid growth and crisis in advanced-capitalist societies. Specifically Habermas wrote that I am thinking here of disturbance to ecological balance, violation of the consistency requirements of the personality system (alienation) and potentially explosive strains on

8 8 international relations. 32 If anything the tendencies identified by Poulantzas and Habermas towards increased income inequality, alienation and a more violent international order have all been confirmed and will probably continue to be unless progressive change happens at the three levels of production, the state and world order identified by Cox. Several authors in the neo-gramscian perspective suggest that the global elites have not been insensitive to the criticisms of the functioning of the global economy and have been working very hard at maintaining their hegemony over the majority of the population. As Gill writes, The process of elite interaction and network building helps to shape the agenda for those state policies which affect the operation of transnational capital. In so far as international organisations accept a framework of thought that serves the interests of capital, they are likely to exert influence and sometimes even pressure (for example in IMF loan conditions) on national governments of a sort which is congruent with that exerted by business. Several writers have suggested that the elements mentioned above are coming together to produce a transnational capitalist class or class fraction, with its own particular form of strategic class consciousness. 33 Beginning from a neo-gramscian perspective, I propose looking at how governments, institutions, and groups in civil society are presently engaged in a struggle about the kind of future they wish to see realized. Two major alternative projects presently confront each other or the world stage in most developed capitalist countries. The first project is the gradual attempt at the creation of a free market utopia on a world scale. The other project, according to Stephen Gill, is the creation of a counter-hegemonic movement that proposes a more equitable world order. 34 Both of these projects rest on different social forces that are antagonistic to each other. As Robert Cox once wrote, the outcome will depend, as usual, on power relations among social groups. 35 Through social struggle policies can change and there is no simple economic determinism that pushes us towards an inescapable destiny. The economic crisis, which began to manifest itself as a more general social crisis in 2008, has in many ways, made the contradictions of contemporary capitalism sharper. More often than not it has made the legitimacy of the ruling classes less solid. Confidence in the ability of states and politicians to seriously deal with issues such as inequality, unemployment and the environment is very low amongst subaltern groups. I suggest that, unless governments and global elites radically rethink their pursuit of a neoliberal agenda they will face mounting opposition and will be forced to change course by social forces they themselves will have unleashed. A continued and accelerated process of global labor exploitation and increased poverty engendered by a deregulated world economy is not socially or ecologically sustainable in the long run. The problem is that this rethinking will not happen by itself. Social struggle will necessarily be a key ingredient in transforming the current hegemonic tendencies of the hyperliberal world order. The neoliberal state-form, which appeared in advanced capitalist societies, was born out of the slow disintegration of the welfare-nationalist state which came to provide many services to what Antonio Gramsci called the subaltern classes such as basic education adapted to the needs of capital, healthcare services to insure the reproduction of the workforce, etc. Popular pressures were exercised and social struggles fought in order to obtain these social benefits and new struggles will manifest themselves as they are being taken away gradually.

9 9 Thus the state, especially in its welfare-nationalist form, could appear to represent the general interest of the society as a whole. 36 Ideologically, the neoliberal counterattack culminated with Thatcherism in Great Britain and Reaganism in the United States during the 1980s. Politically and economically these neoliberal measures, which Cox calls hyperliberal strategies for expanded capitalist reproduction, have mainly continued unabated until the recent economic crisis. The crisis has caused some intellectuals, even within the ruling classes to rethink their neoliberal policies, at least in theory. Yet, for now, not enough has changed to put the world economy on a fundamentally different path. Gill also notes that the power of transnational capital has grown in comparison both to that of governments and especially to that of organised labour. He writes, While the structural power of transnational capital has risen relative to that of governments since World War II (except perhaps in primary industries), it has also risen relative to that of organise labour. Transnational, but not national firms, can threaten unions with plant closures and relocation of investment to other countries. 37 The capitalist counteroffensive which led towards the hyperliberal world order first emerged with the downturn of the world economy during crisis of the 1970s. The dominant classes perceived that their share of global wealth was being threatened and that their rate of profit was gradually diminishing. In the eyes of the ruling factions of the advanced capitalist states, overly generous social programs and excessive government regulations were the cause of this unpleasant situation. If these concessions were accepted as necessary in order to stabilize capitalism after the Second World War they were deemed no longer beneficial in the eyes of the ruling class. Those in positions of power came up with an alternative neoliberal vision of world order that can now be understood as a capitalist counter-offensive to reorganise the state-finance nexus. According to the geographer and economist David Harvey these strategies have been consciously orchestrated. As he writes, They [the wealthy] set in motion the radical reconstruction of the state-finance nexus (the national and then international deregulation of financial operations, the liberation of debtfinancing, and the repositioning of the state apparatus with respect to social provision). 38 The current unstable situation of the neoliberal global economic and political order is in large part due to these conscious strategies by global elites and also the difficulties of mounting a coherent counter-offensive by subaltern groups. The twenty-first century may perhaps reverse the trend of slow defeat on the Left. Globalization and New Social Forces in the 21 st Century Nothing is permanent and there are always, as Gramsci noted, forces operating to change the status quo. Subaltern classes take longer to organize than dominant groups and have often to reorganize painfully after suffering historical defeats. As early as the 1990s Cox saw in certain groups and organizations of civil society, potential forces capable creating a new historic bloc based on more social and progressive values than those promoted by the hyperliberal model: [S]uch social forces are emerging among women, environmentalists, peace activists, indigenous peoples, trade unions to name but a few examples of popular sector movements that increasingly are opposed to the harmful consequences of globalization. 39 Stephen Gill pursued this vein of thought developed by Cox and tried to understand the loosely based coalitions around the anti-globalization

