My article on Podemos (CounterPunch, 13-15 February) has generated some thoughtful responses, including one from a French journalist friend who, remembering May 1968 in Paris, is worried that such "a social upheaval is not easily transformed into a viable political
power."
As I told him, I think we may have some interesting disagreements — interesting because they provoke further thought. Some (at least ) of the campaign proposals for the European elections were quite unrealistic, but they served not only to get all those voters (1.25 million!) but to put the goals of a decent, more egalitarian distribution on the agenda for all the parties. And Iglesias and the others have taken the critiques into account, and refashioned the proposals to make them much more reasonable. The structure of Podemos makes it extremely flexible and open to pragmatic adjustments of this sort — not turnabouts decided by a leader (like Zapatero's disastrous reversal on the Socialist Party program in 2010), but responses to demands and critiques from the base.
Podemos has adopted the formal trappings of a political party (statutes, officers, etc.) because that's what the law requires for elections, but it is more of a social movement than an organized party. It's unlike any other party for the openness of debate, the fluidity of leadership and (unheard of in Spanish politics) the scant respect for hierarchy — Iglesias and his closest allies are generally respected, but not always heeded. In the primaries for municipal elections, Andalucía and Aragón already have chosen rival slates to Iglesias'. Susana (my accomplice) and I are involved in our Podemos circle here in Carboneras (a coastal village of 8,000 in Almería, Andalucía) for the same reason as most of the supporters across Spain, to shake up established, self-satisfied local structures that are doing too little for the community.
My correspondent suggests (if I've understood him rightly) that movements like Podemos "challenge the two pillars of a decent European society : democracy and free market." First, I don't see how such an open, internally democratic movement as Podemos can be considered a challenge to democracy — but maybe there were such strains in the May 68 upheaval in Paris. And as for the "free market," I
personally have been very impressed by the analysis of another Frenchman, Thomas
Piketty. As Mohandas Gandhi said of European civilization, I think a
free market would be a very good idea. But to try it will require some major reforms of the one we've got, so skewed to preserving the wealth of the wealthiest.
Showing posts with label globalization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label globalization. Show all posts
2015/02/16
2015/02/13
Podemos: Threat or Promise? — CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
Podemos: Threat or Promise?
For background, you may also be interested in my earlier articles, on the movements in Spain that have now converged to create Podemos.
- Historic Reversal: Bombs and Bullets in Spain. Op-ed on the 2004 election of the socialist government in Spain in wake of terrorist bombing of Madrid's Atocha railway station. The Philadelphia Inquirer, Mar. 16, 2004
- Spain's "Indignados". On the political occupation of public spaces across Spain through the summer of 2011 ("15-M"). The Voorhis Voice (Claremont Democratic Club) , June 2012
- Spain's many currents of protest. Discussion of protests actions spurred by "15-M". Originally published in Norwegian translation on the website Radikal Portal, August 2013.
2015/01/07
Roots and wings
Ulrich Beck died of heart-attack on January 1. To remind us of some of the important contributions of this very original social thinker, I am reposting this review which first appeared here in 2007.Power in the Global Age: A New Global Political Economy by Ulrich Beck
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In this much-praised essay, Ulrich Beck, German sociologist and professor at Ludwig-Maximilians Universität in Munich, demonstrates why neither nation-states nor international capital alone can save us from the many dangers of the "globalized" globe, and proposes an alliance of these two forces (which can't be ignored) with global "civil society" movements -- not to withdraw from globalization, but to engage it and realize its potential for making a better world for all of us.
Beck argues that: 1. The most urgent problems are now too global to be dealt with effectively by any state (global warming, pollution, exhaustion of carbon fuels, AIDS and other diseases, immigration, terrorism, etc.); 2. Transnational organizations (UN, WTO, NATO, etc.) are clumsy and ineffective, because they are still playing by obsolete "rules" of seeking common ground among states rather than among citizens; 3. Global capital is thus unrestrained by laws except companies' own "extralegal laws" of agreements among themselves, and exercises power over states by nonviolent means of threatening not to invest (in, say, Bolivia, if its laws become too uncomfortable) -- though companies do have to invest somewhere in order to survive, and fierce competition among and within companies makes their leaders' power precarious; 4. Global NGOs can exploit the vunerabilities of global capital (e.g., by organizing consumer boycotts) and pressuring states (e.g., by mobilizing voters and demonstrators), either to solve terrible humanitarian or ecological problems (e.g., Greenpeace, Amnesty International) or exacerbating them (e.g., al-Qaeda -- which is another kind of global nongovernmental organization).
