Re: Spiral, Chapters 5 - 6 (end)

Gert,

Most grateful; your effort is much appreciated.

If I could further impose upon your kindness, would it be possible to
get a little more detail on the ff:

>Chapter 5   "Getting Past the Post"
> but two living socialists. "We examine two such visions:
> Warren Wagar's utopian vision of a world commonwealth and
> John Roemer's analytic vision of market socialism. Then we
> combine elements of both to offer our own portrait of
> market socialism on a world scale."


What is the portrait of market socialism that CD/Boswell offer us?
How do they deal with the Austrian critique? Or even Stiglitz's in
Whither Socialism? [I guess it is permitted to us "reactionaries" to
ask such horrible questions ;) But permitted or not, I think that
after the debacle of actually existing socialism, we do have to pay
some attention to those critiques?]


>Chapter 6   "The Future of the World-System"
> "Finally, we turn back to the future (Chapter 6). Changes
> in world capitalist production ... reveal the impotence of
> any state, including any communist state, to fully control
> its domestic portion of the world economy.

Generally granted. But is this that new, other than to the large core
states, or perhaps more accurately, the US? Most of the rest of us
have never really been able to "fully control" our domestic portion
of the economy -- one doesn't have to be a true-blue dependista to
accept this.

> ... The upsurge in capital mobility and interdependence,
> while lessening the importance of national states, is
> increasing the importance of, and benefits from, interstate
> authority, choking off capital's own escape route from
> political authority....

Is it really lessening the importance of national states? As of this
time, and for the medium term (next ten years, say), national states
are the constituent elements of the interstate authorities, and it is
their decisions which hold, albeit most unequally. Thus, it is not
the counterposition of national states to inter-state authority, but
the working of national states within inter-state authority.

If anything, it strikes me that national states have assumed even
greater importance in pushing through, implementing, the emerging
phase of global capitalist development or, more accurately, what some
quarters would like to see as the emerging phase. So they can either
rush headlong into it -- in which case, it's likely woe upon us -- or
some, at least, can conduct some judicious foot-dragging, or even
more.

I may be completely off base, even foolish, on this. But it strikes
me that the upsurge in capital mobility that is specifically new is
the mobility of financial capital, the foundations for which began to
be laid in the latter 1970s and took off in the 1980s with the
development of more and more 'creative' financial instruments and
derivatives which permitted circumvention of various rules that used
to act as a dampener. FDI's have been quite mobile for quite some
time, and their upsurge, I think, pre-dates that of financial capital
mobility; one thinks of the World Bank's espousal of export
processing zones, aka off-shore manufacturing platforms, in the late
sixties. Still, their greatest movement remains within the core
states, for reasons that have to do with the willingness or ability
of those states to put in place those rules and regulations that make
such capital comfortable. And there has been tremendous movement into
the US, because anyone who wants to get anyway has to have a presence
there, not least to provide it with some means to exercise some
influence on the US state as the single most important actor in
"interstate authorities."

It's not at all clear that capital, including financial capital,
wants an escape route from political authority. Rather, they want
political authority to exercise its authority such as to create the
most conducive environment(s) for their operations, such an
environment often meaning to replicate the US environment elsewhere,
and to make it stick.

But it is also in the area of financial capital that states do have
some means of holding back; just as it is financial capital that
threatens most the ability of national states to at least manipulate
some parameters of domestic economies.

FDI's and financial capital don't see eye-to-eye on everything. For
instance, financial capital apparently detests capital controls in
whatever form, though they are not above making a quick buck if they
think there's some stability to those controls; whereas FDI's may not
find it that objectionable provided such controls do _not_ prevent
profit repatriation, and they have some assurance that there is
sufficient stability to the policy framework. Indeed, in so far as
such controls provide for some currency stability, they may even
welcome it as it allows for just that much more ability to plan --
corporations are units of central planning, ironic as that may be --
and to cut down on costs of hedging.

> The world capitalist system emerges from this presentation
> as a single world economy with an emerging global polity.
> With the increasing development of global intrastate

Is that right? "intrastate"? Shouldn't that be "interstate"? Or have
I misunderstood so completely?

> institutions comes a rapid rate in the transnational
> politics of world governance. We pay particular attention
> to transnational labor movements, as labor has always been
> the prime mover in major social transformations. The
> combination of structural constants, cycles, and trends
> produces a model of world-system structure that is
> reproducing its basic features while growing and
> intensifying. For socialism to transform capitalism, it too
> must be a global system, one that embraces worldwide
> democracy."

In principle, again granted generally.

But can we have some details of what is envisaged as worldwide democracy?

I worry. The interstate authorities that are supposedly laying down
the groundwork of a global polity are subject to extremely unequal
influence.

