Social Movements and Global Capitalism

While capitalism is increasingly organised on a global basis, effective opposition to capitalist practices tends to be manifest locally. The traditional response of the labour movement to global capitalism has been to try to forge international links between workers' organisations in different countries. This strategy, despite some successes, has generally failed and the paper argues that the relationship between the labour movement and the New Social Movements requires further analysis in terms of the local and the global. The rationale and characteristics of such an analysis are discussed in the context of opposition to the practices of the transnational corporations, the transnational capitalist class and its local affiliates, and the culture-ideology of consumerism.