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Globalisation and resistance: struggles over commonsense in the global political economy

MATTHEW STEPHEN

Review of International Studies / Volume 37 / Issue 01 / January 2011, pp 209 - 228DOI: 10.1017/S0260210510001142, Published online: 12 October 2010

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0260210510001142

How to cite this article:MATTHEW STEPHEN (2011). Globalisation and resistance: struggles over common sense inthe global political economy. Review of International Studies, 37, pp 209-228 doi:10.1017/S0260210510001142

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Globalisation and resistance: struggles overcommon sense in the global politicaleconomyMATTHEW STEPHEN*

Abstract. This article develops and applies the role of ‘common sense’ in a Gramsciantheory of transnational counter-hegemony. Building on recent interpretative literature on thealter-globalisation movement, it applies this framework to then evaluate empirically theimpact of the alter-globalisation movement on the realm of global ‘common sense’understandings of the world in the period 2002 to 2007. It shows that there is little empiricalsupport for the notion that the alter-globalisation movement effected a legitimation crisis forneo-liberalism as a hegemonic project on a global scale. Instead, a more ambivalent andpotentially reactionary situation amongst collectively held norms is revealed. This indicatesthe shortcomings of the alter-globalisation movement as a coalition of social forces capableof mounting an ideological attack on neo-liberalism and forging a new intellectual-moralbloc.

Matthew Stephen is currently a doctoral candidate at the Berlin Graduate School forTransnational Studies, and is based at the Social Science Research Centre, Berlin. He haspublished on the anti-war and alter-globalisation movements, and is currently investigatingthe responses of key Southern regional powers to globalisation.

Introduction

Many neo-Gramscian authors have been criticised for neglecting articulations ofresistance to globalising capital in the current era.1 The neo-Gramscian concern forcounter-hegemonic tendencies has been described as merely ‘lip service’,2 and for

* The article presented here has benefited from the helpful feedback of the three anonymous reviewers,and I would also like to thank Philip Nel for ongoing encouragement and intellectual engagement.The financial help of a University of Otago Postgraduate Publishing Bursary is gratefullyacknowledged.

1 For the politics and tribulations of naming and ‘school’ formation, see Adam David Morton, ‘TheSociology of Theorising and Neo-Gramscian Perspectives: The Problems of “School” Formation inIPE’, in Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton (eds), Social Forces in the Making of the NewEurope (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 25–43; Stephen Gill, ‘Gramsci and Global Politics:Towards a Post-Hegemonic Research Agenda’, in Stephen Gill (ed.), Gramsci, Historical Materialismand International Relations, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 1–18; and RobertCox, The Political Economy of a Plural World, with Michael Schechter (London: Routledge, 2002),pp. 26–9.

2 Alejandro Colás, International Civil Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002), p. 16.

Review of International Studies (2011), 37, 209–228 � 2010 British International Studies Associationdoi:10.1017/S0260210510001142 First published online 12 Oct 2010

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depicting the world economy as ‘a place of absolute, unilateral power’.3 Similarly,it has been argued that counter-movements are either neglected or seen as‘overwhelmed by the power of global capital’.4 In fact, it is not hard to find similarcriticisms amongst neo-Gramscian scholars themselves.5 This is despite theparticular importance that Robert Cox, the first to apply Gramsci’s concepts to thestudy of International Relations, attaches to resistance to globalisation.6

However, increasing attention has begun to be paid, particularly since the riseto prominence of a heterogeneous ‘alter-globalisation movement’,7 to cases ofresistance in the global political economy. Early attempts in this direction wereundertaken by Mark Rupert, Stephen Gill and Adam David Morton.8 Morerecently, a spate of attempts to overcome the under-investigation of articulationsof opposition to globalising capital have been made. Examinations have been madeof the relationship between traditional organised labour and the ‘new’ socialmovements that coalesced at the European Social Forum in Florence in November2002,9 the counter-hegemonic potential of the social movement organisationATTAC,10 the prospects of anti-war activism inside the US,11 and the nature of theanarchist strain and influence of the ‘alter-globalisation movement’.12 Meanwhile,

3 André Drainville, Contesting Globalization (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 29.4 John M. Hobson, ‘Is Critical Theory Always For the White West and For Western Imperialism?

Beyond Westphilian [sic] Towards a post-Racist Critical IR’, Review of International Studies, 33(2007), pp. 91–116, at p. 93; see also, Gerard Strange, ‘Globalisation, Regionalism and LabourInterests in the New International Political Economy’, New Political Economy, 7:3 (2002),pp. 343–65.

5 Stephen Gill and David Law, ‘Global Hegemony and Structural Power of Capital’, in Stephen Gill(ed.), Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1993), pp. 93–124, at p. 123; Mark Rupert, Producing Hegemony (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1995), p. 207; Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton, ‘A Critical Theory Routeto Hegemony, World Order and Historical Change: Neo-Gramscian Perspectives in InternationalRelations’, Capital and Class, 82 (2004), pp. 85–113, at p. 103; Andreas Bieler, ‘Class Struggle Overthe EU Model of Capitalism’, in Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton (eds), Images of Gramsci(London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 119–32, at p. 128.

6 Cox, Political Economy of a Plural World, p. 42.7 Often referred to as the ‘anti-globalisation movement’, I use here an appellation that seems to have

taken favour in recent years and doesn’t cause anyone serious offence.8 Mark Rupert, Ideologies of Globalization: Contending visions of a New World Order (London:

Routledge, 2000); Stephen Gill, ‘Toward a Postmodern Prince? The Battle in Seattle as a Momentin the New Politics of Globalisation’, Millennium, 29:1 (2000), pp. 131–40; Adam David Morton,‘“La Resurreccion del Maiz”: Globalisation, Resistance and the Zapatistas’ Millennium, 31:1 (2002),pp. 27–54; Adam David Morton, ‘Structural Change and Neoliberalism in Mexico: “PassiveRevolution” in the Global Political Economy’, Third World Quarterly, 24:4 (2003), pp. 631–53.

9 Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton, ‘Another Europe is Possible? Labour and SocialMovements at the European Social Forum’, Globalizations, 1:2 (2004), pp. 305–27; Andreas Bielerand Adam David Morton, ‘Class Formation, Resistance and the Transnational’, in Andreas Bieleret al., Global Restructuring: State, Capital and Labour (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2006), pp. 196–206.

10 Vicki Birchfield and Annette Freyberg-Inan, ‘Constructing Opposition in the Age of Globalization:The Potential of ATTAC’, Globalizations, 1:2 (2004), pp. 278–304; Vicki Birchfield and AnnetteFreyberg-Inan, ‘Organic Intellectuals and Counter-Hegemonic Politics in the Age of Globalisation’,in Catherine Eschle and Bice Maiguashca (eds), Critical Theories, International Relations and ‘theAnti-Globalisation Movement’ (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 154–73.

11 Mark Rupert, ‘In the Belly of the Beast: Resisting Globalisation and War in a Neo-ImperialMoment’, in Catherine Eschle and Bice Maiguashca (eds), Critical Theories, International Relationsand ‘the Anti-Globalisation Movement’ (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 36–52.

12 Mark Rupert, ‘Anticapitalist Convergence? Anarchism, Socialism, and the Global Justice Move-ment’, in Manfred B. Steger (ed.), Rethinking Globalism (Lanham, USA: Rowman and Littlefield,2004), pp. 121–35.

