Constructivity and Destructivity in the Globalization, as a Background of the Problematic of Peace
Almanac: Globalistics and globalization studiesGlobal Transformations and Global Future.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is a transnational organization that has 15 member states and total population of about 280 million people. One of the aims of SADC, as founded in Article 5 of its Treaty, is to strive towards regional integration. SADC has adopted certain basic norms and standards in its Treaty, Charter on Fundamental Social Rights, and various protocols that are applicable to all citizens within SADC. In this paper the concept of a Transnational Legal Process (TLP) and regional labor standards are reviewed. Attention is given to the establishment and original aims of SADC. The SADC Charter is analyzed and the institutional architecture of SADC is discussed. The link between the ILO core conventions and the SADC Charter is also shown. The author argues that regional integration and a Transnational Labor Relations system within SADC is possible and that the SADC Charter and the ILO core conventions can be used as the basis of regional labor standards within SADC which in turn will lead to the achievement of social justice. The author also evaluates the link between regional integration as a SADC strategy and globalization and argues that regional integration is not necessarily regional globalization.
Keywords: Transnational Labor Relations (TNLR), social rights, labor rights, regional labor standards, international law, regional integration, globalization.
Introduction
Within international relationships, the specific imperial relations can be distinguished via the principle of the mutually guided competition or rivalry among the diverse actor-states in the framework of a paramount global cooperation. The attribute ‘imperial’ is neither a random nor a traditional description which connects with each other the phenomena of similar character in a timeless manner and without any further qualification.
In our context, ‘imperial’ means a specifically new relation and condition which are somewhat described in Huntington's Clash of Civilizations (Huntington 1996). One can also understand that current globalization can be characterized and treated not only through this relation, although its increasing importance can no longer be put into question especially somewhat after 2000. The visible validity, let alone the supremacy of the imperial discourse is also therefore an excellent perspective on globalization, because the basic vulnerabilities of globalization do not define at all its significance from the beginning; on the contrary, the relevance of the order of magnitude of the imperial discourse is itself equivalent with an attribute of the respective state of globalization.
Of course, the imperial dimensions can also change in the course of rapid development, partly in their absolute conditions, partly in their relations to other forms of the global discourse, that is to the perspectives, from which globalization can be interpreted and understood also independently. Since the actorial dimensions, that is the action space of the diverse protagonists in the global processes remain of high importance, this actorial freedom can also on its part increase, in a striking way, the order of magnitude of the imperial dimension amongst the other dimensions. In the context of the imperial dimension, a mixture of objective and subjective action spaces is thus arising, whose constant interweaving can be regarded as one of the major conditions of globalization.
The rapid changes in the imperial dimensions of the process of globalization are very characteristic of this event from the beginning. It goes so far, that during the first years after 1989, the imperial dimension has not been at all thematized publicly, the euphoria of the ‘end of the history’ promised a world where traditional imperial relations have become, as forever, obsolete. The conscious profiling of individual virtual or real global imperial actors is joining this starting situation, for finally the potential imperial role does not depend only on these actors' will.
The Natural Necessity of the Imperial Dimension in the Global Identity Formation, which should not Become Fate
Sometimes the introspection of the great global actors also means a search for identity. Thus, in the first decade of the new millennium China already belonged to the ‘empires’, this appurtenance revealed, however, as ‘virtual’, while the situation so quickly changed in the second decade, that now it costs China much effort to avert that impression, according to which the country would already be now the leading state of globalization (or one of the states willing to lead) or intend to become as such. Other categorizations can also remain unfixed, since the imperial major actors are by no means somewhat identical to the members of the leading international organizations. One can say that it should be possible to enter the first leading circle of the global states (in our consciously chosen formulation: ‘empires’) ‘through invitation’.
The First Line and the Second Line: Cooperation versus Competition
Our thought process is concerned with this new phenomenon of the competition among global ‘empires’. On the one hand, it bears repeating that it is about a competition which realizes as a secondary phenomenon and as a background for a multi-strata global cooperation in the first line (e.g., Sorokin 1928). But this phenomenon, also in the form of a competition of all against all, is revealing quite complex and multiple. We must again emphasize this rivalry, and at the same time we do not cast doubt on the validity of reality and relevance of the primary global cooperation. This competition of the second line often takes some asymmetrical forms. This general situation (global cooperation combined with principally comprehensive rivalry and multiple competition of all against all in the second line) is inextricably linked in our age with the reality of globalization.1 Every possible similarity to former world-historical or international relationships is basically misleading and actively prevents an easy comprehension of these relationships.
