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I was reading to Martin Hutchinson at Asia Times Online and he makes a good an interesting analysis, pointing out some other hidden pockets of rot in the global economy after Dubai, namely: China, Britain and the USA. However, in spite of this rather sharp "discovery", he seems also outraged at the level of rot of the global economy and that I find extremely naive.
Probably Hutchinson is one of those liberal-conservatives who still believe in the promises of Capitalism, so his naivety is ideologically justified. Probably Hutchinson never bothered reading Deleuze and Guattari or any of the other Marxist authors.
So he has rosy glasses when looking at the reality of the liberal economic paradigm, even if he's naively critical of its corruption.
Following the Anti-Oedipus, Capitalism is a schizoid decodifying force, whose only morality is that it can borrow from pre-existent institutions such as religion and culture. In other words: Capitalism is a force of Chaos that spreads corruption and selfishness. And it does not spare those institutions that partner with it: these are also corrupted to the marrow.
Hence there is another more passive or resisting pole that they call paranoid, which is ideological and rooted in the old regime (the pre-bourgeois territorial system) which reacts cyclically in what D&G describe as a pendulum. This secondary pole is not really able to counter Capitalism but can maybe crop some of its excesses (and develop others of its own, as happens with Fascism or Islamism). But in practical terms it cannot escape or effectively counter the corrupting and demoralizing influence of Capitalism, which always persists and comes back with further disintegration once the misguided reactionary season is over.
There's no way out of this pendulum within the system. And there's no way outside the system but a socialist one, one that is also decodifying but creatively ethic. In fact there is a "thin red line" that goes through Capitalist society trying to make it more ethic, but obviously doomed to fail while selfishness and competion are the basic rules of the game.
But, well, the case is that we have a big rotten house, whose very pillars are deeply rotten and whose leaders refuse to cleanse for fear of catastrophe or rather self-perpetuating manipulations by the Oligarchy. The case is that there is no way out of the crisis with or without cleansing, the case is that we are facing a situation similar (but probably much worse) to that of the 1930s.
However now global war is rather unthinkable as an exit and some of the systemic problems are well beyond what they call economy, which is predating the planet to such unprecedented extent that has largely transferred brutal costs to the global ecosystem, making any standard liberal solution impossible.
There are many threads to pull from here, but what seems more striking to me is that in fact there is a serious possibility that the whole global system may implode with relatively low levels of institutional violence (aka war). Not just because of the nuclear threat but because no expansionist adventure would really solve anything anymore. There is many people in the high spheres thinking otherwise, of course, and this may cause some tragedies, but overall none of the problems will be solved that way - unlike what happened after WWII with the military-industrial complex meta-bubble, whose consequences are largely popping out right now.
There is no way and little purpose in securing global hegemony because the colonialist system is itself bankrupt at the very core and little can be done by mere control of some resources. Even a planetary empire would not be able to solve anything at all.
So what now? Considering the low levels of class and even species conscience that exist right now, I'd say that the system will collapse, with some painful outbursts, rather slowly... until an alternative can be built. However, as the system implodes uncontrolled in a chain reaction of sorts, the alternative will appear from the bottom, built on anger and desperation.
Interesting times these we live in.
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8 comments:
The Chinese are the kind of workers every capitalist dreams of, with outsourcing they can bypass the problematic western European workforce. The Chinese economy will be keep expanding because the Europeans' jobs will be going there.
The housing market in Britain is overvalued if the resident population of the UK really is what the UK government statistics say, ie 61383000. There probably are far more people in Britain than the government knows or wants to to know; the UK population is at least 77 million according to some.
Immigration and outsourcing are the salient factors in the modern economy. The capitalists love them both.
1. Workers from anywhere act and react depending on many factors. There's no "ideal worker", except maybe a robot.
2. Chinese also have to compete with other "ideal" work forces from all the Thrid World.
3. There are not so many European jobs anyhow. Europe has chronically high unemployment.
4. China (or any other exporting country) needs markets. Actually the USA does that role today, though Europe as well. That's why Beijing does not let the dollar fall too fast (but they are buying trash debt from Washington only to secure an affluent market for their products).
the UK population is at least 77 million according to some.
Or like 38 million who eat double what they should. Please! Have you ever tried to live without being registered in the census? No healthcare, no welfare, right to vote...
Plus I know of more than one who lives outside but is registered in England for welfare reasons. However, with the decadence of the pound, they are having a harder time, specially in the Eurozone.
I forgot:
You're measuring things in terms of an already obsolete liberal economical pseudoscience. The challenges that China faces are immense: mega-corruption, ecological disaster (both global and local), internal colonialism, brutal inequalities between the well-off and the millions of marginated.
And a revolution is still overdue in China anyhow.
No perfect workers but some populations are clearly better than others.
I'm sure some of China's success is due to them manipulating the terms of trade (though that's not a subject I know about), it does seem to fit into the pattern Gabor Steingart talks about.