The only hope for humanity is for these three forces (states, which are still necessary instruments of power, enlightened global capital, and global civil society) to combine forces as cosmopolitans, meaning that they feel themselves as belonging simultaneously to the cosmos and to the polis ("glocalization"), not to impose a Western vision of democracy or American culture or any other particular ideology ("universalism" of this sort is imperialism), but recognizing and accepting "the otherness of others" (die Andersheit der Anderen), different strokes for different folks, all recognizing one another's rights to live in a better world.
He says all that in far too many words (my favorite, from p. 286, is Globalisierungsbefürwortungsgegner, rendered by the translator as "opponents of the pro-globalization lobby") and occasionally surrealist metaphors (cosmopolitans should have "both roots and wings" he says over and over), repeats ideas and even phrases, and tells you many things that you already knew (e.g., Pres. Bush's attempt to impose his own sketchily-developed vision of a world order has had and can only have disastrous results, in Iraq and everywhere). Still, the basic ideas (the 4 points numbered above) are probably valid and well worth thinking about and maybe even acting upon -- the utopian (his term) cosmopolitan vision is a lot better than any of the alternatives under discussion.
View all my reviews
2014/02/07
Why a novel about the Paris Commune
Why write about events so long ago, specifically the late 19th century? Because it's terribly exciting, and because it can tell us a lot of how and why things got to be the way they are today. This was a period of very rapid changes, all of which contributed to and their effects magnified by the tumultuous 2-month life of the Paris Commune (18 March - 24 May 1871):
:
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| bonjourdefrance.com/images/paris-commune-3.jpg |
- the linking of distant places by the railways, facilitating not only commerce and diplomacy, but also labor organizing nationally and even internationally;
- the invention of mass journalism, spreading ideas and also creating a new class of intellectual workers — and stimulating (by reporting, diatribes, proposals) all of the other many changes;
- mechanization of industries such as textile, mining, chemicals, printing and others, bringing with it the creation of an industrial proletariat and the marginalization of specialized crafts workers, all of them anxious to defend or improve their lot as the terrain shifted from under them;
- revolutionary movements of many forms and ideals — utopian Fourerists, anarchists around Bakunin, and socialists and communists, some more or less influenced by Marx;
- international wars — France and Prussia, most immediately — suddenly changed the relations of forces among countries, industries, and regions,
- and great production and innovation in literature, painting and sculpture as artists, jolted by all these events, sought new ways to respond.
2013/12/20
2013/05/14
Caricature Map of Europe 1914 - StumbleUpon
Caricature Map of Europe 1914 - StumbleUpon
100 years ago. And today's map? Germany would be a fat, greedy banker, Spain a very thin gentlemen in shabby formal clothes with his hand out, Greece a flock of raging demons pursuing foreigners in a boneyard, Italy a grinning Berlusconi sitting on top of some very unhappy people whom Beppe is trying to tickle, France a mass of angry Lilliputians trying to tie down a struggling Marianne, Hungary… , Russia… , and on and on. Things are going nearly badly as they were 100 years ago, but the crisis we're on the brink of today is probably not world war. More like general collapse.
100 years ago. And today's map? Germany would be a fat, greedy banker, Spain a very thin gentlemen in shabby formal clothes with his hand out, Greece a flock of raging demons pursuing foreigners in a boneyard, Italy a grinning Berlusconi sitting on top of some very unhappy people whom Beppe is trying to tickle, France a mass of angry Lilliputians trying to tie down a struggling Marianne, Hungary… , Russia… , and on and on. Things are going nearly badly as they were 100 years ago, but the crisis we're on the brink of today is probably not world war. More like general collapse.
2011/08/16
America, a Spark Away From Riots of Its Own
Some readers of the blog may have got the impression that I'm a pretty smart guy; if so, I'm about to disabuse you, by talking about something I don't fully understand: the great economic collapse, how and why it is happening and what to do about it. Why? Because unless I spell out my tentative and possibly mistaken perceptions, I won't have a chance to correct or develop them.
Probably the most important post-World War II development has been the freeing of finance capital from its former bonds. As long as there have been markets, even before the birth of capitalism in England in the late middle ages (E.M. Wood, The Origin of Capitalism
), there has been credit — "finance" —in some form.
But even as late as Marx (who died in 1883) or even Lenin (1924), there were some constraints on finance capital, national loyalty being one of them. Thus J. P. Morgan was hailed for his "civic responsibility," demonstrated most dramatically in the Panic of 1907.
But finance capital has broken free and now dictates to its former masters: trade, state, local authorities of all kinds, traditional loyalties. It is a collective organism, like an anthill or a beehive or a city, e.g., London today, where the impulse toward mass action overcomes whatever rationality or notion of self-preservation its individual components may possess. Finance capital no longer recognizes any nation, but acts on its own only to aggrandize itself. And since it thinks of nothing but its own appetite, it does not hesitate to consume and destroy the industrial and commercial systems on which it feeds. If left entirely uncontrolled, the parasite will destroy its host — and then even bankers and security traders will despair.
