Global inequality

Dear WSN,
    Peter Grimes contends that: "Globlization today is a
process of acceleration in the ability of Capital to vitiate the effective
power of the nation-state, thereby eroding the old core-periphery
hierarchy BETWEEN states and substituting instead that hierarchy WITHIN
them."
    This, it strikes me, is a rather fanciful notion that has gained
widespread currency on the left these days. I have yet to see any convincing
data to this effect. Core countries, by and large, have remained in the core,
peripheries have remained peripheries, and the gap between them, by most
accounts, continues to grow.
    Sincerely, Jason

Jason W. Moore
Sociology, Johns Hopkins


Peter Grimes wrote:

>         I guess I should clarify.
>         I cannot speak to the motives behind the original posting
> (forwarded to me which I forwarded to WSN), and I agree with Louis'
> assertion that hysteria is a good way to keep the troops mobilised.
> However, I still agree with the overall thrust of it for the reasons I
> mentioned in my own post in reaction.  The actual time-scale involved in
> this conflict (over modes of globalization) is not the issue for me.  What
> *IS* the issue is the fact of the conflict itself.  I have no illusions
> about the Democratic party--I voted for Nader myself.  Furthermore I know
> that patronage is among the motivations for some of the public players.
> But that should not obscure the deeper reality: Globlization today is a
> process of acceleration in the ability of Capital to vitiate the effective
> power of the nation-state, thereby eroding the old core-periphery
> hierarchy BETWEEN states and substituting instead that hierarchy WITHIN
> them.  The NECESSARY consequence is income polarization within the core
> replicating that within the periphery, with a concommitant political
> structure based on coercion.
>         However cynical the Democratic party's players may be, their
> legitimacy has been based upon the post-war "social structure of
> accumulation" of social democracy--albeit in an extremely weakened form.
> As is everywhere true throughout the core, social democracy is
> incompatible with the competitive "rigors" of globalization, hence the
> multiple crises of national health care in England & Canada, the collapse
> of the Italian CP & other strong unions, the rise of down-sized skinhead
> youth across the core (& their left-anarchist polarised brethren), etc.,
> etc., etc.
>         The electoral battle is a distant echo of that very real struggle
> against the residues of a no-longer-tenable social democracy as filtered
> through the lens of competing sectors of capital.  Not that either Gore or
> Clinton *ever were* genuine social democrats!  Rather, their covering
> IDEOLOGIES were the inherited & vitiated cultural echos of social
> democracy.  Put simply, the electoral battle is a shadow-box on the walls
> of Plato's cave.  But let us not confuse their dismissal as shadows with
> the dismissal of the very real battle raging in the fire that illumines
> them.
>
> --Peter
>
> PS--My name is indeed the same as the opera.  My parents always claimed
> innocence of intention.