Korean Workers and Neoliberal Globalization

Kevin Gray

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134112319
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Labour & Industrial Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

One of the most remarkable aspects of South Korea's transition from impoverished post-colonial nation to fully-fledged industrialized democracy has been the growth of its independent and dynamic labour movement. Korean Workers and Neoliberal Globalisation examines current trends and transformations within the Korean labour movement since the 1990s.

It has been a common assumption that the 'third wave' of democratisation, the end of the Cold War, and the spread of neoliberal globalisation in the latter part of the 20th century have helped to create an environment in which organised labour is better placed to overcome bureaucratic national unionism and transform itself into a potential counter-globalisation movement. However, Kevin Gray argues that despite the apparent continued phenomena of labour militancy and the rhetoric of anti-neoliberalism, the mainstream independent labour movement in Korea has become increasingly institutionalised and bureaucratised into the new capitalist democracy. This process is demonstrated by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions' experience of participation in various forms of policy making forums. Gray suggests that as a result, the KCTU has failed to mount an effective challenge against processes of neoliberal restructuring and concomitant social polarisation.

The Korean experience provides an excellent case study for understanding the relationship between organised labour and globalisation. Korean Workers and Neoliberal Globalisation will appeal to students and scholars of Korean studies and International Political Economy, as well as Asian politics and economics.

1 Neoliberal globalization, labour, and resistance

Several events in the past quarter of a century have led to a renewed interest in organized labour’s potential to facilitate transformation in the contemporary world order. It has been argued that the decline of the Keynesian Welfare State in the core and the end of national developmentalism in the periphery alongside the global rise of neoliberalism have led to the emergence of more dynamic and oppositional labour movements. The end of the Cold War and the increased globalization of production have led to new possibilities and imperatives for a global labour movement and, indeed, it is becoming increasingly apparent that to ignore the agency of labour is to ignore an important source of change in the global political economy (O’Brien 1999:45). These developments also add a certain urgency to calls made to join the discipline of Industrial Relations with that of International Relations/International Political Economy (Harrod 1997, Haworth and Hughes 2003). The aim of this chapter will be to examine some of the key theoretical issues at stake in pursuing this aim.

Neo-Gramscian theory in international political economy

Robert Cox’s Gramscian approach to the study of social forces and globalization is particularly apt for examining questions of labour as agency. Cox’s approach theorizes the relationship between social forces centred on a mode of production, forms of states, and world orders. It recognizes that these relationships are bi-directional, but that at each of these spheres of activity there is a dialectical relationship at play with historical structures. In keeping with its historical materialist basis, Cox’s theory recognizes that it is the mode of production that serves as the basis for all social relations. He avoids reductionism and determinism, however, by recognizing that theoretically, the relationships between social relations of production, forms of states, and world orders can run in either direction. The actions that social forces make may be constrained by a hegemonic historical structure, consisting of material capabilities, institutions and ideas. Material capabilities include technological and organizational capabilities, natural resources, wealth, armaments, etc. Institutions are the means by which the historical structure stabilizes and perpetuates itself and provides the anchor for hegemony. Ideas include inter-subjective understandings that are commonly accepted by society as a whole. Historical structures apply at the levels of social relations of production, forms of state, and world order. They are not actors in themselves, and do not determine actions in any direct, mechanical way but impose pressures and constraints. Social forces may move with the pressures or resist and oppose them, but they cannot ignore them. When they do resist a prevailing historical structure, they buttress their actions with an alternative, emerging configuration of forces (i.e. a rival historical structure) (Cox 1981:135–141).

Given that Cox’s framework provides the tools with which to examine social relations of production, forms of states and world orders without recourse to teleology or reductionism, it is now possible to examine what is meant by the terms ‘globalization’ and ‘neoliberalism’. To talk of ‘neoliberal globalization’ rather than simply ‘globalization’ is to be clearer about the nature of the contemporary epoch and to recognize that there has been a transition from the era of ‘embedded liberalism’ (Ruggie 1982). Following Cox’s concept of historical structures, neoliberalism refers to not only a phase of history in which it is possible to talk of a neoliberal world order, but also to a form of social relations of production that is prevalent in this phase of history, and to an ideology that seeks to legitimize and promote those social relations of production, forms of state, and world orders.