This competition of the second line is, in its true definitions, quite a new phenomenon. Conscious of this fact, our research approach might be selective since neither a temporal distance nor a sufficiently specific methodology is now available for a thorough study. Simultaneously, the pure existence of these rivalries in the second line already means a fundamental change in the experience and interpretation of war and peace, for this competition represents a permanent debate which can much more easily pass to a symbolic or limited war problematic, as it seemed still possible in the past.
First, we concentrate on the question to whose expense this struggle of the second line is led. Now we can generally take the thesis, transmitted to us by the historical tradition that as a rule, the burdens and costs of wars and crises are transferred to the ‘society’.
This rivalry on the second line results from conscious strategic reflections, that is from a decision, which can be certainly associated with this rivalry. It goes without saying that this decision is of crucial importance for our thought process. We can only develop and interpret this rivalry through facts. It follows, that we will have to deal with a huge number of facts.
Do we take again the universal global cooperation as a starting point (‘the first line’), it becomes then clear, why in the ‘second line’ this conflict can be conceived also as a war of a new type. This rivalry is not characterized by clashes of armed forces or frontal clashes. This rivalry is rather determined by the idea of a possible weakening of the opponent (some opponents, all opponents), would it be about a concrete but also symbolic or virtual weakening.
If this expression has a current sense, in this new context and terrain having to be compared with no former context, we should then say that these conflicts in the second line are oriented against the competitors' hinterland. This means, however, that the individual actors of the competition do not attack the other actors' elites or ruling class, rather their ‘hinterland’, or the everyday life and conditions of reproduction of those involved, also global ‘imperial’ participants.
Would it be effectively the case (while we do not consider the designation ‘hinterland’ as an optimal designation), then the first purely theoretical question is whether this phenomenon is distinguished from many similar phenomena of the world history, whether this phenomenon, which we have described as a rivalry and competition in the second line, is mainly a new phenomenon.
Our answer is that this phenomenon must be also then necessarily considered as a genuinely new phenomenon through the prism of the reality of globalization and also through relevant universal cooperation (the ‘first’ line), although many of its forms strongly remind similar phenomena from the former world history.
It is quite difficult to discuss the real empirical content of these conflicts. An economic success, changes in prices for raw materials, fluctuations at stock exchange and markets can improve an actor's positions at the expense of the other(s). These conflicts, we accept it now, do not disturb the global communication and cooperation (the ‘first line’), they are often not perceived as conflicts, while they can cause concrete and violent damages. Thus, this asymmetrical war is also simultaneously a silent war, whose victims or those damaged often do not know themselves whom they fell victim to.2
Would this assumption be right, the Wiki-leaks opportunities and finally, the Snowden case would be considered as anything but exceptional phenomena or even astonishments. In reverse order, it would be precisely a surprise, if the individual involved actors would not listen to each other in this context. What is so disappointing in the public opinions following these scandals, is not necessarily the visible information on the state of business as usual, but the indescribable lack of claim of the arguments accompanying the declarations, that undertake no attempt to associate this conflict in the second line with that of the first member of the cooperation. In these opinions, we fail to find where the contours of the new global world order would become visible, what we see is only the attitudes of a potential war of all against all, which were characteristic of the pre-global world. The Snowden case underlines our hypothesis, but not only in the assumption of the ‘normality’ of mutual listening. Also the ‘silent’ war appears here, for it was also a fact, that we assumed, maybe Snowden would have even also been kidnapped under the peaceful circumstances of the global international life.
