SYNOPSIS


    This collection of essays on corporations, globalization and
    the state takes a radical look at the role of the state in
    globalization and its transformation thereby. It addresses such
    key questions as:

    What role is the state (in both the North and South) playing in
    its own rollback and demise?

    How has the emergence of global production chains facilitated
    the emergence of a transnational capitalist class?

    Do states still serve the interests of the peoples they govern,
    or do they now primarily serve the interests of global
    transnational capital?

    How can the struggle for democracy be realized in a
    globalized state?

    The contributors seek, in the context of the worldwide Occupy
    Wall Street movement, to analyse why and how democracy
    might be achieved in globalized states. The editors and
    contributors are long-time social activists approaching the
    issues from the perspective of the global South. This
    collection is unique in that it includes work from and about
    Cuba in relation to the impact of globalization.

RECREATING DEMOCRACY
in a GLOBALIZED STATE

edited by

Cliff DuRand and Steve Martinot

ISBN:  978-0985271039
$19.95   2012








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    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    INTRODUCTION / 11
    The Development of Underdevelopment / 15
    Neoliberalism and the State / 18
    Imperialism and Sovereignty / 22
    The Globalized State / 24
    Resistance to Neoliberal Globalization / 26


    Chapter One: NEOLIBERALISM AND GLOBALIZATION
    Cliff DuRand / 27
    Neoliberalism on a Global Scale / 37

    Chapter Two: GLOBAL IMPERIALISM AND NATION-STATES
    Olga Fernández Ríos / 42
    Some Reflections on Global Imperialism and
    Nation-states / 44
    The Stripping of National Sovereignty from the
    States of the So-called Periphery / 48
    New North American Formulas to Justify
    Imperialist Domination Over the Nation-states of
    the “Periphery” / 53
    Are There Alternatives / 56

    Chapter Three: STATE AGAINST NATION
    Cliff DuRand / 62
    Introduction / 62
    Nation Building / 63
    Globalization / 68
    The Globalized State / 71
    Empire / 77
    State Against the People / 82

    Chapter Four: THE SUSTAINABILITY OF THE NATION-STATE MODEL
    IN A GLOBALIZING WORLD
    Armando Cristóbal Pérez / 97

    Chapter Five: ON THE AUTONOMY, SOVEREIGNTY AND INTEGRATION
    OF PEOPLES AND NATIONS
    Orlando Cruz Capote / 110
    The Present Reality of Globalization / 111
    The Problem of Integrating Diversities / 115
    The Problem of Bourgeois Nationalism / 118E
    On an Oppositional Multiculturality / 120
    Conclusions / 122

    Chapter Six: SOVEREIGNTY AND THE FAILURE OF GLOBAL CORPORATE
    GOVERNANCE
    Steve Martinot / 128
    The Emergence of the Transnational State / 128
    The Post Vietnam “Attack Sequence” / 133
    The Transnational Political Structure (TPS)
    and its Globalized Judiciality / 136
    The Nation-state and the Structure of the Corporation / 146
    The Corporation as Cultural Template / 151
    The Class Nature of the World under the TPS / 155
    The Failure of Global Corporate Governance / 158
    On Sovereignty and Democracy / 161

    Chapter Seven: NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION IN AN AGE OF
    GLOBALIZATION
    José Bell Lara / 170
    The Cuban Paradigm for Development / 175

    Chapter Eight: THE NATION-STATE AND CUBA’S ALTERNATIVE STATE
    Steve Martinot / 178
    The Emergence of the Nation-state as a Structure / 179
    Internal Contradictions in this Post-colonial Situation / 183
    The Cuban State / 186
    A Note on Race and Racism / 191

    Chapter Nine: THE POSSIBILITY OF DEMOCRATIC POLITICS IN
    A GLOBALIZED STATE
    Cliff DuRand / 195
    A Government Designed to be Undemocratic / 198
    Participatory Democracy: The Core of the Democratic
    Ideal / 201
    A Crisis of Democracy or a Crisis of Polyarchy? / 204
    Preventing Economic Democracy / 207
    We Need to Change Our Political Institutions / 210