As a phase of history, neoliberalism has its roots in the world economic slowdown beginning in the 1970s and the consequent crisis of overproduction and declining profits. This slowdown has provided the impetus for greater economic integration and the accompanying ever further spread of capitalist relations and increased commodification (Harvey 2005). Central to the neoliberal phase of history is the neoliberalization of production that seeks to ‘increase the rate of returns to investment’. Karl Marx recognized the inherent crisis tendency in the capitalist mode of production, and understood the factors that could slow down the tendency of the rate of profits to fall as: increased exploitation of labour; the cheapening of constant capital; and increased foreign trade (Marx 1995:447–457). These strategies have all been a central part of neoliberal policies. Increased exploitation and alienation of labour have been achieved through a new era of post-Fordist industrial relations in which the status of workers is downgraded and subordinated to the imperatives of increasingly internationalized production processes. Kim Moody refers to neoliberal production as ‘lean production’, which in practice often has meant further alienation and exploitation achieved by ‘management-by-stress’ to bring about the ‘intensification of labour’, or in other words, getting more work out of less workers through innovation of production processes. The so-called ‘worker empowerment’ that is often lauded by the promoters of ‘lean production’ is often limited in its application to simply requiring workers to make information about work processes available to management in order to facilitate greater levels of efficiency and exploitation (Moody 1997:85–94).

The further extension of capitalist social relations that neoliberalism promotes comes about at the expense of welfare and social goals. Stephen Gill calls this ‘oligopolistic neoliberalism’: oligopoly and protection for the strong and a socialization of their risks, and market discipline for the weak (Gill 1995:405). Labour in particular has been increasingly subjected to market discipline, as governments have abolished legal restrictions designed to protect workers’ job security in the face of the dictates of the new economic climate. Business has sought to downgrade the status and security of workers through greater use of traditionally unprotected temporary and part-time workers. This has included, for example, the increased use of subcontractors, which allows companies to have more flexibility in laying off workers in response to changes in the economic climate (Moody 1997:96–98).

Recognition of the ideological component of the present neoliberal historical structure denies an understanding of globalization as simply an inevitable process that occurs regardless of human actions, or as a historical or theoretical given (Amoore et al. 2000a). Neoliberal ideology has served to champion this intensification of labour and loss of job security. ‘Openness’, ‘flexibility’, ‘globalization’, and ‘competitiveness’ are the new sacrosanct principles of the neoliberal era, and have, in neo-Gramscian terms, become an integral part of the neoliberal historical structure. Neoliberal ideology has also served to legitimize the state’s retreat from provision of extensive social welfare, thus shifting the risks associated with global capitalism onto the world’s working classes.

Given the strong ideological component of contemporary neoliberalism, it is also necessary to mention briefly what it means concretely to talk of the neoliberal form of state, since this is a contentious issue. An integral component of neoliberal ideology is the view of the neoliberal state as being ‘powerless’ or ‘minimal’. However, in the present neoliberal world order, there is still considerable scope for variation in state forms. Jessop (1994) argues that in the present epoch states can take the form of not only neoliberal non-interventionism, but also neo-developmentalism and neo-statism. Even those states typically referred to as ‘neoliberal’, such as the US and UK governments, are far from non-interventionist. I refer to the ‘neoliberal state’ as implying not necessarily a state that has retreated from economic management and intervention, but on the contrary, one that has become more proactive, even instrumental, in creating an environment conducive to accumulation by transnational capital (Cox 1981:148).

The ‘neoliberal state’ is one that seeks to actively disembed economic liberalism from society. It abandons policies aimed at Keynesian macro-economic demand management and the development and maintenance of strategic industries via industrial policy in favour of the pursuit of ‘competitive advantage’ in the global economy. Welfare aims of full employment, redistributive transfer payments and social provision are relegated in importance and attainability to the promotion of enterprise, innovation and profitability. This process has also occurred through the ‘stick and carrot’ policies of international economic institutions that make up part of the surveillance mechanism set up under US hegemony (Cox 1981:145).

