Ideology in a Global Age

Continuity and Change

R. Soborski

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137317018
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book challenges the popular view that established ideologies no longer make sense in today's globalizing world. Considered from a broad historical perspective, major ideological traditions have not become destabilized and incoherent by globalization, but remain meaningful political beliefs that shape the globalization debate.

1

Globalization and Ideology: Mapping the Shifting Debate

This chapter reviews the existing debate on the state of ideology today. More specifically, the focus is on two strands of the literature concerned with ideology and globalization. The first strand considers the utility of ideology in the politics of contestation of the dominant model of globalization. The second strand tends to take the importance of ideology per se for granted but questions the relevance of established ideological currents in the context of a supposedly global era. While I acknowledge the insights provided by both literatures, I suggest that each has been limited by their prevalent assumptions regarding the nature of ideology on the one hand, and the extent of the impact of globalization on the other. I identify several logical and political setbacks resulting from these assumptions and argue for a closer conceptual analysis of ideological discourse as a way out of the flawed terms of the current debate.

Ideology and the globalization debate

The effect of globalization on ideology is usually regarded as an extension of the broader impact of this process and so the question has typically been considered in relation to other areas of the globalization debate. Yet, for its most part, the narrower discussion concerned with ideology lags behind theoretical advances in globalization studies at large. As I pointed out in the Introduction to this book, it has become conventional to map the development of globalization theory in terms of three successive waves, with an initial ‘hyperglobalist’ zeal followed by a ‘sceptical’ reaction, both eventually mitigated by a more nuanced ‘transformationalist’ way of thinking that acknowledges continuity as well as change in current social, economic, political and ideational developments. However, whereas the broader debate thus seems to have come of age, the mainstream of the study of globalization as it pertains to ideology remains, with relatively few (albeit undoubtedly important) exceptions, more or less unequivocally ‘hyperglobalist’. While I do not wish to suggest here a sceptical turn on this question, if it were to be understood as underestimation of globalization, I nevertheless oppose, from a more transformationalist perspective, postulates of a comprehensive ideological break with the past and aim to reveal what I believe to be the shaky theoretical grounds from which such claims have been advanced.

More specifically, though the concept of ideology has been put to a variety of uses and abuses in the globalization debate, I focus my critique on two currents of literature. The first literature has a largely activist leaning. It seeks to inform and foster a particular response to globalization and, in doing so, considers the question of whether ideology of any political stripe may assist activists in their efforts to contest globalization or some aspects of it. The second literature tends to accept the import of ideology in the generic sense but contends that established ideological currents have become irrelevant. The two strands may criss-cross, for example when relevance of established ideologies is disputed in discussions concerning strategies of resistance to the hegemonic model of globalization, or when arguments doubting the importance of specific ideologies end up implying that all ‘ideological politics’ is inconsequential. Nevertheless, while such overlaps exist and are noted in the course of the following investigation, I believe this analytical distinction to be useful in identifying some recurring, and in my view questionable, claims in this area of global studies.

More specifically, as will become evident in the discussion to follow, a typical weakness of the first ‘activist’ literature has been its lack of a clear and consistent understanding of the concept of ideology, often resulting in problematic conclusions regarding the potential use for ideology in political action. It needs to be acknowledged that while the problem persists in many contributions to this stream, several recent additions have been more inclined to see ideology as a significant factor in the politics of globalization. On the other hand, the narrower literature concerned with established ideologies continues, on the whole, to rely on a priori assumptions about the existence, scope and impact of globalization and consequently makes insufficient effort to substantiate its normally far-reaching diagnosis of the changes shaping the contemporary ideological landscape. Reification of globalization, combined with at times inadequate conceptual analysis, is responsible for this strand’s reluctance to fully appreciate the extent of continuity in ideological patterns. This chapter concludes by suggesting that arguments that neglect ideology and ideological continuities in the discourses of globalization are flawed not just on logical grounds; politically problematic implications may follow as well, including an unwitting acceptance of the neoliberal parameters of the debate.

