Latin America and Global Capitalism by William I. Robinson, 2008, Johns Hopkins University Press, 412 pp., $55, Hardcover
William I. Robinson’s latest book offers brilliant insight into the underlying causes and current dilemmas of globalization. In brief, his thesis holds that the economic crises of the late 1970s and early 1980s necessitated an economic restructuring, however temporary, known as neoliberalism and globalization. Neoliberalism has now passed its zenith; it was such a patently absurd, crude, and cruel dogma that it fell apart due to the resistance that its implementation evoked. Globalization, however—defined as “the underlying dynamic that drives social, political, economic, cultural and ideological processes around the world in the twenty-first century”—chugs on and will continue until a sufficiently strong, transnational resistance to it successfully challenges its steamrolling force.
Sketching out this thesis is no simple task. Robinson’s great talents are twofold: his convincing mastery of a broad theoretical analysis, which he terms “a critical globalization perspective,” and his ability to communicate the immediacy of the several hundred million citizens of the Latin American nations whose fragile well-being has been harmed, if not devastated, as the wayward winds of globalization have swept through the region in the past 30 years. Robinson strives to be what Antonio Gramsci termed an “organic intellectual”—fluidly conveying vitally important, theoretically abstract ideas and connecting those abstractions to the concrete realities of everyday life.
The book begins with a tour de force account of the rise and nature of globalization and its underlying structure. This chapter’s breadth is as impressive as is its degree of abstraction. Readers who will want to know what all this purports to mean for Latin America will have to hold their breath, perhaps until they turn a bit blue. The end of these theoretical musings ushers in two chapters of application to Latin America. Chapter 2 is devoted to the rise of so-called non-traditional agricultural exports, since the neoliberal/globalization model has forced Latin America, as Duncan Green once put it, to “export or die.” In the third chapter, Robinson lumps together the growth of manufacturing exports (often of the maquiladora/free trade zone type) with transnational services (e.g., data entry and call centers), tourism, and labor export via migration. The juxtaposition is curious: Export-oriented manufacturing and migration are vastly more important topics, qualitatively and quantitatively, than tourism and service exports; including the latter two dilutes the narrative. Further, it becomes apparent at this point in the book that Robinson’s sweeping theoretical introduction, offered up at a daunting level of abstraction, is not going to be well-integrated with the vignettes he uses to show how the newly internationalized system is playing out at the national level.
Chapter 4 proposes Robinson’s theoretical concepts—particularly what he terms “transnational class formation” and the “transnational state.” These abstractions are blended with two short digressions on the role of China and Latin American integration, plus a more extensive treatment of migration. Robinson then moves on to the terminal stage of neoliberalism, beset by a “crisis of polarization,” which has deepened marginalization, informality, and poverty. He finds a “crisis of over-accumulation,” in which the export-crazed “emerging” nations have become the workshops of the world, providing more material goods than can be absorbed as neoliberalism shrinks the purchasing power of the global working classes. Latin America has no recourse in the face of this crisis because its ossified political system of “polyarchy”—in which power alternates between two or more political parties that together represent the status quo—is incapable of responding to the general population’s needs.
Getting beyond polyarchy is the subject of the final chapter, titled “A New Cycle of Resistance.” Here Robinson takes up the not-so-simple task of interpreting the gradients of resistance to the neoliberal model in several nations (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela). This is likely the best treatment available of a complex shift that began in the late 1990s and has since gathered momentum. Always reasonable in his depiction of on-the-ground trends, Robinson insists that only those nations that have not defanged the social movements that brought center-left governments to power have any chance of realigning their societies to confront the depredations of neoliberalism, while also structuring a new interface with global capitalism. Robinson’s observations on Venezuela and Ecuador are particularly original and acute.
In the process of advancing and supporting his overarching theses, Robinson raises some rather hoary issues that deserve comment. First, and most troubling, is his conception of a transnational capitalist class, of which the Latin American capitalists have become “regional components.” These new “deterritorialized” capitalists are part of “particular clusters in the global economy” and disengaged from their national origins, whereas they once competed with other nations. This claim is, however, undercut by Robinson’s acknowledgement that he has not presented a “systematic study.”