Forms and Shapes of the Rivalry of the Second Line
The assumption of this ‘imperial’ actors' mutual rivalry can be extended to a somewhat modified vision also on weapons production and commerce. However, this also leads further into the experience that the global circumstances and relationships between politics and economy are changing again within a new context. For precisely the military sale (through its double rooting in the political and the economic spheres) must not be interpreted otherwise than as an element of this competition in the second line, even if it is carried out from ‘purely economic’ objectives. The supposed and hypothetical role of victim of the hinterland is again sharply realized in this context: if these guns are needed then this role is clear (for no population can be today kept away from these conflicts), if not, then (and we remain now only with this single consequence) the expenses on the arms are taken from other sections of the budget.
It is also similar with the concurrence of the representations! Events, such as the Olympics in China, winter Olympics in Russia or a football World Cup in Brazil, are certainly considered as rational steps (amongst the others) in the global actors' rivalry in the so-called second line of the international reality in the age of globalization. It is, however, just as clear, that the costs of these mega-events of global representations are ascribed to the account of the populations. These examples show also, that this competition of the second line reveals as a medium that can instrumentalize also events, emerging messages totally independent of their original meaning. We can confidently assume that if in Kuwait the civil population's discontent grows and is also manifested in the public declarations, this event can be admitted as a point of the mutual struggle between the global actors of imperial rank or is also just admitted.
The problem of the energy resources and energy supply represents, however, also a type of events, in which the decisive (intentionally guided) or random (spontaneous) actions could hardly be definitely distinguished from each other. In these domains, we can literally make no step without having influence also on other actors, and this alone, autopoietically brings the state of competition of the second member in the scene. This type also always shows publicly the everyday reality of this rivalry, which then enhanced through digitalization and information society's approaches, strengthens the impression of the already existing mutual global rivalry at the expense of the global cooperation.
In this mutual struggle some actors set certain limits which they decide to consider as pain threshold for the others! Thus, we can for example read in the Drone attacks that another imperial actor wants to avoid the Chinese airspace because it assumes that China would not be tolerant of.
Another aspect of the same dimension consists in the support to the civil, female and other social movements (social media!) on the sovereign territory of other imperial actors, in which some blurred borders of influence are also established. For us, this phenomenon is of particular importance since such steps and opinions can serve as indirect confirmation of our assumption.
Mass communication and mass culture have a very particular place in this very concretely conceived conflict of the global empires. Another important fundamental fact is that this rivalry of individual global protagonists takes place thousands of times.
The difficulty and simultaneously the theoretical interest of this domain consist in its extensive infinity, in its confusion, but also not less in the considerable asymmetry, that exists among the individual global players, while the American mass culture clearly influences the other great empires as it is the case in reverse order, even if this effect can also not be considered as unlimited or unilateral. An independent complex in this context is, that a mass culture does not only mediate the own and the other ‘world’, but in several genres also ‘works up’ and thematizes another world. On working up the essential problems of the other empire, several variations of interpretation can appear, every civilization is working on the fundamental problems of the other, like it was formerly the case in Charlie Chaplin's and Leslie Howard's films on the Third Reich or Andrzei Wajda's films on the Stalinism.
In sign of the universal rivalry of the individual civilizations, multiple and very strange phenomena can also outgrow from this problematic. This is manifested in an interesting way (as one of many phenomena) in the reaction to an American film presently shot about Che Guevara, in which it was affirmed, ‘the others relate our history’. There are, however, examples for that, which one global ‘empire’ calls into question the other ‘empire's’ right to exist, like it often happens in an astonishing way between the USA and Europe (e.g., America = Mars, Europe = Venus). In this labels some real dimensions of this mutual conflict of individual empires are also thematical, like for example in the matter of relationship between Europe and North-Africa, or in the discussion about the extent the EU interventions should support the individual member-states in other parts of the world.
Real Suffering Hinterlands
In this analysis, a point is also visible, which would be unnoticeable from another starting point. If it is really about the responsibilities of the ‘hinterland’ (we still keep so problematically this description), it becomes then soon evident, that this concept means something quite different in Europe in comparison with all other great global units. Europe's ‘base’ consists of individual nation-states which partly protect their sovereignty, partly have abandoned it. This known fact can become relevant in the new context of the competition between the global empires in the second line. If we remain at the level of damages, it is then already quite natural to expect, that they can be unevenly distributed only because of this fact. Here, we want to mention briefly the European policy in education and schooling, when the university shows itself (quite understandable) as a territory where the rivalry of individual great players (behind the comprehensive global cooperation) intensively goes on.