10 10 movement as a new force capable of changing opinions about the new forms of state emerging in the twenty-first century. When Gill talks about "postmodern" he does not mean it in the aesthetic or discursive senses but as a social vision which goes beyond the limits of contemporary capitalism in the same way Habermas wrote about the possibility of a "postmodern" society in Legitimation Crisis. 40 Describing "postmodern" Gill writes, A set of conditions, particularly political, material and ecological that is giving rise to new forms of political agency whose defining myths are associated with the quest to ensure human and intergenerational security on and for the planet, as well as democratic human development and human rights. 41 These forces are therefore both defensive, in terms of preserving viable living conditions for mankind, as well as pre-figurative of more egalitarian social relations. The problem is for them to be truly effective they need to be able to actually affect real economic policies that will transform the lives of the majority of the population. As Gill writes [I]n Gramscian terms, a global hegemony would need to have not only economic legitimacy and effectiveness, it would also need to have moral credibility. 42 Environmental groups have begun a dialogue with unionized workers, feminists with anti-racist organizations. The subaltern elements in society are developing a more unified critical consciousness of the costs associated with the unlimited pursuit of profits. The economic summits have given a forum for various sectors of society to discuss and denounce certain practices by states who have agreed to follow the globalization thrust toward deregulated capitalist accumulation: [W]hat is significant here is that the new counter-movements seek to preserve ecological and cultural diversity against what they see as the encroachment of political, social and ecological monocultures associated with the supremacy of corporate rule. 43 These extreme neoliberal economic measures adopted by consensus in various economic summits and through institutions like the IMF and World Bank are no longer being ignored by the citizens who are affected by them. According to Gill, [T]he wider juridical-political framework for locking in such commitments can be called the new constitutionalism of disciplinary neo-liberalism. 44 These commitments often lock out any kind of democratic control by citizens. Gill specifies that there are limits to the power of transnational capital. He writes, At the global level, limits to the power of transnational capital are grounded in contradictions in what, in Gramscian terms, would be called an embryonic international political society, and a still underdeveloped, but more discernible, internationalised civil society. 45 From a political standpoint, the change has been that whereas Poulantzas believed that the capitalist state preserved the political interests of the dominant classes by creating policies that lessened the effects of a deregulated economy, it is tending toward doing so much less today. The balance of social forces has therefore clearly shifted. As Habermas said, if the contemporary state form becomes more hyperliberal and the present economic destabilization continues the global capitalist order will reach a tipping point. As he writes, such a situation [A]llows fewer possibilities for problem solving than are necessary to the continued existence of the system. 46 If such is effectively the case today then we might be heading towards what Gramsci called an "organic crisis of hegemony". The rapidity with which states are now restricting the rights of protestors by indirectly criminalizing dissent to a certain extent is quite alarming in this respect.

11 11 The positive aspect of the situation is that various elements in civil society are struggling against economic exploitation and planetary destruction and are slowly but surely developing common ground. Cox sometimes referred to this as "common mental dictionary". Gill even goes so far as to say that this new social force, the alliance and common goals shared by the various anti-globalization movement, can perhaps even change the world, A new Post-Modern prince may prove to be the most effective political form for giving coherence to an open-ended, plural, inclusive and flexible form of politics and thus create alternatives to neo-liberal globalization. 47 The alternative to joining these struggles is to let the powerful create even greater inequalities. A long war of position in which consent and coercion will both surely play a part on both sides of the class divide is therefore awaiting us. The outcome of this struggle will inevitably determine in large part what kind of society future generations will live in. Bibliography - Robert W. Cox, Approaches to World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996). - Robert W. Cox, Production, Power and World Order, Social Forces in the Making of History, (New York, Columbia UP, 1987). - Stephen Gill, Power and Resistance in the New World Order (New York: Palgrave, 2003). - Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1980). - Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975). - David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010). - Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince and The Discourses (New York: Random House, 1950). - Nicos Poulantzas, The Poulantzas Reader, Marxism, Law and the State, ed. James Martin, (London: Verso, 2008). - Peter Thomas, The Gramscian Moment, Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism, (Chicago: Haymarket Books 2010). 1 Robert W. Cox, Production, Power and World Order, Social Forces in the Making of History, (New York: Columbia UP, 1987) p. ix. 2 Ibid., p.6. 3 Peter Thomas, The Gramscian Moment, (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2010) p Ibid., p Ibid., p Ibid., p Ibid., p Cox, op.cit., p.7 9 Ibid., p Robert W. Cox, Social Forces, States and World Orders, in Approaches to World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996) p Cox, Production, op.cit., p Ibid., p Cox, Approaches, op.cit., p.130.

12 12 14 Cox, Production..., op.cit.., p Ibid., p Ibid., p Ibid., p Ibid., p Ibid., p Ibid., p Cox, Approaches, op.cit., p Ibid., p Ibid., p Cox, Approaches, op.cit., p Ibid., p Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince and the Discourses (New York: Random House, 1950), p Cox, Approaches, op.cit.., p Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1980), p Stephen Gill, Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994), p Cox, Approaches, op.cit., p Nicos Poulantzas, See Preliminaries to the study of hegemony in the State, in The Poulantzas Reader, Marxism, Law and the State, ed. James Martin, (London: Verso, 2008). 32 Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), p Gill, Gramsci, op.cit., p Stephen Gill, The Post-Modern Prince, in Power and Resistance in the New World Order (New York: Palgrave, 2003), p Cox, Approaches, op.cit., p Poulantzas, op.cit., p Gill, Gramsci, op.cit., p David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital (Oxford: Oxford UP) p Cox, Approaches, op.cit., p See Habermas, op.cit., p Gill, Power, op.cit., p Gill, Gramsci, op.cit., p Ibid., p Ibid., p Gill, Gramsci, op.cit., p Habermas, op.cit., p Gill, Power, op.cit., p. 221.