THE CALL TO MODERNITY
"America does not see that it is facing its most tragic moment: a moment in which it must make a choice to master its machines or be devoured by them." C.G. Jung, (circa 1912)
Having by now been nearly devoured, we hasten to share our predicament with the rest of the world for everybody's alleged benefit — apparently so we can all be equally devoured.
At best, speaking in global terms, the call to universal modernity portends a drab and dreary global "sameness" — at worst, an irrevocable environmental calamity. Multi-culturalism? Why do we seem to wish a couch-potato, (TV, Coke, and Fritos) culture on Bali or Tibet? What do we have against unique and charming foreign cultures, that all of them must be destroyed in the name of modernity and a Double-speak multi-culturalism?
One of the alleged goals of the new international order is to bring the peoples of the lesser developed nations more or less up to our speed — to provide them the blessings of "modernity." This goal is treated as an imperative, and was thus the subject of a Foreign Affairs article some time ago by Jeane Kirkpatrick. I find the idea a little troubling, not because I would deny anybody the wonders of modernity, but because I strongly suspect many of these wonders might actually be somewhat more of a curse. After all, we are, perhaps justly, routinely condemned by much of the world for our wasteful, conspicuous consumption and materialistic values system. Not only that, but "modernity" has some serious costs associated with it. Such things as consumer debt, mountains of garbage and solid wastes, bumper to bumper commutes, drive-by shootings, and such, all add up to stress — both for individuals and the environment. And, of course, stress is a known killer. Disasters such as the Exxon Valdez oil-spill are part and parcel of our modernity. So, apparently, are the twin evils of the drug and prison cultures we see developing in the United States. Could I conscientiously wish this on any fellow man? Could a man even believe a global rise to modernity possible after reading Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, or Earth in the Balance, by vice-president Al Gore?
There seems to be a general consensus, despite Al Gore, that the betterment of social and economic arrangements for the majority of the people of the world requires that universal "modernity" be imposed — by which is implied the state of material development currently enjoyed by the relative few in the richer nations of the world.
Implicit in the call to modernity is the realization of progress towards a universal intellectual enlightenment in which a peaceful world, free from poverty, human and environmental degradation, and oppression, can evolve into a perpetual reality. Presumably, along with uplift goes a call for the abandonment of narrow-mindedness, bigotry, arbitrary discrimination, and the institutionalized oppression of the masses that has plagued mankind throughout most of recorded history.
Everybody, of course, certainly ought to be deemed to deserve ample nutrition, a comfortable abode, a liberal education, and equal rights under the law — and, if possible, a fat stock and securities portfolio.
All of this, with the latter excepted, comprises the concept and alleged motivations behind the developing New World Order. At least that is the promise. But are these positive aspects of the program actually being delivered? Could all of these benefits possibly come in a packaged modernity — a modernity driven almost exclusively by the profit motive and an unabashed worship of Mammon? Let's stand back a moment and take a critical look at where we actually seem to be heading.
I recently had the opportunity to visit Malaysia, a nation that is rising to modernity with a vengeance. What struck me more than any positive development was the monumental solid waste disposal problem in evidence everywhere I looked. A lot of massive landfills are needed out there where rain forests recently stood. On the train ride between Port Kelang to Kuala Lumpur I saw much evidence of rampant development. What I missed was the charm that was once an almost universal aspect of the Malaysian landscape. It was gone, but KL has an impressive skyline, as do several other of Malaysia's cities. Everybody who is anybody, it seems, carries a cell-phone. I saw the tallest building in the world there — their new crown jewel. Pretty impressive, I must admit, but just what it's doing there, I don't know.
On the positive side, Malaysia is trying to rise to modernity without descending into what all Asian governments frequently refer to as western moral decadence. Unfortunately, it probably can't be done.
There appears to me to be something rather more sinister happening in the world than material and intellectual progress for the masses. If nothing else, it is changing the world at a breakneck pace without the slightest concern for the long-term consequences. Those consequences will not be known until a decade or two after those changes have become irreversible. Change is occurring far too quickly for any society to adjust, much less assess whether or not it is indeed progress — or merely a form of overheated material development destined to extract a awful toll on this and future generations.
As might be gathered, I personally tend to think the latter to be the case, and that the final results of this rampant global development will fall catastrophically short of all stated goals and intentions. In short, I think we are on the wrong track and have been for a long time, and a lot of people are going to be disappointed. Tragically, I don't see any meaningful course corrections in the offing for the foreseeable future. To me, the call to modernity is a Pied Piper's alluring melody, gathering all the worlds' people unto the global corporate feeding trough. The feeding frenzy will ultimately be a cannibalistic one.
If every person in the world could be induced or required to purchase his every need — his every mouthful of sustenance — through corporate trade channels, then corporate expansion, profits, and the viability of the stock and securities markets would be secured through the twenty-first century. That is the real goal, and the peoples' hunger for modernity, or their natural desire to better themselves economically, is merely used as the carrot on a stick toward that end.
