>rkm wrote:
>> Isn't the primary consquence of the EU to lubricate the sellout of Europe
>> to globalization? Isn't the concept of an "economically strong Europe" (a
>> competitor to the US and Japan) completely out of date under globalization?
1/30/98, Dennis R Redmond wrote to wsn:
>No. Globalization is creating gigantic transnational macroregions in the
>world economy, from the Pacific Rim to Central Europe. Kohl and his clones
>are not con artists: they're the picked representatives of the
>Eurokeiretsu, whose combined financial-industrial might outweighs that of
>the USA, but whose role in the world economy is still second-tier.
This is the standard apologetic for the EU. It fails to stand up to
analysis, and in particular it ignores that globalization has undermined
the whole notion of "national" as a focus of economic identity and
activity. The EU will simply be a very large nation, and as we have
already seen in the US and Japan, the prosperity of corporations is no
longer of much relevance to the prosperity of the nations which were once
called home.
Domestic neoliberalism, a core element of globalization, takes the nation
out of the economic loop. The nation has (under mature globalization)
minimized power to regulate economic activity and minimized benefit from
the flow of money in the economy. The ideal globalist nation is one which
is in debt to the IMF and which has little in its budget other than debt
retirement and police forces. We have seen the future, and it is the Third
World.
Japanese TNC's, for example, are becoming entities whose stock is traded
globally and which produce goods in Asia for exportation to world markets
while paying minimal taxes to anyone - what has that, really, to do with
Japan?
Kohl and his clones _are_ con artists. One of the most direct pieces of
evidence is the zealousness with which neoliberal fundamentalism is being
made part of the Eurpeanization process. Why was the Maastricht Treaty so
strongly neoliberal? Why wasn't it closer to the center of European
economic practices? Why does the initial Euro currency need to be bundled
with a major shift toward austerity budgeting?
The answer, quite simply, is that the elite knew union could be made into a
winning political concept, and they decided to use the unification process
to smuggle their own globalist camels. Thus they are softening up Europe -
the home of the core's most robust democracies - prior to the full
globalist assault. You won't see Brussels opposing the MAI the way Canada
is beginning to do - or the way France might if it were charting its own
best course.
>Eurocapitalists have internal squabbles, but they're united on one thing:
>they're not interested in subsidizing the consumption binge of US ruling
>elites (the US is a net debtor to the EU/Japan). The euro is about
>toppling the dollar's status as world reserve currency, and ultimately,
>about toppling the rule of the US Empire itself.
Again, you're completely missing that globalization has fundamentally
transformed the meaning of "nation" and "imperialism". There is no US
Empire - that was a _possible_ postwar scenario, but it failed to
materialize. Globalization is the _alternative_ to a US Empire.
When the US fought in Vietnam, it was not to make it a colony - it was to
maintain the boundaries of the periphery on behalf of the core-periphery
system generally. The US had wanted France to accomplish the border-patrol
function, but Ho was too much for the French. And when the US attacked
Iraq, it was not to take control of Iraq - it was in pursuit of globalist
objectives - in particular to establish the legitimacy by precedent of a
neo-imperialist ordering paradigm, aka the "NWO": Pentagon + NATO = Judge
Dredd.
The US dollar is the flywheel that more or less stabilizes the global
economy. Similarly the Pentagon has been since 1945 the stabilizer of the
core-perphery system. It is abundantly clear from the postwar experience
that these considerable US-wielded powers have been used to support global
capitalism generally, not US aggrandizement in particular. The various
"miracles" (German, Japanese, Korean, whatever) have been the intent of US
policy, not accidental by-products.
Capitalist interests have firmly controlled major US policy making since
1945, partly because of the immense corporate war-production infrastructure
developed during the war. It just so happens that the vision of that elite
has been "open global markets" rather than "a global US sphere of
interest". Europe acceded to this vision by giving up its colonies.
Neo-imperialism is collective imperialism.
The core has given up national competition, and hence the raison d'etre for
a strong nation state. Since the collapse of the out-of-system socialist
block, which removed another nation-binding force, the collapse of the
nation state has been rapid. You (Dennis) and others are rationalizing the
EU by means of an analysis which is long past its use-by date.
rkm