Socialist Register 1994 Preface

Abstract

The main theme of this year's Register - 'Between Globalism and Nationalism' - deals with the ever-greater global reach of capital and its impact on the policies of nation-states. The conventional wisdom on the Left has been that the internationalization of capital means that there is now very little space for national governments to adopt policies which run counter to the logic of international capital. We think that the Register is performing an important service in probing and challenging this assumption. This is the burden of the essays by Leo Panitch, Manfred Bienefeld, Arthur MacEwan and Gregory Albo. They demonstrate the dangers and limits of the practice of 'competitive austerity' into which even social democratic governments in the developed capitalist world are drawn by virtue of their acceptance of the logic of global competitiveness; and their essays advance the case for left strategies based on more inwardly-oriented and democratic economic alternatives, while avoiding the pitfalls of parochial and undemocratic nationalist reactions to globalism.