Capitalism, as practiced today, requires ever-expanding markets in order to generate profits, pay dividends, and service its perpetual debt. Because big capital always expands on debt rather than profits, it constitutes an absolutely insatiable, and ultimately destructive, even suicidal, force. In short, to put it bluntly, it's a ravenous hog capable of eventually devouring the planet. The global village idea promises at least a hundred years of continued corporate expansion into the under developed world.
Personally, I believe the entire capitalist system needs to be radically reformed to prevent eventual melt-down. I also believe it could be reformed relatively easily except for the underlying monetary system upon which it was founded and continues to operate. That system is a debt money system which is itself an insatiable hog and a disgrace to civilization. This latter, of course, is the real crux of the problem, and the pivotal issue that makes the call to global modernity a call to inevitable global chaos. This, of course, is strictly my opinion, though it is shared by many. There is something rotten at the core of a system whereby an idle investor can realize $100,000.00 on a $1,000.00 cattle futures investment in only a few months, while those who raise the cattle and do all the work, can't make a decent living, (unless, perhaps, they operate on a large corporate scale in Argentina). Ditto for the perversity of a system where corporate CEOs "earn" over 200 times the pay of their workers, and where sports stars and entertainers command multi-million dollar salaries.
The Old World Order, supposedly discredited forever by numerous revolutions and two world wars, is being torn asunder like a venerable building succumbing to the wrecker's ball or explosives charge. The quaint and traditional are being razed in favor of the angular glass and mirrors of the modern sky-scraper, and plenty of new pavement. But more is being razed than buildings as the Old Order is being summarily relegated to the dust bin of human history. Much more. Whole civilizations, cultures, economies, along with vast rain forests and ecosystems are being razed along with it. The raw materials of paradise are being rearranged into something inherently unnatural, unstable, and un-sustainable. The new order may perhaps prove incapable of providing the "good life" it supposedly promises, even in the short term. The earth, of course, can heal itself, but human civilization as we know it may be eradicated or grossly down-sized during the course of that healing process.
The world is undergoing revolutionary change invoked from the top down. From the fuzzy ivory towers of global finance, university campuses, think tanks, and plush corporate suites of the major corporate cartels. Wise men, we hope and pray, are in charge of this monumental global transformation, for the people have not been given the opportunity to vote on the future world planned for them. Of course, they never have. Just as the Western European powers once planned how they would slice up the globe into colonial empires, the pie is again being sliced, but under deceptive guise of egalitarian world reform for the benefit of all humanity.
Just as the Old Order to which I refer was a political regime of the West, born of western European rivalries, expansionism, empires, colonialism, imperialism, etc., so is the New Order. The New Order is being built upon the debris of the old by the intellectual descendants, now supposedly enlightened and reformed, and wiser than ever before, of the old. But today the exclusive club of plutocratic global decision-makers has been more or less globalized. The main difference between the new and the old is that the organizational mechanism is now corporate rather than national or feudal, and is no longer the exclusive domain of the rulers of European nation-states.
In actuality, the global game hasn't changed very much at all. Nor have the primary players. No longer is the game one of national gluttony as in the past, however. Today it's corporate gluttony, given the sanction, protection, and encouragement of the world's major industrial and military powers. Though the United Nations is the store-front organization of the New Order, the true seat of global financial and military power, significantly, is spelled NATO. And that's why NATO is expanding rather than going away.
Like the regimes of old, this new globalized regime is devoted to the profit of a few at the expense of the many, though the rhetoric of global democratic reform is continuously invoked to make it appear attractive and salable to the general television viewing public. The prime difference is in its corporate organization and the universal appeal given it by the world's best ad men and media propaganda experts. The old regimes served narrow national goals, or perhaps the even narrower ends of the local rulers or ruling classes. The new regime serves a new international ruling class, which sprang fully clothed from the bosom of the old. It's colonizers and exploiters are now globalized corporations that serve their ends as naturally as they exist to nurture the bottom line. Their predominate pariah, and the one which will probably insure ultimate failure, is that their one and only god is Mammon. Yet their ads and propaganda appeal to the "universal aspirations of mankind." Thus they are able to become almost universally accepted as agents of positive change, paving the road to the desired "modernity" and the good life for all as good corporate citizens.
What is modernity if it isn't merely the West's idea of material utopia globally accepted as both inevitable and beneficial? Yet the utopia offered by the Western industrial model, as an expression of the good life, falls somewhat short of being a universally recognized ideal. I for one, obviously, tend to have some serious reservations. So do many others. But the allure of the good life, and material consumption levels attained by a fortunate few seem to be almost universally pervasive. So much so that the world flocks to the Western standard, and other cultures fall into oblivion, even as their champions voice the same concerns which I now express. Even as the West is routinely condemned by much of the Third World as both decadent and immoral, it is embraced and emulated at the expense of all that once defined the wonderful diversity of cultures which made the world such an interesting place to live. It's becoming a McDonald's, Disneyland, and Holiday Inn world. A Coca-Cola world.
We all know that "Things go better with Coke," but while the Coca-Cola song may make us feel good, are Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Monsanto, RJR, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Standard Oil, and the others really going to be able to deliver the real goods as promised?