Globalization and the (new) end of ideology

The literature concerned with the ways to tame or reject globalization has been growing especially on the wave of protests, notably in Seattle (1999), Prague (2000) and Genoa (2001), which assembled a huge diversity of groups, from trade unions to anarchist and ecologist movements to elements of the extreme right, and stood up to institutional embodiments of the global free-market agenda in the form of the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF. World Social Forums and their regional equivalents, which meet annually as gatherings of diverse non-governmental organizations and social movements critical of neoliberalism, provided another spur for the expansion of academic, as well as partisan, interest in alternatives to the globalization of free-market capitalism. Inspired by expressions of political activism, this literature has tended to focus on forms of anti-neoliberal movements and on their choice of protest strategies (see for example Dissent! Network of Resistance against the G8 2005; Kingsnorth 2003; Klein 2001; Mertes et al. 2004; Notes from Nowhere 2003; One-Off Press 2001; Shepard and Hayduk 2002; Starr 2000). Unfortunately, whereas organizational aspects of the politics of resistance have been insightfully discussed, the ideological premises guiding the movements in question have only recently received proper scholarly attention and the predominant tendency in this literature is still to neglect ideology or to conceptualize it in ways that are problematic, as far at least as the neutral model of ideology is concerned.

An inclusive, neutral approach to ideology, as encapsulated in Seliger’s definition, has already been explained in the Introduction but, as it will provide a yardstick against which I evaluate the globalization-and-ideology debate, a short reminder is in order. In a minimal formulation, the neutral approach applies the term ‘ideology’ to any system of political beliefs able to give an adequately full account of a given political reality, either existing or anticipated, and offer a strategy to preserve or attain its preferred political arrangements. From the neutral perspective, any such system will be considered an ideology regardless of whether it is perceived as being right or wrong, fair or unjust, realistic or incongruent with reality. In contrast to this description, the predominant interest in ideology to be found in post-Seattle deliberations about anti- and alter-globalization movements has, until recently in any case, been articulated with the intention of putting the relevance of ideology into doubt, of claiming that ‘the movement’ has somehow become ‘post-ideological’:

[M]any groupings within the anti-capitalist movement are evidently either non-ideological or post-ideological. This is to say that there are groupings that are quite explicitly opposed to the idea that what the movement needs is an alternative vision of how the world should look.

(Tormey 2004: 75)

As noted in the Introduction, this way of thinking about ideology exhibits elements of the logic of the recurring ‘end of ideology’ thesis. As is well-known, the original assertion of the death of ideology was put forward in the 1960s by conservatives and liberals, for example Raymond Aron, Seymour Martin Lipset and especially Daniel Bell, in the context of the then broad convergence of mainstream politics on the principles of the welfare state (Aron 1962; Lipset 1960; Bell 1962). The end of ideology claim enjoyed a heyday again in the early 1990s owing especially to the impact of the work of Francis Fukuyama who announced ‘an unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism’ and hence the end of ideological debate (1989: 1). The more recent verdict of the end of ideology that has been made in connection with globalization does not assume that ‘radical’ politics has been exhausted. However, it bears a resemblance to previous conservative and liberal obituaries for ideology in that it proclaims ideology to be irrelevant in political practice, which in this case is defined as resistance to capitalist globalization. Such assertions are at odds with the neutral description of ideology summarized above. To be sure, no understanding of ideology may legitimately declare itself ultimately valid. But one reason to challenge the sweeping claims about ideology in the literature discussing alternatives to the current form of globalization is the fact that they are made without any coherent conceptualization of the meaning of the term and with no suggestion of an alternative axiological framework to guide political action (in contrast to more systematic critiques of the neutral approach such as Marxist interpretations postulating the truth of dialectical materialism against what they see as ideological distortion).

The implications of such casual dismissals of ideology are particularly clear in post-ideology claims made with regard to specific political positions engaged in the contestation of globalization. For example, Giorel Curran devoted a whole book to the idea that anarchism, one of the key influences in Seattle and on other ‘anti-globalization’ occasions, has now become post-ideological. In suggesting that anarchism has been able to free itself from ‘ideological conformity’ (Curran 2006: 6), Curran’s argument illustrates the reasoning that is common in the literature preoccupied with popular challenges to neoliberal globalization. Unflattering semantic associations attached to the concept of ideology are commonplace in such interpretations. Ideology is identified with rigidity; adjectives such as ‘doctrinaire’, ‘sectarian’, ‘conformist’, ‘vanguardist’ and ‘orthodox’ are used to describe politics that is ‘ideological’. On the other hand, ‘general spirit’ and ‘inspiration’ are said to characterize the ‘vibrant’ ‘post-ideological’ positions that are credited with the ability to come together and challenge global capitalism (Curran 2006: 1–16). ‘Rigid’ ideologies may also be contrasted with a more ‘practical’ focus on political effectiveness. Donatella Della Porta reports that participants of Social Forums in Europe ‘avoid ideologism’ and ‘instead present their action as pragmatic, concrete, and gradualist’ (2005: 196, emphasis in original). Massimo De Angelis likewise insists that what matters for ‘today’s new internationalism’ ‘is not a common ideology, but needs and the practical necessities of different movements within the context of the global economy’ (2005: 9). But De Angelis also uses more evocative terms when contrasting a ‘predefined Ideology’ with ‘[w]hat is here and now to be lived: dignity, hope, life’ (2005: 26, capitalization and emphasis in original).