At this point, let us leave aside whether the European politics of higher education is meaningful or not (for us it is not). The chosen strategy in the conflict, however, undoubtedly revealed as a strategy whose disadvantages and losses are distributed unevenly among the individual states. This difference can also be generalized. In Europe, therefore, the negative consequences of the rivalry of the second line are probably unequally redistributed among the individual member-states!
New Rivalries and Old Ideologies
Today we deal with a new phenomenon of globalization which is in many ways similar to the traditional competition of great powers but still one should regard it as a new phenomenon because of the new basic characteristics of globalization. Now, we put the question, whether one can associate this rivalry with the phenomenon which we usually denote as a conflict, or as a rivalry of great philosophies of life, religions or ideologies or what just after the advent of globalization Samuel S. Huntington called ‘the clash of the civilizations’. It is obviously an attempt, and we proceed from the fact that the global empires' rivalry in the second line and the clash of civilizations have different motives and origins.
Huntington's concept, also as a self-fulfilling prophecy, plays an important role since today we must put just this very question of the rivalry relation between the global powers within large ideological or civilizational struggles. Huntington has reduced the very complex dimensions of the Modern Age to a fundamentalism as a basic world order.
If we think of the rivalry of the philosophies of life, religions and ideologies (practically of all what Huntington described as clash of civilizations), we would suddenly realize that only quite a few ideologies take part in this great competition. It is, however, not the case. In fact, there are many more ideologies in the globalized world, which are fighting each other and each of these ideologies has also a rich internal differentiation which also fights within certain ideology or religion.
The convincing impression that Huntington's Clash of Civilizations was a self-realizing prophecy (which in its way influenced the events) came mostly from the strange and somewhat fear-instilling experience that this ‘struggle’ came together with that situation when every ideology or philosophy of life ‘fundamentalized’ with consequences; in other words, every individual ideology gave rise to a more fundamentalist or the most fundamentalist variation.
The Pluralism of Fundamentalisms
Thus, fundamentalism entered a new phase of its history, which has also made necessary to develop a new history, a new sociology and also a new knowledge of the fundamentalism. The development occurred, which in a peculiar way had also moved individual philosophies of life or ideologies closer to each other. Simultaneously, some fundamentalist thought structures became so general, that larger groups and masses, in many countries and in many sociological circles, do no longer recognize exactly the fundamentalist color of their mode of thinking and just use the fundamentalism, like they applied formerly the constructive thought structures; now they even use the fundamentalist structures to solve actual problems.
We can recognize that both universal struggles (empires + civilizations) of the great global actors are today on the way to merge. In the conflict between two empires, the ideological and civilizational clash can easily manifest itself. The difference between communism and post-communism is not also made with sufficient care, while China is still classified sometimes communist, sometimes neo-liberal in these double-level becoming confrontations (in which the level of empire will be interconnected and so unified with the level of ideologies).
Also the eventual differences between America and Europe are already looking for ‘ideological’ marks, where one part must always stand above the other in ideological terms, even if the criteria of this civilizational superiority are absolutely relative and no longer show the unambiguity of the year 1989.
The imperial conflicts of the second line (behind the global cooperation which constitutes the first line) always adopt clear ideological-philosophical forms in any of their constitutions. This event clearly reminds (as it has been declared so reluctantly in this attempt) of a state that Huntington described in 1992 and 1993. These ideologies and these philosophies of life are adopting (as it has been pointed out) a generally ‘fundamentalist’ character which can be also explained in terms of this competition. It is almost alarming that this process represents the counter-movement toward the development after 1945, while formerly the individual ideologies/philosophies of life became always more differentiated and demanding. No doubt, this movement is also to explain with the rivalry of individual global empires, in which the leading ideologies anyway are often really very close to fundamentalism; it is, however, to explain also the decreasing role that the really independent intellectuals play in the process of formation of these ideological concepts.
Of course, one can hardly define at which stage this process of common growth of the imperial and ideological-philosophical competition stands; however, this tendency is already clearly visible today.