Disney's "It's a Small World After All" celebrates a shrinking world in which everybody is apparently destined to wear Levi's, tee-shirts, Rebok or Nike shoes, and, of course, drink Coke. This is the essence of the New World Order culture, and I don't think its all that great. We hear a lot about the desirability of diversity these days, but real cultural diversity is being clobbered with a maul in favor of cultural blandness and a great diversity of corporate brand names familiar to everybody on the planet.
A rise to modernity would imply a rise to conspicuous consumption of the variety now well known in the United States and other more or less affluent nations. More than this, it means an ever increasing abundance of chain saws and bulldozers in the Amazon, Borneo, and the Congo. It would mean two billion more automobiles in two billion new garages, and hundreds of millions of additional acres of parking lots and pavement, and a lot of large gray low-income housing units. More to the point, it means the ability to purchase food and consumer goods through established corporate trade channels through corporate chain stores — and no other. In short, in spite of all of the high sounding rhetoric about the desirability of the rise to modernity, it is nothing more than a massive smoke screen for an emerging globalized corporate state — a global plantation disguised as utopia. And this corporate utopia comes with a steep price tag. That price is a new form of global corporate imperialism dedicated solely to the bottom line, able to exploit labor and resources globally regardless of local or regional interests. People, no doubt, will ultimately exist for one reason only — to serve corporation masters.
Two answers to two salient questions remain ambiguous: from whence and from whom are the ever-increasing profits required to sustain the new order to be extracted? And what if the New Order doesn't work? What then?
If the United Nations Covenant on Human and Political Rights included a clause stating that henceforth every child born into this world would be awarded a nice stock and securities portfolio, reflecting his "equal status share" in the emerging global corporate structure as a birth right, I would be somewhat more optimistic than I now am about the prospects for human democratic and economic equality — at least in the short term. But this isn't about to happen. Even if it did, the limits of capital exploitation of the world's resources would still soon be reached, and a global environmental night-mare all the sooner realized. This, in spite of an increasing frenzy of global environmental activism. In fact, the environmental bugaboo will provides the ready-made excuse for disappointing the aspiring masses somewhat shy of having attained anything like the "good life."
We all know the results of the level of development attained by the people of the United States and western Europe. Pollution, environmental degradation, and accusations of un-sustainable conspicuous consumption, not to mention the rampant exploitation of the rest of the world's resources. Now, we're to believe that all of the rest of the world is going to be just like us? Isn't it more like, "Let's export all the polluting industries to Korea, China, Borneo, Bali, and Brazil and give those poor people a break? Give them the gift of `modernity' to which they certainly must aspire, and let them produce for us, so we can surf the Internet, and be `knowledge workers?'"
I'd like to be able to say, "Let's get real." But, unfortunately, that is real. That's what is going on now. Of course it won't work. It isn't really supposed to — at least not exactly. That is merely the scenario designed to appeal to us Westerners. In this scenario, all the people of the world are eventually supposed to become equal. Like us, they will all become equally affluent, conspicuous consumers, who drink Coke, eat Big Macs, mess with computers, and watch lots of cable TV — presumably all ultimately knowledge workers. That's the implied promise of the ad men. How realistic is it? You be the judge.
With all the negative baggage the Old Order had, there was one thing that survived throughout the centuries. It can be encapsulated in one simple word. I don't mean to sound trite, cute, or ridiculous, but the word is "charm." The world was rife with charming picturesque and charming cultures, societies, and pristine natural wonders. Charm, of the cultural or societal variety, required some degree of provincialism, and provincialism is first on the chopping block of the new order, along with all forms of local, regional, and national economic self-reliance. There is no charm in the New Order and never likely to be any. The rise to modernity spells death to all forms of natural charm. Canned and packaged charm will be for sale at Walmart, however, or at the video store along with abundant violence and pornography. In the future, charm will be the sole province of a few artists, more often than not, on corporate payrolls. Charm, bigger than can be found in a shrink-wrapped package, or viewed on TV, will be found only in theme parks, or within the air-conditioned confines of corporate taverns and chains such as Pizza Hut. Increasingly, computer-generated virtual reality, a new drugless opiate, will suffice those inclined to escapism.
Charm is being abolished because, well, it is sort of related to individualism. More damning yet, it is related to provincialism, and local self-reliance, and those things are the root of local, (and sometimes, heaven forbid, ethnic) pride and regionalism, which are the seed of nationalism. All of which, of course, are said to cause bias, discrimination, and war. Or so we are taught. The Old Order was rife with recurrent barbarism and war, and the abolition of war from the face of the earth is supposed to be the big pay-off of the New Order. Charm and natural beauty are too abstract for modernity and the properly conditioned modern mind to appreciate and quantify. No dollar price can be put on it. No corporate profit can be calculated relative to it. Like the "good old days," which we've been conditioned to recognize as the "bad old days," charm is simply denied to have existed as a quantifiable factor of the history of man's existence. It has become irrelevant to all who are deemed both adult and sane. The only important thing to consider today is corporate profit — if it's profitable, it's good. If you want to be charmed, go to Disney World.
