, end of global growth, imperial illusions and peripheral options. Jorge Beinstein
Espai Marx
First International Meeting on "The right of peoples to revolt" Caracas 7-8-9 October 2010, the day of the heroic guerrilla
The bluster of the distant 1990s about neoliberal capitalist millennium have become historical curiosities, perhaps his last events (and defensively) have been media campaigns which indicate the early end of the "turbulence financial "and the immediate return of the triumphant march of globalization.
Now, to begin the last quarter of 2010 the optimistic expectations of the high command of the planet (heads of state, central bankers, fashion gurus and other media stars) are giving way to an overwhelming pessimism. We speak of course of central economies in the form of W as if after the deflation started in 2007-2008 had been a real recovery we now followed by a second fall and whose term would durable expansion of the system, something like a second penance that allow elites to purge their sins (financial) and resume the upward path.
The "recovery" has been nothing but a fleeting relief obtained by an overdose of "stimuli" that paved the way for a return that is advertised terrible. Because the patient has no cure, the disease is not the result of an accident, bad behavior or a virus attack (super science that most sophisticated civilization in history will sooner or later control) but the step time, irreversible aging has joined the senile stage.
capitalist modernity and almost no reference horizon, visible future retreats at an unexpected rate, survival appears possible in the form of monstrous stage marked by militarized, genocide and environmental destruction whose magnitude is unprecedented in human history.
Capitalism has finally become world's strictest sense of the term, has made it to the hidden corners. In that sense one can say that Western bourgeois civilization root is now the only civilization on the planet (including diverse cultural adaptations). But the victory of globalization comes at the same time they begin their decline, in other words, if we look at this new century from the long-term realization of the global domain capitalism appears as the first step of its decline, accordingly, necessary but not sufficient condition for the emergence of post-capitalism is already installed.
We are entering a new era characterized by the cooling of global capitalism and the failure to revive the imperialist economies that match the stagnation of the colonial war in Eurasia. In this area the United States and its allies are undergoing a geopolitical disaster occurs in a first approximation the image of an Empire at bay. But beneath that image is developed resdespliegue deaf imperialist process of new offensive supported by its military apparatus and a wide range of communication devices and ideology that accompanies it. The United States is setting up on renewed global strategy, policy of state whose first steps were taken towards the end of the presidency of George W. Bush and take hold with the arrival of Obama to the White House. The decadent empire like other decaying empires of the past seeks to overcome its economic decline to the maximum of what it considers its comparative advantage: the military apparatus. His aggression increases the pace of its industrial decline, commercial and financial, its militaristic delusions are psychological compensation for their diplomatic and economic difficulties, and encourages the development of dangerous adventures, massacres peripheral neofascist emergency.
The new strategy involves the launch of a combination of military actions and diplomatic communication intended to harass enemies and competitors, causing destabilization facing disputes and conflicts and more or less chaotic able to weaken large and medium and from restore strong positions there are currently depressed. Extension of aggression against Afghanistan-Pakistan threat (and prepare) for war against Iran, against North Korea, provoking conflicts between Japan and China, etc.
Also since the end of the Bush era develop large offensive on Africa and especially Latin America, the traditional backyard today crossed by leftist governments, more or less progressive than have come to form a relatively independent of the colonial master. U.S. offensive there appears as a concerted action with a strong dose of pragmatism aimed at another check to the region. Its essence is revealed when we detect its target, now is not primarily to occupy markets, dominate industries, extract financial benefits, we're not in the twentieth century. The points to look imperial strategic natural resources (oil, large agricultural areas as producers of biofuels, water, batteries, etc..) In many cases local people, institutions, trade unions and more generally the set of social frameworks are obstacles, barriers to eliminate or reduce the vegetative state (in that sense what happened in Iraq can be considered an exemplary case).
need to realize that the imperial power has implemented a strategy of long-term achievement of style that you implemented in Eurasia, is a predator-genocidal attempt whose only comparable precedent in the region is what happened for Five hundred years of colonial conquest. The phenomenon is so deep and vast that it becomes almost invisible for looks wonderful progress with easy success obtained during the past decade. The progressive search and search tracks, balances "civilized" wandering from failure to failure because the speaker sound to their proposals only exists in your imagination. Today the empire's power system is based on a "reason of state" founded in despair, caused by a brain senile, delusional reason ultimately sees the agreements, negotiations diplomatic or political maneuvering of his own allies "lackeys like open doors for their aggressive plans. The only thing that really interests him is to recover lost territories to destabilize the uncontrolled areas, hitting and hitting to return to hit, your logic is mounted on a wave of conquest whose magnitude tends to sometimes overwhelm the imperial strategists themselves (and of course a wide variety of U.S. political leaders.)