Which is why things may not go quite to this extreme, that is, to the total self-destruction of the system. But we're getting close. Some financiers are able to raise their heads above the tumult (see links to Soros below) and see the dangers and may be willing to cede some control. But the forces of destruction are so strong and states (national governments) so timorous they (states and financiers) are acting too late to prevent great devastation — high unemployment in Europe, starvation in Africa, and turmoil everwhere.
And that of course is what is stimulating other and opposite movements of mass organisms, collective movements impelled more by rage than by sense, also overwhelming the rationality of individual participants and also possibly destroying the systems that sustain them. From Somalia to Athens to London and many other places. O, if we could just channel all that furious energy into a real revolution, establishing a truly sustainable system for reproducing social life! It will happen, surely, but — if we continue to behave as our species has over the millennia — only at the last possible moment.
(See Ford Releases Report on German Subsidiary and WWII.) These days, such operations — financing all sides in a war, for example — seem to be simpler to execute. And with the ease of moving money instantly, globally, through the Internet, patriotic concerns and the powers of states to regulate transactions have all but evaporated.
Three steps to resolving the eurozone crisis | George Soros
Germany must defend the euro | George Soros
America, a Spark Away From Riots of Its Own
Empire’s Last Gasp — A Two-Act Scenario; Charles Degelman returns to classic texts by Marx and Lenin
It is probably true, as Charlie Degelman suggests, that Marx and Lenin provide pointers, but a lot has happened since them and so we're going to have to try to figure this out without them.
For my earlier comments on "good and bad capitalism" and related issues, click on keyword "capitalism" below.
And here's something to listen to while you ponder these problems: Ry Cooder: No Banker Left Behind - YouTube
Probably the most important post-World War II development has been the freeing of finance capital from its former bonds. As long as there have been markets, even before the birth of capitalism in England in the late middle ages (E.M. Wood, The Origin of Capitalism
), there has been credit — "finance" —in some form. But even as late as Marx (who died in 1883) or even Lenin (1924), there were some constraints on finance capital, national loyalty being one of them. Thus J. P. Morgan was hailed for his "civic responsibility," demonstrated most dramatically in the Panic of 1907.
But finance capital has broken free and now dictates to its former masters: trade, state, local authorities of all kinds, traditional loyalties. It is a collective organism, like an anthill or a beehive or a city, e.g., London today, where the impulse toward mass action overcomes whatever rationality or notion of self-preservation its individual components may possess. Finance capital no longer recognizes any nation, but acts on its own only to aggrandize itself. And since it thinks of nothing but its own appetite, it does not hesitate to consume and destroy the industrial and commercial systems on which it feeds. If left entirely uncontrolled, the parasite will destroy its host — and then even bankers and security traders will despair.
Which is why things may not go quite to this extreme, that is, to the total self-destruction of the system. But we're getting close. Some financiers are able to raise their heads above the tumult (see links to Soros below) and see the dangers and may be willing to cede some control. But the forces of destruction are so strong and states (national governments) so timorous they (states and financiers) are acting too late to prevent great devastation — high unemployment in Europe, starvation in Africa, and turmoil everwhere.
And that of course is what is stimulating other and opposite movements of mass organisms, collective movements impelled more by rage than by sense, also overwhelming the rationality of individual participants and also possibly destroying the systems that sustain them. From Somalia to Athens to London and many other places. O, if we could just channel all that furious energy into a real revolution, establishing a truly sustainable system for reproducing social life! It will happen, surely, but — if we continue to behave as our species has over the millennia — only at the last possible moment.
(See Ford Releases Report on German Subsidiary and WWII.) These days, such operations — financing all sides in a war, for example — seem to be simpler to execute. And with the ease of moving money instantly, globally, through the Internet, patriotic concerns and the powers of states to regulate transactions have all but evaporated.
Three steps to resolving the eurozone crisis | George Soros
Germany must defend the euro | George Soros
America, a Spark Away From Riots of Its Own
Empire’s Last Gasp — A Two-Act Scenario; Charles Degelman returns to classic texts by Marx and Lenin
It is probably true, as Charlie Degelman suggests, that Marx and Lenin provide pointers, but a lot has happened since them and so we're going to have to try to figure this out without them.
For my earlier comments on "good and bad capitalism" and related issues, click on keyword "capitalism" below.
And here's something to listen to while you ponder these problems: Ry Cooder: No Banker Left Behind - YouTube
2010/12/25
The Fading Dream of Europe by Orhan Pamuk
A good commentary to read in conjunction with Tony Judt's book on Europe since 1945, Postwar
.
