The Post-modern Prince

Abstract

This essay analyzes recent protests against aspects of neo-liberal globalization, as for example at the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Meeting in Seattle in late 1999 and in Washington, DC in spring 2000 to coincide with the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings. I first examine the reasons for the failure of the Seattle talks, and second, evaluate the protests and their political significance. Finally, I analyze some emerging forms of political agency associated with struggles over the nature and direction of globalization that I call the ‘the post-modern Prince’. This concept is elaborated in the final section of this essay. It is important to stress at the outset, however, that in this essay the term ‘post-modern’ does not refer, as it often does, to a discursive or aesthetic moment. In my usage, ‘post-modern’ refers to a set of conditions, particularly political, material and ecological that is giving rise to new forms of political agency whose defining myths are associated with the quest to ensure human and intergenerational security on and for the planet, as well as democratic human development and human rights. As such, the multiple and diverse political forces that form the post-modern Prince combine both defensive and forward-looking strategies. Rather than engaging in deconstruction, they seek to develop a global and universal politics of radical (re) construction.

The modern prince, the myth-prince, cannot be a real person, a concrete individual. It can only be an organism, a complex element of society in which a collective will, which has already been recognized and has to some extent asserted itself in action, begins to take concrete form. (Gramsci 1971: 129)