Despite ostensible convergence of state forms under neoliberal globalization, the means by which this has occurred has differed between the global North and the global South. A key development in the global South, or more precisely the semi-periphery (Korzeniewicz and Awbrey 1992), has been the ‘third-wave of democratization’ at the latter end of the twentieth century (Huntington 1991). However, this should not be understood as part of a worldwide movement towards liberal democracy, but rather as a ‘double transition’ towards both democratization and neoliberal globalization (Gills and Gills 1999). In the non-Communist global South, democratization had its immediate origins in domestic popular struggles. However, the worldwide transition towards a nominal or formal democracy took place in the wider context of a shift in US foreign policy that resulted from the late twentieth century crisis of capital accumulation and an accompanying perceived crisis of US global hegemony. The threat to military authoritarianism posed by the popular struggles of the 1980s and 1990s led the US to shift its support from increasingly illegitimate anti-communist authoritarianism to these new emerging formally democratic political systems. However, US and Western support for democratization in the Third World has usually been conditional upon accepting neoliberal economic and social policies and IMF structural adjustment programmes. In order to facilitate the extended reach of global capital, newly democratic governments still retain their coercive function and capacity to repress social forces, in particular the working class, in order to legitimize itself from the point of view of international and, perhaps to a lesser extent, domestic capital. As such, the nominally democratic nature of the neoliberal state serves to obfuscate the reality of continued authoritarianism, repression and engrained conservatism. The difference with overt authoritarianism is that the neoliberal state’s status as a formal democracy allows it to better legitimize the subjugation of the national economy to the global economy (Gills et al. 1993).

Resistance and global civil society

The pernicious social effects of global neoliberal restructuring combined with the constrained nature of the ‘third-wave’ of democracy raises the question of how resistance is conceptualized. A key neo-Gramscian argument is that the decline of the historical bloc’s hegemonic nature creates the conditions for resistance in the form of a counter-hegemonic movement. Cox follows Gramsci in viewing civil society as both the space in which the coercive apparatus of the state sustains the educational and ideological agencies which shape morals and culture, and as a space in which contemporary historical structures can be challenged. With regard to the present era, Cox asks the questions of what mechanisms exist for maintaining hegemony in this particular historical structure, and what social forces and/or forms of state have been generated within it which could oppose and ultimately bring about a transformation of that structure. Cox’s framework provides the ontological tools to argue that the internationalization of production and internationalization of the state under a neoliberal order has led to the emergence of a nascent global civil society (GCS) (Cox 1981:147–151, Cox 1999).

Before examining the specifically Gramscian conception of civil society, it is necessary to critically examine the more common liberalist conception of GCS, which has become something of a ‘hegemonic’ concept in terms of examining social resistance to neoliberal globalization. Global Civil Society has been referred to as an autonomous space separate from the constructed boundaries of the state system that allows for the construction of new political spaces. Lipschutz (1992) argues that GCS is a space occupied by the conscious association of actors, in physically separated locations, who link themselves together in networks for political and social purposes. Thus, GCS has its origins in the decline of anarchy amongst states, and a change in the ‘operating system’ of global politics to ‘liberalism with the individual at the core’, which has made possible a new global social consciousness and has enabled new forms of non-state global political activity. It is also argued that the emergence of GCS has been encouraged by the decline in state legitimacy and a growing reliance on civil society to find other ways of fulfilling the welfare function, or as Lipschutz (1992) puts it, ‘increasing state incompetence amidst growing social competence’.

It can be seen, therefore, that in contrast to the Hegelian-Marxist view of civil society as a competitive area in which isolated and alienated individuals pursue selfish interests (Sassoon 1991:82–83), GCS is considered by many international organizations and academic commentators to be ‘a force for good’ that struggles against ‘the bad of the state and capital’. Its constituents include the associations and movements of labour, women, environmentalists and other ‘good’ causes (Amoore and Langley 2004:95–96). It is assumed that the conditions exist for a unity of value-orientations amongst the various constituents of global civil society (Pasha and Blaney 1998). In this liberal conception, globalization is understood as a dichotomous process with two constituent elements: ‘globalization from above’ and ‘globalization from below’. Whilst ‘globalization from above’ refers to a world citizenship of global elites (Falk 1995),

Globalization-from-below represents an overall effort to moderate market logic by reference to the following values embodied in a ‘normative democracy’, a view of democracy that takes account of the emergence of global village realities: consent of affected peoples; rule of law in all arenas of decision; human rights; effective modes of participation; accountability; support for public goods to address basic needs; transparency; and non-violence as a principle of public order.