But the rule is ill, it is huge but is fraught with weaknesses, time is your enemy, bringing new economic woes, new social degradation and amplifies the areas of autonomy and rebellion. Depletion
stimuli
the end of 2010 witnessed the depletion of financial incentives in the Central Powers launched from the deepening global crisis in 2007-2008.
The American case has been conclusively described by Bud Comras, chief economist at Casey Research: "In 2009 the federal government had a fiscal deficit of around 1.5 trillion (million million) dollars, for its part, the Federal Reserve spent about 1 , $ 5 billion to buy mortgage debt and thus prevent the collapse of that market. This means that the government spent $ 3 billion for a small recovery evaluated by 3% of GDP, approximately 400 billion dollars of economic growth. But spending $ 3 billion for 400 billion is a bad deal "(1).
with the policies of "encouragement" (A kind of neo-Keynesianism-neoliberal) did not durable recovery of the great powers, so if you got was a flood of public debt: from 2007 (last year before the crisis) and 2010 the ratio of government debt to GDP happen in Germany from 64% to 84% in France from 64% to 94% in the United States from 63% to 100% in England from 44% to 90% (2).
Then there was what inevitably had to happen: they began the second stage of the crisis after the outbreak of the Greek public debt it expected other European Union in affecting not only the debtor countries but also more vulnerable to its major creditors to whom the threat loomed over-accumulation of trash credit assets: the end of 2009 the debts of the so-called "PIIGS" (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain, ie European countries exposed by the media system as the most vulnerable) to France, England and Germany amounted to about 2 million billion sum equivalent to 70% of gross domestic product of France or 75% of England.
If the first stage of the crisis was marked by government incentives to the private sector and the expansion of public debt, the second stage starts with the beginning of the end of state largesse (more beyond some possible future reactivation desperate attempts), the arrival of the spending cuts, wage reductions, increases in interest rates, essentially the gateway to an era of economic contraction or stagnation that will be maintained in time and extending into space.
we headed for the engine cooling global economy, the G7 countries crushed by debt following a weak and short-lived revival thanks to the subsidy policies. His public and private debts have now grown to near its saturation point, in 1990 the total debt of the G7 (public + private) represented about 160% of the sum of its gross domestic product in 2000 had risen to 180% and in 2010 will exceed 380% (110% public debt and private debt 270%) (3).
The choice now facing is simple: try to amass more debt allowing them to postpone the recession for a short time (with high probability of leakage, high turbulence in the global system), or go soon in a recession ( hoping to control) advertising be very long, not really dealing with two conflicting alternatives but a single black horizon that can be reached by different ways and at different speeds.
financial Hypertrophy Stimulus
rain, massive transfers of income to the ruling elites (with rapidly diminishing returns) appears as the latest chapter in a long cycle of financial hypertrophy originated in the years 1970 (and perhaps a little earlier) when the capitalist world immersed in a huge crisis of overproduction should come from the imperial center, the United States, his two crutches History: Militarism and financial capital. Behind both events was an old acquaintance: the state, increasing military spending, loosening controls over financial affairs, introducing reforms in the labor market with respect to wages delayed of increases in productivity.
The process was led by the hegemonic superpower, but integrating the two areas associated with sub-imperialists (Western Europe and Japan). Needless to say, unipolarity in the capitalist world with its economic, political, cultural and military, began in 1945 and not in 1991 but after that last date (with the collapse of the USSR) became global.
It was an epochal change, a transformation that allowed to control the crisis but the system degraded irreversibly. The high central bourgeoisie moved largely to the leadership of the speculative business, merging financial and production interests, making the production of and trade in complex networks of transactions governed increasingly by short-sighted behavior. Hegemony parasitic hallmark of senile capitalism was captured large global businesses and spawned a subculture, really a cultural degeneration shredder based on consumerist individualism that was tearing apart the ideological and institutional foundations of the bourgeois order. It is derived from the phenomena of crisis of legitimacy of political systems and institutional apparatuses in general and served as a breeding ground for mafia deformation of central and peripheral bourgeoisie (Complex array of global lumpenbourgeoisie). Roof
energy and "creative destruction" (more destruction).