The Fading Dream of Europe by Orhan Pamuk | NYRBlog | The New York Review of Books
The WikiLeaks revelations underscore just how confused European leaders are about their mission. Here in Spain the biggest scandal (of several) is permitting interference of the US State Department in the Spanish justice system, to prevent prosecution of the US soldiers who killed TV cameraman José Couso and another journalist. But even apart from US interference, German and French politicians (the ones who have most clout in the European Union) pursue self-defeating policies to placate sectors of their equally confused electorates. They don't seem to be willing to accept that Iraq, Afghanistan and Turkey (and every other country outside Europe, North America and maybe China and Japan) may have their own needs and agendas and are no longer (if ever) simply willing to emulate the Europeans.
. The Fading Dream of Europe by Orhan Pamuk | NYRBlog | The New York Review of Books
The WikiLeaks revelations underscore just how confused European leaders are about their mission. Here in Spain the biggest scandal (of several) is permitting interference of the US State Department in the Spanish justice system, to prevent prosecution of the US soldiers who killed TV cameraman José Couso and another journalist. But even apart from US interference, German and French politicians (the ones who have most clout in the European Union) pursue self-defeating policies to placate sectors of their equally confused electorates. They don't seem to be willing to accept that Iraq, Afghanistan and Turkey (and every other country outside Europe, North America and maybe China and Japan) may have their own needs and agendas and are no longer (if ever) simply willing to emulate the Europeans.
2010/09/10
Interesting times
It was supposedly a Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times." We do.
Curse? Yes, if what you, like most people everywhere, most want is predictability, to have some idea of what's going to happen and what will be the consequences of whatever action you take, "interesting times" are a curse.
Unsettled times are unsettling. And times that are as unsettled as ours, with the globe warming and the sea rising over isles and the rims of continents, the climate producing heat waves in Moscow and hurricanes of unprecedented intensity, fish disappearing from the oceans, farmlands turning to desert, gigantic engineering projects turning valleys into seas, whole industries collapsing and economies crashing, while communications technology changes so fast that we can only wonder as it whizzes by, are enough to induce panic. Especially in those people most affected by one or several of these unsettlements.
So of course people are killing each other in the Sudan (and many other places), pirating ships in the Gulf of Aden, fleeing starvation or confusion or violence or ethnic or religious persecution or all those together, in short, resorting to any available method, including violence, to acquire or recover resources. It makes things interesting, all right.
And that, I think, is what drives so many people, in so many different societies and social conditions, to the extreme right. When everything else is falling apart or moving so rapidly it throws us off balance, we have to have some psychological stability. Something unchanging. God, for instance. Or the eternal superiority of our race. Some absolute truth to cling to. Sarkozy is re-inventing some absolutist idea of France (without Gypsies), religious nuts are burning one another's holy books or symbols and blowing up institutions, governments are punishing anyone who questions the government's truth, and so on. We've seen this before, when the huge changes in chemistry, communications, manufacturing and everything else, upsetting class relations and population patterns coming ever faster toward the end of the 19th century made many people see the desirable solution in fascism and its kindred. After two world wars and and two atom bombs, daily life in some parts of the world became at least more predictable. The Cold War, awful as it was, was at least an understandable system. But then everything got moving again, ever faster, and here we are. The Soviet Union disappeared, the Internet appeared, and so on.
Of course a minority of us go in the other direction, to the left, recognizing that everything is changing and trying to prepare not only ourselves but all humanity to take advantage of the good things and avoid the worst of all the possible outcomes. This means the opposite of clinging to any absolute truth, denying that such a thing even exists or is knowable to us, the only absolute being a value, the value of our lives—all our lives, all of humanity. And it requires us to be probing and watching to anticipate, if only by a microsecond, the next big change and position ourselves to duck or use it. And hoping to stay agile enough to recover if we misjudge and get slammed by something.
The rapid shifts in publishing are just one mix of currents in the maelstrom. None of us can say how things will turn out in, say, 50 years. What people will be reading, or how, or even if. But right now, trying to stay agile and to ride what seem the strongest currents, I'm hitching my novel to p.o.d. (print on demand) and plan also to take it to e-publishing on several platforms. Launch in mid October.
Curse? Yes, if what you, like most people everywhere, most want is predictability, to have some idea of what's going to happen and what will be the consequences of whatever action you take, "interesting times" are a curse.
Unsettled times are unsettling. And times that are as unsettled as ours, with the globe warming and the sea rising over isles and the rims of continents, the climate producing heat waves in Moscow and hurricanes of unprecedented intensity, fish disappearing from the oceans, farmlands turning to desert, gigantic engineering projects turning valleys into seas, whole industries collapsing and economies crashing, while communications technology changes so fast that we can only wonder as it whizzes by, are enough to induce panic. Especially in those people most affected by one or several of these unsettlements.