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critical attention has also been directed to neo-Gramscian treatments of trans-border activist agency,13 and more sceptical assessments of the Social Forumprocess and Stephen Gill’s ‘postmodern Prince’ have been advanced.14

Much of the attention directed to sources of resistance has focussed on thediverse and heterogeneous ensemble of groups marshalled under the rubric of the‘alter-globalisation movement’. So far, neo-Gramscian assessments have varied.Mark Rupert’s analysis of anti-war mobilisations inside the US ends by gloomilylooking to the long-run,15 while Stephen Gill is yet to repent his enthusiasm in themonths after the Seattle protests and later.16 Andreas Bieler and Adam DavidMorton’s study of the 2002 European Social Forum concluded with cautiousoptimism.17 Craig Murphy’s conclusions have been accurately described as agnosticon this point,18 while Robert Cox is similarly tentative.19 For Gill, the movementapproximates an incipient ‘postmodern Prince’, after Gramsci’s vision for arevolutionary organism modelled on the Jacobin functions of Machiavelli’s Prince.At a perhaps more optimistic time Gill claimed that ‘the recent protests in Seattleand the meetings in Porto Alegre have begun to demonstrate a counterhegemonicand planetary challenge to capital’,20 something which could develop into a newform of political agency ‘giving a coherence to an open-ended, plural, inclusive,and flexible form of politics and thus create alternatives to neoliberal globalisa-tion’.21 Meanwhile, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have seen what they referto as the ‘globalisation movements’ as, ‘[a]long with the most progressivegovernments of the global south’, ‘the most promising existing forces that canorient a project of renewal, creating an alternative to the failed unilateralist regimesand posing the bases for a new Magna Carta’.22

It is this broader need to re-think political agency which seems to be at theheart of this celebration of the forces of alter-globalism. As Malcolm Bull pointsout, ‘Almost all the agencies through which political change was effected in thetwentieth century have either disappeared or been seriously weakened.’23 Commu-nist and social democratic parties both have been implicated in the failure to stemthe rising tides of neo-liberal globalisation and exclusionary populism. It is in this

13 Rosalba Icaza Garza, ‘To Be and Not to Be: The Question of Transborder Civic Activism andRegionalization in Mexico. A Critical Account of Neo-Gramscian Perspectives’, Globalizations, 3:4(2006), pp. 485–506.

14 John Gibson, ‘The Myth of the Multitude: The Endogenous Demise of Alter-Globalist Politics’,Global Society, 22:2 (2008), pp. 253–75; Matthew Stephen, ‘Alter-Globalism as Counter-Hegemony:Evaluating the “postmodern Prince”’, Globalizations, 6:4 (2009), pp. 483–98.

15 Rupert, ‘Belly of the Beast’, pp. 36–7, 50–1. See also his contrition of earlier excitement in‘Reflections on Some Lessons Learned from a Decade of Globalisation Studies’, New PoliticalEconomy, 10:4 (2005), pp. 457–8 at pp. 472–4.

16 Gill, ‘Postmodern Prince’, p. 137; ‘Constitutionalizing Inequality’, p. 64.17 Bieler and Morton, ‘Another Europe Is Possible’, pp. 320–1, at p. 305.18 Robbie Shilliam, ‘Hegemony and the Unfashionable Problematic of “Primitive Accumulation”’,

Millennium, 32:1 (2004), pp. 59–88 at p. 61.19 Robert Cox, ‘Beyond Empire and Terror: Critical Reflections on the Political Economy of World

Order’, New Political Economy, 9:3 (2004), pp. 307–23 at pp. 309, 314–5.20 Stephen Gill, ‘Constitutionalizing Inequality and the Clash of Globalizations’, International Studies

Review, 4:3 (2002), pp. 47–65 at p. 64.21 Gill, ‘Postmodern Prince?’, p. 140.22 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude (New York: Penguin, 2004), p. 322.23 Malcolm Bull, ‘The Limits of the Multitude’, New Left Review, 35 (2005), pp. 19–39 at pp. 19–20.

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context of the ongoing crisis of democratic agency that attention has turned towhat appeared, for a time, to be the greatest social movement since the collapseof historical communism.

The aim of this article is to investigate the impact of what I will call the‘alter-globalisation movement’ on the realm of global ‘common sense’ understand-ings of the world, something to which the political theorist Antonio Gramsciattached great importance. It is incumbent upon a critical theory of InternationalRelations/Global Political Economy (IR/GPE) to seek out and theorise prospectsfor change in historical structures of world order. In doing so, it is important notto idealise the alter-globalisation movement. This task has been taken up by manyothers. For example, it has been suggested that we can accept ‘an idealized visionof the “movement of movements” accentuating the positive and innovative aspects’on the grounds that this ‘does not constitute naivety, but rather helps strengthenour unity in the face of neoliberalism’.24 In fact, an idealised portrayal of anythingis an invitation to naïveté. In many ways, alter-globalism seems to have fallen intothe trap that the editors of the New Left Review warned of several years ago, thatis that ‘[i]nflation of the scale or achievements of an embryonic movement is of nomore service than indifference or neglect’.25 Understanding the possibilities forchange is of course important, but not at the expense of political realism. This, atleast, would be my interpretation of a ‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of thewill’.

This article proceeds in three parts. The first part outlines a transnationaltheory of social transformation based on the thinking of Antonio Gramsci and hiskey followers in the field of IR/GPE. Gramsci, as a leading and intellectuallydiverse theorist of an earlier praxis, posed a series of telling questions pertainingto the struggle for social transformation which can help us to understand thepossibilities and limitations of the alter-globalisation movement. In particular, weare interested in the role of common sense in Gramsci’s revolutionary praxis.26

This serves as the point of departure for conceptualising the counter-hegemonicpotential of social forces opposed to globalisation as a hegemonic project. Thesecond part of the article examines to what extent the aspects of popular commonsense are pro-hegemonic and to what extent the alter-globalisation movement hasbeen able to impact common sense in the direction of counter-hegemoniccontestation. It seeks to examine empirically the ideological aspects of theconstruction of an alternative, counter-hegemonic consciousness. This is done usinga review of survey data gathered by the Pew Research Center in the period from2002 until before the financial crisis of 2007. To pre-empt the conclusions, theevidence examined here contradicts the view that neo-liberalism or the inter-national financial institutions were suffering a legitimation crisis in the years of thepeak of the alter-globalism movement. Instead, a more ambivalent and potentiallyreactionary situation amongst collectively held norms is revealed. This points to theshortcomings of the alter-globalisation movement as a coalition of social forcescapable of mounting an ideological attack and forging a transnational intellectual-moral bloc.

24 Nicolla Bullard, ‘Where is the Movement Moving?’, Development, 48:2 (2005), pp. 4–7 at p. 5.25 Editors, ‘Introduction’, New Left Review, 9 (2001), pp. 81–9 at p. 88.26 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971),

pp. 332–5, 395, 419–25.

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Counter-hegemony and common sense in the global political economy

Gramsci’s strategy for revolutionary social transformation has been extrapolated,with varying degrees of interpretation and conceptual reconfiguration, to the realmof the global political economy.27 Something that is striking about these diversetreatments, though, is the relative neglect of Gramsci’s theoretical and strategicconsiderations of how to build what we can call a ‘counter-hegemony’.28 This isparticularly conspicuous given that any reading of Gramsci will quickly reveal thathe was engaged, primarily and above all else, in the revolutionary activity ofconstructing sufficient intellectual basis for the construction of such a counter-hegemonic force. What follows is an outline of a neo-Gramscian approach tocounter-hegemonic resistance, with a view to evaluating the counter-hegemoniccredentials of the alter-globalisation movement. Gramsci’s programme for socialtransformation retains its force when applied globally to conceptualise thecounter-hegemonic potential of social forces positioned in opposition to globalisingcapital.