By comparison, look around the globe today and see how peaceful it is becoming with the demise of the Old Order. See how weapons and weapon systems are being retired in favor of plow-shares and NATO is being dismantled. NATO, a military alliance, deprived of an enemy, is being expanded, for "peaceful purposes." That peaceful purpose is enforcement and protection of international capital. The alliance, however, is a standing army which will, in the fullness of time, find itself wars to justify its continued existence. Look at our modern cities and behold the peace and harmony to be found there. If you get the feeling I'm trying to be a little facetious, you're right. Mankind appears to be as barbaric today as were men of every age, and in many places, including some of our cities, even more so.
The promise of peace of the New World Order means peace between global corporate rivals in a mutually beneficial scramble for globalized markets and profits. But this international peace, if it can be said to exist, is not coming as a result of the emerging New World Order. The New Order is coming about because the global plutocrats, and captains of industry, (the war machine), whose historic fortunes have always been tied to war, have finally realized the folly of their ways. In short, modern mass warfare has become so terribly dangerous, that even the most insulated global plutocrat can no longer feel safe. For that reason, and that reason alone, is mass organized warfare between at least Western nations is perhaps a thing of the past. This, of course, is good so far as it goes. But peace — real peace — shall be as illusive as ever, as is made abundantly clear in the daily news. From now on, however, small regional wars and threats of war, and the perpetual war on crime, drugs, and terrorists will replace mass organized intercontinental warfare among great powers, and it will feed and sustain the military-industrial complex in the foreseeable future.
The peace the NWO appears to be creating may more fleeting than we imagine. It may only last until China, fully armed with our awesome weapons technology, comes fully on line and demands yet a Newer Order in a bid to wrest global hegemony from the West. Yes, in the era of contented bulls and suffering bears there grows a formidable and unpredictable dragon — one with both recent and ancient injustices to avenge.
What I lament most, at least superficially, in our global rise to modernity is the apparent inevitability of the total loss of charm in this world. Mrs. Clinton, at least in her book's title, reminded us that It Takes a Village, but what is a village without charm? There are a few charming villages left in this world, but they are as endangered as the local cultures and economies that once created and supported them. But, of course, Mrs. Clinton wasn't writing of a charming village. She's too practical for that. I rather suspect that her village is actually a euphemism for "collective," or in the broader context, a caring government, made up of enlightened, caring people, such as herself and her husband. In short, the caring arm of Big Brother, or more likely in the 21st century, Big Sister.
As long as the world's greatest alleged proponent of global peace and World Order also remains the world's largest arms merchant and meddler in the affairs of other states, global peace and harmony will remain as illusive as ever. And as long as this great nation, or any group of nations, recognizes no other god but Mammon and the bottom line, and habitually declares such motives good, the uplift toward modernity, will be counter productive.
Camden
THE OTHER FACES OF CAPITALISM
Most Americans are at a loss to understand why capitalism failed to gain the popular respectability in many parts of the world that it gained early on in the United States. The answer is that while capitalism was developing an affluent consumer/producer society here and in Western Europe, to everybody's benefit, it was playing the role of economic imperialist in underdeveloped nations, replacing colonial imperialism. Capitalist foreign investment, which we had been taught to view as a "helping hand," to the disadvantaged, along with our generous foreign assistance programs, seldom uplifted the workers of the Third World, but rather became an oppressor, in partnership with, and support of, repressive dictatorial governments in those same countries. The result we Americans saw, of course, and appreciated, was cheap sugar and tropical fruits and oils at the super markets in St. Louis and San Francisco. But for the recipients of our supposed largess in the Third World, it more often than not became a new servitude and thus a fertile seed-bed for unrest in countries south of our border and elsewhere.
Capitalism has had two distinct faces. We saw the happy side, while the Marxists gleefully pointed to the other more cynical side. We didn't understand, because while we were busy "moving on up," we never saw the other face of capitalism.
Almost all of our foreign policy failures can be traced to our national support for imperialistic predatory capital exploitation of foreign nations. Thus our foreign policy, almost without exception, has been an ongoing monumental, and unmitigated, disaster. Currently our foreign policy can be defined simply as being the primary agency for bringing about the ill-conceived new international order. Of course, it is self-serving, and the American people have never been anything to it save a source of finance and profit.
By 1914, "The foundation of the modern interdependent world economy was laid, with cartels dominating raw material trade." (World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1995, World History section) This heavily loaded short sentence from an impeccable source says more in sixteen words than many volumes written pro and con the New World Order. After the world was sliced up and divided into colonial empires, it was sliced up and divided again, this time into regions conductive to raw materials exploitation, by corporate cartels. These cartels, of course, survived the demise of colonialism and continue to this day. Such cartels, and the multi-national corporations, can in turn trace their genesis to the British East India Co. which spawned Empire east of Suez. This easily illustrates why our foreign policy has been a consistent failure, and why capitalism earned a bad reputation in the undeveloped world. Many of our much acclaimed foreign investments were little more than an extension of empire, and thus were totally anathema to the ideals of American republicanism and justice.
