Daniel Egan

A Neo-Gramscian Approach to Corporate Political Strategy: Conflict and Accommodation in the Climate Change Negotiations*

A neo-Gramscian theoretical framework for corporate political strategy is developed drawing from Gramscis analysis of the relations among capital, social forces, and the state, and from more contemporary theories. Gramscis political theory recognizes the centrality of organizations and strategy, directs attention to the organizational, economic, and ideological pillars of power, while illuminating the processes of coalition building, conflict, and accommodation that drive social change. This approach addresses the structure-agency relationship and endogenous dynamics in a way that could enrich institutional theory. The framework suggests a strategic concept of power, which provides space for contestation by subordinate groups in complex dynamic social systems. We apply the framework to analyse the international negotiations to control emissions of greenhouse gases, focusing on the responses of firms in the US and European oil and automobile industries. The neo-Gramscian framework explains some specific features of corporate responses to challenges to their hegemonic position and points to the importance of political struggles within civil society. The analysis suggests that the conventional demarcation between market and non-market strategies is untenable, given the embeddedness of markets in contested social and political structures and the political character of strategies directed toward defending and enhancing markets, technologies, corporate autonomy and legitimacy. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2003.

Toward a Marxist Theory of Labor-Managed Firms: Breaking the Degeneration Thesis

The idea that worker cooperatives are at best diversions from class struggle or, at worst, destined to turn into capitalist enterprises is common among the Marxist left. Such a position, however, is the product of an undialectical reading of Marxs comments on cooperation. A dialectical analysis finds that labor-managed sectors succeed in preserving their democratic, cooperative character to the extent that they are connected to a history of class struggle. This conclusion is reinforced through a comparative review of labor-managed sector history and performance within mediated and unmediated advanced capitalist economies.

The Limits of Internationalization: a Neo-Gramscian Analysis of the Multilateral Agreement On Investment

The OECDs attempt to create a Multilateral Agreement on Investment provides a useful case study with which to examine the process of the internationalization of the state. Transnational historical materialism sees the development of supranational institutions such as the failed MAI as part of the neoliberal strategy of an emerging transnational capitalist class. However, in defining internationalization in terms of the national state becoming a transmission belt for global capital, transnational historical materialism adopts a deterministic reading of Gramscis theory of hegemony. A more dialectical reading of hegemony suggests that internationalization will be uneven and contradictory. The suspension of negotiations for the MAI reveals how hegemonic conflicts, both within and directed against the transnational capitalist class, impose important limits on internationalization.

Frantz Fanon and the Construction of the Colonial Subject: Defining “The Enemy” in the Iraq War

The invasion of Iraq by the United States has been correctly seen by the left as an expression of US imperialism. In the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States was freed of the political and military constraints on its exercise of global power, such as they were, that the Soviet Union once offered. The United States has sought to make full use of this opportunity to demonstrate to allies, potential competitors (e.g. China), and “rogue states” alike that it will not allow any state to challenge its position as the sole global superpower. In this context, the Iraq war represents an attempt to solidify the global hegemony of US-led neoliberalism. As a result, the left critique of the war, at least within the academy, has focused on the political-economic aspects of imperialism, emphasizing either the specific sectors of capital that have benefited from the war (such as oil companies and the military-industrial complex) or the significance of Middle Eastern oil for the United States and its competitors. Unfortunately, the racialized nature of imperialism has received less attention. US policy elites have presented the Iraq war as benign: as an important step ensuring the spread of capitalist markets, democracy, human rights, and individual liberties to less fortunate regions. They see the US as bearing what was once called the “white man’s burden” of bringing civilization to the darker corners of the world. In setting for itself this “civilizing” mission, however, the US demonstrates just how “uncivilized” it is. The “white man’s burden,” in its

Rethinking War of Maneuver/War of Position: Gramsci and the Military Metaphor

One of the most important components of Antonio Gramsci’s social theory is his discussion of political strategy, particularly his distinction between ‘war of maneuver’ and ‘war of position’. For Gramsci, the classical model of revolution through military insurrection (war of maneuver) has been supplanted within advanced capitalism by a cultural struggle of much longer duration and complexity (war of position). Despite the significance of Gramsci’s analysis of war of maneuver/war of position for contemporary Marxism, it is striking that so little attention has been paid to these terms. These terms have a history, both in military theory and in Marxism, which predates Gramsci’s prison notebooks. An examination of the military writings of Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, which are grounded more directly on military theory, leads to different conclusions about the nature of political strategy and the relationship between war of maneuver and war of position.