"Their secret is stoic perseverance, the weapon they use to pursue their own interests while at the same time disregarding ours. What looks like a market economy in Asia, actually follows the rules of a type of society which former German chancellor Ludwig Erhard liked to call a “termite state.” In a termite state, it is the collective rather than the individual which sets the agenda. Tasks that serve the aims of society’s leaders are assigned to the individual in a clandestine manner that is barely perceptible to outsiders. It is a state that encourages as much collective behavior as possible but only as much freedom as necessary. We don’t know what they feel, we don’t know what they think and we have no way of guessing what they are planning. Indeed, this is what makes China a dark superpower.
Even if no one is prepared to say it outright, there are signs of a similar indifference to Western values all across Asia. But it is precisely that unspoken that separates the two worlds. Free labor unions are neither vilified nor permitted. Lip service is paid to the environment as something that should be protected, but at the same time it is torn apart like a car in a wrecking yard. Child labor is condemned even as it is actively tolerated. And a whole range of laws exist to protect Western intellectual property, but those rules are seldom applied."
Chinese are relatively obedient and hard working compared to their Third World competitors. Their system has corruption but it's like Japan's; not the kind that is a serious drag on the economy. India's caste system is a crippling disadvantage for them in the modern world. There are more people starving in rural India than in Africa.
When Henry Ford tried to use indigenous labour in Fordlândia he "was shocked to discover that while in the U.S. high wages ensured attendance at work, in the Amazon they encouraged absenteeism". The Amazonians disliked wearing ID badges, and being in under the tropical sun at midday and would often refuse to work. They were much happier practicing animal husbandry.
The lefties make common cause with capitalism, they're all claiming that the economy needs immigrants and that immigration is going into reverse.
Like house prices, immigration could fall too.
"Our 2015 problem may well not be keeping mobile, motivated workers out, but desperately trying to attract them, not least to look after that other unexpected population surge - in the dependent over-80s. The studies are pretty clear: economic migrants bring with them dynamism, innovation and hard work."
Immigration raises house prices, say peers.
You're maybe correct - in the long term - about the debt and dollar exchange rate. China's leaders keep a tight reign and rule a population that is unlikely to have any kind of revolution because there are too few young people to provide a basis for political upheaval. The excess of males is the only source of trouble and that is mitigated by the age structure in China at least. India is far mre likely have serious unrest.
Termite state! LOL, I wonder who is the official buffoon who coined that term? All states and all societies since agriculture are like a hive.
When I was 13 or 14 I already protested against the ant-like society we live in. And when I was to the USA, I saw an even more hive-like society than the European one, where, with a vane pretext of "individuality", everyone was made to dress the same, have similar houses and similar cars - and similar opinions. And of course, a star spangled banner, so they can be rallied to the Big Brother's hate minutes in the name of "patriotism".
When I read Orwell's 1984 (in 1984 originally, long ago!) I did not think of Stalinism or China (though I was aware that some aspects had been taken from such systems): I thought of the West and the increasing police control of everything, and the increased "single thought" (the official imperial doctrine of "democracy", meaning elitist property and domination) and the custom of calling things by euphemisms or even words that are not appropriate (newspeak).
However I realize now that such a Fordist totalitarian monster is physically impossible (Chaos can't be controlled) and obsolete (Orwell wrote that in the disciplinary period of Capitalism, he could not foresee the social period we live in now).
Chinese corruption is at least as large as in India, probably much more for most matters. You never see made in India stuff that has the safety issues of China. China has still a long way to reach German quality standards.
You see their societies as "disciplined" but they see them as merely gregarious, glued only with a shallow sense of social shame. Cheating is the real rule in China too, you just don't have to be caught and exposed, which is dishonorable. It is not really different than in the West in fact, just that we have some slight sociological differences - but very slight in reality.
When Henry Ford tried to use indigenous labour in Fordlândia he "was shocked to discover that while in the U.S. high wages ensured attendance at work, in the Amazon they encouraged absenteeism".
In Britain in the 18th century, bad salaries encouraged absenteesm: people got paid on thursday and did not return till tuesday or wednesday. It needed a long transgenerational process of social indoctrination and domestication to get workers to work beyond their real immediate needs. In the pre-idustrial relaity, half of the year were holidays and the concept of "saint Monday" is not modern at all: early Modern artisans used to practice it in fact.
It was not easy to indoctrinate whole nations to go to work more than a few days a week in conditions similar to slavery. And there is where the horrible living conditions described by authors like Victor Hugo or Dickens make sense: they were oriented to discipline by means of extreme poverty masses that otherwise would not work under the capitalist conditions.
It's not intrinsecal to societies or ethnicities: it's a cultural and even political process that did create true hives and true termites.
The lefties make common cause with capitalism, they're all claiming that the economy needs immigrants and that immigration is going into reverse.
