Politics of Global Competitiveness

Marx predicted in Capital (1867) that as capitalism became global, patterns of work would be transformed, and workers would need to develop versatility, flexibility, and mobility. This 'general law of social production', as he called it, is now in evidence all around us, in global value chains, 'zero hours' contracts, and contract work organised through digital platforms. It results from competition between capitalists, scientific and technological revolutions inproduction, and incessant advances in the division of labour as production processes are broken down into ever smaller steps. This book documents the leading roles of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Washington-based World Bank as advocates of thesedevelopments. They do not, as generally supposed, simply represent the interests of the advanced economies or the 'West' and their transnational corporations. They promote a single global model of capitalist development, without limits and on a genuinely global scale. It calls upon all states to 'adjust' continually to the structural and social demands of competitiveness, which they see as essential to the global hegemony of capital over labour. The OECD and the World Bank propose policies thatgive girls and women equal access to education and paid work, reform welfare to 'make work pay', introduce flexible labour contracts that make 'hiring and firing' easier, focus education on skills that boost employability, and draw workers in the developing world from the 'informal' sector into theformal sector, where they can be more productive. This is the politics of global competitiveness.

Paul Cammack taught at the University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University, and City University, Hong Kong, before retiring in 2015. His initial interest in Latin American and Third World politics developed into a broader focus on global political economy, and most recently on the politics of social reproduction. His main empirical interests are in politics of international organisations, which he addresses from a classical Marxist perspective.