NEW MYTHS FOR THE SOUTH - GLOBALIZATION AND THE CONFLICT BETWEEN PRIVATE POWER AND FREEDOM

The overall argument of this article is reasonably straightforward. My concern is with the way in which the broad changes in the global econ omy that have taken place since the decline of the Bretton Woods syste m in the late 1960s and early 1970s have helped to generate a range of what I would call 'new myths' about the world-system. The most import ant of these is the way in which freedom and its possibilities have be come synonymous with the transcendence and extension of a particular c onception of private power. The reach of these ideas, underpinned as t hey are by important structural changes in the global economy, represe nts one aspect of the qualitative transformation in the power of a cap italist world-system to produce, reproduce and transform itself over t ime and space.(2) As has frequently been observed in the literature on globalisation, the compression of global time and space that has been facilitated by technological developments in the postwar period has i ntensified the transmission of diverse ideas, practices and forms of s ocial, economic and political organisation.(3) Nonetheless, we need to be clear here that this does not mean that there is any simple or lin ear relationship between the transmission of these ideas and practices and either how they are received or whether they are even seen as leg itimate by the world's population. As we will see later, it is reasona bly clear that they do not have anything like universal legitimacy. My claim, then, is that these are real mechanisms and structures that re flect the power of prevailing social forces in the capitalist world-sy stem that have developed in the past 25 years. The revival of liberal conceptions of freedom has coincided with the restructuring of the glo bal economy that has taken place since the mid-1970s and has led to a widening of inequality across a whole range of indices, from wealth an d income to mortality and morbidity ratios.(4) This fact raises an ini tial contradiction for the new mythology of private power and freedom as this deepening inequality excludes those without the necessary soci al, economic and political power from either control over or consumpti on of the very products that capitalism is able to generate.(5) My mai n contention is that this restructuring of the world-economy and its a ttendant ideological entrenchment have served to bring about two subst antive changes in the world-system First, it has reinforced and sought to legitimise the diverse forms of exploitation and inequality in the world-system, the aforementioned inequalities of health, income, weal th and mortality, and so on. These inequalities, in turn, reflect the inequalities of social power felt by conflicting social forces and are essentially concerned with questions of class relations.(6) Second, i f we are to understand the social forces that have helped to generate these changes then we need to recognise that prevailing ideas as to wh at we mean by the terms 'North' and 'South' must be seriously revised. By this I mean that the types of objective indices by which we attemp t to measure inequality in its diverse social, political and economic forms have become increasingly synonymous with parts of what has conve ntionally been described as the North as well as the South.(7) Convers ely, specific parts of the South have become significantly wealthy and powerful and seem set to increase this power in the years ahead.(8) I f we map these inequalities globally, as well as nationally, we find t hat there are substantive grounds for redefining our understanding of North-South in the world-system.(9) Most crucial here, I would argue, is that these transformations reflect the ongoing production and reali gnment of class relations in the world-system, as transnational capita list institutions, actors and social and economic structures help to i ntensify the speed and dynamism of what is already a world-system. Hav ing established the boundaries of this article's concern with globalis ation, we can briefly set out what I take to be its general dynamic an d its broad implications for the world-system, before turning to the p owerful claims and contradictions of liberal conceptions of freedom an d private power.