Globalizazioa ala neoliberalismoa?

1 Ikus http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=33417.

2 Mitchell-en hitzez: “Financial Times journalist Wolfgang Münchau’s article (April 24, 2016) – The revenge of globalisation’s losers – rehearses a common theme, and one which those on the Left have become intoxicated with (not implicating the journalist among them). The problem is that the basic tenet is incorrect and by failing to separate the process of globalisation (integrated multinational supply chains and global capital flows) from what we might call economic neo-liberalism, the Left leave themselves exposed and too ready to accept notions that the capacity of the state has become compromised and economic policy is constrained by global capital.”

3 Ingelesez: “Globalisation is a multi-faceted development that spatially reorganises economic activity (if allowed) and has, to some extent been part of social developments for as long as we have records.Göran Therborn wrote (2000: 153) that:

Like so many concepts in social science and historiography, ‘globalization’ is a word of lay language and everyday usage with variable shades of meaning and many connotations.

He tries to tie down a definition to give the concept meaning and concludes that globalization refers:

… to tendencies to a world-wide reach, impact, or connectedness of social phenomenon or to a world-encompassing awareness among social actors.

So in that context, you and I are participating in a globalised social process – me writing to an international audience and connecting ideas with people all around the globe.”

4 Ingelesez: “Interestingly, in the – Communist Manifesto (1848) – Marx and Engels discuss the way that discoveries of new lands (America, Rounding the Cape, etc) “opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie”.
They wrote:

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

So the search for new markets and new ways of organising production is not new and has been going on for centuries.

The important point is that the way that these global developments manifest is, in now small part, influenced by the political developments that accompany them in time.”

5 Ingelesez: “Therborn delineates six stages of globalisation starting back with the spread of religious ideas in the C4th AD.

He considers that we are now in the 6th stage “in which the politico-military dynamic of the Cold War has been overtaken by a mainly financial-cum-cultural one. This took off in the second half of the 1980s with the enormous expansion of foreign currency trading after the breakdown … of the international Bretton Woods currency system, followed by the trading of derivatives and other new instruments of high-level gambling” (p.163).

[Reference: Therborn, G. (2000) ‘Globalizations: Dimensions, Historical Waves, Regional Effects, Normative Governance’, International Sociology, 15(2), pp. 151-179

Certainly in the early 1970s, governments became financially unconstrained and floated their exchange rates, which freed their central banks from engaging in official foreign exchange market intervention.

But at the same time a major ideological shift occurred, (…) the way the Left has been duped into believing that ‘globalisation’ has evaporated the power of the state.

As the organisation of production was shifting globally, the scourge of right-wing ‘free market’ thinking began to win the battle of ideas. (…)

Whatever we want to call the emergence – and I use the term neo-liberal now although in the late 1960s it might have been called Monetarism – the genus that started out with a focus on the money supply as a narrative to oppose discretionary fiscal and monetary interventions by the state – has broaded out over the ensuing period to become a full-scale attack on the capacity of the state to influence economic outcomes, apart from those that benefit the top-end-of-town.”

6Ingelesez: “So we first saw the debates about capital controls and the demands by Wall Street to abandon them so that new markets could emerge. Industrial capital demanded the abolition of tariffs unless they were to their advantage.

And then we saw the wave of privatisations to shift wealth and income-generating capacity to the private elites. That was accompanied by the destruction of national state monopolies in the big essential industries and user-pays principles for other state-provision.

And as this process of neo-liberalism has unfolded, more and more demands are made by international capital with the TPPs-type arrangements being the latest wave.

The idea that state intervention into market activity should be reduced to a bare minimum is now the dominant mantra. But that has nothing to do with globalisation per se. It interacts with globalisation but is separate and separable.

To reinforce the ‘free market’ ideology (which is nothing to do with free markets anyway as outlined in the mainstream textbooks that are used as authorities to justify the demands), the elites knew they had to penetrate the state decision-making processes.”

7 Ingelesez: “As David Harvey (2006: 145) notes:

… the advocates for the neoliberal way now occupy positions of considerable influence in education (the universities and many ‘think tanks’), in the media, in corporate boardrooms and financial institutions, in key state institutions (treasury departments, the central banks) and also in those international institutions such as the IMF and the WTO that regulate global finance and trade. Neo-liberalism has, in short, become hegemonic as a mode of discourse, and has pervasive effects on ways of thought and political-economic practices to the point where it has become incorporated into the common-sense way we interpret, live in and understand the world.

[Reference: Harvey, D. (2005) ‘Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 88(2) 145-158.]

So, the neo-liberals knew what the capacity of the state was – well and truly – and have tried to take over the state!”

8I ngelesez: “Meanwhile, during the period that nations were becoming free of the restrictions imposed on them by the Bretton Woods system, the Left became besotted with notions that the deep crisis that accompanies the massive OPEC oil price hikes was to be found in the lack of taxing capacity of governments.

They failed to understand that with fiat currencies, sovereign governments were no longer revenue constrained because it is the monopoly issuer of the currency. They didn’t have to issue debt any longer and the role of taxation was not to raise revenue but to give the government ‘fiscal space’ in which to spend.

The situation became worse when the ‘Left’ – at both the political and intellectual levels – started incorporating the increasing global nature of finance and production-supply chains into their analysis. They wrongly assumed that these trends further undermined the capacity of states to spend and maintain full employment.

The ‘fiscal crisis of the state’ and ‘globalisation’ were held out as the two major impediments to state sovereignty. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

But this mythology progressive became the perceived ‘wisdom’ of the Left in the 1970s and the neo-liberal resurgence as Monetarism, then privatisation and austerity, became virtually unchallenged as the ‘Left’ became lost in various post-modern debates that amounted to nothing important at all.”

9Ingelesez: “Academic journals publishing so-called ‘progressive’ material became overwhelmed with all sorts of post modern deconstructions of this and that, while the main game, the macroeconomics debate was lost – in a no contest.

Despite being eulogised by the Left, the only contribution that key left-wing academics such as James O’Connor made in the 1970s were negative – teaching the Left that the government was financially constrained and could not run continuous deficits because it would run out of money.”

10 Ingelesez: “There is no question that if we hadn’t been so complacent and ready to be bought off by mass consumerism, the neoliberalisation could have been stopped even as the processes of globalisation continued.

There is no doubt that the big international companies prefer a free run across national borders as they do their utmost to coopt governments in their favour.”

11 Ingelesez: “But last time I looked, the likes of Coca-Cola and Apple did not have assembled armies.

Last time I looked, companies like Microsoft were brought to heel by judicial processes applying national laws.

Last time I looked, companies like BHP Billiton had to pay huge fines after being found guilty of corruption within a national border (Source).

We could list countless examples.

The point that Wolfgang Münchau makes about people becoming polarised because the promises of their politicians are not coming to fruition is valid.”

12 Ingelesez: “But the problem is not the global trends in supply chains etc. Rather it is that their elected representatives have become co-opted by neo-liberal elites who fully understand that state power can be skewed to work in their favour and deprive a vast majority of citizens of the benefits of such global economic activity.

But until we abandon democracy (voting out governments), we have power if we choose to use it. We can force changes in the political system so that it works more for us and not the top-end-of-town.

Perhaps the anger now being unleashed is a start of that fightback.

The problem is that the Left is not leading the charge. It is leaving that to the crazy popularists while it crafts ever more ridiculous arguments to justify ‘austerity lite’ type policies to make them look responsible.

The reference group they seek to appeal to though is the neo-liberal elites – which means the Left is going nowhere.”