Andrea Marie Nicole E.

Ravelo

2019-11662 September 4, 2019

Globalization and Political Strategy by Frederic Jameson

I. Analysis on Political Resistance towards Globalization

A. The author provides a Political-Marxist perspective on the subject matter.
B. There may be two ways to explore globalization this way.
1. The combination of all descriptions and making an inventory of their ambiguities.
2. Determining how the aforementioned analysis system is not helpful in determining
political resistance towards globalization.
C. Five Levels of Globalization
1. Technological
2. Political
3. Cultural
4. Economic
5. Social

II. The First Analysis System

A. Technological Level
1. Globalization defined and the new communication technology and information
revolution.
a. In consideration of the impact this brings on industrial production and
organization, and on marketing of goods as well.
2. Most perceive this dimension to be irreversible.
B. Political Level
1. The predominant arising concern is centered on the nation-state.
2. This concern is rooted from the deep fear is a new version of imperialism
spearheaded by the United States.
a. Spreading of power and influence of globalization = United States spreading
economic and military might
b. Weakening of nation-state = Subordination of other nations to American power
 c. We are at the third stage of imperialism wherein United States pursue:
i. Exclusivity on nuclear weapons
ii. American-style electoral democracy and human rights
iii. Limiting migration and free flow of labor
iv. Global propagation of free market
d. This form of imperialism will only primarily involve the United States who
would adopt the role of world’s policemen.
e. They will enforce their rule to other countries by selected interventions.
3. On the nation’s autonomy, this is an aspect which encompasses with culture and
economy; in which we arrive on nationalism.
a. United states depict nationalism to always be the act of resistance against
their globalization; in a way considering that their interests are universal.

C. Cultural Level
1. The standardization of world culture which drives out the local popular or
traditional forms.
a. This is another manifestation of the fear on United States replacing
everything.

2. In cultural terms only the fear is the destruction of ethno-national ways of life.

3. There is no clear indication whether there is a requirement for cultural-political

program.
4. All cultural politics apply a certain strategy of representation.
a. This pertains to the alternation of pride in affirmation of cultural group
strength and strategic demeaning of it.
b. This is done for political reasons which may be:
i. to foreground the heroic and embody forth stirring images of subaltern
heroism
ii. to arouse indignation, making the situation of the oppressed more
widely known and convert ruling class to the cause.
D. Economic Level
1. This level seems to have dissolved into the rest of the levels.
a. Technological: controlling new technology
b. Political: reinforcing geopolitical policies
c. Cultural: postmodernity
2. There is now a collapse of cultural to economic and economic to cultural.
a. Cultural to Economic: Economics has become a cultural matter.
i. Commodity production is now considered to be a cultural phenomenon.
ii. People buy products based on image and immediate use.
iii. The emergence of advertising which is an entire industry focused on
designing product image to generate sale.

iii.1. The principle of aesthetic production, erotization and seriality play

a major role in the consideration of appropriate advertising strategy

iii.2. People in this industry are considered to be Freudo-Marxists that

understand how libidinal investment is needed in enhancement of
their wares.

iv. Guy Debord: A society of images consumed aesthetically;

commodification is now also an anesthetization.

b. Economic to Cultural: Culture has now become an economic matter.

i. One fitting example is the entertainment business; one of United States’
most profitable exports.
ii. United States has made a massive effort since the end of Second World
War to secure dominance over foreign markets.

ii.1. They attempt to systematically batter down ‘cultural protectionism’;

enshrined in World Trade Organization and its effort to supersede
local laws with international statues that favor American
corporations.
 ii.2. This is especially in the aspects of intellectual property and national
sufficiency of food.

ii.3. Due to culture becoming economic, it results to setting of political

agenda of dictating policy.

3. The transnational corporations were the first sign of the new capitalist
development.

a. They raised political fears about the possibility of a new dual power; the
preponderance of these supranational giants over national governance.

b. This fear is related to the complicity of states with these business operations,
capacity to devastate national labor markets by transferring operations to
cheaper locations overseas.

4. The huge expansion of finance capital markets which is linked to the

simultaneities opened by new technologies.

a. This is without consideration with labor movement or industrial capacity

anymore; more on the aspect of capital itself.

b. The destructive speculation on foreign currencies signals the absolute

dependency to foreign capital by nation-states.

5. The instant transfer of capital may impoverish whole regions, draining

overnight the accumulated value from years of national labor.

