Globalization and the Revolutionary Imperative ------------------------------------------------------------------ INTRODUCTION ----------------------- Things are changing so fast under globalization, and are so seeminly out of control, that it's difficult to get a good perspective on it. Where is it heading long term? Where did it come from? Why is it happening now? This talk is an attempt to put globalization into its proper historical perspective. If this perspective is correct, globalization is even more radical than it appears to be. It is far from random, and it is taking us in very frightening directions. PRE-ENLIGHTENMENT WORLD ---------------------------------------------- There were elites in those days ... royalty, church hierarchy, lords of manors, and the wealthy, and no one disputed that they ran things. ERA OF COMPETITIVE WESTERN IMPERIALISM ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The enlightenment was about liberation from royal power. To the common people, this meant democracy; to the wealthy elite, it meant the elimination of competition from the dethroned elites. There was certainly more democracy, compared to monarchies, but private capitalism has played the decisive role in how the post-enlightenment world has evolved. Did we have democracy or oligarchy? In fact there was an ongoing see-saw struggle for power between elites and popular democracy: labor movements, socialist movements, reactions to those, etc. In any case, this period, up till 1945, was a period of Western expansionism and competitive Western imperialism - eventually dominating world affairs. Each Western power had its own sphere of influence, within which its own capitalist community had, more or less, a monopoly on the economic opportunities. In order to defend and expand these opportunities, capitalist interests favored strong nation states, and relatively prosperous Western populations. The era of competitive imperialism was characterized by a de facto partnership of interests between capitalism and nationalism. There was a strong bond between capitalism and the nation state, and between capital growth and general Western prosperity. The US model of imperialism was different: instead of administrations and former colonies, the US _created the conditions_ which gave its investors the opportunities they needed. 1945 AND COLLECTIVE IMPERIALISM ------------------------------------------------------ The US emerged as the overwhelmingly dominant global power - an unprecedented event - something the British never quite accomplished. This fundamentally changed the formula under which the world operated. Without competitive imperialism, the strong bond between capitalism and the nation state was broken. The postwar rhetoric was about the end of empires, the defeat of fascism, and the spread of democracy. But the reality was Collective Imperialism, following the traditional US model. --- The Council also outlined, during 1941 - 2, the basic strucures of the Bretton Woods arrangements, the IMF, the World Bank, and the UN. In their records, they explicitly reveal that the American design for the postwar world was the globalization of Uncle Sam's traditional high-leverage style of imperialism, based on creating the conditions that would facilitate imperial exploitation by Western corporations. Recommendation P-B23 (July 1941) stated that worldwide financial institutions were necessary for the purpose of "stabilising currencies and facilitating programs of capital investment for constructive undertakings in backward and underdeveloped regions." During the last half of 1941 and in the first months of 1942, the Council developed this idea for the integration of the world. - Trilateralism p. 148. Isaiah Bowman first suggested a way to solve the problem of maintaining effective control over weaker territories while avoiding overt imperial conquest. At a Council meeting in May 1942, he stated that the United States had to exercise the strength needed to assure "security", and at the same time "avoid conventional forms of imperialism." The way to do this, he argued, was to make the exercise of that power international in character through a United Nations body. - Trilateralism, p. 149 --- In the competitive era, strong and prosperous nation states were important in the struggle for imperial advantage. In the collective era, this model was carried over. A prosperous West, behind a Pax Americana shield, exploiting the rest of the world. But this model ran into difficulties, something Samuel P Huntington called the "Crisis of Democracy". People were taking the rhetoric of democracy and justice too seriously. This led to the Reagan - Thatcher neoliberal revolution. NEOLIBERAL REVOLUTION --------------------------------------- This reflected a realization by the capitalist elite that the nation-capital bond was no longer necessary. In fact, democratic forces in the West were becoming the major obstacle to further capitalist growth. Green movements, peace movements, political reform movements - these all represented restraints on investments and profits. Every piece of the neoliberal platform represents a weakening of the Western nation state and the further consolidation of power and wealth into elite capitalist hands. THE GLOBALIST, NEW WORLD ORDER REGIME ---------------------------------------------------------------------- WTO, IMF, World Bank, and now the US-NATO global strike force - centralised global imperialism. With biotech, there's the stealthness of it all, eg the mixing of GE soy with other soy. IN ADDITION, WE HAVE REACHED HARD ECO