American companies dominated the economies of most of South and Central America for the better part of this century, and turned those lands into a quasi colonial empire. This is why we have had so many military interventions south of our border to "protect American interests." It became the unwritten rule of the Monroe Doctrine that our government had the right to intervene in Latin America whenever American corporate interests were threatened. We supported the dictatorships that catered to American multi-nationals, no matter how oppressive or ruthless those dictatorships may have been. The people were often ruthlessly exploited, in the name of mineral raw materials and plantations exploitation providing the American markets with minerals, coffee, other tropical commodities.
Corporate plantations were established throughout Latin America at the expense of the local peasantry, which was displaced from ancestral lands and then obliged to work the plantations as little better than slaves. They had a choice, of course. It was either work or starve, or join an increasing exodus from the countryside to the squalor of overcrowded cities. It took authoritative governments to keep resentful people in line and do the bidding of the foreign corporations. Profits from resulting exports were also largely exported, with the portion not exported supporting the dictator and his family, and their protective bureaucracy and military. Dictators like Cuba's Batista, and Nicaragua's Somoza were the result of these policies. They, and many more of equally ruthless reputation, were supported, and their senior army officers armed and trained, by the U.S. taxpayer. Latin American armies have generally had only one purpose, and that was to defend the dictatorial regime from the people, and protect foreign capital. All local opposition was routinely ruthlessly crushed. Whenever necessary, the U.S. Marines landed. After WWII, when sending in the Marines became unfashionable, the CIA took a very active role. Government sponsored death squads became almost common place in some countries, to deal with what was always termed "communist subversion." Our government played an important role in arming and training most of them. It was convenient that the only powers willing to extend a helping hand to the political opposition happened to be communists. Thus it was easy to label all opposition movements, and unruly peasants as communist subversives whether they were or not.
No wonder "Yankee go home!" became the predominate graffiti in many Latin American countries. Few Americans understood why. Few do to this day. To most of us it seemed a blatant lack of gratitude. Castro is considered the epitome of evil, neither because he is a communist nor a ruthless dictator, for we have routinely braced up far worse, but because he succeeded in taking his nation out of the grasp of the American corporate plantation owners, and organized crime — the long-time de facto rulers of the nation.
It has recently been said by our administration that democracy has come to every Latin American nation except Cuba. Indeed, there has been some reform, but take the notion that democracy has arrived in Latin America with a grain of salt. True enough, the old order Batistas and Somozas may be gone, but the multi-national corporations still maintain their vast influence. Death squads may no longer be the rule, but oppression and corruption have not been eliminated. (For some interesting background, see Cry of the People, by Penny Lernoux, Published 1980 by Doubleday & Company, Inc.)
If there has been improvements in the human rights abuse record in Latin America, no thanks are due to Uncle Sam. Our government resisted change, and was only shamed into allowing favored dictators to be overthrown. Uncle Sam repeatedly only jumped on the bandwagon late in the game, always giving the impression of double-crossing and back-stabbing tried and true friendly dictators whenever the tide of world public opinion turned against them.
It is fairly obvious why American style capitalism never won many friends among the masses in Latin America. So, why has capitalism worked so well in the United States and Western Europe?
Camden
THE GOOD FACE OF CAPITALISM
The "good life," or the modernity we have come to know, developed only because capital development was tempered by at least five major conditions: (1) That individual liberty, self-government, and the free market were the accepted norm; (2) That broad-based private land ownership and a well established, prosperous, agricultural economy pre-dated it; (3) That capital produced overwhelmingly for domestic consumption, from domestic raw materials — and not predominately for export; (4) Where capital was forced to pay labor better than just a living wage; (5) That government represented the best interests of the people by protecting borders and markets.
The United States had an advantage over all the industrializing nations of western Europe in that it was almost totally self-sufficient in raw materials. Thus industrialization here produced a prosperity unparalled in the industrialized world.
Capital has never paid labor well out of any altruistic motives. It was either forced, or did so out of self-interest. Initially, chronic labor shortages forced capital to pay labor a decent wage in the United States. This held true throughout the industrial revolution, as this country was becoming both the greatest producer nation and the greatest consumer nation in the world.
Later in the game, some enlightened industrialists, such as Henry Ford, discovered that if they were to have expanding markets for their production, they'd have to pay workers enough to purchase the fruits of their own labor. Concurrently, labor unions developed to keep pressure on capital to pay workers a fair wage.
Of course, the government had the sense during our industrial formative years, and until WWII, to protect both domestic industry and markets, therefore insuring that labor's wages wouldn't be underbid by cheap foreign labor.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, protectionism never hurt the consumer. In fact, quite to the contrary, it made the American worker the world's greatest consumer — by protecting the domestic industries in which he worked from foreign competition. It kept those domestic industries responsive to the worker/consumer. It protected his job and his ability to earn and consume.