6. The United States has resisted the strategy of introducing controls on the
international transfers of capital

a. They have played a leading role within International Money Fund (IMF).

i. It is an institution which has been considered to be the perpetrator of

neo-liberal attempts o impose free-market conditions on other countries
with the threat of investment fund withdrawal.

ii. Recently, it has reflected that the interest of United States and IMF have
not been absolutely identical.
 iii. These new global financial markets may yet evolve to have autonomous
mechanism; they would then be uncontrollable even from the most
powerful government.

E. Social Level
1. Globalization has brought about a mode of living which was coined by Sklair as
‘culture of consumption’
a. This was generated by late-capitalist commodity production that threatens to
consume alternative forms of everyday behavior in other cultures.
b. A matter examined as the point where economics encompasses over to the social
aspect as it is dealing with daily life.
c. The main inquiry is whether this practice is a signal to an end of all things we’ve
understood to be social at present.
d. This is in connection to older denunciations of individualism. atomization of
society, corrosion of traditional social groups.
2. This can be characterized as Gesellschaft versus Gemeinschaft.
a. The impersonal modern society undermining older families, clans, villages, and
other social ‘organic’ forms.
b. This goes to show that consumption then individualizes and atomizes; its logic
tears through the fabric of daily life.
c. The critique of commodity here parallels the traditional critique of money.

F. Irreversibility
1. One must note the presence of this concept on all five levels of globalization.
a. Technological: no return to simpler life
b. Political: imperialist domination
c. Cultural: extinction of local cultures; can be revived but in Disneyfied form
d. Economic and Social: Our own inability to conceive hoe delinking from world
economy could be feasible project
III. Author’s which influenced Jameson’s Analysis on Globalization
A. John Gray
1. He traces the effects of globalization while following Karl Polyani in his estimation
of the devastating consequences of any free-market, when fully implemented.
2. His work identifies the essential contradiction of free-market thinking.
a. The creation of any genuinely government-free market includes:
i. enormous government intervention
ii. increased centralization of government power
b. The free market does not grow by nature; it must be brought by decisive
legislative and other interventionist means.
i. Thatcherite experiment in Britain was a particular precise reference used
as representation of the present case.
ii. He drew two(2) conclusions from the aforementioned representation.\

ii.1. True cultural conservatism is incompatible with the free market

intervention.

ii.2. Democracy itself is not compatible of this as well.

c. An excellent solution is the neo-liberal theory; this is Gray’s fundamental

ideological target in his work.

i. To this idea, Jameson suggests that it is best viewed as a lesson in the

dynamics of discursive struggle.

ii. Gray’s sees that the neo-liberal ideology here is the powering free market
globalization to be specifically an American phenomenon.

d. Gray sees the US Doctrine as something that is not shred anywhere else in the
world; rehashes about the time when there was a popular reproach of
Eurocentrism.

i. The traditions of continental Europe had not always been open to the idea
of absolute free market values.
 ii. They tended to be of support towards the ‘social market’ which was all
about Welfare State and social democracy.

3. The growth of world economy does not start a universal civilization.

a. Instead, it allows the growth of indigenous types of capitalism
b. The creation of regimes that achieve modernity by renewing own cultural
traditions.
4. In this account, the global free market does not become cultural but ultimately,
social in nature.
5. The grimmest dystopia is in United States, due to:
a. drastic social immiseration
b. destruction of middle class
c. large-scale structural unemployment without welfare fallback
d. highest incarceration rates
e. devastated cities
f. disintegration of families
6. These realities of US all spring from atomization and destruction of the social;
leading them to be a terrible object lesson for the rest of the world.

B. Samuel Huntington
1. He is a fervent opponent of US claims to universalism and global police-style
military interventions; a new kind of isolationist.
2. He believes that what we may think as universal Western values are, in fact, not
rooted from eternal human nature; rather, a culturally specific constellation of
predominantly American values.
3. This type of Toynbee-like vision suggests that there are 8 presently existing
cultures.
a. The West
b. Russian Orthodox Christianity
c. Islam
d. Hinduism
e. Japan
 f. Chinese/Confucian tradition
g. African culture
h. Latin- American culture
i. In this case, social phenomena become characterized as ‘cultural
traditions’
4. In regard with the opposing argument of secularization, he believes that values
apparently survive the secularization process.
5. He also passively mentioned about Maw Weber’s thesis of Protestant work ethic
which identifies capitalism with a specific religious-cultural tradition.
6. The most astonishing feature is the absence of any form of serious economics;
truly political science of the most arid and specialized type.
a. All diplomatic and military clashes without any hint of economic dynamics.