(Falk 1998)

No one can doubt that in the last few years, we have seen the rise of a number of movements, or a single movement as the proponents of ‘globalization from below’ would have it, that appear to transcend national contexts and vent their grievances at the level of the international institutions of global neoliberal governance. However, as Ian Clark argues, two broad streams can be further identified within ‘globalization from below’ and what is commonly referred to as ‘resistance’ to the present system of global governance. The first takes the form of a ‘loyal’ opposition that accepts the basic principles of the system and advocates alternative policies within it. The second stream tends towards radical anti-capitalism and rejects the present forms of global governance as the ‘new imperialism’, and seeks to achieve an alternative system. It is, of course, very difficult to deploy such categories empirically: civil society is by no means wholly excluded from the system of global governance, but is instead selectively co-opted into it. Furthermore, movements that claim to be driven by radical opposition and rejectionism can unwittingly contribute to the upkeep of the order they claim to oppose (Clark 2003:76–79).¹

These difficulties remind us of the fact that ‘resistance’ itself is a complex and often contradictory phenomenon. If GCS is to be understood as a site of ‘resistance’ to neoliberal globalization, then it should not be represented as a combination of mutually-compatible normative wish lists and empirical claims. The myriad concrete practices of individuals and organizations claiming to ‘resist’ are, of course, far more complex. Whilst historical sites of civil society uprising may include labour unions, educational institutions, the media, and religious organizations, all are potentially institutions of exclusion, control and the exercise of hegemony. ‘The politics of GCS is, thus, running with contradictions, and constantly in flux – a movement that is not always in the direction of emancipatory “civility”’ (Amoore and Langley 2004:105).

The opaque boundary between ‘domination’ and ‘resistance’ is apparent in the argument that the role and legitimacy conferred on NGOs, as a newly essential part of the private sector, is a feature of neoliberal globalization. International organizations actively promote the role of NGOs in order to restrain the role of the state and erode its legitimacy. They increase the pressure on the state to open up to both external intrusions in the form of foreign capital and domestic collaboration with such capital (Kothari 1997:232). Certainly, this raises questions over what it means to say that key international institutions are beginning to become more ‘democratic’ and ‘accountable’ due to pressure by NGOs and social movements (O’Brien et al. 2000). The use of the term ‘democracy’ to describe the participation of NGOs in international organizations is little more than rhetoric. Such participation cannot be democratic in terms of a voting system, since there can be no objective standard by which to judge an NGO’s qualifications for inclusion or exclusion, and because anybody with sufficient resources can establish an NGO (Monbiot 2004:78–82).

Despite the fact that GCS is often lauded as a force for democracy, the internal workings of many NGOs are decidedly undemocratic. Many do not confer any opportunity for participation beyond the payment of subscriptions, and policy making within civic organizations can be far from transparent to outsiders. Leadership is often self-selecting, which suggests problems with accountability and potential conflicts of interest. Furthermore, if the welfare functions of the state are increasingly being passed onto NGOs, those affected should be allowed access and opportunities for participation, rather than the biased access which tends to reflect structural inequalities with regard to class, gender, nationality and race (Scholte 2000:194–195). In addition, structural inequalities within the international political economy at large have a tendency to reproduce themselves within GCS. Whilst some appear to celebrate the state’s replacement with the dominance of NGOs, this could represent a further concentration of political influence by Western societies, and the former principle of the UN of ‘representation’ of all states may be replaced by the principle of lobbying by predominantly Western NGOs (Baker 2002:937).

Indeed, for a concept that seeks to derive its legitimacy from its universal nature, radical ‘globalization-from-below’ perspectives of GCS have particularly Western origins. The concept of GCS has its origins in the post-1968 ‘new left’, the Eastern European ‘oppositionists’, as well as the Seattle protests (Chandler 2004:315). Mary Kaldor, a leading theorist of GCS, argues for example, that the conception of ‘civil society’ that formed the basis for GCS was developed by Eastern European dissidents who emphasized self-organization and civic autonomy in reaction to the vast increase in the reach of the modern state. The creation of ‘independent spaces’, in which individuals can act according to their consciences in the face of powerful influences from the state on culture and ideology, was envisaged as a long-term strategy for political and social transformation. This was then taken up by certain Western radicals who saw civil society as a check both on the power of the arbitrary state and on the power of unbridled capitalism (Kaldor 2003:21).

David Chandler argues that it was the particular social isolation of the East European dissidents that largely determined their approach of individual dissent. Their ‘anti-politi...