The Path to a New Dialectics of Fundamentalism
This common growth carries in itself two dangers which should be considered seriously. The first danger is apparently of purely intellectual nature. The correspondence and relation of an ‘empire’ with a ‘civilization/philosophy of life/religion’ represents such a striking (!) and amazing simplification of our hypercomplex post-modern world, which must be in itself identified, through the scale of this simplification, directly as the highest danger. This simplification is somewhat as if we would really think that the Roman Empire consisted of the Romans, who represented the civilization/philosophy of life/religion of the Roman Empire!
This extreme simplification has operated until present and will most probably endure in the future, also working as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The concrete orientation of this prophecy is already a negative and self-destructive one. If an ‘empire’ interprets the plural, multi-strata, modern reality of the other as fundamentalism, it follows then necessarily, that the own society considers itself also as fundamentalism, possibly emphasizes and supports in itself the own fundamentalist traits. From these virtual processes there often emerges a concept of the enemy. Two fundamentalistically shaped empires can perceive the others as ‘enemies’, depending on the intensity of formation of the concept of enemy in the own philosophy of life. Today no politician is to blame for the fact that within his fundamentalist basic ideology any other philosophy of life is considered an enemy; he is, so to speak, constrained to perceive the other as an enemy at a certain stage of the self-fulfilling prophecy.
Another consequence of this dangerous association of the rivalry between empires with the rivalry between ideologies consists in the easily understandable fact that the mechanisms of the positive feedback must work on this basis. The perception of this now doubled rivalry leads necessarily to the acceleration and intensification of conflicts among individual great actors. Under some circumstances, this process can become rather swift-flowing, to which we are not prepared and that possibly cannot be perceived in the normal everyday world. This doubling (if not political escalation) of the global rivalry is obviously also supported by many real processes.4 The unquestionable proportion of the real processes cannot mislead us about the fact that at the stage when this doubling (if not potentialization) of the rivalry is installing, the importance of the real moments to interpret the rationally decisively regresses. The own dynamics of the already fundamentistically colored doubled rivalry takes excessive proportions and can highly diminish the control on this development in certain circumstances.
In other words, it seems that in a positive feedback of the redoubled competition (on the level of empires and on the level of ‘civilizations’), the chances of the universal fundamentalists are always larger, for the solidarity, emancipation, individualization, information or human rights are hardly able to compete with a fundamentalist competition of ‘civilizations’ which could win at each concrete location already due to their scale and majority obtained in masses.
The doubled competition in the second line (always under the universal cooperation within globalization of the first line) can transform into the ideological war. The question remains whether this war runs today or not yet. It is, however, certain, that now the doubling of the rivalry already contains the danger of an ideological war of a new type. This danger brings a real risk of the launch of the civilizational struggle in the imperial rivalry which represents a critical, if not just an irreversible change.
The universal rivalry of global ‘empires’ (at the moment when the imperial dimension became dominant in the history of the globalization) is, after all, a part of the real normal science of politics, is rational to interpret and might be even also addressed as a trivial event. It is, therefore, of socio-ontological nature, whether we like it or not. The truly tragic consequences of the penetration of civilizational struggles consists in the fact, that the ideologies add new characteristics to the struggle of great empires, they make a new reality of this struggle and no longer controllable irrational world situation can arise from a politically and socio-ontologically ‘normal’ situation.
Forgotten Right-Wing Extremisms?
The mutual rivalry in the second line of globalization can engage new ‘double antagonisms’ through this link which proceeds within every great empire, a confrontation between ‘fundamentalism’ and ‘true democracy’ arises from these double positions, and sometimes also democratic or social elements are to be found in ‘fundamentalism’ and fundamentalist traits in a ‘true democracy’.
Apart from these new simplifications, we must here point out another problematic aspect: while in the ‘West’ the communism is the opposing fundamentalism Number One, in the fundamentalist ‘East’ (i.e. in certain empires, we count there), the liberalism is the enemy Number One.
The juxtaposition of both these ‘fundamental’ facts poses considerable dangers for the further development. For, the role distribution has the common trait, that neither in the ‘West’ (among the great actors concerned here), nor in the ‘East’ (among its great actors), the fundamentalism is the concept of enemy Number One, this contributes to another acceleration of the dynamics, if not of the dialectic of fundamentalism.