C. Compare and Contrast: Gray and Huntington

1. In the aspect of cultural tradition,
a. Gray
i. He insists on variety of cultural tradition being noteworthy because of the
delineation of the many kinds of capitalism they could accommodate
ii. He sees it in terms of their capacities to bring forth modernity of varied
forms.
b. Huntington
i. He argues that plurality of cultures simply stands for the decentralized,
diplomatic, military jungle which the Western culture have to deal with.
ii. He delves in more on religious wars.
2. The discussion on globalization must definitely come to terms on the reality of
capitalism.

D. Jameson’s critique and interpretation of Gray’s perspective

1. He sees Gray’s celebration of the regimes that achieve modernity by renewing
their own culture.
 2. He hazards the notion that modernity id something used to cover up the lack of
any great collective social hope, after discrediting socialism; for capitalism has no
social goals.
3. The fundamental limitation to Gray’s thoughts is his forced use of the word in so
many strategic moments.
4. He sees that Gray’s program emphatically disdains any return to the old collective
projects; globalization, in the current sense, is irreversible
a. There was a repetition on communism being evil, social democracy is called
to be unviable, discursive struggle on breaking neo-liberal ideology’s
hegemonic power.
5. Markets cannot be self-regulating; without fundamental shift in the policies of US,
all reform proposals on global markets will be of no progress.
6. He says that Gray attributed the preconditions of the global free market to
irreversibility and technology.
a. Technology is a determining factor on social and economic policy.
b. ‘A truly global economy is being created by the worldwide spread of new
technologies; the main motor is the rapid diffusion of new, distance
abolishing information technologies”

IV. The Second Analysis System

A. This is a way to identify the aspects of globalization which have been isolated, targeted
and neglected.
1. Technological Level
a. The notion on evoking Luddite politics is of real merit due to the skepticism it
causes.
i. Awakening of deepest held convictions about technological irreversibility.
ii. The ecological critique and other various proposals such as the Tobin plan,
which aims to control capital flight and investment across national borders,
may be placed through this.
 b. Technological innovation can only be irreversible is in itself the greatest barrier
to any politics technology control.
c. The electronic exchange of information seems to have been central whenever
there were forms of political resistance against globalization.
2. Political Level
a. The concept of delinking from the pre-existing global system.
b. Partha Chatterjee shows that the nationalistic project is inseparable from
modernization of politics.
i. A nationalist impulse must always be a part of a larger politics that
transcends nationalism.
c. It has been clear that the very goal of national liberation has demonstrated
failure in its realization.
d. It’s necessary to distinguish between nationalism and US imperialism—
Gaullism.
i. This must be part of any self-respecting nationalism to not degenerate
into ‘ethnic conflict’
e. At present, the nation-state remains to be the only concrete terrain and
framework of political struggle.
i. The defense of the national suddenly becomes the defense of the welfare
state itself.
ii. This turns a national resistance to neo-liberalism; making the discursive
struggle evident between the claims of the particular and universal.
iii. This is perhaps the deeper and philosophical reason why the struggle
against globalization cannot be done successfully in pure national or
nationalistic terms.
3. Cultural Level
a. This can be a powerful negative program; it ensures the articulation and
foregrounding of all visible and invisible forms of cultural imperialism.
b. The deeper and more intangible effects of globalization on daily life are the
ones which are most dramatically seen.
 c. The problem is ‘daily life’ is very difficult to represent; the positive substance
of what is being defended tends to be reduced into mere anthropological tics
and oddities.
d. It is the mere notion of tradition that id being questioned.
e. The best measure to test the various forms of resistance from the West is their
capability to neutralize or transform this particular mode of exploitation.
f. The grounding of any religious form of political resistance to an actual existing
community is their concrete power.
4. Economic and Social Level
a. Any purely economic proposal for resistance must be accompanied with a shift
of attention from economical to social.
i. This is due to social cohesions are necessarily indispensable precondition
for any effective and long-lasting political struggle.
b. The preservation of the collective over and against the atomized and
individualistic can be forged in struggle.
c. We must identify social collectivity as the crucial center of any form of true
innovative and progressive political response to globalization.