I take it that neo-liberal globalisation represents the latest in a series ofhegemonic projects fostered by dominant social forces operating through the globalpolitical economy.29 Neo-liberal globalisation represents a bid for transnationalhegemony constituting an historical structure of dominant material capabilities,ideas and institutions.30 Emerging out of the economic crisis of the 1970s, the riseof neo-liberalism as an alternative hegemonic project was associated in its earlyphase with politically forceful, coercive strategies designed to reassert capital’scontrol over social life and to accommodate for the rise of the transnationalfraction of finance and investment capital. The 1990s witnessed the entrenchmentand expansion of neo-liberalism, undertaken without the open inter-class hostilityof the 1980s. Since then the dominant configuration of forces came to beconsolidated into a nascent transnational historical bloc predicated on trans-national capitalist social forces, neo-liberal forms of state and a conception ofworld order as a technocratically managed order designed to solve the problems ofinterdependence – world order as ‘global governance’. These interrelated processes

27 Robert Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory’,[1981] in Robert Cox with Timothy Sinclair, Approaches to World Order (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1996), pp. 85–123; Robert Cox, ‘Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations:an Essay in Method’, [1983] in Cox and Sinclair, Approaches to World Order, pp. 124–43; Gill,‘Postmodern Prince?’; Gill and Law, ‘Global Hegemony’, p. 114; Craig N. Murphy, ‘UnderstandingIR: Understanding Gramsci’, Review of International Studies, 24 (1998), pp. 417–25; Rupert,‘(Re-)Engaging Gramsci: A Response to Germain and Kenny’, Review of International Studies, 24(1998), pp. 427–34; Mark Rupert, ‘Globalising Common Sense: a Marxian-Gramscian (Re-)Visionof the Politics of Governance/Resistance’, Review of International Studies, 29 (2003), pp. 181–98.

28 Partial exceptions include James H. Mittelman and Christine B. N. Chin, ‘ConceptualisingResistance to Globalization’, [2000] in Louise Amoore (ed.), The Global Resistance Reader (London:Routledge, 2005), pp. 17–27; Morton, ‘La Resurreccion’; Mark Rupert, Producing Hegemony(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 25–31. By comparison, such a systematicattempt has been made in a Gramscian study of the rise of political Islamist organisations in theMiddle East: Thomas J. Butko, ‘Revelation or Revolution: A Gramscian Approach to the Rise ofPolitical Islam’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 31:1 (2004), pp. 41–62.

29 Compare Robert Cox, Production, Power and World Order (New York: Columbia University Press,1987), p. 299; Stephen Gill, Power and Resistance in the New World Order (Houndmills: Palgrave,2003), pp. 60, 116–20; Anthony Payne, The Global Politics of Unequal Development (Houndmills:Palgrave, 2005), pp. 26–8.

30 Cox, ‘Social Forces’.

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then constitute what can be called the hegemonic project of neo-liberal globalisa-tion. The result has been a global regime of accumulation that exacerbates globalinequalities while threatening the environmental basis of industrial society. Stabilitylargely relies on popular quiescence generated by the discrediting of historicalalternatives to capitalism and a general resignation to the status quo. This aspect ofglobalisation therefore needs to be understood as a hegemonic project.

Of course, hegemony is part of an historically dialectical process of struggle andrenegotiation between social forces set apart by the alienations endemic tocapitalism. The quest for supremacy embodied in a hegemonic project implies theexistence of subaltern groups whose consent is necessary for the consensual exerciseof hegemonic control; hence, hegemony is susceptible to disruption, disorder andorganised challenges. The internationalisation of production, finance, civil societyand political organisations under conditions of globalising capital and technologi-cal innovation poses the question of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic contesta-tion at the global and transnational, as well as national, levels.31 The creation ofa counter-hegemony implies the creation, within the bounds of the old society, ofa new society.

If Gramsci posed an analytical distinction, by way of military analogy, betweenthree broad categories of resistance (wars of movement, wars of position, andguerrilla warfare, but also possibly a ‘commando tactics’), he also noted thatpolitical struggle is ‘enormously more complex’.32 The distinction between wars ofmovement (frontal assaults) and wars of position (akin to siege warfare) wasdeveloped to take account of the differing state-society relations prevailing in the‘contender state’ of Tsarist Russia by comparison with the countries of thecapitalist ‘heartland’ of Western Europe.33 Gramsci saw that the permeation ofthe institutions of ‘civil society’ by hegemonic social forces transformed civil societyinto a mechanism for stability and control, even in the face of unprecedentedstructural crises.34 For Gramsci the only way to overcome the entrenched anddiffuse patterns of bourgeois power that characterise hegemonic social formationsis to construct, within civil society, a long-term and broadly based counter-hegemonic movement, modelled on the strategic requirements of the war ofposition. The project to construct an alternative society envisions a form of socio-political struggle that requires the construction, within the confines of the old, ofa new political organisation capable of mobilising all subordinate strata into acoherent whole, one capable of replacing the coercive apparatus of the bourgeoisstate.

Just as hegemony relies on the consent generated by the prevalence of ideologyconducive to prevailing power relations, so a successful counter-hegemonicchallenge requires the de-reification and critique of hegemonic ideology whichconstrains the exercise of collective self-determination. For Gramsci, every personis an intellectual, in the sense that every person contains within them a conception

31 Robert Cox, ‘Civil Society at the Turn of the New Millennium: Prospects for an Alternative WorldOrder’, in Amoore (ed.), Global Resistance Reader, pp. 103–24 at p. 109.

32 Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, pp. 229–35. This is often misread as a binary opposition between twoalternative strategies of social contestation.

33 Ibid., p. 238. ‘Heartland’ and ‘contender state’ terminology is from Kees van der Pijl, GlobalRivalries from the Cold War to Iraq (London: Pluto, 2006).

34 Ibid., p. 235.

214 Matthew Stephen

of the world that is contained in the everyday common sense understanding of theworld that is the result of a host of historical residues and contending views of theworld, and therefore takes ‘countless different forms’.35 Common sense is therefore‘a syncretic historical residue, fragmentary and contradictory, open to multipleinterpretations and potentially supportive of very different kinds of social visionsand political projects’.36 These become embedded in social practices and become‘objective’ by mediating collective agency.

For Gramsci, ‘ideologies are anything but arbitrary; they are real historicalfacts to be fought and unmasked in their nature as instruments of domination [. . .]in order to render the governed intellectually independent of the governors, inorder to destroy one hegemony and create another, as a necessary moment in theoverturning or reversal of praxis’.37 Gramsci saw the disabling effects of hegemonicself-representations as operating over the collectively held norms and normativeideas summarised by the term ‘common sense’.38 This is not to imply idealism. ForGramsci, ideas only assume a role within an historical structure if they are sociallyembedded as ‘organic ideologies’,39 that is, when they ‘connect with a particularconstellation of social forces’.40 Ideology then serves to unify the dominant socialforces and lend coherence and legitimacy to their social power. The purpose of thephilosophy of praxis is to transform common sense, a collection of intersubjectivenorms and normative structures, into something that can be conducive to theconstruction of a new state and society. As the ideological aspect of the war ofposition, Gramsci likened this to a reciprocal siege.41 Thus, for Gramsci, thedevelopment of a counter-hegemonic historic bloc is co-dependent on the activecontestation of the hegemonic ideology. The construction of an alternativeideological culture will change the way in which people think and act, because ‘itis on the level of ideologies that men become conscious of conflicts in the worldof the economy’.42

It appears that the political struggles over common sense have taken on aglobal dimension. The story of globalisation has been the ascendancy of atransnational strata of managers and owners spearheaded by multinationalcorporations.43 Based on their decisive influence in the sphere of materialproduction,44 globalisation has been accompanied by the growing power of this

35 Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, p. 419.36 Rupert, ‘Globalising Common Sense’, p. 185.37 Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del Carcere, 4 vols., Valentino Gerratana (ed.), (Torino: Einaudi, 1975),

p. 1319; as quoted in Dante Germino, Antonio Gramsci: Architect of a New Politics (Baton Rouge:Louisiana State University Press, 1990), pp. 236–37.