So of course people are killing each other in the Sudan (and many other places), pirating ships in the Gulf of Aden, fleeing starvation or confusion or violence or ethnic or religious persecution or all those together, in short, resorting to any available method, including violence, to acquire or recover resources. It makes things interesting, all right.
And that, I think, is what drives so many people, in so many different societies and social conditions, to the extreme right. When everything else is falling apart or moving so rapidly it throws us off balance, we have to have some psychological stability. Something unchanging. God, for instance. Or the eternal superiority of our race. Some absolute truth to cling to. Sarkozy is re-inventing some absolutist idea of France (without Gypsies), religious nuts are burning one another's holy books or symbols and blowing up institutions, governments are punishing anyone who questions the government's truth, and so on. We've seen this before, when the huge changes in chemistry, communications, manufacturing and everything else, upsetting class relations and population patterns coming ever faster toward the end of the 19th century made many people see the desirable solution in fascism and its kindred. After two world wars and and two atom bombs, daily life in some parts of the world became at least more predictable. The Cold War, awful as it was, was at least an understandable system. But then everything got moving again, ever faster, and here we are. The Soviet Union disappeared, the Internet appeared, and so on.
Of course a minority of us go in the other direction, to the left, recognizing that everything is changing and trying to prepare not only ourselves but all humanity to take advantage of the good things and avoid the worst of all the possible outcomes. This means the opposite of clinging to any absolute truth, denying that such a thing even exists or is knowable to us, the only absolute being a value, the value of our lives—all our lives, all of humanity. And it requires us to be probing and watching to anticipate, if only by a microsecond, the next big change and position ourselves to duck or use it. And hoping to stay agile enough to recover if we misjudge and get slammed by something.
The rapid shifts in publishing are just one mix of currents in the maelstrom. None of us can say how things will turn out in, say, 50 years. What people will be reading, or how, or even if. But right now, trying to stay agile and to ride what seem the strongest currents, I'm hitching my novel to p.o.d. (print on demand) and plan also to take it to e-publishing on several platforms. Launch in mid October.
2009/07/18
Soy: A Hunger for Land | North American Congress on Latin America
Soy: A Hunger for Land | North American Congress on Latin America Terrible story. Please read. then let's see what we can do about it.
2009/05/31
Virtual irreality
I've been getting more and more networked, involved and entangled through Twitter, the Red Room ("where the writers are"), Zoetrope, and this blog, among other sites, in a virtual space so active -- so many messages, so many chances to connect with so many other computer users -- that it's easy to forget. There is a real world out there, and it's inhabitants -- all of us -- are in trouble. A lot of the people using these networks are barely making enough to keep their cyber connections, let alone rent, child care, health etc. Real income is dropping, steady job opportunities are disappearing, the mass of people considered redundant is ballooning, inequality is increasing as fewer secure ever greater proportions of the wealth.
But as long as all the precariously employed or unemployed have got the 'net and SMS to voice their protests virtually, they are not much of a threat to this skewed system. They're not going to answer the calls of the trade unions to march down the streets (real, physical tarmac streets in real, physical cities), because the trade unions don't represent them and because they're too busy on their computer screens. So, the professional fortunetellers (e.g., Gaggi and Narduzzi in their new book, "Full Unemployment") tell us, in post-crash society people will just docily accept our diminished lives. Without rebellion. There may be neo-Nazi outbursts here and there, but mostly, people won't know where to direct their anger other than by virtual screaming into cyberspace.
Maybe. But the skewed system is unstable. The big shift is eastward: when new technology and new high-skilled industries in everything from windmills and solar power to transportation and communications create new wealth, it looks like they'll be centered in India and China and maybe in other places that may surprise us (Brazil? Africa?). Western Europe and even Japan and the U.S. are rapidly losing their privileged positions. This is very hard for politicians and their voters in those countries to accept.
Which I think explains the irreality of political debate in Spain right now -- and much the same in the U.K., France and Germany. Not to mention Italy, where Berlusconi has diverted all attention to his dating habits, but I'm talking about places with more serious politics. In Spain, the head of the right-wing Popular Party blames the Socialist government for soaring unemployment (neglecting the role of his Party's 8 years of government in artificially pumping up the construction boom that has just collapsed), saying the Socialists don't have a clue how to solve "the crisis." He's right that the Socialists don't have the answer, no European party does, because the solution isn't even in Europe. What is ridiculous is his claim that the Popular Party does.
It's going to be rough here in Europe, and especially in Spain where rapid economic growth was premised on such a low-skilled, inefficient, and inessential industry as second homes for pensioners (whose pensions have now collapsed, and thus nobody is buying). Not just in Spain, but for all of Europe and beyond, because we're going through yet another global redistribution of wealth, like the one that got Europe started as a dominant power in the first place beginning in the 16th century. It's useless to deny it. But we can and should prepare for it, to do what we can to make sure the new power centers don't treat us as badly as our European ancestors treated them back then. To try to see that in this new redistribution of wealth, we don't reproduce the global inequality of the old system.
