BOOK NOTES Alex Callinicos. 2001. Against the Third Way: An AntiCapitalist Critique. Cambridge: Polity Press.

ISBN 0-7456-2675-0 The end of socialist economies and societies in Eastern Europe and the successful retreat from socialist principles of the oversized welfare state in most developed market economies has not persuaded the proponents of old-fashioned socialist planning to endorse the vitality of economic freedom. Opponents of such free market institutions as private property rights congregate into two major camps. One camp includes modern-day Social Democrats on the continent of Europe and the New Labour movement in Great Britain. Both these groups, while recognizing the superior economic performance of the marketbased economy, try to harness it to serve the postmodern bureaucratic state in which identity politics are ultimately detrimental to the successful functioning of the market. This policy, sometimes referred to as the Third Way, purports to tread a path between capitalism and socialism toward an economy that combines virtues of both systems while having none of the usual vices. The other camp consists of old-style socialists, who still see economy and society through the Marxist prism of class struggle. To them, the Third Way represents a betrayal of socialist principles and a retreat from the ground gained by the working-class ght against the capitalist exploiters. Defenders of the socialist dogma do not notice that the Third Way tends to slide leftward, both intellectually and politically. They do not notice that the ultimate goal of the neosocialist project is a socialist utopia not dissimilar from Mussolinis corporate state. Not content with promises of a utopia in the future, opponents of the Third Way demand a utopia here and now. Calling for a revolutionary confrontation between the diverse forces of postmodern political melee and global capitalism, they envision the onset of a society in which resources are distributed and human needs are satised without markets, without private property, without individual responsibility for economic decision making. Undeterred by a century of conclu-

The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 63, No. 3 (July, 2004). 2004 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

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sive refutation of socialist economic theory, they continue the futile search for a viable nonmarket economy. Alex Callinicos, a British political scientist, sees no alternative to capitalism but the classical socialist economy and society. He denes socialism as a society that gives priority to human needs and subjects allocation of resources to democratic control (p. 120). Such a society has never really existed. By making this assertion, the author cleverly disposes of the need to account for deciencies of those socialist societies that actually tried to subject the distribution of resources to the control of nonmarket mechanisms. Their failures do not reect on the doctrine of socialism, since, according to Callinicos, the purportedly socialist practices of the 20th century can easily be dismissed as Stalinism and economic statism. While practitioners of Marxist dogma are irrelevant for Callinicoss project, the doctrine itself remains of utmost importance as an indispensable intellectual foundation of left-wing economic and social policies. The author approvingly quotes a French prime minister, Lionel Jospin (a politician with identiable Trotskite roots), who praises the Marxist method for its continuing power to explain the workings of capitalist society (p. 9). Callinicos then throughout the book returns to Marx as a guiding light of the revolutionary process that will nally lead to the establishment of a socialist society worthy of that name. In this book, the author reveals the persistent inhumanity of any economy based on freedom of exchange and private property. He seeks to prove that the Third Way policies are in fact perpetuating the free market economy and he wants to outline a truly socialist revolution that will abolish the free market and replace it with a much more humane system of wealth distribution. In Chapter 1, Callinicos demonstrates that globalization, while limiting the ability of national governments to interfere with economic processes, has not changed the nature of capitalism, which is the centrality of prot in the system of nancial incentives. Thus, competition is merely a means of prot maximization. We should keep in mind that the author sees the limits on government economic involvement as inherently negative. On page 20 he asks if a political action by a social democratic government can alter the nature of global capitalism and by page 28 answers this question in the nega-

