Re: Alternatives to corporate globalization

List

        I am always pleased when a post generates any discussion,
particularly when it offers the opportunity to raise fundamental issues
about the status and direction of the world-economy.  Which brings me to
my first point: the original post to WSN of the title in the subject field
above was a FORWARD.  I did not write it, nor does my forwarding an item
to WSN constitute an endorsement.  I choose to re-post to this list items
I find on others (& the opposite) when I believe them to be provocative of
thought or useful discussion.  But I ask that in future you attribute to
me positions I write myself, only.
        In fact, I agree with each of the responses to the original post 
in one key respect:
the original author was not posting politically REALISTIC alternatives to
corporate globalization, nor can I know that such was even his intent.
But the list of oppositional movements was inclusive of some important 
ideological currents circulating today.
        Speaking now strictly for myself, I dismiss every alternative to
global capitalism in its current form as either hopelessly utopian
(e.g.--Anarchism) or naively ineffective (reforming the WTO).  Too few
appreciate the historical MOMENTUM behind the gathering together of the
global ruling class, and their current efforts to build a global state.
This is a process that has been building for 500 YEARS, and will not be
stopped by mass demonstrations or even open insurrection.  (Yes these are
getting some [carefully distorted] media attention and have required the
re-adjustment of PUBLIC meetings of the WB/IMF/WTO proto-state, but these
are minor inconveniences at worst.)  But the technology, power, means of
coercion, and money are all decisively in the hands of the TNCs and have
been ever since the dawn of capitalism itself.  All oppositional movements
that have seized state power throughout this period have at best gone
"back to the future" by re-inventing the pre-capitalist Tributary State
(Soviet Union & China) or at worst quickly succumbed to the corrupting
seductions of getting a piece of the global action (Viet Nam which now
cravenly wags its tail at the door of the very same imperialism that it
spent 50 years fighting to rid itself of, or the current Chinese despots
who lack even the pretense of a legitimating ideology and are now simply
haggling with imperialism over the price of their prostitution).  So to
clamor for a revolutionary insurrection that will rescue us is to
demonstrate one's ignorance of history.  What HAS changed over the past
500 years is the relative power by the powerful over our daily personal
lives made possible by technologies of surveillance.  In the past, kings
made grandiose and arrogant claims about their "absolute" authority over
their lands and peoples. But these absurd claims could be ignored because
they were unenforceable most of the time.  Today they are completely
ENFORCEABLE.  Even this internet, were it truly to become a security
concern, would suddenly become "unavailable," and the most influential
writers would "disappear."

        So..."What Is To Be Done?"