But as long as all the precariously employed or unemployed have got the 'net and SMS to voice their protests virtually, they are not much of a threat to this skewed system. They're not going to answer the calls of the trade unions to march down the streets (real, physical tarmac streets in real, physical cities), because the trade unions don't represent them and because they're too busy on their computer screens. So, the professional fortunetellers (e.g., Gaggi and Narduzzi in their new book, "Full Unemployment") tell us, in post-crash society people will just docily accept our diminished lives. Without rebellion. There may be neo-Nazi outbursts here and there, but mostly, people won't know where to direct their anger other than by virtual screaming into cyberspace.
Maybe. But the skewed system is unstable. The big shift is eastward: when new technology and new high-skilled industries in everything from windmills and solar power to transportation and communications create new wealth, it looks like they'll be centered in India and China and maybe in other places that may surprise us (Brazil? Africa?). Western Europe and even Japan and the U.S. are rapidly losing their privileged positions. This is very hard for politicians and their voters in those countries to accept.
Which I think explains the irreality of political debate in Spain right now -- and much the same in the U.K., France and Germany. Not to mention Italy, where Berlusconi has diverted all attention to his dating habits, but I'm talking about places with more serious politics. In Spain, the head of the right-wing Popular Party blames the Socialist government for soaring unemployment (neglecting the role of his Party's 8 years of government in artificially pumping up the construction boom that has just collapsed), saying the Socialists don't have a clue how to solve "the crisis." He's right that the Socialists don't have the answer, no European party does, because the solution isn't even in Europe. What is ridiculous is his claim that the Popular Party does.
It's going to be rough here in Europe, and especially in Spain where rapid economic growth was premised on such a low-skilled, inefficient, and inessential industry as second homes for pensioners (whose pensions have now collapsed, and thus nobody is buying). Not just in Spain, but for all of Europe and beyond, because we're going through yet another global redistribution of wealth, like the one that got Europe started as a dominant power in the first place beginning in the 16th century. It's useless to deny it. But we can and should prepare for it, to do what we can to make sure the new power centers don't treat us as badly as our European ancestors treated them back then. To try to see that in this new redistribution of wealth, we don't reproduce the global inequality of the old system.
2009/04/25
Maybe you can go home again?
That's what several of our foreign friends and acquaintances in Spain are hoping, such as Rumanians who may have had some other profession but in Spain were working in the once-booming construction industry. See As Jobs Die, Europe’s Migrants Head Home in yesterday's NYT. But "home" isn't what it used to be, either. There will be lots of stories to tell, of kids pulled out of school, repatriated and having to function in a language they´re no longer used to (or maybe never learned beyond talking with their mothers), of marriages in trouble because of new economic stresses, and lots more. Maybe the only upside of this crisis is that it is sure to enrich Rumanian (and Lithuanian and other eastern countries') literature.
2009/04/23
Bad move by Japan
Now this is going to be self-defeating: Japan pays foreign workers to go home. No, folks, you can't de-globalize, though you can do your economy a lot of damage by trying. They're going to need foreign workers in Japan if they're ever going to climb out of this recession, but when they do, will they be willing to come after this insult?
2009/02/03
The Job
Thanks to Dirk van Nouhuys for sending this commentary on the financial crisis, from the Festival international de très courts ("very short" videos):
The Job
Don't miss it!
The Job
Don't miss it!
2009/01/04
2 crises
No answers today, just a question. Today's El País is dominated by two "stories", as journalists call them, though neither one has a clear narrative yet. One is the massive bombardment and now invasion of Gaza by the Israelis. The other is the gobal financial crisis. My question: How will these two huge events affect each other? Because in our closely interconnected world, the vibrations of any major shock are felt throughout the network.
There are other big "stories", i.e., events waiting for their narrative. The Russian pressure on the Ukrainians and the constricting of gas pipelines to most of Europe, for example. The big offensive by the government of Sri Lanka, etc. And down through other events whose ripples beyond their own regions may be felt less intensely. But for now let's just look at the first two.
Did the financial pinch have anything to do with the Israeli move against Gaza? War has always proven an excellent distraction from other troubles. And with no economic surplus, what else besides war can the candidates for premier offer to their citizens? The far more severe pinch in Gaza may also have a lot to do with the Hamas government's allowing, or encouraging, reckless and senseless missile attacks on Israeli civilians. People in the strip are so frustrated that they have to lash out at somebody, and Hamas must figure, better the Israelis than us.