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tive. Citing the fate of Oskar Lafontaine, a German nance minister in the Schroeder Administration whose antibusiness policies resulted in his resignation, Callinicos comes to an unsettling conclusion: in a free society, markets are able to resist excessive government pressure. Does the free market economy have any positive characteristics, such as techincal innovations, freedom of consumer choice, or decreasing production costs? Not according to Callinicos! What he sees as the main consequence of a relatively free interplay of market forces is not increased freedom and improved living conditions but the concentration of power in the hands of a few very large global corporations. While distancing himself from the most vulgar leftist critiques that portray a handful of monopolies as the uncontested rulers of the global economy (p. 37), the author on the very next page predicts that soon the Internet business will be completely controlled by only three or four companies. Without noticing this apparent contradiction, Callinicos proceeds to discover drawbacks of large private monopolies, which, according to him, are just as inefcient as Stalinist command economies (p. 38). Apparently, the new global capitalism is just as incapable of innovation and productivity growth as a Soviet-type economy. The author argues that productivity growth in the United States has zzled out, stagnating in the last three decades of the 20th century and in the last decade showing signs of improvement, but only in the narrow eld of computer-related industries. To substantiate this controversial claims, the author refers to just one sufciently detailed analytical work on productivity, citing mostly its conclusions while omitting any discussion of the analysis itself. The issue of productivity growth is sufciently complex to warrant a more detailed discussion with the use of various sources. Without such a discussion, the authors unequivocal statement about stagnating productivity remains just a controversial and unproven hypothesis. Callinicos atly denies that the modern economy has in fact produced technical innovations of any importance. Advances in computer technology are casually dismissed as a minor improvement in a persons ability to edit text, access sources of entertainment, and make purchases without leaving home. This excessively restricted vision of the impact of computer and software technology on economic progress is presented with lively rhetorical ourishes. The

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substantive argument, which ignores the ubiquity of softwarecontrolled electronic devices in modern life, does not seem compelling. According to the author, the modern state is powerless vis--vis the market. The latter can manipulate the former to force nonmarket entities into submission. Callinicos sees the state in classical Marxist terms, as an executive committee promoting nancial interests of the ruling class. Following this model, he insists that governments of modern capitalist nation-states are actively pursuing policies inspired, if not directly ordered, by the global capitalist corporations. Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted to the discussion of how New Left politicians oppress the poor and minority populations at home and subjugate third-world governments abroad to expand the reach of global capitalism. It is interesting that the author seems to recognize the preservation of traditional social structures as essential for the successful functioning of the market economy. He criticizes New Labors declarations about the necessity to maintain public order and protect communities from violent crime (pp. 5657). One might wonder why the author might object to these laudable goals, until we realize that for him the preservation of community and social order actually represents a stumbling block on the road to an ideal form of socialism. Callinicos follows Marxs contention that capitalism must destroy all traditional structures and all networks of human interaction outside the cash nexus of the impersonal market in order to rid society of those institutions that might impede its inexorable movement toward anti-capitalist revolution and eventual socialist utopia. Callinicos does not see social order, community, family, and other societal structures as self-emerging, self-maintaining, and selfperpetuating. Instead, he thinks that they, in their current form, are maintained by the state, which keeps patterns of social inequality inherent in them so as to benet the process of capitalist accumulation. On the other hand, he insists that social institutions based on nonmarket principles will be swept away by global capitalism, so the New Left governments are only postponing the inevitable (p. 67). It is unclear if the disappearance of the current institutions that Callinicos regards as anti-egalitarian will lessen social inequality. If it does, then the market is more egalitarian than the supposedly government-

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maintained community and family structures. I doubt that Callinicos would agree. However, if the disappearance of these structures would result in greater inequality, then they are not anti-egalitarian in their consequences and neither are the government policies that support them. Callinicos seems to believe that the state can serve as a great equalizer and effective promoter of full employment, if only it wished to do so. He laments New Labors reluctance to achieve full employment by means of Keynesian demand management (p. 49). The dismal history of this type of policies, well known to anyone familiar with postwar British economic history, is not mentioned. Calling for increased government expenditure to ensure the equality of outcomes (equality of opportunity not being sufciently egalitarian), while at the same time lambasting New Labor for adherence to the preservation of family and community, Callinicos seems to tacitly acknowledge the link between the expansion of government social spending and the weakening of family and communal structures. But then, the ultimate destruction of these institutions is just what the revolutionary Left wants. The book was written before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. However, the U.N. sanctions and no-y zone enforcement, designed to limit the destructive capacity of Saddam Husseins regime, were in force at the time of the writing. Not surprisingly, they are presented as a glaring example of U.S. imperial hegemony. Humanitarian interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo are also interpreted in the same way. Apparently, all these actions were conducted solely to promote the global capitalist expansion. As the United States and its obedient ally Britain intervene to maintain the international order riven with inequality and conict (p. 96), we are left to contemplate a less conictual and more equal world in which the likes of Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein are left to their own devices. The authors Marxist background is as visible as neon lights in Times Square. The book treats the assumptions of classical Marxism as self-evident truths. It is replete with postulates of historical materialism: subordination of the state to the interests of the capitalist ruling class, inevitable class polarization in advanced capitalist societies, eventual collapse of the capitalist mode of production under