THE CHANGING FACE OF CAPITAL
"The facts of nature cannot in the long run be violated. Penetrating and seeping through everything like water, they will undermine any system that fails to take account of them, and sooner or later they will bring about its downfall."C.G. Jung
The rise to modernity entails the myth of remaking the rest of the world in our image. But our image has become tarnished. That six percent of the world's population, (limiting the discussion to the American population for clarity) consumes almost a third of the world's recourses is cited as being an unconscionable travesty of justice. There is no equality possible on a global scale under those percentages. The solution? Simple. (Simple in both contexts of the word.) Make the other ninety-four percent of the world's population just like us!
Of course, the numbers don't add up. If the rest of the world were like us, the sum total of us, (a hundred percent of us, as world citizens, assuming a stagnant population) would then be consuming several hundred percent of the world's current resources. This, of course, would be impossible. The implication is that somebody is pulling somebody's leg. Somebody's got to be kidding. Obviously, there can be no rise to modernity, (that is, of the unsustainable kind kind we have become accustomed to) for the masses of humanity in this world. The promise is false, and the hopes will be disappointed. But the utopian mythology is perpetrated to keep the fires of international capital burning brightly in every corner of the globe. The resources for fulfilling the promise just aren't available. We, the working people of the richer industrial nations, are slated for the sacrificial altar. That is the truth of the matter. The rise to modernity may be global, but it won't be universal. A considerable majority of the world's population is inevitably going to be left out. In the Third World, modernity will be the same wage slavery that once plagued the workers in European sweat shops, and still plague the Latin American peasant. His utopia will be his fetters to the company store. The plantation economy, is going industrial now. The third world peasant is no longer confined to cane, banana, coffee, or rubber plantations — he now makes computer chips, machine tools, and Nike shoes. But his lot is not necessarily improved. His modernity is most often one of squalor and enforced hopelessness, as both the production and profits of his labor is exported "elsewhere."
The statistics are clear enough, and projections readily arrived at, that say if six percent of the world's population (that's us) suffers, say, a fifty percent decline in living standards, while the remaining ninety-four percent are uplifted by a mere five percent, there will still be about two billion new customers coming on line to satisfy the profit needs of big international capital. Or so it is hoped by corporate economists and the purveyors of conventional wisdom.
Our job should not be to export our modernity to the underdeveloped world in its present corrosive and destructive form, but to first transform modernity into something that is both sustainable and rewarding — something that is non-destructive and non-toxic. Only then should we consider exporting and sharing it with the rest of the world. But this is not the New World Order way. The NWO way is to destroy the "haves" while also destroying the "have nots," in the name of a better world. Though this sounds pretty evil, I don't believe there is actual malice or evil intent in this process, there is only a pervasive corporate greed, and a degree of insidious avarice inherent in ruling elites, whether royal or corporate, which choose first their own survival and enrichment over the welfare of those they presume, how ever benevolently, to rule. Government, at least our American government, was instituted to shackle these perverse forces on behalf of a self-government peoples, and channel them to the public good.
The real rise to modernity is a corporate rise, not a rise in the standard of living of the people. A rise to our level of consumption and waste has already been statistically proven to be both un-sustainable. The real goals are sustainable corporate growth and profits, and nothing more. And that's what we'll get, at least until natural systems begin to fail. Production will continue to become more and more efficient, thus eliminating the need for workers in high wage countries. But if this trend is carried to logical conclusions, and the numbers of workers continues to proliferate as in the past, the question becomes: who will pay this growing mass of displaced workers so they can be consumers of the production of capital? At some future time it would appear that almost all income will accrue only to the owners of capital — the stock and bond securities holders — while the teeming millions of workers will subsist either on the barest living wage or some sort of social safety net, `entitlement,' or new age concentration camp.
Capitalism, in its current form, requires perpetual growth to survive, yet the earth's resources are quite finite and our biosphere is undergoing a transition which may not favor human habitation as the next century progresses. Greed and debt capitalism are as a cancer to civilization and the living earth. Capitalism works, but it sorely needs ethical direction, which can only result from enlightened regulation imposed by governments that truly represent the interests of their people. Of course, new technologies will eventually harness limitless sustainable sources of energy, but our Garden of Eden may have been totally laid waste in the mean time. The "Brave New World" we may be facing, in my opinion, is not very attractive.
Without worker-producers earning a decent living, there can be no broad-based consumerism. But how can capital continue to expand without it? The new "lean and mean" corporate philosophy — is short sighted. Downsizing essentially means disenfranchising labor. And labor has been the prime consumer of capital production in all of the advanced nations.
Not many years ago, rising productivity in the United States held out the promise of the five hour work day and the three day work week, without a cut in pay. Plenty of leisure time with which to enjoy the finer things in life seemed in the offing. We don't hear too much about those prospects anymore. I guess we've got beyond them without actually having to enjoy the full benefits of our industrial capabilities. Or something happened in the sixties, seventies, and eighties to make us forget those once apparently realistic dreams. Our nation is turning itself inside out — has literally inverted itself in a single generation, and repudiated both its material advantage and cultural heritage. Whole cities burned and collapsed financially during our most prosperous years. The countryside was cleared of the "inefficient" (but invaluable) family farmer and entire towns literally dried up and disappeared. Cities and towns were remade in the new corporate image as chain stores and franchises replaced local control. Local color, charm, and regional self-reliance utterly disappeared from town and country alike. In a manner of speaking, we were rising to the epitome of modernity. Many still think it's great. Now it's the rest of the world's turn — this gut-wrenching development. Who in their right mind would wish this on anybody?