And how will this huge escalation of violence affect global finance? Is it going to escalate the already widespread hostility toward Jewish financiers (and toward the far more numerous non-Jewish financiers wrongly suspected of being Jewish, just because they are financiers)? Probably it will, I think, and that is likely to be a pretext for more isolationist, nationalist economic policies by, for example, Muslim countries in Asia (Indonesia among them). Will it make a rapprochement of the U.S. and the Arab countries even more difficult, because of the U.S.'s knee-jerk support of Israel? Almost certainly. And is that going to further limit the U.S.'s power to affect markets?
As I said, no answers, just questions. These are some of the things to watch for, I think. In the long run, I don't think this invasion is good for the Jews or for anybody. Though it might be good for the short run aspirations of some Israeli politicians.
Middle East finance headlines (Financial Times)
Rice cancels Mideast trip to help with financial crisis (CNN)
Turning a crisis into an opportunity. By Nehemia Shtrasler (Haaretz)
Finance Minister: No Israel banks will collapse in global crisis (Haaretz)
There are other big "stories", i.e., events waiting for their narrative. The Russian pressure on the Ukrainians and the constricting of gas pipelines to most of Europe, for example. The big offensive by the government of Sri Lanka, etc. And down through other events whose ripples beyond their own regions may be felt less intensely. But for now let's just look at the first two.
Did the financial pinch have anything to do with the Israeli move against Gaza? War has always proven an excellent distraction from other troubles. And with no economic surplus, what else besides war can the candidates for premier offer to their citizens? The far more severe pinch in Gaza may also have a lot to do with the Hamas government's allowing, or encouraging, reckless and senseless missile attacks on Israeli civilians. People in the strip are so frustrated that they have to lash out at somebody, and Hamas must figure, better the Israelis than us.
And how will this huge escalation of violence affect global finance? Is it going to escalate the already widespread hostility toward Jewish financiers (and toward the far more numerous non-Jewish financiers wrongly suspected of being Jewish, just because they are financiers)? Probably it will, I think, and that is likely to be a pretext for more isolationist, nationalist economic policies by, for example, Muslim countries in Asia (Indonesia among them). Will it make a rapprochement of the U.S. and the Arab countries even more difficult, because of the U.S.'s knee-jerk support of Israel? Almost certainly. And is that going to further limit the U.S.'s power to affect markets?
As I said, no answers, just questions. These are some of the things to watch for, I think. In the long run, I don't think this invasion is good for the Jews or for anybody. Though it might be good for the short run aspirations of some Israeli politicians.
Middle East finance headlines (Financial Times)
Rice cancels Mideast trip to help with financial crisis (CNN)
Turning a crisis into an opportunity. By Nehemia Shtrasler (Haaretz)
Finance Minister: No Israel banks will collapse in global crisis (Haaretz)
2008/11/29
Crunching numbers, saving people
Collier, Paul. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Paul Collier deserves -- and has received -- great credit for developing a method of statistical comparison for identifying the very poorest countries and estimating the costs of such poverty to them and potentially to all of us (short life spans, HIV and other devastating diseases, political violence that spreads beyond their borders, etc.). He and his co-researchers are especially keen on finding correlations between such wretched conditions and various geographical, demographic and historical factors, and comparing them to countries which share many such characteristics but that have broken out of poverty -- most notably, India and China, still beset by many problems but developing.
Very briefly: Collier has identified 58 countries, together comprising about 1/6 of the world's population or nearly 1,000,000,000 people, which are not only extremely poor, but which are not developing at all -- that is, they are experiencing no economic growth whatever. He declines to provide the full list, but in the course of the book he names several: most are in Africa, others include "Haiti, Laos, Burma [Myanmar], and the Central Asian countries, of which Afghanistan has been the most spectacular" development failure.
These are all places caught in "traps" of: recurring civil conflict, an abundance of a single natural resource whose exploitation (mostly for the benefit of outside corporations and the local corrupt elite) causes neglect of all other productive areas, being "landlocked with bad neighbors," and/or suffering "bad governance in a small country."
His question: How to get these countries out of the "traps" of undevelopment and get their economies growing?
Aid doesn't work, because too much of it is eaten up in corruption and inefficiency -- though without it, people's lives would be even worse. Collier gives several woeful examples, but also singles out a few heroes who have struggled to limit or end corruption, for example in Nigeria and Uganda.
Military intervention could work very well in those places wracked by civil war and terrorism, if only the richer countries dared to use it and if they avoided the disastrous misuse in the U.S.'s spectacular and self-defeating deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. The other African countries are themselves too poor to intervene effectively in Sudan, for example, or the Congo, and would need the troops, arms and logistical support of richer countries. To be seen as legitimate, such intervention would have to come at the invitation of groups in the country or region that had wide popular support. And without raising any suspicion that the intervenors' true goal was to seize natural resources, e.g., oil. Unfortunately, in Collier's view, the U.S.'s bungling in Iraq has given intervention such a bad name that when the French, for example, send troops to a civil war zone, they are ordered to stay in barracks when the fighting breaks out. And we all remember the passivity of the Dutch UN troops in Srebrenica. UN troops in the Congo also seem to be more concerned for their own safety than that of the populace.