At the same time, popular organisations/people also have unequal
abilities to set the agenda, to make their voices heard, to even
establish the terms of debate and discussion, minimally the terms
that are used. This, presumably, is laying down the groundwork of the
global democracy that is said to be emerging.

Put it another way, with perhaps some off-tangent matters, pet
hobby-horses so to speak, thrown in.

My concern is simple, although possibly misguided and wrong-headed,
or just plain stupid. And it is likely guilty of insufficient
cognisance of the role of resistance in shaping inter-state authority.

States are still the major actors on the world arena. Despite all
talk of weakening of states under globalisation, the fact remains
that it is through states that the current globalisation agenda takes
shape. Indeed, states are the guardian angels, fighting back their
own people if needs be with either TINA or "not yet". Financial
liberalisation, e.g., was/is an act of national states and it is
never quite the case that there is no alternative to going along with
the full tide of liberalisation; corporations will continue to invest
where they think they can turn a good profit, or for reasons of
getting into a regional market, or for positioning vis-a-vis
competitors, etc. Sure, without full liberalisation, we may not grow
(as in GDP growth) at as fast a clip -- there won't be all those
funds sloshing around. But then, we may also avoid the "one step
forwards, two steps back" tango, although of course the usual "two
steps forwards, one step back" shuffle is an inevitability under the
present economic dispensation.

Thus, a "global democracy" for the foreseeable future, and the avenue
through which we would have to navigate to get to "true" global
democracy (barring the "big bang"), would include at least three
actors: states and the international organisations which they control
(unequally), corporations and the states they influence (unequally),
and peoples with the voices they have (unequally). How are the
present inter-state organisations to be the ground upon which we
would construct a "global democracy"?

Further, as far as people are concerned, there too we have unequal
voices. Like it or not, it is often the NGOs of the North Atlantic
who do set the agenda, at least the terms of debate and discussion.
Take what, in the eyes of some, might  possibly be said to be a
secondary matter: the concept of "indigeneity". In the context of
settler colonies, where the previous inhabitants were put down and
are now marginalised, there is little difficulty with the idea. Yet
the idea has been taken up all over the world by NGOs, and one does
have to wonder what is its force, other than as a synonym for
oppressed minorities in, say, the context of Thailand, where Tai are,
I think, as much indigenous as Lisu or Akha; or in India vis-a-vis
the so-called tribals, or in the context of Malaysia, where Malay
would be considered as much indigenous as Iban or Penan.

Indeed, Malaysia might be a test case of the applicability of the
idea, other than as a synonym for oppressed or marginalised or
downtrodden minorities. For written into the independence
constitution, 40+ years ago, is a recognition of the rights of
indigeneity (at that time the reference was of course to Malays) over
and above the rights of citizenship. Yet, it is precisely that which
is behind so much of the view, both in the media and in academic
circles, that Malaysian Chinese are discriminated. Of course, some
would want to claim that the Orang Asli, the aboriginal peoples, are
the true indigenes -- but if length of tenure of a territory is to be
the criteria of indigeneity, then we do have one big headache. In
effect, we are talking of everyone enjoying the full rights of
citizenship and of fighting oppression in whatever shape; but because
the notion of "indigenous" is good tender in the world of (North
Atlantic) funding agencies and the like, that is now often used.

Or, to take up another instance, currently somewhat fashionable in
'western' academic circles -- diasporic studies. We now have studies
of the Chinese diaspora, or the Indian diaspora, etc. And it is
fashionable to study and talk about and hold conferences on Chinese
business networks -- but God forbid if I should try and put in a
grant application to the SSRC to study Jewish business networks.
Still, we -- meaning those of us in the semi-periphery and periphery
-- follow suit and pick up on these fashions. I can't speak for all
others, but I (and many of my friends) am not in diasporic anything;
I'm at home and I feel at home, though most of the time ill at ease.
But the place, imagined or otherwise, I'm supposed to be in diaspora
from is a foreign country as far as I'm concerned, a place in which I
would be a stranger and which I would visit only as a tourist. But of
course I (and my friends) can be dismissed as a minority.

Finally, given the already limited (some more so than others)
sanctions we have as people against our national states, what makes
us think we are going to have any greater leverage against a global
government, or inter-state organisations? Or even a global party?
Especially when there are quite distinctive perspectives amongst the
people, which does not preclude a coming together for specific
actions, although the day after, there will likely be huge
differences in the next step forward. The differences over China and
PNTR/WTO should sound a warning bell, shouldn't it?

Anyway, all this by way of reactive thoughts rather than criticism.
May well all be answered in the details of the book...

Thanks for the indulgence.

KJ Khoo