It has always been the hope of the many to make a decent living without any further expenditure of energy. Thus the continued allure of the illusory Wonderful New World. The three or four day work week idea in the United States wasn't allowed to develop. Sour grapes perhaps, at least for the global planners that now pull the strings of our nation's affairs. The new hope is for full employment world-wide by everybody becoming "knowledge workers" — messing with computers, and surfing the Internet. Banking, doctoring, lawyering, stock brokering, professoring, social working, and consulting are still considered respectable professions, but the goal seems to be to do away with "labor" entirely — most particularly organized labor, at least in the most developed nations. (And not let it develop anywhere else!) All that's needed is a little additional education and a computer on every first-grader's desk, and everybody will end up a well-paid entrepreneur. Hog-wash!
Free trade holds abundant promise only to those who can't see the forest for the trees. That promise is that everybody can prosper by exporting everything to everybody else at a profit, while at the same time importing everything from everybody else at a profit. Everybody will profit and nobody will get caught holding an empty bag. Dream on oh Pantheon of economic gurus and New World Order builders. A monstrosity is being built that puts Babel to shame — a tower of cards built on sand. Dragons guffaw in the distance at your arrogance! This new mythology is the essence of voodoo economics. This is the economics of the new international order.
A NEW SOURCE OF WEALTH?
We are assured that with our new order comes totally new sources of wealth which nobody ever dreamed of before. We are told that the artificial, almost magical, inflation of the market value of existing stocks and bonds through "securitization" is a wonderful source of new wealth. We are not told that perpetual debt, compounded to the n'th degree, restructured, renamed, and visited unto the very seventh generation hence and beyond make it possible.
It would seem not to take a Harvard economist to discern that these magic bullets are merely innovative abstract perversions of traditional economic principles. Both are examples of creative paper and account shuffling which don't really create any new wealth at all, but merely the illusion of wealth primarily for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. The first is merely a newly orthodox-ized breed of inflation. The second is the perverse transfer of responsibility and obligation from the current rising generation of affluent paper shufflers to unsuspecting taxpayers, and future generations of taxpayers, with the hope that the day of financial reckoning will be postponed at least until the perpetrators have enjoyed their profits passed from the scene.
This so-called new wealth, however, has a price in the here and now in spite of illusory "manna from heaven" appearances. The very rampant development now taking place in many places of the world will take an inevitably high toll, both in the locations in which it is taking place, and where it is not taking place. The cost in the developed countries will continue to be in the form of lost industries and jobs, and lost security, for a large and growing number of formerly well-paid workers. Their former wages and salaries are feeding the ravenous bulls and vipers on Wall Street and providing investment capital for rampant Third World development, where the cost will be in entire cultures, economies, and ecosystems disrupted (or destroyed) and harnessed to global corporate shackles.
I have no doubt that there will soon be many more creative ways devised by which to transfer debt burdens into the even more distant future — beyond the Brady bond and hundred year securities. I suspect we will see cyber-bonds before too long, or perhaps even orbital comet or satellite bonds. (Comet bonds are debt instruments like Brady bonds shot into comet-like deep space orbit which become payable upon their future return to the solar system. Satellite bonds would merely orbit the earth until we figured out how to appear to redeem them.)
The pity is that, too many vested interests make global economic interdependence effectively irreversible. Enlightened, ethical, national leadership would be required to make the necessary corrections toward sane economics possible. We've been set on a course, and the engine has gathered so much steam, and the train so heavily burdened, that it is unstoppable except through strong breakmen or a catastrophic derailment. The engineers — those who set the behemoth in motion — cannot really control it. They can control the ahead throttle. To attempt to slow or stop it would bring on self-destruction. Few want to stop it, for it has been pronounced "good and getting better." Even though losers may vastly outnumber the winners in this dangerous global game, the winners, whose money speaks, are the only ones who have a real voice in national and international affairs. And, too, Wall Street infects American society to a degree most people don't fully realize or appreciate. Almost all of us have a stake in the game now whether we realize it or not — and whether we like it or not. And few of us want to see the train crash, even if we believe it's both grossly over-loaded and on the wrong track, for those most bloodied in the crash would be those least culpable and responsible.
Unfortunately, this will continue until there is a literal crash, or until things deteriorate to the point where mob rule begins to assert itself, a circumstance that few want to see. Most people merely bury their head ostrich-like, and hope that somehow blind luck will save the day. We hope that somehow things can be made to work as promised and that there really is a Santa Claus.
Of course, while many perceptive people in positions of influence, in both government in industry, are beginning to have second thoughts about where the train is taking us. Others vigorously continue to shovel coal upon the fires and open the steam valves wider. An article in a recent issue of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace magazine, (Fall 1996, Foreign Policy) by John C. Edmunds called Securities: The New World Wealth Machine explains why and how "securitization" of high-quality stocks and bonds "has become the most powerful engine of wealth creation in today's world economy."
