In search of a great transformation: Weaving together a new historical subject

Neither the multitude nor the nation-state is capable of moving the global political economy toward the great transformation that the world needs, though both must play a role.  Classic models of the self-emancipation of the working class must also be radically reconstructed in order to be theoretically serviceable.  The historical subject capable of providing the kind of great transformation that will enable human society to outwit the destructive logic of global neoliberal capitalist accumulation is like to be a very complicated creature. 

Each of the current forms of potential agency is seriously flawed.  The rhizomically organized multitude can exercise disruptive creativity, bringing down vulnerable local elites and forcing new conversations onto the political agenda but can’t reconstruct the global capitalist order.  Even progressive nation states are likely become instruments of regressive nationalist agendas in the absence of powerful social movement pressure.   But, there is a symbiotic interaction among the “horizontals,” calculating nationalist politicians and the persistent multilevel campaigns of the myriad social movement organizations that combine rhizomic networks with traditional command and control structures. This symbiosis creates a threatening “witches-brew” from for those whose vested interests require preservation of the established global order, which is to say it creates the possibility of a great transformation. 

Drawing on the cornucopia of concrete movements and organizations that have succeeded in transcending national borders and the North-South divide, in braiding together diverse constituencies, and in operating at multiple levels from the local through the national to the global, this paper seeks to sketch out the organizational forms and discursive strategies that characterize of existing efforts at counter-hegemonic globalization assess the possibility of creating the more robust articulation that would be necessary for these movements to force changes in existing structures of power.