        W-S theory has been arguing for 30 years that both individuals and
nations are parts of a larger creature: the "World-Economy."  THAT is the
organism whose most visible form we now call "corporate globalization,"
the WTO, etc.  These visible parts are like the exo-skeleton of the
world-economy--interesting to observe but designed to conceal and protect
the majority of the vital organs lying underneath.  What distinguishes a
social scientist from those without training is that the scientists
acknowledge the POWER of social structures to shape our daily habits and
reproduce across generations.  Most non-scientists are victims of the
dominating ideology that relentlessly hammers us every day: that we are IN
CONTROL of our lives, that we are RESPONSIBLE on an individual level for
each and every one of our actions and thoughts.  In fact the OPPOSITE is
more correct, and both the beauty and horror of the entire operation is
that those who believe themselves to be in control--the global ruling
class--are perhaps the most deluded of all, insofar as their OWN desires
and aspirations are outputs of a social machinery just as manipulative of
them as it is of most of us.
        My point here is that the juggernaut/organism/creature that we are
components of, products of, and students of can best be thought of as a
cancerous tumor.  Like a tumor, it is growing without internally imposed
limits.  Mutual fear keeps the effective rulers growth-promoting, and
anyone opposing that ideology would quickly be ousted from power by the
system's own internal logic.  That is how capitalism has always worked,
and continues now.  No, there will be no epiphany of global
"enlightenment" that will change the gobal consciousness, nor any
combination of demonstrations, sabotage, and militance that will put on
the brakes at the last minute as in a Hollywood movie.  Instead, this
tumor will die as all do--by starvation.  Cancerous tumors typically kill
their hosts and die of starvation.  Here the host is not the "planet" but
the ACCESSIBLE ENERGY to run the technologies that are the decisive basis
for ruling class power.  Without high-tech communication and production
the effective means of coercion would disappear, throwing today's rulers
back to the arrogant ineffectiveness of their medieval counterparts.  As
the price of fossil fuels rise (not just in price, but increasingly in
lives lost to global warming, asthma, crop loss, desertification,
sea-level rise, etc), the capacity of the entire system to live and
reproduce will become ever-more precarious.  Nuclear and solar will help
fill some gaps, but most of us do not realise that much of the food we
require depends also on fossil fuels in the form of fertilisers and
pesticides.  This NECESSARILY implies that food prices will also rise
because without the contribution of fossil fuels yield/acre will fall, 
even as total agricultural land area contracts (global warming).
        Hence the downfall of corporate globalization--the death of the
tumor--will be from EXTERNAL limits to growth, not INTERNAL ones.
Inadequate energy for hi-tech production, transport, and communications
on one side, inadequate energy for food on the other.  Some of you will
note that twice I have sent out articles about civilizational collapse
from SCIENCE magazine.  Each article itemizes a list of major empires
whose collapse was due to the withdrawal of externally supplied
energy caused by severe draught.  Recall that these tributary empires got
their energy from human and animal effort, so a draught for them was like
a cut-off of oil for us.  They collapsed.
        Ecology teaches us that big complicated life forms (like
elephants) are good at surviving short-term stressors (like draught) that
sporadically afflict their environments, even when simple little life
forms (like bacteria, grasses, insects) might quickly die out.  That is
because their size and complexity allows them to save up food and water
internally to go without for a while.  But, when they DO eat and drink,
they require a LOT of food & water.  But a bacteium in a desert or a
spider frozen in winter needs only comparatively minor amounts of energy
to reproduce abundantly.  Hence, over the much longer term, a prolonged
draught will kill all of the elephants because any sporadic intermediate
rain will not be enough to keep them alive.  However, only a few tiny
sprinkles will be enough to allow the smallest life-forms to 
quickly reproduce that a few might survive to the next sprinkle.
        History teaches the same social lessons for the same reasons.  Big
complicated societies require large volumes of energy that is sustained
and reliable.  Temporary shortages can be endured, but prolonged cut-offs
cannot be survived without contraction or collapse.  Human societies grow
in population and complexity to the limit of their energy supply.  Once at
that limit, system stability becomes precarious and breakdowns more
frequent, insofar as the core energy supply may fluctuate due to external
forces.  We are now at that point today--consuming energy just as soon as
it becomes available, with instabilities popping up everywhere and on
every level.  The world-system is like an immune-compromised patient in a
hospital for whom every stray fungus and bacterium becomes a deadly threat
which requires constant monitoring.  Which particular crisis becomes the
terminal one is at that point arbitrary--ANY series of crises will do.
        History also has shown us that the actual process of collapse
involves the collapse of trade & transport compelling the depopulation of
urban areas (which is just another term for a breakdown in energy flow),
accompanied by mafias/warlords fighting over the remaining scraps.  It
sometimes appears that warfare CAUSED a given collapse, but in reality it
is only a symptom.  When and as our OWN global system collapses various
social movements led by charismatic individuals will doubtless claim
credit in various places and triumphantly announce the dawn of some new
era, but their effective control will be limited by the energy available
to them at that moment, which by definition will be declining into
micro-fiefdoms.
        We also know that after some considerable period of
decentralization a new equilibrium with available energy suppy will be
established, on a simpler (and easier to replicate) basis with its own
political structure and legitimating ideology.  I would imagine that by
then we will again be out of contact, mutually isolated by the oceans that
have trapped so many of us for so long.  Shipping will doubtless continue,
but I rather doubt that we will be able to hang onto the vast satellite
and cable arrays that now make communication so easy.
        Lest any of you find my pessimism unrealistic, I remind you that
empires collapse in their peripheries first, with the core yielding last.
What then do you think of the collapse of Indonesia, (soon to be
followed by the Philipines), most of the entire continent of Africa, the
Balkans, the USSR, Columbia, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay....?  But you may
assert that these are unrelated, due to unique historical factors...
and you would be wrong.  But that must await another essay at another
time.

Cheers,
Peter