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the weight of its own contradictions. Along with modern Marxists, Callinicos recognizes the futility of Soviet-style socialism and makes every attempt to distance himself from it. Of course, the system for which he reserves the real scorn is the liberal market economy as exemplied in the policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Callinicos presents Stalinism and Thatcherism as equally unpalatable (p. 121), and the reader is given a glimpse of the modern Marxists dislike of the only socialism that really existed. Of course, for a person unversed in dialectical materialism there is something really implausible about equating a dictatorship responsible for millions of deaths with a set of policies conducted by a democratically elected government that has no record of mass extermination of its citizens. But then, this passage in Callinicoss book is yet another testimony to his peculiar Marxist credentials. The author concludes with the nine theses that chart the road to socialism by way of anti-capitalist revolution. According to Callinicos, capitalism cannot be successfully reformed. Even its most benign varieties, such as the German and Japanese ones, are bound to follow the logic of capitalist development and therefore should be regarded as undesirable in the long run (p. 119). Therefore, the alternative to the free market and to private property is not a set of socialist policies introduced piecemeal and depending on the outcome of democratic electoral process. The only proper solution is socialism. Of course, this time it will be different from those impostor regimes that have previously operated under the title of socialism. The author sees a bright future for the advent of a real (envisioned) socialism and evidence of a multiplicity of sources from which the future socialist society will spring. A variety of ideological currents, Green, socialist, Third Worldist, anarchist (p. 119) will somehow cooperate in begetting a new, equal, and just economic and social order. I doubt that this unbridled creativity would produce a socialism that is very different from the one established by Lenin and perfected by Stalin. After all, Lenin could enthuse about the living creativity of the masses and the withering away of the state while at the same time issuing orders to summarily execute his political opponents. The ideological multiplicity of forces that produced the Russian Revolution of 1917 did nothing to prevent the subsequent bloodbath. Why would

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a new leader, brought to the surface by the revolutionary movement envisioned by Callinicos, behave with a greater restraint in promoting his (or her) vision of socialist utopia? The author does not provide an answer. Actually, the book gives an impression that he does not even recognize the legitimacy of this question. There is something hopelessly immoral and irresponsible about this omission. Andrew Savchenko

Moore, Mike. 2003. A World Without Walls: Freedom, Development, Free Trade and Global Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-82701-9 Mike Moores tumultuous three-year term as Director-General (DG) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) ended in 2002. It began with the disastrous Seattle ministerial summit meeting and culminated more hopefully in the Doha meeting that nally launched the so-called Development Round of trade negotiations and also marked the entry of China and Taiwan into the WTO. This memoir includes his account of these events, as well as his views on globalization, the role of trade in political and social progress, and his vision of global governance. It also provides a useful, if limited, account of recent changes in the conduct of WTO negotiations and the workings of the WTO Secretariat. Moores term at the WTO began under a cloud as the member countries were bitterly split between him and Supachai Panitchpakdi of Thailand, nally agreeing to split the DGs six-year term between the two. Moore was unlucky enough to get the front end of the deal, presiding rather helplessly over the nal stages of preparation for the Seattle meeting, which foundered, in his account, on the bickering among delegations and the lack of a consensus on the agenda, rather than on the highly publicized protests on the streets. Ironically, one the enduring images of the Seattle debacle is the image of the balding, button-down Moore, in reality a lifelong New Zealand labor activist, caricatured and demonized as the heartless bureaucrat from Geneva, hell-bent on destroying the environment and exploiting cheap labor