LIMITS TO CONTINUED CAPITALIST GROWTH ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CAPITALISM IS ABOUT GROWTH OF WEALTH - DEVELOPMENT IS REALLY A CODE WORD FOR INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES --------------------------------------------- Regime - capitalism grows to its limits. The capitalist goal then becomes to change the regime -> elites skilled at social engineering The development paradigm - not just development, but destructive development, wasteful development, for change's sake, like churning. Example of LA's Pacific Electric; today's EU funding going to highways. The NWO solution to over-population appears to be outright genocide; with the IMF systematically destroying, for example, African economies and the CIA following up with arms and stirring up of civil wars. WE HAVE NO CHOICE ABOUT REVOLUTION, WE ARE IN THE MIDST OF ONE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ - world police force - downsized living standards - police states - end of environmental controls - end of liberal democracy, such as it was There's no going back to the old partnership of convenience, and this is accentuated by the eco crisis that has arisen as a side effect of the development paradigm. It was a questionable deal to begin with; it can no longer work; the other side has abrogated it in any case. We need to replace that paradigm, and in order to do that or anything else sensible, we need to establish genuine grass-roots democracy. CURRENT TRAPS -------------------------- - internationalism - genocide in third world - sustainable development - drugs & terrorism WE HAVE THE MOTIVATION AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE IT OUR OWN REVOLUTION --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FOR ECO REASONS, WE NEED SENSIBLE POLICIES. TO GET SENSIBLE POLICIES WE NEED AN END TO CAPITAL RULE AND THE CREATION OF REAL DEMOCRACY -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE REAL REVOLUTION IS NOT FOR ANY PARTICULAR IDEOLOGY, BUT FOR GENUINE GRASS-ROOTS DEMOCRACY, BOTTOM-UP POLITICS, AND POLICIES ALIGNED WITH PEOPLE'S NEEDS AND PREFERENCES ---------------------- The basic principles are sustainability instead of short-sighted exploitation, collaborative harmonization instead of factional divisiveness - at every level from village to the world. The details would be different in different places. WE NEED NO LESS THAN A DETHRONEMENT OF THE LAST REMAINING ELITE - THE FACELESS SUPER-WEALTHY AND THEIR MEGACORPORATIONS ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is all less utopian than you might think ... because - the other side is forcing a crisis. They are pushing so hard and so relentlessly, that there is hope that people will feel it in their gut and be supportive of change. One of the biggest obstacles is communication and the sophistication of media propaganda. --- If we see that Germany is winning we should help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many as possible .... - Harry S. Truman, 1941 (27) --- The Council also outlined, during 1941 - 2, the basic strucures of the Bretton Woods arrangements, the IMF, the World Bank, and the UN. In their records, they explicitly reveal that the American design for the postwar world was the globalization of Uncle Sam's traditional high-leverage style of imperialism, based on creating the conditions that would facilitate imperial exploitation by Western corporations. Recommendation P-B23 (July 1941) stated that worldwide financial institutions were necessary for the purpose of "stabilising currencies and facilitating programs of capital investment for constructive undertakings in backward and underdeveloped regions." During the last half of 1941 and in the first months of 1942, the Council developed this idea for the integration of the world. - Trilateralism p. 148. Isaiah Bowman first suggested a way to solve the problem of maintaining effective control over weaker territories while avoiding overt imperial conquest. At a Council meeting in May 1942, he stated that the United States had to exercise the strength needed to assure "security", and at the same time "avoid conventional forms of imperialism." The way to do this, he argued, was to make the exercise of that power international in character through a United Nations body. - Trilateralism, p. 149 --- According to Huntington, democratic societies "cannot work" unless the citizenry is "passive". The "democratic surge of the 1960s" represented an "excess of democracy", which must be reduced if governments are to carry out their "traditional policies", both domestic and foreign. His notion of "traditional policies" is expressed in the following passage: To the extent that the United States was governed by anyone during the decades after World War II, it was governed by the President acting with the support and cooperation of key individuals and groups in the executive office, the federal bureaucracy, Congress, and the more important businesses, banks, law firms, foundations, and media, which constitute the private sector's "Establishment". (19) --- The Clash of Civilisations, the book by Harvard professor Sam Huntington, may not have hit the bestseller lists, but its dire warning of a 21st century rivalry between the liberal white folk and the Yellow Peril - sorry, the Confucian cultures - is underpinning the formation of a new political environment. To adapt one of Mao's subtler metaphors, Huntington's Kulturkampf is becoming, with stunning speed, the conceptual sea in which Washington's policy-making fish now swim. - Guardian Weekly, April 6, 1997 (68)