The Anti-Globalization and Upgrading of Extra-Parliamentary Politics
This article sheds a new conceptual light on the sociopolitical context of anti-globalization struggles by drawing attention to two theoretical assumptions of critical historical sociology. It argues that the sociological literature concerned with the transformative agency of the anti-globalization movement would benefit from a more rigorous theorization of the historical specificity of capitalism — a unique differentiation between the “economic” and the “political”. The objective is to better assess, by overcoming the limitations stemming from the commonly held conjonctural analysis of neoliberalism and liberal democracy, the processes through which the anti-globalization movement is attempting to change the world without taking power. The article concludes that the global justice movement — despite its hesitation to repoliticize the issue of labor and social property relations — has the great merit of reenergizing a cosmopolitan and extra-parliamentary political culture that has been depreciated by liberal democracy.