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for multinational corporations. This book is in large part his attempt to correct this image and to address what he views as the wrongheaded opposition to trade liberalization by anti-globalization groups. The best parts of the book focus on Moores formative years as a young labor politician in New Zealand and his personal experiences dealing with the bureaucracy and culture of trade policy in the WTO. Readers of this journal will note with interest his political development as a pro-labor, pro-trade globalist, a combination that will bafe many labor union supporters in the United States and Europe. Coming from a small, open economy, he saw that economic opportunity for his working-class constituents lay in access to foreign markets, rather than in insular, protectionist trade policies. Economists will, however, nd Moores trade theory a little rough around the edges, as he proclaims that the basis of the gains from trade is the premise of the essential righteousness of universal reciprocity (p. 50). This passage reveals the approach of the trade diplomat, as opposed to the economist. Economic theory establishes the gains from trade based on specialization and exchange according to comparative advantage, without relying on reciprocity, righteous or otherwise. Yet the work of trade negotiations relies heavily on reciprocal concessions of market access, a mercantilist trick that gets countries to bargain, promoting mutual economic benets. Moore thus inadvertently makes the point that reciprocal mercantilism forms the basis for WTO-sponsored trade liberalization. Moore describes the frustrations of working as a high-prole ofcial within the limits placed on the DGs powers. Unlike the sinister CEO-of-world-trade image that many protestors have made of it, the position is strictly circumscribed by the fact that WTO member countries ultimately control the rules and the negotiations. For his predecessors, the role had been to act as the chief public cheerleader for trade liberalization and simultaneously to work behind the scenes to keep the trade negotiations on track. Moore inherited a much more demanding job in the expanded WTO, which was to do all that in the context of a much larger, diverse, and unwieldy membership, but also to manage public relations for the WTO itself, and to gure out how to promote a more democratic internal process of delibera-

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tions. Regarding the last of these problems, one of the most serious challenges to the WTO has been its inability to reform its traditional green room consultations on major issues, which were based on negotiations among the larger members and a select group of smaller countries. Moore made signicant progress in opening up WTO deliberations and agenda setting to the smaller, previously unrepresented developing countries. Moore continues his cheerleading for trade liberalization, a role that suits him well. He acknowledges the global concerns over the environment, health, and poverty, and yet maintains that increased trade is consistent with progress in these areas. Above all, he links increased trade with democracy and economic growth for countries that take part in it. He also recognizes the need for increased transparency and accountability in global institutions, but argues for the integrity of the WTO based on representation through sovereign nation-states. One of Moores most signicant contributions was the opening of communication and dialogue between the WTO and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), even those most critical of the WTO. He regards the proper role of NGOs as facilitators of public debate on critical issues, not as voting members in global economic institutions. Yet he cannot resist leveling some pointed criticisms against NGOs that are less accountable to their membership and the public than the businesses and organizations they criticize. He counterbalances these observations with equally mordant comments on the obstructionist and narrow-minded ways of some career trade diplomats and staff, whom he refers to as tenured bureaucrats. Given Moores unique position to observe the unfolding of global trade issues, the book leaves one wanting to hear more about trade and perhaps less about broader global issues and challenges, which receive more systematic treatment in books by specialists in those areas. In this regard, the really critical political challenge to the WTO was not addressed. Moore agrees that the WTO faces a serious challenge from those who would hijack the organization to introduce environmental and social conditions on trade. Yet NGOs especially will not be satised with an observer or passive role in the WTO as long as their issues have no other global organization to promote

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them. In his retirement, Mike Moore may therefore best serve the WTO as DG of a newly formed world environmental and labor rights organization, which would keep untold hundreds of NGOs from making mischief with trade policy. Kent Jones