Book Review: Boris Kagarlitsky, The Twilight of Globalization: Property, State, and Capitalism (London: Pluto, 2000, 176 pp., £12.99 pbk.)
| DOI | 10.1177/03058298000290030921 |
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| Author | Eric A. Heinze |
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Millennium
964
Boris Kag arlitsky, The Twilight of Globalization: Property, State, and Capitalism
(London: Pluto, 2000, 176 pp., £12.99 pbk.).
Over the past ten years, students of i nternational relations have witn essed an
explosion in the discourse on glo balisation. In the second volume of his Recasting
Marxism trilogy, e ntitled The Twilight o f Globalizatio n: Property, State and
Capitalism, Boris Kagarl itsky addresses the phen omenon of globalisat ion as a neo -
liberal project that i s inhere ntly weakeni ng the economic agency of t he state in
global affairs. Kagarlitsky, as a pro ponent of left-win g strategies to ward t he state,
argues for the creati on of a publ ic sector that woul d facilitat e democratic
institutions, political accountability and the decentralisation of capital. The new
‘Big Brother ’, accordi ng to Kagarlitsk y, is no longer the centrali sed bureaucra cy of
the state but the multin ational corp orations and global financial institutions that
have flourish ed under the adv ent of globalised capital. The po wer possessed by t his
new ‘Big Brother’ presents a c risis for democracy p recisely because of it s inherent
lack of accountability. According to Kagarlitsky, glo bal capital’s present quest for
profit accu mulation imposes an arbitra ry and capricious agend a on the states of the
world.
On the one hand, t he author asserts that ideologue s of the left have conceded to
the noti on of the ‘impote nce of the state’ in regard to t he effective manageme nt of
global capital. Yet paradox ically, t he stat e remai ns a n e ssential component for
global capit alism to thriv e. That is, eve n at the globa l level, the int ernal
contradict ion of capi talism’s depend ence on lab our comes back to haunt it. This,
Kagarlitsky argues, is the l ight at the end of the tun nel in that the d emocratic state
ultimately has the p ower to overcome this market crisis. The proble m with th is
logic is tha t it is dependent on the g lobalisation (and subseque nt success) of
democracy, whic h must be undertaken first i f the destructive force of gl obal capital
is to b e stopped. Even Kaga rlitsky admits that ‘no democratization of i nternational
relations is possi ble without democracy at the level of a n ation-state’ (p. 39).
Presupposing the successful proliferation of democratic principles and
institutio ns, Kagarlitsky argues fo r nationalisati on of the means of pro duction as a
means of changing the social and economic structures as oppo sed to simply a
method for mana ging industry. Under the realisa tion that any reforms attemptin g to
redistribute power to the advant age of the labour majori ty are impos sible without
the stat e, Kagarlitsky co ntends that a democratic eco nomy can be created throu gh
socialising the process of the p roduction of ca pital. Again, t he i deas of
democratisation and the establishment of social ‘democracy-friendly’ institutions
in periph ery states present obsta cles to this project . Furthermore, the idea o f
nationali sm and subseq uent fragmentation of states se rve to faci litate the
exploitat ion of labou r by cap ital in states that lack the institutional framework to
empower l abour. ‘Nationali sm…often b ecomes a di rect ally of neo-liberalism’ (p.
102). Pa radoxically then, the new leftist pro ject must not b e conducive to p olitical
and so cial fragmentation at the state level or centralisation of capital at the global
level.
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