38 Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, pp. 323–4, 419–25.39 Ibid., pp. 376–7. It is with this in mind that Gramsci reiterated Marx’s point in the introduction to

a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right that ‘popular beliefs’ can assume thesame energy as ‘material forces’. See also p. 404.

40 Stuart Hall, ‘The Problem of Ideology – Marxism without Guarantees’, Journal of CommunicationInquiry, 10:2 (1986), pp. 28–44 at p. 42 as cited in Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton, ‘TheDeficits of Discourse in IPE: Turning Base Metal into Gold?’, International Studies Quarterly, 52(2008), pp. 103–28 at p. 119.

41 Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, p. 239.42 Ibid., p. 162.43 Cox, Production, Power, and World Order, p. 358.44 As Gramsci wrote, ‘[. . .] though hegemony is ethico-political, it must also be economic, must

necessarily be based on the decisive function exercised by the leading group in the decisive nucleusof economic activity’. Prison Notebooks, p. 161.

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transnational strata, tending towards the emergence of a ‘transnational capitalistclass’.45 Neo-liberalism has operated as the hegemonic ideology of this strata whichoperates over multiple state-society complexes, and works by de-politicising theeconomic sphere and thereby increasing the structural power of capital relativeto labour.46 This task has been assisted both by political leaders allied to theinterests of capital and intellectuals ‘organic’ to that class. Under this process ofglobalisation these elites have been able to occupy key positions throughout anincipient global civil society, concentrated in positions consisting of internationalorganisations, private associations and epistemic communities. International insti-tutions have tended to provide managed outlets for dissent while adjusting theirideological claims to represent the universal interest, assuming as common sensethe basic assumptions of liberalism and technocratic management. In this wayneo-liberalism has embedded itself in the historical structure as an organic ideologyand is connected to the dominant social forces of transnational production.47 Thematerial impacts of neo-liberalism as an ideology lend weight to Gramsci’s conceptof the social ‘myth’ ‘which suggests how apparently normative forces may have thesocial power normally associated with “material forces” (such as technology, theforces of production)’.48

International institutions have played a crucial role in fostering this new wayof thinking about economic matters – and have thereby assisted in influencingcommon sense at the international level. Politicians in various states can then relyon or contest with institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), WorldBank, Bank of International Settlements, and the Financial Stability Board whichtend to formulate policy frameworks conducive to neo-liberal ideas. While this maybe seen as an elite phenomenon relatively obscure to most people, it nonethelessconfronts them ‘as an external political force, an element of cohesive forceexercised by the ruling classes and therefore an element of subordination to anexternal hegemony’.49 The World Economic Forum, long the ultimate bogey-manof the alter-globalisation movement and described by van der Pijl as ‘a trueInternational of capital’,50 fosters this process of hegemonic integration by bringingtogether business, politicians, Think Tanks and media, thereby assisting inincorporating neo-liberal ideas into common sense.

The construction of an alternative, ethical hegemony begins with the task ofdeconstructing the ideological hegemony of dominant social forces and construct-ing an historical bloc of subordinate classes united under an alternative hegemonicideology.51 The new hegemonic ideology would have to be capable of transcending

45 Leslie Sklair, The Transnational Capitalist Class (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001). In contrast to the moreexcitable literature on the transnational capitalist class, I see this more as an emerging tendency thanas a fait accompli, which will fracture and weaken with the appearance of more hostile inter-staterelations.

46 Mark Rupert, ‘Globalising Common sense: a Marxian-Gramscian (re-)vision of the politics ofgovernance/resistance’, Review of International Studies, 29 (2003), pp. 181–98 at p. 190.

47 ‘[. . .] the material forces would be inconceivable historically without [ideological] form and theideologies would be individual fancies without the material forces’. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks,p. 377.

48 Gill, ‘Epistemology, Ontology and the “Italian School”’, p. 26.49 Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, p. 420.50 van der Pijl, Transnational Relations, pp. 133–4.51 Stephen, ‘Alter-Globalism as Counter-Hegemony’.

216 Matthew Stephen

what Gramsci called the ‘economic-corporate’ level of consciousness, and coheringinto an ideology expressed in universal terms. For this to be possible requires thetransformation of prevailing ‘common sense’ assumptions about the world into acoherent counter-hegemonic consciousness, taking the form of a new ‘good sense’.A successful challenge of hegemonic power depends on the construction of ‘newpopular beliefs, that is to say a new common sense and with it a new culture anda new philosophy which will be rooted in the popular consciousness with the samesolidity and imperative quality as traditional beliefs’.52 This would depend on aprocess of popular education assisted by the subaltern classes’ organic intellectuals.Organic intellectuals are socially attached to a particular class, whose role is ‘tochange, correct or perfect the conceptions of the world that exist in any particularage and thus to change the norms of conduct that go with them; in other words,to change practical activity as a whole’.53 This amounts to no less than theconstruction of an alternative counter-culture, conceived by Gramsci as nothingshort of a ‘modern popular reformation’.54 In this sense, the radical transformationof society begins, for Gramsci, in the realm of ideas.

The extent to which ideological structures constitutive of the neo-liberalconception of world order are facing challenge from social forces articulating analternative world view should then become a central line of neo-Gramscianenquiry. This would be expressed by the extent to which popular common sensecan dereify the market and ‘demonstrate the fundamentally social and, therefore,public nature of economic relations’.55 The articulation of an alternative hegemonicideology capable of transforming ‘common sense’ into ‘good sense’ and therebyterminating popular assent to subaltern status would, hopefully, result in an ethicalcounter-hegemony. An ethical hegemony of subordinate social forces relies on thevoluntarily given consent of the governed, in which leading social groups performan historically progressive role in which a reciprocal internal relationship ofteacher-pupil, leader-led causes the material and cultural elevation of subordinategroups: in which ‘the social group [exercising hegemony] puts the end of the Stateand of itself as the goal to be achieved’.56 The remainder of this article seeks toevaluate the balance of forces operating over this crucial terrain of social struggle.

The reciprocal siege: challenging the supremacy of market ideology?

The ideological power of neo-liberal globalisation is embodied in the frameworksof thought that circumscribe human intervention in the market and raise capitalistsocial relations beyond political challenge. In this sense, we begin to see in renewedform what Marx would have identified as fetishism, the attribution of spiritual andmagical powers to the ‘global market’ as the Chief Good of all human action; thecreation of a new deity of the ‘market’, to which human communities attribute

52 Ibid., p. 424.53 Ibid., p. 344.54 Ibid., p. 395.55 Vicki Birchfield, ‘Contesting the Hegemony of Market Ideology: Gramsci’s “Good Sense” and

Polanyi’s “Double Movement”’, Review of International Political Economy, 6:1 (1999), pp. 27–54 atp. 45.

56 Gramsci, Quaderni, p. 1050; as quoted in Augelli and Murphy, America’s Quest, p. 125.

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great social power and to which in times of volatility great human sacrifices mustbe made.57 The reliance of dominant groups on the popular consent generated byideological suasion translates into a practical need to de-reify hegemonic ideologiesas a pre-condition for the successful overturning of dominant social relations. Thisis reflected in battles over common sense. For Gramsci, every person is anintellectual, in the sense that every person contains within themselves a conceptionof the world that is contained in the everyday common sense understanding of theworld. The purpose of the philosophy of praxis is to transform common sense intosomething that can be conducive to the construction of a new historical structure,one capable of replacing a society founded on multiple exclusions and oppressivesocial relations. This invests critical importance to whether popular common senseperceives economic and relations to involve the socially consequential exercise ofpower, whether alter-globalist forces have been able to make in-roads in thehegemonic conceptions of world order sustaining neo-liberal market relations.