Two problematic issues emerge here. First, as I will further explain below, from the perspective of the neutral approach, which perceives all politics as inevitably ideological, the opposition between political ideology and political practice is obviously unsustainable. Second, and relatedly, what the activist literature usually posits as a unifier of diverse ‘anti’- or ‘alter’-globalization politics is not commonality of a positive vision, but either single concepts isolated from broader interpretations or, more typically, methodological similarities and shared enemies. Curran once again provides a relevant example by putting forward a construction that builds upon an isolated concept to support affinity of anarchist and deep ecologist interpretations and their ability to form a united front ‘against globalization’. To discuss this case in detail would form too long a digression but a brief comment is in place. The argument in question opens as follows:

While deep ecology does not claim any direct anarchist roots, it identifies hierarchy as culprit in environmental ruin. Its conception of hierarchy may be novel and applied relatively exclusively, but it highlights a hierarchy of value wielded by the powerful over the powerless – with inert nature as the most subjugated.

(Curran 2006: 114)

Having established that a radical current of ecologism declares a form of hierarchy to be a problem, Curran then assumes that this current therefore partakes in, or at least comes very near to, ‘post-ideological’ anarchism. The trouble is that the critique of hierarchy that is present in this variant of ecologism is at odds with anarchist interpretations in that it is concerned with relations between species, not within any of them. In fact, some ecologists have postulated hierarchy between human beings as necessary to prevent humans from oppressing nature. The idea is of course irreconcilable with the anarchist belief that hierarchical arrangements in society bring about human domination of other species. In other words, as this example shows, the mere presence of a concept within a given ideological structure is not a measure of that structure’s kinship with others that also include the concept.

Curran actually acknowledges those nuanced differences: ‘while deep ecology may rail against the operation of hierarchy against nature, it can overlook its operation within humanity’, and yet she does not see them as preventing deep ecology’s membership in ‘anarchist politics’ (2006: 114). By ‘politics’ Curran means political strategy; this makes her argument particularly useful as an illustration of the practice, common in the literature on alternatives to neoliberal globalization, of elevating operative components of ideologies or, in other words, explanations of the optimal ways to achieve political goals, to the status of classificatory tools to the neglect of more fundamental conceptual discontinuities. In this instance, Curran posits that what constitutes post-ideological anarchism is its ‘temperament’ which ‘rejects “roadmaps” of prescribed visions in favor of “toolkits” for discovering them’ (2006: 231). As a result, she places a hotchpotch of often incompatible ideas in her ‘post-ideological’ anarchist territory.

In a broadly similar manner, that is to say, by way of elevating political strategies to the status of markers of political positions, other authors explain the move ‘beyond ideology’, that they believe to have occurred, pointing to the ingenious forms of network-based organization that epitomize contemporary transnational activism. Accordingly, networks are the means to transcend ideological discrepancies by converging on one ‘no’ (Kingsnorth 2003) that unites otherwise heterogeneous expressions of resistance to the neoliberal form of globalization within the ‘movement of movements’ (Mertes et al. 2004; Hardt 2002) or ‘coalitions of coalitions’ (Klein 2001: 81). Overlaps in organization and tactics have thus been brought up as evidence that a wide-ranging movement against the neoliberal model of globalization is possible. Yet, while the postulate of liberation from the ideological straightjacket was to be politically empowering, the classificatory problems that it has posed continue to cause concern not just to scholars but also to activists themselves. Attempts to conceptualize this miscellaneous range of ideological projects in terms of one broad politics of opposition, or ‘one world with many worlds in it’ (Klein 2001: 89), have led to political as well as terminological controversies that now permeate ‘the movement’. On some occasions all opponents of the neoliberal form of globalization have been labelled as ‘anti-globalists’ causing unease among Marxist and other internationalist critics who define themselves as anti-capitalist, or at least anti-neoliberal, but who reject the label of ‘anti-globalization’ as opening them to charges of isolationism. Conversely, appellations such as ‘globalization-from-below’ or the ‘global justice movement’ have more recently been applied in an insufficiently discerning manner to a huge variety of positions, some of which do not identify with any global agenda. More contentiously, the assumption that there is room for a united front against capitalist globalization has led some insiders (to the dismay of others) to advocate alliances between fundamentally different perspectives such as right-wing separatism and anarchism (Starr n.d.), a suggestion that has had some rather negative consequences for the public image of this putative political project as well as causing considerable uneasiness among sympathetic commentators on the left (see for example Amin 2011: 191–2; Anton 2007: 27; Berlet and Lyons 2000: 342–3; De Fabel van den illegaal 2000; Sakai 2003).