This is the kind of absurd unsustainable comment of the righties with their lack of socio-political culture and their love of simplistic clichés.
The capitalist economy needs immigrants because they are cheaper and can be fired at no cost. Otherwise they'd need to recruit locals and pay them properly, decreasing the threat effect of unemployment and getting more labor protests and claims. In a society with no unemployment, workers would be able to negotiate their rights in very favorable terms - but that's unrealistic in the conditions of Capitalism.
What I think that the real left says about immigration in the "First World" is that:
1. In conditions of sharp inequality among planetary regions and countries and in a highly globalized world, economic migration is just normal and expected. Thinking otherwise is not recognizing the conditions of late hyper-globalized Capitalism, being blind to reality.
2. Immigrants must be granted the same rights as locals or locals will also bear the cost of the creation of such undercaste without rights. Human and worker rights are something that need to be extensively implemented in order for them to work. The Capital tries to breach the revolutionary advances in these aspects by dividing the working class along ethnic and legal lines. The Working Class is not interested in such division that can only undermine our rights and pit worker against worker.
The right instead exerts of hypocritical devil: they make sure that the slave workforce arrives and, by waving xenophobic appeals, make sure they have less or no rights. Xenophobia is mainly oriented at dividing society along ethnic and status lines, so the disorganized individuals can be exploited by the elite as usual.
That's the big lie of the right in relation to immigration: they want it but want it to be illegal, so xenophobia and racism are ideal discourses for them. It's not different than older institutionalized racism in America for example, creating various castes on ethnic grounds that could be assigned different roles, paid differently and used differently against each other.
Only if net immigration becomes negative will house prices collapse in Britain. M.Hutchenson will have a long wait for that, rely on it.
Even if the foreign workers are given the same pay and conditions that is still going to be more competition for unemployed workers. It is not just down to the wages ect. Even when all other things are equal the foreign job seeker is preferred to the unemployed native. I know this because someone who worked in an employment agency told me the applications from local unemployed were put in the trash. British unemployed are considered too unreliable for consideration. It is unclear why British unemployed will benefit from increased competition for jobs in Britain.
And it's not just a result of globalisation, 100 years ago Lithuanians were imported into Scotland by mill and mine owners.
Power station protest over foreign workers. That was a non official protest, the unions are eager to recruit Poles ect.
I'm sure it's true that British workers in the 18th century were often unreliable. But what has that got to do with my point that China's economy is in good shape because Chinese workers are the best in the world?
I thought the workers were supposed to be able to see what their own interests are, you're suggesting they're totally deluded about immigration.
Only if net immigration becomes negative will house prices collapse in Britain.
That's not correct. You are assuming that housing prices are true market prices, when if fact they are still highly inflated.
It is unclear why British unemployed will benefit from increased competition for jobs in Britain.
I'm not saying that they will. Just that they can't but face it on light of the REAL situation.
You seem to be advocating for some sort of xenophobic policy and claim that it would be a utopy for the working class. In fact it would only serve for two things:
1. Replace "brown" immigrants by "white" ones. Less Moors (or Africans, or Asians) and more Russians (or Polish, Romanians, etc.) - this assuming that the neonazi policies are implemented at all (one thing is making politics with racist undertones and another thing actually applying policies that damage the national capital).
2. Pit workers against each other, destroying the class identity along ethnic and racial lines. This does favor the capitalist class.
For the bourgeois class and their machinery, it's ideal to have different "castes" of workers, that can be employed differently and thrown against each other at political and social fights. That's why the Left has always been internationalist: because the interests of all workers worldwide are convergent, confrontation being just a manipulation by the Capital.
And it's not just a result of globalisation, 100 years ago Lithuanians were imported into Scotland by mill and mine owners.
LOL. Globalization is not just something of today. 500 years ago Africans were sent to Madeira and other colonies (America, etc.). That was also product of globalization. Some details have changed, globalization has become more and more pervading but the essence is the same.
What happens now that did not happen in the past is that before, globalization was a trend, a process, but now it is an all-pervading reality: it's almost completed.
This is part of the massive decodification process that Capitalism has accomplished: destroying through corruption and war all what used to give meaning to life, including ethnic identities.
I'm sure it's true that British workers in the 18th century were often unreliable. But what has that got to do with my point that China's economy is in good shape because Chinese workers are the best in the world? -
You questioned the "work ethics" of some ethically described working class populations. I said that these "work ethics" are something that Capitalism took time to impose.
It has nothing to do with Chinese, whose cultural ethics I have adressed elsewhere. I don't think that Chinese workers are specially good or productive, just cheap. In fact, as their living standards grow, they are losing production to other Third World countries.
I thought the workers were supposed to be able to see what their own interests are, you're suggesting they're totally deluded about immigration.
No, I am suggesting that YOU are totally deluded about immigration and many other things.
Your thought actually expresses a highly reactionary doctrine of the Empire, which may have some popularity in some sectors but that is nothing but propaganda.
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