After all, the main slogan of the movement was ‘Another World Is Possible’,a clear challenge to a series of neo-liberal ideological appeals initially expressed inthe Thatcherite aphorism that ‘there is no alternative’. (The neo-liberal consensuswas transmitted into policy prescription by the ‘Washington Consensus’ andreached new heights in Fukuyama’s thesis that [neo-]liberal democracy representedthe teleological, quasi-Hegelian ‘end of history’.) The role of the alter-globalisationmovement in challenging neo-liberal ideological representations and proffering analternative way of thinking has already been emphasised. Roland Bleiker haswritten that ‘[. . .] the actions in Seattle and other cities are not quite as ineffectiveas they appear at first sight. Even without engendering immediate institutionaltransformations, traces of these protest events continue to influence the struggleover global values – and thus over the direction of politics’.58 The images of radicalcontestation circulated by the media, though usually preoccupied with pettyvandalism or with sniggering references to ‘anti-globalist protesters’, serve to opento contestability elements of the ‘neo-liberal consensus’ that perpetuate citizenpassivity. Furthermore, Chris Nineham has claimed that the basic critiques of whathe calls the ‘anti-capitalist movement’ have ‘gone mainstream’. ‘Walk into anybookshop in the world and you will find a shelf of popular books putting the caseagainst corporate power and the neo-conservative warmongers. Few now believethat privatisation delivers better services, that the international financial institu-tions like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and IMF are there to help thepeople of the developing countries, or that the occupation of Iraq has anything todo with liberation.’59 Moreover, protests in one part of the world can now haveglobal repercussions through the transmission of the modern mass media – thebattle over global values takes on a universal character as the local/globaldichotomy breaks down.

It is an assumption of the following empirical section that mass opinion surveystell us something useful about what Gramsci referred to as common sense. Thisview does not go uncontested. The ‘post-positivism’ of much critical IR scholarship

57 van der Pijl, Transnational Relations, p. 11.58 Roland Bleiker, ‘Seattle and the Struggle for a Global Democratic Ethos’, in Eschle and Maiguashca

(eds), Critical Theories, IR and ‘the Anti-Globalisation Movement’, pp. 195–211 at p. 202.59 Chris Nineham, ‘Anti-Capitalism, Social Forums and the Return of Politics’, International Socialism,

109 (2006), pp. 91–108 at p. 91.

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may seem at the outset to forbid the use of such a methodology60 – although itshould perhaps be pointed out that one of Adorno’s major studies was in fact aquantitative, survey-based project.61 Nonetheless, the limitations and shortcomingsof the use of quantitative survey methods to ascertain prevailing mental images canbe readily acknowledged. David Held has expressed the sort of reservationsAdorno himself expressed, in which surveys ‘through the fixed selection ofquestions put to the individual or through the very generality of the questions,opinions where they do not exist and an artificially limited range of responses.Frequently these opinions are then treated uncritically as “objective accounts” ofsubjective attitudes. The structure of the object is neglected in favour of what istaken as a general objective method. In this way opinion research both producesits own object and hypostatizes the results.’62

However, to say such methods have no value would be equally misleading, asany politician who monitors their approval rating would have to acknowledge.Rather it would be better to proceed with a healthy understanding of thelimitations of opinion surveys, but only with a view to extracting all that we canthrough the critical appraisal of such made facts. It is important to stress that‘common sense’, like public opinion, is not something ‘out there’ to be impartiallydiscovered – it is the internalised opinions and beliefs of numerous individuals thatare instantiated through the act of responding to the social researcher.63 It iscontinually made and reproduced in the minds of innumerable individuals whoseactions are mediated by the collective force of these ideational representations, andthereby become an ‘objective’ force. Responses to set questions are likely to reflect,rather than constitute, common sense.64

The following discussion is based on the survey results commissioned by thePew Research Centre under its Global Attitudes Project. The Pew Research Centredescribes itself as ‘a nonpartisan “fact tank”’65 capable of delivering ‘independentand unbiased measures of public attitudes’.66 It is designed more or less explicitlyto help American foreign policy elites, and their reports tend to exhibit a worldview in which liberal democracy and the free market are the highest aspirations ofhumanity. Their 2003 report explicitly links market economies to ‘individualfreedoms’,67 and the 2007 survey counter-poses ‘basic needs’ to ‘basic rights’, andconcludes that in Africa, ‘basic human needs trump democratic principles’, as iffulfilling the essential material conditions of human life is separable from a

60 Robert Cox seems to be of this view. He writes that ‘Collective images are not aggregations offragmented opinions of individuals such as are compiled through surveys; they are coherent mentaltypes expressive of the world views of specific groups such as may be reconstructed through the workof historians and sociologists [. . .]’. Cox, ‘Social Forces’, p. 153, fn. 2.

61 Theodor Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson and Nevitt Sanford, The AuthoritarianPersonality (New York: Harper and Row, 1950).

62 David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory (London: Hutchinson, 1980), p. 165.63 Philip Nel, ‘The Foreign Policy Beliefs of South Africans: A First Cut’, Journal of Contemporary

African Studies, 17:1 (1999), pp. 123–46 at p. 123.64 This is how I would reconcile this approach with Cox’s point in note 60 (above).65 Pew Global Attitudes Project, World Publics Welcome Global Trade – But Not Immigration

(Washington: Pew Research Centre, 2007), p. 9. Available at: {http://pewglobal.org/display.php?ReportID=258}, accessed on 26 May 2008.

66 Pew Global Attitudes Project, Conflicting Views in a Divided World: 2006 (Washington: PewResearch Centre, 2006), p. iii. Available at: {http://pewglobal.org}, accessed on 26 May 2008.

67 Pew Global Attitudes Project, Views of a Changing World: 2003 (Washington: Pew Research Centre,2003). Available at: {http://pewglobal.org}, accessed on 26 May 2008.

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democratic project.68 However, despite the questionnaires of the Pew GlobalAttitudes Project being designed to reflect the interests and values of members ofthe US foreign policy elite, the data can also be used, cautiously, to assess theaspects of popular perceptions with a potentially subversive democratic intent. Intypically dialectical fashion, the surveys can reveal an image of common sensewhich can assist in the construction of an alternative, counter-hegemonic project.In essence, we can begin to investigate the state-of-play in this global battle overcommon sense.

The data used here are drawn from a series of mass surveys based on telephoneand in-person interviews. The samples of public opinion in each country arebroadly representative, although the samples in many of the developing countriescontain an urban bias.69 The discussion that follows is drawn primarily from thetwo biggest surveys conducted by the Pew Centre, examining popular perceptionsof the US, globalisation and phenomena associated with globalisation, andattitudes towards liberal political and economic systems. The first involved opinionsurveys conducted in 46 languages and 17 dialects in 44 countries between July andOctober 2002, with a supplementary sample of 16,000 people in 20 countriesconducted between April and May 2003 specifically to gauge reactions to the USinvasion of Iraq in February 2003.70 The second Pew report was released in 2007and was based on surveys of popular opinion in 47 countries in the Americas,Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa. In total 45,239 interviews wereconducted.71 If we accept that it is possible to usefully generalise about socialconsciousness based on survey data, it is possible to examine some of the results.