Partly in response to such concerns, this literature has recently begun to evolve in ways that should be welcomed by students of ideology. Valuable insights into the ideological dimension of contemporary anti-neoliberal activism have been offered by a variety of scholars, including political economists and geographers, cultural anthropologists and critical theorists, most of them unabashedly straddling the worlds of academia and political engagement. Among recent studies, a particularly nuanced analysis has been provided by anthropologist Jeffery Juris. Like most of the contributions discussed here thus far, Juris’s (2008) is also concerned with discourses and practices of activist networking in what he refers to as ‘anti-corporate globalization movements’ (significantly – in plural). However, what distinguishes his work is both its willingness to decode the narratives that circulate among activists as reworking old ideological themes and its sensitivity to place-specific determinants of ideological positions or, in other words, the diachronic dimension of ideology. Himself an activist, Juris nevertheless maintains a degree of scepticism regarding some of the self-understandings prevalent among the participants of ‘anti-corporate globalization networks’. Pointing out that networking as organizational logic is a topic with long history in anarchist thought (Juris 2008: 10, 86), Juris questions the claim to radical innovation that is commonplace in discourses of contemporary activism. He emphasizes the ideological nature of the ‘cultural struggles’ over the strategies and forms of anti-corporate globalization movements (2008: 15, 17). More specifically, the ideological positions identified by Juris on the Catalan anti-corporate globalization scene (his major case study) include social democratic, socialist, Marxist, Trotskyist and anarchist currents; their distinct organizational preferences are in each case informed by ideological values that have themselves crystallized ‘not within abstract, undifferentiated global space but in the historically sedimented contours of concrete places’ (2008: 59–60, 63).

Paul Routledge and Andrew Cumbers also retreat from the tendency to see activist networks as transcending spatial and ideological constraints. Like Juris’s, their work acknowledges geographical and ideological ‘fissures and fault-lines’ dividing the ‘geographies of transnational solidarity’ (Routledge and Cumbers 2009: 2). It is likewise wary of the risk of taking the activists’ accounts of political action for granted. According to Routledge and Cumbers, such narratives ‘tend towards hyperbole and inflated rhetoric’ (2009: 17) and exaggerate the extent of ideological unity and normative coherence or, at least, the potential for transcending such differences in political practice. In their careful description of ‘a series of overlapping, interacting, competing, and differentially-placed and resourced networks’ (2009: 19), Routledge and Cumbers stress ‘the conflicting goals, ideologies and strategies of power that exist between the different participants’ (2009: 20, 37–8).

Several other accounts of contemporary transnational activism should be mentioned here. The argument presented by Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner raises further doubts about the capacity of the diverse currents of resistance to globalization to overcome ideological tensions between positions ranging ‘from the radically progressive to the reactionary and conservative’, and traceable back to classical debates involving intellectual titans like Karl Marx and Adam Smith among others (2007: 662). In their turn, Catherine Eschle and Bice Maiguashca identify the jagged ideological roots of the contemporary politics of global justice in the main ideologies of the left and in second-wave feminism (2010: 174–5). Heather Gautney likewise stresses continuities between the discourses of ‘alternative globalization’ and feminism, ecologism, anarchism, socialism and communism, and connects the debates pertaining to globalization today with those that raged a century ago over the impact of modernity (2010: 3, 7). Ideological differences among anti-WTO protesters in Seattle are also noted by James Mittelman in his excellent recent book (2010: 127), while Mark Rupert and M. Scott Solomon acknowledge the endurance of anarchism and Marxism, and ‘their love-hate relationship’, in the controversies dividing contemporary activists (2006: 69; see also El-Ojeil...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Globalization and Ideology: Mapping the Shifting Debate
• 2. Classical Liberalism: Globalization as the Logic of Freedom
• 3. Socialism: Globalization as the Fulfilment of History
• 4. National Populism and Fascism: Blood and Soil against Globalization
• 5. Anarchism and Ecologism: Alternative Localizations in a Comparative Perspective
• Conclusion: Crisis of Ideologies or Ideologies of Crisis?
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index