I find Mr. Edmunds' advocacy this new hot means of "wealth creation" very disturbing. "Nowadays," says Edmunds, "wealth is created when the managers of a business enterprise give high priority to rewarding the shareholder and bondholders. The greater the rewards, the more the shares and bonds are likely to be worth in the financial market."
This, to Mr. Edmunds, is creating wealth. The so-called wealth that Mr. Edmunds would increase, by many-fold, through securitization is already in the form of government and corporate debt. So he is advocating not only the value inflation of stocks through "securitization" but the increase of the public debt as well, as a wonderful new form of wealth creation. No mention is made of rewarding labor. In fact, it seems that labor is totally left out of the wealth creation loop, unless the worker happens to own enough stocks and bonds to cash in on the new bonanza.
Edmunds does admit that "not everyone is enjoying these gains... Restructuring and downsizing, undertaken to increase shareholder wealth, ...leave people out of work. Unemployed workers cannot afford mutual or pension fund investing; neither can the poor or anyone unable to save. Thus, wealth becomes concentrated among those who own financial investments." And, Mr. Edwards continues, somewhat ironically, "There is a danger that a wedge will be created between those Americans who have investments and those who do not."
And right he is. There is a real and present danger, and the long-range implications are not at all good. (The militias are already drilling, for heaven's sake!) In addition to pointing out that danger, Professor Edmunds points out, "The awesome power of this wealth-creation process, and its capriciousness, have raised the stakes for policy makers. Slight errors, which would not have hurt much 10 years ago, mushroom into horrible economic catastrophes with lasting effects." emphasis added!
The point I wish to make is that many of our most preeminent policy wonks know that we are playing with fire, yet still somehow think that we're going to be able to pull our chestnuts out without getting burned. They are stoking the fires of an engine out of control, and they know the dangers. Their answer is always an enthusiastic and highly qualified "Full speed ahead!"
The continuing problem of any economic system is the equitable distribution of wealth, or purchasing power, among the people. We were getting there, at least making progress in the right direction, until about two or three decades ago. But now, the people's purchasing power is once again being diverted to the few. We are no longer making egalitarian progress, though we are told that things are great and getting better. This regressive process has become the global model of progress!
Debt is increasingly mistaken for wealth by many, first and foremost, because of the very nature of our debt-based monetary system.
The globalization idea has its many attractive attributes. But the world isn't a village and never will be. It's a lot bigger than a village. It's bigger, in fact, than even most cities. If a village burns, neighboring communities can provide assistance. But when the world becomes so economically interdependent that it behaves like a village, a single village fire may bring down the whole establishment. We're painting ourselves into a pretty scary corner.
There are relatively simple solutions, of course, and the American Congress holds the key. That is, the solutions are simple in principle and easy to state. In practice, however, they will be very difficult to accomplish, because Congress is grossly out of touch with the people, Constitution principles, and reality. Worse still, most of the people themselves haven't got a clue as to what is going on, thus cannot give their representatives the "direction" they so direfully need. Thus Congress and the administration will continue to represent Wall Street and international capital rather than their constituents. Main Street, and our agrarian economic infrastructure, have already crumbled. But while Wall Street represents international capital, and well-healed investors — labor still comprises the overwhelming majority of the electorate. Congress should concern itself with the welfare of that majority rather than the select few. The market is now at odds with labor, which was not the case only a few years ago. Once capital and labor were interdependent. Now that relationship is being severed.
If the Congress were concerned with the welfare of the overwhelming majority of the electorate, it would examine what caused the prosperity of the middle class before decline in their living standards became a trend, checking, and even reversing, decades of progress for the masses. Something was working, though perhaps far from perfectly, and working to the benefit of an overwhelming majority of the people. What was working, was capital and labor, working together for their mutual benefit. And government helped make this teamwork possible by the use of measured degrees of protection for domestic markets and judicial subsidies for critical industries.
Sane degrees of protectionism and isolationism don't mean turning our back on the world and withdrawing into a nationalistic shell. It simply means preserving national sovereignty and reserving the right, as a nation, to be masters of our own destiny. It means minding the national store. It means preserving the natural advantages that we have both inherited and earned as a nation and as a people. Only by doing so, can we get our house in order and maintain that order. Only thus can we insure both our national security and safety, as well as our position as a progressive example to the rest of the world.
Continued pursuit of interdependence merely undermines our security and will eventually totally subvert our national morale and undermine our status as a world leader. (Our leadership should be through example, not coercion.)
Empires die because they lose the will to govern their satellites and colonies. Our nation is dying from the loss of will to be self-governing and independent.
Our lack of will to remain independent is self-evident in our present head-long quest to melt into an amalgamated global interdependence. We should not delude ourselves into thinking that we can maintain both our unique republican institutions and position of world leadership once this self-deprecating global mission is accomplished.
Camden
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Published in U.S.A., by William R. Carr, Editor and
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