The coercive turn in global hegemony embodied in the invasion of Iraqoccasioned a stark reshuffling of American ideological pretensions: the pre-emptiveuse of military force in order to preserve American supremacy was a newideological claim that was difficult to legitimate. It has been a basic element of thepost-war order that America would always attempt ‘to ensure that force willappear to be based on the consent of the majority’72 by acting in such a way asto appear to be upholding certain universal values. While the ‘War on Terror’ hasattempted to absorb the traditional legitimating pillars of American foreign policy– human rights, democracy, freedom – these were never really central to itsideological appeal, which was rooted more in traditional American chauvinism.This is reflected in the almost total lack of support displayed for the invasion ofIraq revealed by the Pew surveys. The alter-globalisation movement’s massiveanti-war demonstrations of February 2003 (the largest in world history)73 appearto be congruous with a world-wide legitimation crisis for the US’ militarisation ofits relations with the world. According to Pew data, ‘The [Iraq] war has widenedthe rift between Americans and Western Europeans, further inflamed the Muslim

68 Pew, World Publics Welcome Global Trade – But Not Immigration.69 Pew, Conflicting Views in a Divided World: 2006, p. 95; Pew, World Publics Welcome Global Trade

– But Not Immigration, p. 80.70 Pew, Views of a Changing World: 2003, pp. 119–20.71 Pew, World Publics Welcome Global Trade – But Not Immigration, pp. 79–87.72 Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, n. 80.73 Barbara Epstein, ‘Notes on the Antiwar Movement’, Monthly Review, 55:3 (2003), pp. 109–16 at

p. 109; Karin Simonson, ‘The Anti-war Movement: Waging Peace on the Brink of War’ (Geneva:Centre for Applied Studies in International Negotiations: 2003). Available at:{http://www.casin.ch/web/pdf/The%20Anti-War%20Movement.pdf}, accessed on 26 May 2008.

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world, softened support for the War on Terrorism, and significantly weakenedglobal public support for the pillars of the post-World War II era – the UN andthe North Atlantic alliance.’74 The political relevance of the UN General Assemblyhas been marginalised, with full majorities in nearly every country surveyedexpressing the view that the UN was less important.75 According to the report, ‘thebottom has fallen out of support for America in most of the Muslim support’, withsolid majorities or minorities in five Arab countries expressing support for Osamabin Laden.76 A similar poll conducted for the BBC in 2007 found that views of theUS have been steadily deteriorating since 2005, with 52 per cent saying the US hasa mainly negative role in the world, and nearly three-quarters saying theydisapprove of the US government’s handling of the war in Iraq.77 The invasionitself and the ongoing effects of the revelation of a systematic ‘torture culture’78 inthe War on Terror have critically undermined the legitimacy of US power in globalcommon sense understandings.

Still, the near absolute failure of America’s neo-imperial pretensions to garnerlegitimacy is offset by the ongoing legitimacy of the key tenets of globalisation asa hegemonic project. It would appear that the linking of an anti-war message tothe broader socio-economic causes of alter-globalism by educated members of theEuropean left79 has not permeated into the views of the populations whoseparticipation is a pre-requisite for mounting a counter-hegemonic challenge.Whereas the coercive aspect of neo-liberal hegemony attracted wide condemnation,the lack of a widespread conception of imperialism failed to link the military-strategic implementation of globalisation with globalisation through socio-economic processes. Although the connections between the two were seen as partof the same processes by many at the elite level, this failed to penetrate intopopular consciousness and contributed to the rapidity of the collapse of theanti-war movement after 2003. Consequently, the 2003 study referred to abovereported also that ‘Globalization, the free market model and [liberal] democraticideals are accepted in all corners of the world.’80 This indicates a significant failurein the alter-globalisation movement’s political project.

This is reflected also in widespread support or assent to those epitomic symbolsof globalisation, multinational corporations (MNCs) and the international financialinstitutions.81 The survey revealed that, paradoxically, it is those in the coredeveloped capitalist states that had the least support for MNCs (only one in tenpeople in North America and Western Europe think MNCs ‘very good’, withbarely half giving good marks overall), while support was highest in the states ofAsia, Africa and Latin America (excluding Argentina).82 The IMF, World Bankand WTO also command widespread legitimacy: ‘In most developing countries in

74 Pew, Views of a Changing World: 2003, p. 1.75 Ibid., p. 2.76 Ibid., p. 3.77 BBC World Service Poll, World View of US Role Goes from Bad to Worse. Available at:

{www.bbc.com}, accessed on 26 May 2008.78 Richard Jackson, ‘Language, Policy and the Construction of a Torture Culture in the War on

Terror’, Review of International Studies, 33 (2007), pp. 353–71.79 As reported by Bieler and Morton, ‘Another Europe Is Possible?’, p. 320.80 Pew, Views of a Changing World: 2003, p. 1.81 Ibid., p. 11.82 Ibid., p. 98.

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Africa, Asia and Latin America [except Argentina and Brazil] and the Middle East,majorities think such international institutions have a good influence on theirsocieties. Nearly six in ten people in North America, Western Europe and Japanagree.’83 However, the social basis of the organised alter-globalisation movementwas always the international NGO nébuleuse,84 and support for NGOs appears tobe widespread, with three-quarters of people in North America and Europe (exceptBulgaria) supporting NGOs, while in other countries support was always in themajority. Unions, fumbling for an alternative to outright capitulation to neo-liberalism but not always ready to join the alter-globalisation movement, also enjoywidespread legitimacy and approval.85 Despite repeated attempts by alter-globaliststo draw attention to the role of the global governance institutions in perpetuatingthe power of dominant strata of global society, they and multinational corpora-tions continue to command legitimacy and thwart counter-hegemonic conscious-ness formation.

More specifically, there is now data available to quantify the popularperceptions of alter-globalisation protesters. Unfortunately for the street warriors,in their 2003 survey Pew found that ‘people generally have a negative view of anti-globalization protesters’.86 Indeed, in the homeland of revolutionary struggles, theFrench gave more favourable views of multinational corporations than of theprotesters! Majorities or pluralities of people in all the Western European coun-tries, as well as Canada and the USA, offered negative views of the protesters.87

While this represents a great setback to those who would argue, as Nineham does,that the movement’s critiques have ‘gone mainstream’, there is significant minoritysupport for the protesters in several countries. Many in France appear not to haveextinguished all sympathy with the spirit of 1968, where 44 per cent of people ratedthe protesters positively. The same proportion of positive responses was recordedin South Africa and Guatemala, while in Honduras (46 per cent) and Bolivia (47per cent) nearly half of the respondents held favourable views.88 Outside thedeveloped countries (where most of the protests took place), majorities did notknow enough to offer an opinion or declined to offer a view of the protests. Hence,the report concludes, ‘To a considerable degree, anti-globalization protesters havesimply failed to register on the public’s consciousness.’89

A more recent (2007) survey reveals the ongoing resilience of neo-liberalhegemony in the face of repeated ideological attack by the alter-globalisationmovement. Although there was a slight dent in the enthusiasm of those in thedeveloped countries for international trade and transnational corporations, thiscould not shake the broad acceptance of the key tenets of economic globalisation.Significantly, the largest fall in popular support for trade was inside the US, where

83 Ibid., p. 98–9.84 Cox’s term nébuleuse was re-applied to NGOs by Drainville in Contesting Globalization, p. 118.85 Pew, Views of a Changing World: 2003, p. 100.86 Ibid.87 Ibid.88 Ibid. The Bolivian poll was undertaken at the same time as a private consortium spearheaded by the

US corporation Bechtel tendered to acquire the rights to the municipal water supply (and potentiallythreatening the right of water collection by private citizens) in Cochabamba, which the Pewresearchers rightly point out in their report.

