WSN:
I'm generally quite in agreement about Richard Moore's personal WS account.
I too think we need to be ready for flexibility in capitalism's adapting to
changing conditions and in creating new ones.
UNLIKE Moore, however, I think the main remaining contradiction is
Socio-ECOLOGICAL, not social alone. That is, as Peter Grimes accounted at
the recent PEWS conference, topsoil loss, global warming, and the
accumulation crisis will combine to shake the system.
I am more of an agnostic than Grimes about how this Ecosocial Crisis will be
dealt with by globalized capitalism. Specifically, new global environmental
agreements are emerging which may lead us to a more sustainable system. On
the optimistic side, the hope is that GLOBAL standards of production will
emerge so that transnationals cannot flee indefinitely to "pollution haven"
peripheries. On the pessimistic side is the very real possibility that some
of these global standards and agreements will be manipulated by industry to
become essentially vacuous. However a recent trip to Holland encouraged me
that some form of capitalism can incorporate much ecological and
participatory planning. These new rules are tighter, and capitalists simple
(must) adapt. Certainly this is only one step on the way to real
sustainability, but it's a lot further than U.S. firms are yet considering
possible. I discuss these two arguments in a piece forthcoming this fall in
the Journal of Developing Societies, called "Emerging International
Environmental Standards: Prospects and Perils." I can email a DOS version
to people if they're interested.
Timmons
>The price to be paid, disenfranchisement and exploitation of the citizenry,
>is not clearly marked on the price tag of globalization. As the price
>becomes widely evident - as it already is in the Third World - instability
>will arise from citizen unrest.
>
>Police-state structures are being rapidly implemented to contain such
>unrest in the First World, and have already been deployed in the Third
>World. Meanwhile, the soporific mind-control mass media carries the
>primary burden of population control. The mid-term stability of this
>semi-fascist WS remains to be proven, but widespread precedents indicate
>considerable stability potential.
>
>The long-term source of coporate-WS instability relates more to Marxian
>contradictions - growth can't go on forever - than it does to the inability
>of modern political mechanisms to keep people under control. When a few
>corporations have swallowed up all the others (ala Rollerball or Blade
>Runner) then yet another final-state will have been reached.
>
-- ****************************************************************** Timmons Roberts Assistant Professor Department of Sociology/Center for Latin American Studies Tulane University New Orleans LA 70118 tel: 504-865-5820/FAX 504-865-5544 timmons@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu ****************************************************************** "So many ways to understand. One for every woman and man." -- Bruce Cockburn ******************************************************************