Australia in the Expanding Global Crisis

The Geopolitics of Racism

Erik Paul

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9789811522789
• eBook ISBN:
  9789811522796
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book is a study of the key components and contradictions of the escalating global crisis and their impact on modern Australia. It elaborates the damage being done to democracy, human rights, and the fabric of society. Racism is structured in the universality of the nation-state and capitalism in the 21st century. Racism is a process that discriminates and segregates the human species, creating major conflicts and antagonisms. It generates a global struggle for equality and social justice. The global crisis is energised by the contradiction between a global capitalism that is in effect totalitarian and the imperatives of economic growth driving every nation-state of the world. Racism is embodied in the emergence of a new imperialism to maintain Western global hegemony, a growing source of instability and violence in the world system, endangering the survival of humanity. The book advocates the promotion of full democratic participation in the struggle for social, political, and economic equality.

© The Author(s) 2020

E. PaulAustralia in the Expanding Global Crisishttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2279-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Emancipation and Genuine Democracy

Erik Paul¹

(1)

Department of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Erik Paul

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Emancipation is the ongoing struggle for social, political, and economic equality. It is conceived and mobilized as a major struggle against different forms of subjugation and exploitation, giving political expression to these struggles. The nation-state is the primary site for the struggle for social, economic, and political equality. Racism is deeply embedded in capitalism and nationalism, particularly when the state becomes imperialist. Democracy is a necessary condition for human progress. Both capitalism and nationalism impede democratization toward a genuine democracy and socialism. The evolution of imperial capitalism has undermined democracy in Australia and created a political culture obsessed with war. A reengagement of citizens in democratic politics requires that voters are confronted with the choice of real alternatives.

Keywords

RacismNation-stateDemocracyCrisisAustralia

End Abstract

Racism

The geopolitics of racism is embedded in capitalism and nationalism. The foundation of racism is structured in the universality of the nation-state and capitalism in the twenty-first century. Racism is a process that fragments and discriminates among the human species, creating major conflicts and antagonisms. It generates a global struggle for equality and social justice. Geopolitics highlights the nature and dynamics of racism as a broad process of discrimination and as a major mechanism in the segregation of the human species as it operates in nation-states and in their global relations. Racism is deeply structured in the existing crisis of the world order. The global crisis is energized in the contradictions of global capitalism that is in effect totalitarian in its global aspiration to economic and political power, an aspiring global state, and the imperatives of economic growth, driving every nation-state of the world. Racism is embodied in the emergence of a new imperialism to maintain global hegemony, a growing source of instability and violence in the world system, endangering the survival of humanity.

The foundation of racism is embedded in the universality of the nation-state of the twenty-first century. It derives from the partitioning of the earth by humans over time by war, including genocide. A nation-state is a form of enclosure by a population, claiming the sovereign right to possess the ground, often with a maritime domain, and defend it against all other people. Racism is also built in capitalism as a mode of production based on the construction of economic, social, and political inequality to produce wealth and capital. Nation-states’ politics for social, political, and economic equality are an ongoing struggle fought within and between each nation-state. Emancipation was a driving force in Karl Marx’s political philosophy and life against alienation in social relations (Schmied-Kowarzik 1998). Emancipation is scripted in the struggle for genuine democracy in movements for social, economic, and political equality fought between the left and the right of politics (Bobbio 2005).

The present global crisis is a recurring peak in a major struggle for emancipation against different forms of domination, giving political expression to these struggles. It continues to give substance to the great events of the past, marking the struggle of the human species to emancipate itself from different forms of subordination. Hannah Arendt’s life was given to recording her own confrontation with the reality of the suffering of others, testifying as a witness to the events of her time. Emancipation for Arendt was to be found in the struggle for equality of rights, an equality of human purpose as well as ‘another equality, expressed in the concept of one common origin’ of humans (Arendt 1976: 234). It was perverted by ‘[n]ationalism and its concept of a “national mission”, corrupting the idea of humanity’ (ibid). The bonding of nationalism and capitalism in a never-ending expansion and accumulation of power and capital, she argued, turned people against each other and could only lead ‘to the transformation of nations into races’ (ibid: 157). Both are inscribed in the existing hegemonic crisis among the great powers of the US, China, Russia, and the EU, and between the West and the rest of the world.

Political philosopher Chantal Mouffe’s analysis of the current crisis calls for a new left politics to ‘articulate the struggles about different forms of subordination attributing any a priori centrality to any of them’ (Mouffe 2018: 3). Domination and subordination are processes that deny the humanity and rights of others. In that sense, they constitute the broad practice of racism which discriminates against others. Sociologists Maxime Rodinson and Colette Guillaumin contended for the need of a broad definition of racism. Such a definition should take account of ‘all forms of exclusion and depreciation, whether or not they are accompanied by biological theories’. These are different mechanisms to racialize various social groups (Balibar 1991: 48). Mouffe and others have argued that the centrality of politics is the axis between the right and the left, and that these positions represent different hegemonic projects for the state. They need to be clarified and clearly exposed in their public and electoral contestation (Mouffe 2018; Bobbio 1991). Emancipation as the democratization of the state is an ongoing struggle articulated primarily between right-wing populism and left-wing populism for the control of the state, requiring political mobilization to regain control of the state from the right-wing hegemonic project in defense of equality and social justice.

Nation-State

The nation-state is the primary site for the struggle for social, economic, and political equality. The nation consists of the population prescribed the rights of nationality and habitation within the territorial sovereignty of the state, constituting civil society engaged in the struggle for emancipation. This struggle takes the form of a power contest within civil society between democratic and anti-democratic forces for the control of the state. Possession of the land and sovereignty over it and its population is vested in the state and power apparatus, including the government, police, military, courts and prisons, and bureaucracy. It makes the state all powerful with a monopoly over the means of violence and the sovereign rights to make laws about people’s rights, the extent of their participation in the control of their affairs, and what policy it should pursue about the economy and the people’s welfare and its relations with other states.