89 Ibid., p. 99.

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support between 2002 and 2007 fell 19 percentage points, to only 59 per cent.90

This compares to near universal support for international trade amongst theheirs-apparent to the title of central locus of capital accumulation, China andIndia. Where the disciplinary powers and material incentives of Fordist accumu-lation and consumption may be waning in the European heartland of capitalism,the social-psychological crisis of ‘post-material values’ has certainly not penetratedthe periphery, where newly found prosperity is generating renewed consent. WhereFordist consumption once upheld the ‘Free World’, increasingly, it underpins thesocial stability of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. Latin America andEastern Europe also reported significant increases in support for capitalism, whilesupport for the free market and foreign corporations declined since 2002 inWestern Europe (in France, a majority in 2007 said that MNCs are a badinfluence, while support has fallen significantly elsewhere).91 Despite a slighttempering of support for the avatars of neo-liberal globalisation, ‘Overwhelmingly,the surveyed publics see the benefits of increasing global commerce and free marketeconomies.’92

Surveys also indicate something more ambiguous lurking under the surface ofthe globalising political economy. While people ‘endorse free trade, multinationalcorporations and free markets’, they are also ‘concerned about inequality, threatsto their culture, threats to the environment and threats posed by immigration.Together, these results reveal an evolving world view on globalization that is‘nuanced, ambivalent, and sometimes inherently contradictory’.93 This lendssupport to Gramsci’s understanding of common sense as ‘not critical and coherentbut disjointed and episodic’, ‘an ambiguous, contradictory and multiform con-cept’.94 In fact these global findings conform to the contradictory nature of popularconsciousness found in other studies, highlighting the ambiguity of the popularresponses this can elicit.95 As Gramsci was keenly aware, common sense is able tolend support to wildly different social projects, which implies that the fragmenta-tion of social identities and the material insecurity accompanying neo-liberalglobalisation can be exploited as easily for reactionary as for progressive socialcauses.

This darker side to common sense interpretations of globalisation is illustratedby the social anomie leading to the vast support throughout the world for greaterrestrictions on immigration and stronger borders.96 This is despite the emergingnorms of transnational solidarity and international reciprocity nurtured by the

90 Pew, World Publics Welcome Global Trade – But Not Immigration, p. 14.91 Ibid., p. 15.92 Ibid., p. 2.93 Ibid., p. 1.94 Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, pp. 324, 423.95 Ibid., p. 333; Joseph Femia, ‘Gramsci’s Patrimony’, British Journal of Political Science, 13:3 (1983),

pp. 327–64 at p. 359; Michael Mann, Consciousness and Action Among the Western WorkingClass (London: Macmillan, 1973), p. 68; David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory (London:Hutchinson, 1980), p. 367; Kees van der Pijl, Transnational Classes and International Relations(London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 46–8; Mark Rupert, Ideologies of Globalization (London and NewYork: Routledge, 2000); Adam David Morton, ‘The Antiglobalization Movement: Juggernaut orJalopy?’, in Henry Veltmeyer (ed.), Globalization and Antiglobalization: Dynamics of change in theNew World Order (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 155–68 at p. 163; Mittelman and Chin,‘Conceptualizing Resistance’, p. 19.

96 Pew, World Publics Welcome Global Trade – But Not Immigration, p. 1.

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alter-globalisation movement. The uncertainties and volatilities of a neo-liberalform of globalisation are also evident in the socio-political forces that lead peopleto ‘worry about losing their traditional culture and national identities, and they feeltheir way of life needs protection against foreign influences’.97 This uneasinessgenerated in the minds of people in different parts of the world by the destabilisingimpacts of globalisation opens to way to the possibility of an inward-looking,potentially authoritarian reaction to the neo-liberal project of globalisation. TheWorld Economic Forum in 2002 commissioned a Gallup International poll ofpublic opinion in forty-seven countries which revealed ‘increasing lack of trust ofcitizens towards their political representatives and institutions’. Half held little orno trust in parliaments, which shared the category of ‘least trusted institutions’with political parties, governments and MNCs. Perhaps more disturbingly, bycontrast, 69 per cent of people had ‘a lot’ or ‘some’ trust in the armed forces to‘operate in society’s best interest’.98

Despite the latent potentiality for reconstructing popular common sense in anemancipatory, egalitarian direction, the evidence revealed by these surveys indicatesthe failure of the alter-globalisation movement to occupy the positions opened upby the destabilising impacts of globalisation, which are more readily going over toregressive social forces. Alter-globalist ideological constructions remain fragmentedand analytically diverse, while hegemonic conceptions have stabilised in post-Washington Consensus and Third Way forms. Despite the efforts of thoseassociated with the movement, the writings of Klein, Monbiot, Chomsky, Pilgerand Fisk appear to be having less of an impact on common sense as those ofBrzezinski, Fukuyama, Huntington, Luttwak and Friedman. As Anderson argues,the latter writers ‘unite a single powerful thesis with a fluent popular style, designednot for an academic readership but for a broad international public’.99 ThoughIraq may have significantly dented America’s imperial legitimacy, the evidencepoints to the ongoing efficacy of neo-liberalism and its governance mechanisms asthe new hegemonic concept of world order. While this situation is liable to change,especially in light of the economic crisis beginning in 2007, this seems to have littleto do with the efforts of alter-globalist activists.

Systemic transformation will be dependent on the creation of an ideology andculture of resistance to neo-liberalism and on promoting global linkages in orderto sustain progressive change in multiple state-society complexes. A basic elementof hegemony implies ‘both a factual condition of powerlessness and a represen-tation of oneself as an impotent hostage in the hands of an ineffable destiny’.100

The failure so far to significantly disrupt the consensual aspects of neo-liberalhegemony reveals the shortcomings of the alter-globalisation movement as acoalition of social forces capable of mounting an ideological attack and forging anew intellectual-moral bloc on which to cement and unify a counter-hegemonichistorical bloc. Hegemonic ideology remains supreme, successfully undermining theformation of counter-hegemonic consciousness. The view is still widespread that

97 Ibid.98 Patrick Hayden and Chamsy el-Ojeili, Critical Theories of Globalization (Houndmills: Palgrave,

2006), pp. 125–6.99 Perry Anderson, ‘Renewals’, New Left Review, 1 (2000), pp. 5–24 at 19.

100 Nadia Urbinati, ‘From the Periphery of Modernity: Antonio Gramsci’s Theory of Subordinationand Hegemony’, Political Theory, 26:3 (1998), pp. 370–91 at p. 370.

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the status quo is ‘natural’, and ‘that it could not do otherwise than exist, and thathowever badly one’s attempts at reform may go they will not stop life going on,since the traditional forces will continue to operate and precisely will keep lifegoing on’.101

Discrepancies and tensions in global common sense

Although it would not appear that there has been much success at overcoming theideological power of market ideology in the global political economy, it isincumbent on a critical theory of IR to point to areas of tension or broaderdevelopments conducive to the overcoming of hegemonic domination and itsreplacement with a more egalitarian, emancipatory global political economy. Asglobalisation draws ever more aspects of human life and diverse communities fromaround the world into a world-wide system of market relations, the extent to whichthis represents the hegemonic project of specific strata of global society directsattention to the reactions we can expect as people look to secure their livelihoodsfrom the vicissitudes and exploitations of market-based capitalist relations. How isthis reflected in the views expressed by those surveyed here?

One line of differentiation of potential significance is the extent to whichAmerican common sense is diverging from its European antecedents. It wouldappear that there is more ready material from which to construct an egalitariancounter-hegemony in the common sense prevailing in Europe than in the US. Thehomogenising and materially satiating impact of consumer capitalism appears to beon the wane in a Europe increasingly enmeshed in a EU founded on nationaldiversity and respect for transnational regimes and institutions, whereas thecultural convergence embodied in the ‘American dream’ continues to define a USfounded on a messianic faith in ‘exceptionalism’ and self-declared Hobbesianinter-state competition.

This extends to the common sense orientation of many inside the US, wherematerial wealth continues to define self-realisation (the ‘American way of life’) andwhere people continue to think that ‘most people who fail in life have themselvesto blame, rather than society’.102 The core defining features of neo-liberalism havealso permeated American common sense far more effectively than elsewhere:Americans tend to think it is more important to have ‘freedom to pursue personalgoals’ than for government ‘to guarantee that no one is in need’. This is a starkdeparture from the views of those in most other parts of the world.103 Thetrans-Atlantic intersubjective tension is also reflected in a sharp division in popularattitudes to religion: 59 per cent of Americans deem religion ‘very important’ totheir lives, while barely half that number in Canada or Europe would agree.104 Thepsychological certitudes of monotheism in the US may carry over to a widespread

101 Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, p. 157.102 Pew, Views of a Changing World: 2003, p. 8.103 Ibid.104 Pew Global Attitudes Project, Among Wealthy Nations . . . America Stands Alone in its Embrace of

Religion (Washington: Pew Research Centre, 2002), p. 1. Available at: {http://pewglobal.org}, accessedon 26 May 2008.