    RESOURCES / 216

    INDEX / 222
9

    ABOUT THE EDITORS / CONTRIBUTORS

    José Bell Lara is professor at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences,
    University of Havana (FLACSO-Cuba). He has written Globalisation and the
    Cuban Revolution (2002) and Cuban Socialism within Globalisation (2007).
    Bell Lara is part of the international advisory board of the journal Critical
    Sociology.

    Orlando Cruz Capote holds a Doctorate in Historical Science.  He is a
    researcher at the Instituto de Filosofía and its former scientific subdirectory
    from 2005-2008. He is Professor at the Higher Institute of International
    Relations Raúl Roa García and a member of the Nacional Union of Cuban
    Writers and Artists (UNEAC), as well as a founder of the Cuban Union of
    National History. For 35 years he has done historical, philosophical and
    political rsearch.   His recent publications include Apuntes para la historia del
    movimiento juvenil cubano (1987); El Peligro Mayor (1993); Historia de la
    Revolución Cubana 1959-2000 (2001-Inédito); Proyección Internacional de la
    Revolución Cubana hacia América Latina y el Caribe (1959-1962); El
    contexto histórico-político y filosófico del debate teórico internacional sobre la
    Identidad Nacional: Un estudio acerca de su re-conceptualización en Cuba y
    un balance historiográfico de lo publicado en el país entre 1989 y el 2005”
    (2006); Cuba: Nación y Raza en el siglo XX (2010). He has written essays
    such as the problem of the Nation-state and continuing research on
    globalization and nationalism, participation and socialism and contemporary
    international relations.


    Cliff DuRand is a Research Associate at the Center for Global Justice, which
    he co-founded in 2004.  He is also coordinator of Research Network in Cuba
    and has led trips annually to Cuba since 1990.  A veteran of the 1960s social
    movements, he has worked to build institutions of the Left.  In 1982 he co-
    founded the Radical Philosophy Association and the Progressive Action
    Center, long the “home” of the Left in Baltimore.  For 40 years he was a
    professor of Social Philosophy at Morgan State University.  His continuing
    research and activism focuses on globalization, participatory democracy and
    socialism.  

    Steve Martinot has been a human rights activist for most of his life, as
    union organizer, community organizer, and anti-war organizer, including Latin
    America solidarity work. He has worked as a machinist and truck driver, and
    taught literature and cultural studies at the Univ. of Colorado and San
    Francisco State University. His latest book is "The Machinery of Whiteness,"
    from Temple University Press. His two preceding books, also from Temple,
    are "The Rule of Racialization" and "Forms in the Abyss: a philosophical
    bridge between Sartre and Derrida." He lives in Berkeley, CA, leads seminars
    on the structures of racialization in the US, and is active in a neighborhood
    assembly and participatory budget movement.

    Armando Cristóbal Pérez holds a doctorate in Political Science from the
    University of Havana.  He has taught there as well as at the Higher Institute of
    International Relations.  He has held diplomatic postings in Moscow and
    Madrid.  He has been Executive Secretary of the National Union of Cuban
    Writers and Artists (UNEAC) as well as a founder and Vice President of the
    Cuban Society for Philosophical Research (SCIF).  His recent publications
    include Literatura y sociedad en Cuba (Ensayos literarios)(   ), Del acoso a la
    consagración. La Cuba del siglo XX en la novelística de Alejo Carpentier
    (Investigación literaria) (  ), Las puertas del infierno también son verdes
    (cuentos) ( ), Un traspatio en el jardín (cuentos ), El Estado Nación. Su origen
    y construcción (investigación y estudio de teoría política) (    ) y  ena con
    Buda (novela-thriller en proceso de edición)