Democracy is a necessary condition for human progress, but only if democracy eventually leads to socialism. Democracy is widely viewed as an indication of the level of equality achieved by a country and as an established and authentic model of governance to be replicated elsewhere. But democracy does not exist as such. It is an ongoing struggle and therefore a process which moves back and forth toward a situation where a country is more or less democratic. Democratization is marked by substantial advances toward a more democratic society. Philosopher Chrysis Alexandros’ work on real democracy outlines Marx’s argument for citizens’ direct and active involvement in politics as a way of life. He rejects the separation between the individual and the state and the reduction of democracy to the state itself. True democracy, he argues, is ‘woven into the praxis of engaged solidaristic citizenship. The end of this kind of true democracy would be the flourishing and development of a free association of equals’ (Alexandros 2018: viii).

Genuine democracy is precluded by the capitalist mode of production and the appropriation of the surplus by a minority. Economist Richard Wolff confirms the absence of true democracy in the US, for example, in the absence of worker-controlled workplaces (Wolff 2013). Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin argue that:

Whether called socialism or not, today’s revived demands for social justice and genuine democracy could only be realized through a fundamental shift of political power, entailing fundamental changes in state as well as class structures. This would need to begin with turning the financial institutions that are the life-blood of global capitalism into public utilities that would facilitate, within each state, the democratization of the decisions that govern investment and employment. (Panitch and Gindin 2013: 340)

Socialism is a process of reclaiming the state apparatus and transforming it. Present-day democratic politics do not reflect sufficiently the reality of the antagonisms embedded in the plurality of society. In other words, the hegemonic order embedded in the center politics of the nation-state cannot further the emancipatory aspirations of society. What is needed to advance democracy is the expansion of the democratic struggle for equality and liberty to a wider range of social domestic and international relations (Laclau and Mouffe 2001: xv).

Democratization is a long march toward socialism. It means that the existing antagonisms in society will deepen and further undermine the cohesion of the social order. In contrast, the hegemonic neoliberal order will become more resistant to emancipatory demands and repressive in the maintenance of power. A genuine democracy entails social, economic, and political equality. It would require significant changes about how a surplus is created and distributed, bringing equality in the workplace. The democracy that socialism offers, argues Ellen Wood, ‘is one that is based on a reintegration of the “economy” into the political life of the community, which begins with its subordination to the democratic self-determination of the producers themselves’ (Wood 2016: 283). Karl Marx, Joseph Schumpeter, and Albert Einstein envisaged the eventual destruction of the capitalist society and the movement toward socialism (Elliott 1980; Einstein 1949).

Capitalism imposes major obstacles on the path toward a more authentic democracy. In the West, democracy is accepted as defining a form of governance which includes democratic practices ‘such as regular elections, parliamentary control of the executive, and the ability to organize politically, free from coercion by the state or forces within civil society’ (Pilon 2017: 1). Professor of politics Dennis Pilon writes that by 2010 the number of democracies had increased to 87 out of a planetary nation-state system of 193 countries. Pilon makes the point that the level of dissatisfaction in the West has sharply declined in recent years. At the same time the level of public involvement in elections, political party membership, and social movements ‘had declined precipitously’ (ibid). Neoliberal globalization is increasing inequality in the world, widening the democratic deficit in the West and highlighting the continuity of the struggle between democratic and anti-democratic forces (Stiglitz 2012; Stilwell 2019).

It indicates the existence of major blockages in the potential space for citizens to occupy to advance their demands for social, economic, and political equality. It also highlights the power of the dominant class to neutralize and control opposition to their rule as well as the weakness of movements for change and more generally support for socialism. Above all is the control of the state by a dominant class. The state is hegemonic in a Gramscian sense because it is managed by a ruling class, sharing a common mindset of ideas and worldviews. Political economist Ellen Wood’s research shows how capitalism imposes a determining limit on democracy by separating the political from the economic. She concludes that ‘political equality in capitalist democracy not only coexists with socio-economic inequality but leaves it fundamentally intact. Capitalism, then, made it possible to conceive of formal democracy as form of civic equality, which could coexist with social inequality and leave economic relations between “elite” and “labouring multitude” in place’ (Wood 2016: 213).

The nation-state continues to be a major battleground for the struggle for equality. Wherever it exists, democracy faces the power of anti-democratic forces to capture the state. Economist Alan Nasser explains the recent history of US capitalism in the long-term class warfare war waged by a dominant class in the 1970s to gain control of the state apparatus (Nasser 2018: 154–157). He choreographs the ‘silent coup’ and ‘a wall street take-over’, driven by the financial sector in the capture the state. He writes that both the Democratic and Republican parties ‘govern on behalf of the ruling financial oligarchy’ and that the neoliberal ideology and financialized policy have captured the policymakers of both major parties (ibid: 156–157). Nasser argues that capitalism and democracy are not compatible and says that ‘economic equality has never existed under capitalism and political democracy is in conspicuous decline’ (Nasser 2018: 225–226).

A decline of democratic politics in Western countries has accelerated in recent years. Political scientist Colin Crouch diagnosed the situation some years ago in his study on post-democracy to be caused by a ‘major imbalance now developing between the role of corporate interests and those of virtually all other groups. Taken alongside the inevitable entropy of democracy, this is leading to politics once again becoming an affair of closed elites,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Emancipation and Genuine Democracy
• 2. Racism as Nationalism and Capitalism
• 3. Australia’s Existential Crisis
• Back Matter