To: •••@••.••• (World System network)
From: •••@••.••• (Richard K. Moore)
Subject: Re: Kst Stability & constrained capitalism
rkm had written:
>>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.
5/19/97, J. Timmons Roberts wrote:
>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.
Bingo! Right you are: finite Earth, finite biolayer, finite ozone, finite
markets... it's finite all the way down. Sustainability isn't an
environmentalist slogan - it's a tough-love law of nature.
>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.
Sorry to play Grinch and burst another bubble of optimism, but the official
global standards and procedures for the next millenium are now being
drafted by the WTO, and they are ecologically disastrous. I've got many
bulletins documenting this arhived... example snip at bottom.
>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.
That capitalism can thrive under reasonable constraints has been proven
many times over... Holland (by your observation), Scandanavia, postwar UK
(to some extent), etc. Such constraints can include strong social
programs, nationally-owned infrastructures, flight-of-capital restrictions,
environmental protections, tough wage and labor laws, and stiff corporate
taxation. As one business leader reassured FDR about the New Deal - "You
pass whatever laws you want, we'll find a way to make money anyway."
If such constraints are imposed politically, corporations compete alike
under the regime, investor expectations are scaled down accordingly - and
the game is simply played for slightly lower stakes. The increased
stability of the system is even welcomed by business leaders who aren't of
the plunge and boom mentality.
But if the capital elite has the ability to manipulate the political rules,
then such manipulation becomes a lucrative growth opportunity for corporate
endeavor: loosening the constraints can produce more profit per dollar
invested (via bribery, corruption, and media promotion) than the most
brilliant new marketing idea. Ten percent off the corporate rates, for
example, represents LOTS of bucks to the bottom line, and a privatized rail
system opens a whole new industry for lucrative investment.
Europe, more than America, has been the redoubt of socially-constrained
capitalism, and that is why - in my view - the EU is being pushed so
strongly by the corporate community. Corporations perfected their skills
at manipulating the political system in America - the EU is an attempt to
export America's large-scale democracy model to Europe: a new, large,
multi-cultural society is more amenable to divide-and-conquer corporate
tactics than is a smaller, culturally coherent society with deeply-rooted
socioeconomic traditions.
Besides, the EU institutions are being set up with a built-in
corporate bias from the outset - witness the neoliberal social
prescriptions built into the (arbitrary) "requirements" for the ECU.
Holland-style regulations are lame duck in Europe - the handwriting is on
the wall. While the EU levels the social playing field in Europe - taking
credit for a presumed green conciousness in the process - the WTO is laying
down the long range rules to which EU will eventually subscribe. The
two-stage scheme is to seduce Europeans into a romanticized "Europe", and
then engulf the EU in the globalist regime: thus perisheth democracy.
Don't kill the messenger,
rkm
________________________________________________________________
Subject: MAI:The next brick in the globalist wall
Preamble Center for Public Policy:
WORSE THAN NAFTA
By Scott Nova and Michelle Sforza-Roderick
In popular mythology, economic globalization is a natural
phenomenon, like continental drift: impossible to resist or control.
~--<snip from wsn posting: see cj#670>--~
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Posted by Richard K. Moore - •••@••.••• - PO Box 26 Wexford, Ireland
Cyberlib: ftp://ftp.iol.ie/users/rkmoore/cyberlib | (USA Citizen)
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