From the point of view of the relationship between economic system and its material base predation (in both central behavior of the system) began to shift to play. In fact the cultural core predator was from the great historic launch of industrial capitalism (late eighteenth century, mainly in England) and even during the long period before pre-capitalist West. Forever marked technological systems and scientific development, starting with the energy pillar (First coal, then oil) and followed by a wide variety of mining non-renewable natural resources (such predatory exacerbation is one of the hallmarks of bourgeois civilization on previous civilizations), but during the stages of youth and maturity of predation was subject to the expanded reproduction of the system. Mutation parasitic
the years 1970-1980-1990 not possible to overcome the crisis of overproduction but make chronic but controlled, cushioned, exacerbating the plundering of nonrenewable natural resources and introducing large-scale techniques that allowed the super- violating renewable resources, destroying their reproductive cycles (in the case of GM-based agriculture and herbicides such as glyphosate, highly destructive). This occurred when several of these resources (eg hydrocarbons) were close to their maximum level of extraction.
The spate of short-termism (cultural financialization of capitalism) settled any possibility of long-term planning manor of a possible energy conversion, which leaves raised the issue of historical-civilizational feasibility of the conversion pathways (energy saving, renewable energy resources, etc.).. Viability in the context of relations of power, industrial and agricultural structures, in short: the concrete capitalism is inseparable from the production of "profit-here-and-now" and not the likely survival of future generations.
The technological system of capitalism was not prepared for energy conversion, the issue was not of priority concern to the ruling elites (which did not prevent "worry" about the problem). It is not the first time in the history of the decline of civilizations in which the immediate interests of the upper classes come into antagonism with long-term survival.
The roof has found energy the reproduction of capitalism converge with other non-renewable resource ceilings that will soon affect a broad spectrum of mining activities, we also consider the savage exploitation of renewable natural resources. We present a scenario of general exhaustion of natural resources from the available technological system, specifically the social system and its paradigms of capitalism is that as a lifestyle (consumerist, individualistic, authoritarian, centralizing predator).
In the chronic crisis of overproduction to the general crisis of underproduction. The long cycle of industrial capitalism.
Moreover, the natural resource crisis inseparable from environmental disaster converges with the crisis of hegemony parasite. In the first decades of chronic crisis prompted the process of expanding consumer financialization (especially in rich countries), the realization of major industrial projects and public subsidies to domestic demands, major imperialist military adventures, but at the end of euphoria faded way to expose huge mountains of public and private debts. The financial party (which was on its way too many accidents) becomes a financial ceiling that blocks growth.
turmoil of 2007-2008 can be considered as the starting point of the twilight of the system, multiplicity of "crisis" that erupted during this period (financial, production, food, energy) converged with others such as environmental or Military-Industrial Complex Empire bogged down in wars in Asia. That sum of unresolved crisis prevent, hinder the expanded reproduction of the system.
Viewed from the long-term succession crisis of overproduction in Western capitalism in the nineteenth century did not mark a simple sequence of falls and recoveries ever higher levels of development of productive forces but each depression after the system recomposed but accumulating in its path growing masses of parasitism.
financial Cancer burst triumphant, dominant between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and gained control of the system seven or eight decades later, but its development was begun long before financing industrial and commercial structures increasingly concentrated and imperialist states where expanded civilian and military bureaucracies. The hegemony of the ideology of progress and productivist discourse served to obscure the phenomenon, established the idea that capitalism is the reverse of the earlier civilizations parasitism but did not accumulate productive forces created by expanding overcome mismatch problems within the world system , resolved through processes of "creative destruction". " The large-scale capitalist parasitism was evident when it was considered a form of "backwardness" or "degeneration" passing on the upward march of modernity. That
ideological tide also caught much of the anti-capitalist thought (ultimately "progressive") of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, convinced that the relentless stream of development of productive forces would eventually confront the capitalist relations of production, jumping over them, crushing them with a revolutionary avalanche country industrial workers more "advanced" that would follow the so-called backward countries. " The illusion of indefinite progress hid the prospect of decline, thus stopped halfway to the critical thinking, took cultural radicalism with obvious negative consequences for the movement of emancipation of the oppressed of the center and the periphery. Meanwhile
modern militarism is rooted latest in the nineteenth century, since the Napoleonic wars, leading to the Franco-Prussian war to break into the First World War as "Military-Industrial Complex" (although it is possible to find background important in the West in the early arms industries of modern guy about the sixteenth century). Was initially perceived as a privileged instrument of the imperialist strategies of capitalism and economic reactivation, but this is only one aspect of the phenomenon that deeply hidden or underestimated parasitic nature, the fact that military monster behind the reproduction service system is hiding a monster much more powerful in the long term: the unproductive consumption, causing deficits at the end of the trail does not encourage further expansion but stagnation or contraction in the economy.