    Olga Fernandez Rios is a Researcher at the Instituto de Filosofia and its
    former Director from 1988 to 1999.  She was professor of Marxist studies and
    sociopolitical theory at the Central University in Villaclara and at the
    Universityd of Habana. She has held diplomatic postings, first in the Cuban
    Mission at the UN in New York and for the last 10 years in the Cuban Interest
    Section in Washington DC and in the Cuban Embassy in Chile, in both places
    in charge of Academic Exchanges.  She is a member of the Cuban Academy
    of Sciences.  Her research interests focus on the theory and practice of
    democracy, state and political system.  Among her publications are:  
    “Formación y Desarrollo del Estado Socialista en Cuba”; “La terca actualidad
    del socialismo”; “Democracia: mito y realidad”; “Democracia y Justicia Social:
    romper el mito o buscar alternativas”; “Socialismo y Democracia en el
    pensamiento político de Che Guevara”; “Socialismo y Valores Éticos. Una
    reflexión a partir de El Socialismo y el Hombre en Cuba de Ernesto Che
    Guevara”; “Cuba: participación popular y sociedad”; and “El Socialismo en
    Cuba: Búsqueda y Descubrimiento”.  
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    REVIEWS


    "In Recreating Democracy in a Globalized State, Cliff Durand and Steve
    Martinot confront one of the most important political and theoretical problems
    facing modern society: how the national state can be democratised in an era
    when transnational corporations rule a global economy....Recreating
    Democracy in a Globalized State is a lively and involving work that gets the
    reader to think about some of the most important questions of our time. The
    authors’ approach helps to update national liberation strategies common in
    the 1950s and 1960s, addressing these questions in the context of
    globalisation in a creative and radical manner. Engaging with this book is
    certainly time well spent."                                      

    Jerry Harris, Secretary of the Global Studies Association of
    North America, reviewed in Race and Class, 2013

    “DuRand and Martinot pull no punches in this insightful analysis of the
    fundamental causes of our current crisis. If you’re looking for an interpretation
    of the geo-political world that is independent of the wooly-headed evasions of
    the conventional wisdom, read this book.”  

    Jeff Faux, author of The Global Class War and The Servant
    Economy: Where America’s Elite is Sending the Middle Class
    (forthcoming); founder Economic Policy Institute.

    "This book passionately challenges the orthodoxies that legitimate neoliberal
    corporate globalization and explores the practices of direct democracy in
    social movements that prefigure the emergence of a more humane global
    commonwealth."

    Christopher Chase-Dunn, world systems sociologist, author of
    Global Formation: Structures of the World-Economy   

    “As popular movements surge around the globe, people everywhere are
    asking about the possibilities of social, political and economic transformation.
    DuRand, Martinot and their contributors sharpen this discussion with an
    assessment of the shifting terrain of state power, corporate power, and
    popular sovereignty. How do we transform the state if we do not understand
    its permutations over the last thirty years? How do you tame corporations
    whose national identities are now questionable given how easily they can
    relocate? What tools do popular movements have to affect changes? Pick up
    the book and find some provocative answers.”

     Mike McGuire, Occupier and Organizer

    “The book is published at a very opportune moment in the history of the
    world. Since 2011, democracy is a common thread running through a wide
    variety of movements and countries. From peoples seeking democracy such
    as in Egypt and more recently the U.S., to those striving to improve it by
    innovating as in Cuba and Venezuela, democracy is on the minds and in the
    plans of millions of people around the globe. DuRand and Martinot have done
    an excellent service to this inspiring quest by bringing together distinguished
    writers especially from the U.S. and Cuba: a fitting challenge to imperialist
    globalization.”   

    Arnold August,  author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997-98
    Elections  and  Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion
    (forthcoming).

Catch Cliff DuRand and  Chris Hedges, discussing
"What Kind of Democracy Exists in the US?"
on WE ACT RADIO, Washington DC.