The Challenges for International Solidarity and Labour Rights in the Emerging Multipolar World: The Case of the BRICS

Abstract

The classic literature on globalization was dominated by two central questions. The first question had to do with the forces of convergence and divergence in national models of capitalism in the face of a post-Cold War unipolar moment led by the United States and Anglo dominated global finance.  The second question centred on the neoliberal nature of that order and the struggle of workers to protect, assert, and expand their labour rights. The challenge to international labour solidarity, abstractly in any case, was easy enough to identify and define: neoliberal globalization. The rise of the BRICS group raises some contemporary issues for the promotion of labour rights and solidarity in the global south. Has, for example, the emerging of this multipolar order complicated the political economy of global capitalism and given rise to new challenges for labour?  To answer this question, we set ourselves two central tasks.  First, we analyse how the universalist pretensions of embedded liberalism within the post-war multilateral international system were contradictory and ultimately not practicable along several vectors. Second, we examine the formation of BRICS and its relationship to labour via the BRICS Trade Union Forum.  We find both the lingering constraints of embedded liberalism and opportunities for elevating the status of labour and labour standards and increased labour solidarity within the multiregional BRICS bloc.