Currently U.S. Military-Industrial Complex (around which reproduce those of its NATO partners) spend in real terms over a trillion (one trillion) dollars, growing contributor to the fiscal deficit and therefore the debt of the Empire (and the prosperity of the financial affairs beneficiaries the deficit). Military effectiveness is declining but is growing bureaucracy, corruption has penetrated into all its activities is no longer the major source of jobs as in the past, the development of industrial and military technology has significantly reduced this role (the time of military Keynesianism as an effective anti-crisis strategy of the past). At the same time you may find that in The United States has produced the business integration between the military-industrial sphere, financial networks, the major energy companies, the mafia cliques, the "business" of security and other fast-growing activities forming the dominant space of the system of imperial power. Nor
energy crisis around the arrival of "Peak Oil" (the strip of maximum world oil production from which it develops its decline) should be restricted to the history of recent decades, it must be understood as a phase long downward cycle of modern exploitation of nonrenewable natural resources, since the beginning of industrial capitalism could make takeoff and subsequent expansion under these energy supplies plentiful, cheap and easily transportable first developing the carbon cycle under British hegemony in the nineteenth century and then the oil under American hegemony in the twentieth century. The energy cycle conditions all the technological development of the system and he said, was the vanguard of the dynamics of predatory capitalism extended to all natural resources and ecosystem in general.
In summary, the development of bourgeois civilization over the past two centuries (with roots in Western past much longer) has ended generate an irreversible process of decay, environmental degradation and the spread parasite, closely interrelated, are the basis of the phenomenon. The dynamics of economic development of capitalism marked by a succession of crises of overproduction is the engine of predator-parasite that inevitably leads to a prolonged crisis of underproduction (capitalism must grow indefinitely-prey not to die ends up destroying the material base .) There is a perverse dialectic relationship between the expansion of the global mass of profits, its speed increased, the proliferation of civil and military bureaucratic structures of social control global concentration of income, the rise of the tide parasite and predation in the ecosystem.
This means that the necessary improvement of capitalism appears as the essential step to continue the "march of progress" but primarily as an attempt human survival and environmental context.
The decline is the latest stage of a long historical super cycle, its declining phase, irreversible aging (senility). Extreme reductionism as practiced by the "social sciences" could talk about "cycles" of varying lengths: energy, food, military, financial, productive, state etc., and so in each case describe paths that take off in the West between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and involving anterior roots growing geographical areas to eventually take on a global dimension and then declined each. The historical coincidence of all these declines and the easy detection of dense interrelationships between all these "cycles suggest the existence of a single super-cycle that includes everyone. This cycle of bourgeois civilization, which is expressed through a variety of "aspects" (productive, moral, political, military, environmental, etc.)..
Decline of Empire military redeployment, remote and global insurgency illusions
whole history of capitalism tour since the late eighteenth century around the rule first and then U.S. English. Global capitalism, imperialism and Anglo-American dominance are a single phenomenon (now declining).
The joint system of capitalism appears historically inseparable from imperial articulator but it appears that in the foreseeable future any new global imperialism upward, therefore the bourgeois world is missing a crucial piece of their reproduction process. The European Union and Japan are as decadent as the United States, China has based its spectacular expansion of a massive export into markets now declining in these three Central Powers.
Capitalism is being adrift unless predict the next appearance of a sort of universal invisible hand (and bourgeois) capable of imposing order (monetary, commercial, political, military, etc..). In this case we extrapolate the level of future humanity reference to the invisible hand (actually nonexistent) market capitalism trumpeted by the liberal economic theory.
The decline of the greatest civilization ever known to human history presents several scenarios for the future, alternatives to self-destruction and regeneration, genocide and solidarity, ecological disaster and reconciliation of humans with their environment. We are returning to an old debate about alternatives interrupted by the neoliberal euphoria, the crisis breaks the lock and allows us to think about the future.
Back to the initial reflection of the text: the beginning of the twenty-first century marks a crucial paradox, capitalism has clearly assumed a global dimension but also has begun its decline.
Moreover century of revolutions and counter-cultural shifts were peripheral, now in the periphery (fully modernized, that is completely undeveloped) there is enormous potential for autonomy in the lower classes. Here's what you so perhaps too simplistic could be defined as democratic heritage developed over the twentieth century. Submerged peripherals have built trade unions, peasant organizations have participated in voting of all kinds, have speed (many with socialist flags), democratizing reforms, most of the time have failed. It's all part of his memory, has not disappeared, however is experience, usually processed underground, invisible to outside observers. This has been reinforced by the very modernization that provides you with tools such as communication that to interact, exchange information, socialize reflections. Finally, the general decay of the system, the possible beginning of the end of its cultural hegemony opens a huge space to the creativity of the oppressed.
