<nettime> One World, Ready or Not

[markb@gn.apc.org (Mark Brown) (by way of patrice@xs4all.nl)]

     [orig to Multiple recipients of list <j18discussion@gn.apc.org>]

'One World, Ready or Not - the Manic Logic of Global Capitalism' 
     by William Greider

Greetings fellow travellers,

Here are a few thoughts from Greider's book. Everything not inside quotes is
directly from his text. It's an interesting book, if overlong, with an
extraordinary depiction of the way globalisation has hit workers, especially
in the Far East. His recipe for sorting out our woes isn't one I'd 'buy
into' (if you'll excuse the market terminology), but I think he has nailed
the problem pretty well... 

So everything here is for your interest, for debate or possibly for your
leaflets and 'agitprop'. Please email me (not the whole list!) if you spot
any typos. Thanks...

Mark

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The entire global volume of publicly traded financial assets (about $24
trillion) turns over every 24 days...The entire traded volume of US Treasury
debt ($2.6 trillion) turns over every eight days. (p.23)

"Now capital has wings. Capital can deal with twenty labour markets at once
and pick and choose among them. Labour is fixed in one place. So power has
shifted." Robert A. Johnson, New York financier, (once with George Soros.)
(p.24)

The Robespierre of this revolution is finance capital. Its principles are
transparent and pure: maximising the return on capital without regard to
national identity or political or social consequences. (25)

To describe the power structure of the global system does not imply that
anyone is in charge of the revolution. The revolution runs itself. This
point is critical to under-standing its anarchic energies and oblivious
disregard for parochial victims or, for that matter, the seeming impotence
of enterprises themselves to control things. (26)

many present aspects of change that seem shocking and unprecedented are
actually following the long-established patterns of capitalism. (27)

An ironic and debilitating form of global convergence is under way between
rich and poor: a global jobs auction. (82)

Though every major industrial government was in fiscal crisis, politicians
found it easier to raise taxes on consumers or workers or to reduce
government spending. The political scandal of multinational tax avoidance
was a visible marker of who held power in the new world order. (97)

Yet, despite these advancements, the chase must continue because there is no
finish line. (111)

The great multinationals are unwilling to face the moral and economic
contradictions of their own behaviour - producing in low-wage dictatorships
and selling to high-wage democracies. Indeed, the striking quality about
global enterprise is how easily free-market capitalism puts aside its
supposed values in order to do business. The conditions of human freedom do
not matter to them so long as the market demand is robust. The absence of
freedom, if anything, lends order and efficiency to their operations. None
of the great companies is inclined to complain or forego the advantages. The
Communist leaders of China understand this about their new capitalist
partners and are making good use of the knowledge. (170)

"The company share of capital is smaller," Dean Baker of the Economic Policy
Institute explained. "Debt has grown enormously and a much higher share of
profit has to be paid out in interest on the debt. So they feel under
tremendous pressure to maintain their profit levels in order to make new
investments and stay productive. From their standpoint, there is very little
room to spare, which is one reason why they keep trying to reduce labour
costs." 
(Footnote) The paradox of corporate profit begs an obvious question: If
labour lost wage incomes and corporations lost profitability, who got the
money? The answer, roughly speaking, is the owners of financial capital, the
people and institutions  who lend money to companies, governments and
consumers. (183)

corporate convergence contains the seeds of a great political crisis. Sooner
or later, as the global system progresses along these lines, people will
begin to grasp that enormous economic power is becoming concentraed in a
very few hands and on a plane beyond national systems of accountability. (191)

General Electric (US) Executive Vice President Frank P. Doyle said that, in
becoming smaller and more profitable, "We did a lot of violence to the
expectations of the American workforce." 
GM, #1 US exporter, shrank from 559,000 to 314,000 American employees in the
last decade, (1987-97). (216)

The industrial multinationals are the main engines of the revolution, but
they themselves are supervised and buffeted by a higher order of power,
finance and capital markets. (223)

returns on capital are rising faster than the productive output that must
pay them (227)

In financial-market history, when people of modest means become swept up in
the speculation, it usually means that a climax is approaching. (230)

This epic shift of power was delineated in numbers form the McKinsey report
on global capital: in 1983, five major central banks (the United States,
Germany, Japan, Britain and Switzerland) held $139 billion in
foreign-exchange reserves versus an an average daily turnover of $39 billion
in the major foreign-exchange markets. In other words, the central bankers'
combined firepower dwarfed the marketplace by more than 3 to 1. By 1986, the
two were about even in size. By 1992, the balance of power was reversed:
These major central banks had $278 billion in reserves against $623 billion
in daily trading activity. The market traders now had the size advantage by
more than 2 to 1. (245)

Robert A. Johnson: "It's like a video game - the greatest video game in the
world." 
 "We used to have a thing called the German economy or the Swedish economy
or the American economy, but we now have the whole planet sitting in one
stadium." 
"The best and smartest people in this business are the ones who can hang in
there with the pain and contradictions and see what the reality is without
drawing back from it, without letting ideology or emotions get in the way
of what they see happening. It's a little like a good surgeon who knows he's
working on a human body, but to perform well he has to disengage form those
emotions." (246-7)

"I cannot see the global system surviving. Political instability and
financial instability are going to feed off each-other in a self-reinforcing
fashion. In my opinion, we have entered a period of global disintegration
only we are not yet aware of it." Soros, ('Soros on Soros').