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feeling of cultural superiority.105 Considerations such as these lead Robert Cox tosuppose that ‘it would seem that western Europe and the USA are moving indifferent directions regarding the way people perceive the world and understand itsproblems’.106 Europe and the US have diverged in their collective images of worldorder and associated cultural forms.107

Furthermore, popular attitudes towards the current mode of economic devel-opment are more ambivalent than they may appear at first sight. For the mostpart, during the period of time in which the alter-globalisation movementrepresented a dynamic factor of world politics, people around the world have cometo think that life has deteriorated in many ways.108 Practically no people believethat what they attach to the word ‘globalisation’ is ‘very good’ – the vast majorityprefer to describe it more ambiguously as ‘somewhat good’.109 Strong majorities innearly every wealthy country believe the next generation will be worse off –including 60 per cent of Americans and British, 73 per cent of Germans, 69 percent of Italians and 80 per cent of French.110 Furthermore, growing internationaltrade was seen in 2007 as ‘very good’ by only 14 per cent of Americans (the thirdlowest of any country).111 Significantly, between 2002 and 2007 support for ‘tradewith other countries’ fell by 19 per cent in the US, to reach only 59 per cent.112

The largest drops in enthusiasm for international trade occurred in the countriesof the developed core. Meanwhile, the percentage of people saying foreign com-panies are having a positive effect in their countries is below 50 per cent in everyWestern country surveyed in 2007, down somewhat from 2002, while the rest of theworld continues to hold mostly positive views of multinational corporations.113

Increasing insecurity and socialisation of the costs of financial and economicderegulation are also reflected in a general belief that it is more difficult to get agood-paying job compared with five years ago.114 Furthermore, most people thinkthat working conditions for ordinary workers have gotten worse. This is especiallytrue in the ‘transitional’ zones of global capitalism – Latin America and post-Communist Europe and the ex-Soviet sphere.115 There is a widespread perceptionthat inequality has increased. There remains an egalitarian element of popularcommon sense which is reflected in a virtual consensus that ‘the government shouldtake care of the very poor who cannot take care of themselves’.116 So while thealter-globalist critique does not appear to have struck roots among the conscious-nesses of its key audience, the latent potential for a progressive response ismanifested in the democratic impulse of a dual consciousness. When related to

105 Pew, World Publics Welcome Global Trade – But Not Immigration, p. 44.106 Cox, ‘Beyond Empire and Terror’, p. 316.107 Gramsci touched on some of the themes here, though with differing conclusions, in ‘American and

European Civilisation’. Cf. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, pp. 316–8.108 Pew, Views of a Changing World: 2003, p. 79.109 Ibid., p. 85.110 Pew Global Attitudes Project, Global Opinion Trends 2002–2007: A Rising Tide Lifts Mood in the

Developing World (Washington: Pew Research Centre, 2007), p. 4. Available at: {http://pewglobal.org},accessed on 26 May 2008.

111 Pew, Views of a Changing World: 2003, p. 13.112 Ibid., p. 14.113 Ibid., p. 10.114 Ibid.115 Ibid., p. 79.116 Pew, World Publics Welcome Global Trade – But Not Immigration, p. 5.

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concrete circumstances of life and work, a dissatisfaction and frustration with theeffects of neo-liberal globalisation are revealed, but when posed in terms of abstractprinciples and liberal institutions the dominant ideology continues to commandassent. While the alter-globalisation has thus far failed to foster a coherentcounter-hegemonic critique, the ambivalence of the dual consciousness lendssupport to the continuing necessity for a ‘critical pedagogy’117 in order totransform these intuitive responses into a ‘higher level of one’s own conception ofreality’.118

Conclusion

The argument outlined above indicates the extent to which the alter-globalisationfailed to radically contest the hegemonic ideology of neo-liberalism in the globalpolitical economy. While, in their search for an agent capable of constructingalternative futures to neo-liberalism, Gramscian IR scholars have avoided theworst excesses of naïveté and uncritical celebration of alter-globalisation practicesand the inherent emancipatory potential of a ‘global civil society’, more attentionneeds to be directed towards those people of global society not directly involvedin the political battles over international financial institutions or ensconced in theinternal debates of the social forums. If common sense truly forms the basis for theconstruction of a counter-hegemony to that of the transnational fraction of capital,the point of departure must begin with the popular beliefs of those masses ofpeople on whose passivity the hegemony of neo-liberalism ultimately depends. Thefailure of the attempt by American state managers to garner legitimacy for thecoercive armour of global hegemony is revealed in the overwhelming publicopposition to the invasion of Iraq and the popular revulsion towards the imperialpretensions of American power. Offsetting this is the fact that none of this popularreaction has been carried over to the ‘dull compulsion of economic relations’underpinning the social power of capital. This is exhibited in the ongoinglegitimacy of the international financial institutions, multinational corporations andopen markets. The fact that ‘anti-globalisation protesters’ are viewed negatively bymajorities in every developed country surveyed, while barely registering in mostdeveloping countries, indicates a disconnection between the movement and the livesof the masses and the lack of an organic basis on which to articulate acounter-hegemony.

The material insecurity of a deregulated liberalism is widely felt but has so farfailed to translate into support for transnational solidarity and democraticreconstruction. Instead the social corrosion and immiseration of globalisation isexpressing itself in a reassertion of statist and exclusionary identities and a distrustof liberal democratic institutions. The hegemonic project of neo-liberalism seems tobe undermining that cosmopolitan element of liberalism which constitutes theprogressive element of globalisation. Gramsci’s personal biography reminds us ofthe perils of such developments, and reinforces the pressing need to bridge the gap

117 Rupert, ‘Globalising Common Sense’, p. 186.118 Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, p. 333.

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between the masses and those rather more traditional vehicles for working-classagency, trade unions and political parties. The extension of alter-globalism to suchinstitutions would assist in the acquisition of institutional and material power andalleviate the distance between protesting elites and the popular element.

The forgoing considerations suggest a general situation characterised more bythe discrediting of historical alternatives and general acquiescence to the status quorather than any active or spontaneous attachment to hegemonic world views. Butfar from neo-liberal globalisation entering a moment of ‘openly declared “contes-tation and resistance”’,119 the situation revealed in this analysis is of further,though inherently unstable, ‘consolidation’120 in popular common sense, despitethe counter-hegemonic efforts of the alter-globalisation movement and the ideo-logical exposure of the momentary coercive rupture represented by the invasion ofIraq in 2003. It is possible that the financial crisis that began in 2007, as itpenetrates the real economy and foments a global economic and social crisis willcause a rupture between dominant representations and the material facts of livingexperience for most people. This could open up new ground for the alter-globalistcritique, but it will not organise its social forces or ‘endow them with fightingspirit’.121 The crisis could equally be co-opted into a discourse of ‘creativedestruction’ or give way to dirigiste impulses seeking to defend the privileges of theowners and restore the profitability of capitalism. In either case, in the effort toconstruct a counter-hegemony ‘the starting point must always be that commonsense which is the spontaneous philosophy of the multitude and which has to bemade ideologically coherent’.122 In the mean time, neo-liberal globalisation as ahegemonic project remains resilient.

119 Bieler and Morton, ‘Another Europe Is Possible’, p. 319.120 Henk Overbeek, ‘Globalization and Britain’s Decline’, in Richard English and Michael Kenny (eds),

Rethinking British Decline (London: Palgrave, 1999), p. 249.121 Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, p. 235.122 Ibid., p. 421.

228 Matthew Stephen