War spawned a huge Eurasian geopolitical morass that Westerners do not know how to get the setback has consolidated and expanded areas of rebellion and self-containment which is becoming increasingly difficult with which the Empire is stepping up its threats and attacks. North Korea could not be bowed like Iran, the Palestinian resistance and Israel is still standing, for the first time in their history suffered a military defeat in South Lebanon Iraq war could be won by the United States that poses a situation there where all roads lead to the loss of power in that country.
At the other end of the periphery, Latin America, the popular awakening transcends and undermines progressive governments strategically a few right-wing oligarchs who still control political power. U.S. plans to restore "friendly governments" encounters a major obstacle, the deep degradation of elite allies, their inability to govern in a number of candidate countries to the forehand but the Empire can not (not able) to stop or decelerate their offense to wait for better political contexts. The pace of regional strategy overdetermined crisis ultimately is not too different the situation in Asia where the imperial dynamics combines the sophistication and variety of technical and operational structures available with the rude behavior.
Looking at the entire periphery today from the long historical period will find that one side stood an imperial power mad faced a tidal wave submerged villages plural from Afghanistan to Bolivia, from Colombia to the Philippines, expression of the crisis underdeveloped modernity. It is the beginning of a popular awakening much higher than the twentieth century.
Amid these tensions see a colorful array of peripheral illusions based on the possibility of generating a disconnect calls led by emerging nations, fantasy that does not take into account the crucial fact that all "emergencies" (those of Russia, China , Brazil, India, etc.) rely on their entry into the markets of rich countries. If those states that have been practicing more or less bold neokeyneesianismos offsetting global cooling would like to deepen those impulses mercadointernistas and / or interperiféricos be found sooner or later with the social barriers of their own economic systems or to put it another way: with their own capitalism actually existing, especially the interests of the bourgeoisie and transnationalized financierizadas.
As the crisis deepens, the weaknesses of peripheral capitalism become more visible, the internal social bases of the imperialist bourgeoisie deteriorate and imperial desperation deepens, the global popular wave already under way will have no path than that of their radicalization, its transformation into revolutionary insurgency. Complex at different speeds and construction (against) different cultural, moving from different identities to overcome the hell. It is only from that perspective it is possible to think of the post-capitalism, the Renaissance (a reconfiguration) of the communist utopia, not as a result of "science" social elite, from overcoming the interior of bourgeois civilization through a kind of "abolition soft but his denial integral as unlimited expansion plurality recovering the old egalitarian cultures, solidarity rising to a new collectivism.
insurgent movements in the periphery tend to be presented today by the global media as lost causes, such primitive resistance to modernization or as the result of the activity of mysterious groups of diehard terrorists. The resistance in Afghanistan and Palestine Colombian rebels or displayed on this propaganda starring wars that could never win against super-powered devices, there are also professionals who counsel peacekeepers to combatants lay down their intransigence and negotiate some form of accountability advantageous "before it is too late." The twentieth century should be a good school for those who dazzle with gigantism and effectiveness of military equipment (and bureaucracies in general) because that century saw the birth of the great victory of modern equipment as it is now the Military U.S. Industrial and witnessed its destruction, the loss to people in arms, with the creativity and rebelliousness from below.
From 1990 we explained that the neoliberal globalization was an irreversible phenomenon that capitalism had acquired a global dimension that swept all the national and local obstacles. They did not realize that soon transformed irreversibility in global decline of the system will open the doors to an unexpected subject: the twenty-first century global insurgency, the time (the start of the crisis) in their favor. The Empire and its allies wanted to make direct and indirect abortion, starting with trying to erase its universal dimension, through the media trying to make (fragment) in a modest collection of local waste no future, but such waste alleged resistors have a surprising vitality, reproduce, survive all the killings and when we see the future path of the current civilizational decline, the deep degradation of the bourgeois world, anticipating deployment barbaric crimes even greater then the globalization of popular insurgency appears to be the surest way for the emancipation of the masses submerged in turn is your only chance of survival with dignity.
------------------ (1), Bud Conrad, "Beyond the Point of No Return", GooldSeek, 12 May 2010
(2) " The explosion of public debt. OECD forecasts for 2010 ", AFP, 25-11 - 2009
(3), Source: IMF. OECD, McKinsey Global Institute.
Rebellion has posted this article with the author's permission through a license from Creative Commons, respecting their freedom to publish it elsewhere.
.jpg)