In time, when people of future generations are able to look back on this
system with clear eyes, they may recognise its true ugliness: the rich
nations of the world are acting like ancient usurers, lending money to the
desperate poor on terms that cannot possibly be met and, thus, steadily
acquiring more and more control over the lives and assets of the
poor...Citizens on the wealthy end of the global system may claim to be
innocent of these practices, but their ignorance and indiference make them
complicit, too. (282)

The wealthiest industrial societies, the very ones that first promoted the
globalisation of commerce, find themselves governed now by unforgiving
imperatives from the capital market - a commandment to undertake a forced
march to reduce living standards for their own citizens, discard old
political commitments to social equity and reduce benefit systems for
pensions, health care, income support and various forms of ameliorative aid.

"Governments in Europe must confront their deficits - and throw more people
over the side - but they really can't do that because they get de-elected if
they do." A financier.

Global convergence has united the separate crowds of national financial
markets into one restless, multinational herd.

The doctrine...requires political passivity in the presence of social brutality.

The revolutionary machine is awesomely powerful and quick, ploughing forward
out of control, but the footrace with history is not yet lost. (p.330)

The capacity of nations to control their own affairs has been checked by
finance and eroded by free-roving commerce, but politicians continue to
pretend they are in charge...The nation-state faces a crisis of
relevance...If governments are reduced to  bidding for the favours of
multinational enterprises, what basis will citizens have for determining
their own destinies?

If multinational enterprises truly expect greater  human freedom and social
equity to emerge from the marketplace, then why do they expend so much
political energy  to prevent these conditions from developing?

The disturbing social question embedded in the new industrialisation was why
capitalism reverted so readily to its barbaric patterns from the distant
past, repeating old brutalities on fresh ground, among new people, and
inviting the same explosive conflicts for the future. In that sense,
capitalism was still an immature system of social organisation since its
creativity depended on neurotically repeating its own worst behaviour,
abandoning and destroying in order to build anew. Did the capitalist system
learn nothing from the class warfare of the past hundred years?

A system that depends upon rigid control from above or the rank exploitation
of weaker groups is not about values, but about power...Human societies have
struggled to overcome those conditions for centuries.

Boycotts are difficult to organise and sustain, but every one of the
consumer goods companies is exquisitely vulnerable.

When human lives are stolen in the 'dark Satanic mills', nothing happens to
the offenders since, according to the free market's sense of conscience,
there is no crime.

In military terms, the free-running market has mounted a pincer movement
against the modern welfare state and is advancing to disable it. One flank
of the attack is formed by debt, the accumulating indebtedness of the
wealthiest countries as they are unable to keep up with the costs of
long-established social commitments. The other flank is capital exit -
flight of firms and investors to other locations when nations fail to shrink
the overhead costs that the welfare state imposes on enterprise and labour
markets. As these two flanks tighten, each makes the situation worse for the
societies under attack, swelling the ranks of dependent citizens and the
cost of resistance.

Multinations are, in effect, 'creaming' the poor countries of the world for
cheap and disposable labour, with the collaboration of governing elites in
those nations. Firms extract the cost advantage until such time as upward
wage pressures may develop.

The system produces grotesque convergences between great wealth and great
poverty. The most famous shoe producer, Nike, was said to pay more in one
year's promotional fees to one American basketball star, Michael Jordan,
than the entire workforce in the Indonesian shoe industry - the 25,000
workers who made Nike, Reebok, LA Gear, Adidas and other famous brands.

As an economic transaction, labour repression sustains growth and profits.
As a social transaction, it sows the ground for bloody explosion.

APEC, Jakarta Nov '94; US ambassador on his government's refusal to mention
the case of an imprisoned union leader: 'APEC is a trade forum, not a forum
for discussing human rights or the rights of workers.'

now that many new nations are industrialising, claiming greater shares of
production and consumption and wealth, the question of responsibility has
taken on a new and different urgency. A greater social question stalks
everyone, rich and poor alike: Can the earth survive the triumph of global
capitalism?

The brilliant possibility of 'one world' is the emerging recognition that
there is not going to be anyplace to hide. If Thailand becomes rich, where
will it ship its toxic wastes? To Vietnam? To Africa? When every nation has
industrialised, will they all dump their refuse in the ocean, as the
so-called civilised societies now do? If the rainforests are shrinking, will
someone invent machines to purify the air and generate rainfall? When the
automobile conquers China, will the world be choking on the polluted atmosphere?

If only the well-to-do can afford to pay the price for quality, then the
environmental quality will remain a niche market, reserved for the virtuous
few with ample surplus income.

Many of us have acquired awesome levels of prosperity from the complexities
of the modern industrial system, yet also lost the skills and confidence
that made our ancestors self-reliant.

So long as nations preoccupy themselves with  with thew head-to-head
footrace for competitive advantage, none can draw back and face these larger
portents. A new global ideology starts by accepting that, ready or not, we
are all in this together.

The new question for democracy, one might say, is: Who elected George Soros?
Or IBM-Siemens-Toshiba?


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For news'n'views of the January 4th Shell UK office occupation (and info on
resistance to Big Oil in the Niger Delta), see www.kemptown.org/shell
"We want justice. We want peace not war. We are tired of oil inspired
environmental pollution. Oil is conflict, it is war. Let us have justice." 
Niger Delta Women for Justice (NDWJ)
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