Globalization and the invasion of Iraq : State power and the enforcement of neoliberalism

Abstract A number of critical theorists of capitalist globalization argue that the power of capital is based on a consensus for global neoliberalism generated by a transnational bloc of capitalists, state officials, and intellectuals. I argue in this paper that these theorists minimize the role that coercive state power has played in supporting capital accumulation, and, as a result, they underestimate the continued significance of the nation-state in capitalism. The U.S. invasion of Iraq illustrates the central role of the nation-state in global capitalism in two ways: first, by revealing intense levels of intercapitalist rivalry; and second, by demonstrating the determination of the United States to ensure that neoliberalism is imposed unilaterally, through force if necessary.

Planning the Transition to Capitalism: The Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba

“There is no alternative.” This has been a consistent theme of politicians, corporate officials, and intellectuals for the past 25 years. Global capitalism has been presented as an inevitable, irreversible process that is beyond the control of states. Besides, we are told, global capitalism is good for everyone, in terms of both economic prosperity and the spread of democracy, so even if there were an alternative it would not be desirable (Steger 2005). The politics of global capitalism are defined by neoliberalism – a coherent program of market liberalization, state deregulation, and privatization which privileges market forces above all else (Petras & Veltmeyer 2001; Tabb 2001). All non-market forces that might challenge the hegemony of the market run the risk of being either marginalized or absorbed through commodification. At the same time, labor and other subordinate social forces are disciplined by legal restrictions on union activity, punitive reductions in social welfare provision, and the extension of formal institutions of social control. The collapse of social democracy in the advanced capitalist countries (perhaps best exemplified by Tony Blair’s success in expunging the Labour Party’s socialist heritage from “New Labour”) (Panitch & Leys 2001) seemed to confirm – as did the collapse of the Soviet Union – that nothing could stop the tidal wave of capitalist globalization. While the Soviet Union subordinated national liberation movements and revolutionary governments in the Third World to its own interests, it also provided them an alternative to integration into global capitalism; at the same time, the Soviet Union’s existence put pressure on the advanced capitalist countries to ameliorate the most destructive and alienating features of capitalism. More recently, China’s move to a “market socialist” system that seems more market than socialist (Hart-Landsberg & Burkett 2005) appears to be further evidence that global capitalism is a juggernaut that lies outside political control. As Steger (2005) points out, such arguments play an important ideological function within global capitalism. They portray states as

Who put the 'welfare' in 'corporate welfare'? Race, gender, and the critique of business subsidies

ABSTRACT Political forces on both the left and right have, with increasing frequency, defined public subsidies for business as ‘corporate welfare.’ While the concept has its origins in the New Left, it was discovered by the political mainstream only in the 1990s. As a result, the dominant definitions of the problem presented in political debate have been those associated with conservatives. The power of ‘corporate welfare’ as a symbol in mainstream political debates today lies in its equation of government subsidies for business with social welfare received by the poor. As with social welfare, corporate welfare is said to create a culture of dependency that must be eliminated. I argue that this critique makes use of longstanding racial and gender constructions of worthiness that are central to the US welfare state. If the term is to reclaim its earlier radical meaning, greater effort must be made to changing the context in which ‘welfare’ is defined.

The Dialectic of Position and Maneuver

In The Dialectic of Position and Maneuver, Daniel Egan offers a critical analysis of the role played by military metaphors in Antonio Gramsci’s social theory.

Bureaucracy and Radical Politics: The Case of the Greater London Council

New Left Organizational Theory contains a powerful critique of bureaucracy, and in its place offers a model of collectivist organization. This rejection of bureaucracy, however, is inadequate for understanding left political strategy in the advanced capitalist state. The experience of the radical Greater London Council during the early 1980s suggests a more dialectical critique of bureaucracy, one that recognizes structural opportunities for the democratic transformation of bureaucracy. This study outlines a Gramscian organizational theory that goes beyond New Left Organizational Theory by suggesting a strategy of participatory centralization for radical politics within the state.