In this relation between the ‘West’ and the ‘East’, the West wanted mainly to influence with the attraction force of the occidental values, on the population of the East, and also to export democratic institutions. We cannot say that the endeavors have failed even these efforts were however highly hindered by the arising clash of civilizations, because they have been just fully politicized and even the clearest values of democracy and of emancipation could appear as imperial interests.
Conclusion
We came to the conclusion (temporary and in many ways quite hypothetical) that any fundamentalism is an organic component of the double global rivalry of the ‘empires’ that must act in the context of globalization. While elsewhere we have described globalization as the dialectic of modernity, we must distinguish the advance of fundamentalism (both in vertical and horizontal dimension) in this doubled rivalry as the dialectic of fundamentalism. It is precisely this dialectic of fundamentalism that appears on the scene also in the events in Syria, when we read that ‘like iron particles on the magnetic field, how the fighting groups are organizing on the confessional line’. It seems to us that this observation could characterize also many other situations within current globalization. An open confessional conflict or even a war would also bring an incalculable damage. This (global) confessional war (which is ultimately anything but confessional or civilizational) differs in nothing from the war of the crusaders.
That we previously focused on the confrontation between the ‘West’ and the ‘East’, does not at all mean that we have forgotten that there are quite a lot of ‘imperial’ and ‘civilizational’ conflicts. The effective reality is constituted precisely of a multiplicity of these conflicts.
In this ‘dialectic of fundamentalism’ (which, as noted above, is both temporary and hypothetical), we must emphasize the domain of ‘mutual affinities and attractions’ (Wahlverwandtschaften) between empires and ideologies. In the beginning of these processes, the individual empires try to find their own (old or new) civilizational ideologies, while the same movement can also proceed from the other end: the organizing civilizational ideologies (that can already exist at this stage also as independent institutions) also try to find their ‘own’ empire which will allow them to play an ‘exclusive’ role in this concrete area.
Has the ‘dialectic of the fundamentalism’ effectively somewhat advanced, it is then inevitable that the democracies would be disadvantaged in this competition. In other words, it is doubtful whether the attraction of democracy in a non-democratic society, or in a state of crisis, could rival the demagogy or aggressiveness of the well-organized fundamentalist pressure.
It seems to us that the assumption of Huntington's Clash of Civilizations was an historical error of the West, mainly of the USA, for the rapid identification with this conception (which in addition is intellectually poorly grounded) has prevented a more constructive, more communicative and, finally, more human development in the ‘global’ space of globalization; already the absence of another way must be considered today as a serious mistake.
The interpretation of terrorism is without any doubt a consequence of this politics. On the one hand, this approach hides the real state of affairs, at least in the sense, that this phenomenon is not justified by the doubling of imperial rivalries in the second line. Drawn from this context, the terrorism can already be multiply interpreted, even if these interpretations can also contain numerous reasonable ideas.
Thus, the terrorism has, on the one hand, immeasurably increased. On the other hand, the transformation of the so-called terrorism reveals also in a self-fulfilling prophecy, so that at the end we can hardly make the distinction between the ideological phantom and the reality, as it has been formerly the case with the Clash of Civilizations. The integration of the Clash of the Civilizations in the (almost obvious) rivalry of the empires within globalization can accelerate the conflicts in the globalization also thus unexpectedly and critically.
Thus, a huge mutation of fundamentalism can be realized. It is apparently the consequence, but in reality an unnecessary consequence of globalization itself, if not just its counterpart. It may no longer be called into question that this is a real danger.
References
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1 For the concrete link of this description of global international relationships with the theoretical interpretation of globalization see, e.g., Kiss 2003, 2010a, 2010b; Grinin 2009; Grinin and Korotayev 2010; Korotayev and de Munck 2013.
2 An interesting confirmation of this assumption of the mutual rivalry in the second line can be as follows: if inside the cooperating global structure of these imperial actors other coalitions are emerging, which feel themselves closer to each other than versus the others, for this consideration seems to have already taken into account the fact, that this rivalry causes damages to the others (with the closer approach, these can certainly be moderated).