Nonetheless, much of the book, explicitly or implicitly, depends on this concept, yet the empirical evidence available regarding the international role of Latin American grupos (or conglomerates) does not bear out Robinson’s theory. Latin American transnational firms are not peers of those of the advanced capitalist nations, except for some who operate in low-technology (e.g., retailing) or mineral-based niches (cement, steel). Further, when Latin America grupos team up with technologically dynamic behemoths, these transnationals use the Latin American firms for their knowledge of local markets without sharing advanced technological capabilities that could turn them into peer firms. In addition, the near complete absence in Latin America of nationally based networks of research institutions capable of producing and diffusing technological innovations (Brazil stands out as the exception) means that Latin America has no chance of autonomously entering the big leagues of high-value-added manufacturing, where the transnationals from the advanced nations reign supreme.
To locate a transnational capitalist class, including Latin American firms, would be to empirically verify a relatively homogenous social strata that exists both in and for itself. Yet compare the rentier, quick-buck artistry of Mexico’s Carlos Slim with the Schumpeterian entrepreneurialism of Bill Gates. This simple exercise, popularly conducted by Mexicans of almost any class, and which could be repeated throughout Latin America, adequately shows the vast gulf that exists between Latin America’s oligarchy and that of the advanced industrialized nations. Or take the Chileans, impressed with their own modernity and fond of stories of Scandinavian firms that have worked their way from timber production to globally competitive manufacturing. But Chile, lacking virtually any industrial base (thanks to the depredations of Milton Friedman and his acolytes) can never move upstream from simple resource-based production. Nor do the Chilean grupos aspire to do so.
Another major theoretical concept that underlies Robinson’s understanding of globalization is the “transnational state.” This concept is even more elusive that the transnational capitalist class. According to the argument, the transnational state is an “analog” of the globally integrated system of production and finance. National states clearly exist, according to Robinson, but their purpose is now to operate in a “loose network,” facilitating the movement of production, finance, and distribution that serves the larger interests of the transnational capitalist class—especially as expressed in the needs and visions of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization.
Really? To begin with, the World Bank and IMF have practically ceased to function, and the WTO’s power to deliver is now in shambles. One could agree—particularly based on the Mexican case—that the commanding heights of policy making are now dominated by a group of U.S.-trained technocrats whose self-appointed mission is to implement policies that conform to the neoliberal template as stamped-out by the Washington Consensus. Yet in the Mexican case, for example, there is little sign of the new capitalist “horizontalism” that Robinson envisages. Rather, the Mexican state serves largely as a surrogate for U.S. policy—a relation of dependence that far exceeds that which existed in the 1960s, when dependency analysis was all the rage. This is a direction that Robinson does not want to go in—he categorically rejects dependency relationships. According to Robinson, the “old” “state-centric” way of viewing the world, wherein one nation exercised hegemonic power and nations were arranged in a system of vertical power (dominant/subordinate), is now passé.
Imperialism, never defined, is also of no use as a category, since for Robinson all the old-fashioned ways of understanding the world have been swept away by globalization. But before one throws out concepts like dependency and imperialism, it is necessary to first determine why they have fallen out of use. Dependency is a thorny concept in its own right. Is not Mexico dependent on the United States, having built an economy wherein 85% of exports are marketed here, while U.S. firms operating in Mexico dominate the two crucial pillars of the country’s export economy, autos and electronics?
Just as there is more than a single conception of dependency, so too are there multiple formulations of imperialism, which generally refers to the extra-territorial power that one nation extends over another nation, either directly or indirectly. But Robinson believes that understanding the present global system demands that we cease to think about nations exercising power. How, and when, did the United States cease to strive for advantage over Latin America through the direct use of diplomatic power, economic power, military power, and ideological power? According to Robinson, the asymmetrical U.S. relationship with the region should be “more properly understood as U.S. tutelage of the region’s restructuring and integration into global capitalism on behalf of a transnational project [rather] than as a project of ‘U.S.’ hegemony in rivalry with other core powers. . . . [italics added].”
This is a truly sweeping statement, one that Robinson’s book fails to support. Somehow, according to Robinson, the very nature of U.S. international political economy has fundamentally changed (due to “globalization”)—with the United States failing to act in its own national interest. The transnational capitalist class, in this view, has taken the levers of power within the United States, and a nationalist vision has ceased to guide policy. Yet any comprehensive review of major economic initiatives in the region, such as the (failed) U.S.-sponsored Free Trade Agreement for the Americas, not to mention NAFTA, clearly show the U.S.’s intention to pursue a modern version of the Monroe Doctrine. And U.S. policy makers are adamant and nearly unanimous in their opposition to popular governments in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. That they are so positioned for any other reason than to maintain a specifically U.S. hegemony (or to minimize any losses to it) is a matter that this exceptionally innovative, thought-provoking book fails to prove.
James M. Cypher is professor of development economics at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, Mexico.