"By contrast, the British intervention in Sierra Leone [in 2000], Operation Palliser, has been a huge success. It has imposed security and maintained it once the RUF [rebel movement] was disposed of. The whole operation has been amazingly cheap," Collier writes (p. 127). Another example that seems to me to have been very positive (though I think Collier would disagree) was Cuban intervention in Namibia and Angola, saving both countries from far worse fates -- but of course that occurred during the Cold War, which distorted everything and made all sides' motives suspect.
"So we should intervene," says Collier, "but not necessarily everywhere. Sierra Leone rather than Iraq is the likely future of intervention opportunities in the bottom-billion countries. Look at the contrasts between the two situations. In Sierra Leone our [i.e., British] forces were invited in by the government and hugely welcomed by the local population. In Sierra Leone we could not be accused of going in for the oil, as there wasn't any." (pp. 128-9)
We also need to change laws and charters in the developed world, for example, banking secrecy regulations that permit corrupt dictators to steal their countries' wealth and hide it. (He has much more to say about laws and charters, including a proposed charter for world democracy.)
Finally, he proposes "trade policy for reversing marginalization" -- ending, for example, protective tariffs for European and U.S. agricultural interests that make it impossible for African cotton producers, etc., to compete in the only lucrative markets.
There's a lot of good stuff here, and Collier and his team keep on producing more such pointed analyses. Check out the Paul Collier home page. His statistical work is a good starting point for finding solutions, but it is only a starting point. To understand phenomena such as massive corruption, suicidal terrorism (such as in Mumbai this week), and the consequences and contradictions of rapacious global capitalism requires much more than number-crunching. The "traps" he lists are not all really comparable phenomena, though the statistical method showing only their numerical consequences make them appear so. Being landlocked with few natural resources is a geographical and historical phenomenon. As Collier sagely remarks, the reason so many such countries are in Africa is that, in other parts of the world, territories that are landlocked and have few resources don't become countries -- so that is a historical political problem, dating from the way colonial powers carved up the continent.
"The Natural Resource Trap," i.e., being "too rich" in petroleum, or diamonds, or some other valuable commodity, is not a geographical fatality at all. What makes such natural wealth a "trap" rather than an asset is obviously a problem of the way markets are organized and who has the means to exploit someone else's wealth. Bolivia under Morales, for example, is working to turn its natural gas into an asset.
But if we can think along two or more tracks at the same time, keeping in mind the statistical correlations that Collier and other investigators generate while also thinking broadly and deeply about markets and other social process in the manner of, say, Ulrich Beck, Alain Touraine and others, we may seriously address these problems.
One minor quibble: The cover declares the book a winner of the "Lionel Gelber Prize for excellence in writing on international relations." It seems to me that the writing would have been more excellent had Collier found a better metaphor than "traps" to describe those difficulties and had he not repeatedly referred, with no apparent irony, to landlocked countries as "missing the boat" (of development).
Paul Collier deserves -- and has received -- great credit for developing a method of statistical comparison for identifying the very poorest countries and estimating the costs of such poverty to them and potentially to all of us (short life spans, HIV and other devastating diseases, political violence that spreads beyond their borders, etc.). He and his co-researchers are especially keen on finding correlations between such wretched conditions and various geographical, demographic and historical factors, and comparing them to countries which share many such characteristics but that have broken out of poverty -- most notably, India and China, still beset by many problems but developing.
Very briefly: Collier has identified 58 countries, together comprising about 1/6 of the world's population or nearly 1,000,000,000 people, which are not only extremely poor, but which are not developing at all -- that is, they are experiencing no economic growth whatever. He declines to provide the full list, but in the course of the book he names several: most are in Africa, others include "Haiti, Laos, Burma [Myanmar], and the Central Asian countries, of which Afghanistan has been the most spectacular" development failure.
These are all places caught in "traps" of: recurring civil conflict, an abundance of a single natural resource whose exploitation (mostly for the benefit of outside corporations and the local corrupt elite) causes neglect of all other productive areas, being "landlocked with bad neighbors," and/or suffering "bad governance in a small country."
His question: How to get these countries out of the "traps" of undevelopment and get their economies growing?
Aid doesn't work, because too much of it is eaten up in corruption and inefficiency -- though without it, people's lives would be even worse. Collier gives several woeful examples, but also singles out a few heroes who have struggled to limit or end corruption, for example in Nigeria and Uganda.
Military intervention could work very well in those places wracked by civil war and terrorism, if only the richer countries dared to use it and if they avoided the disastrous misuse in the U.S.'s spectacular and self-defeating deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. The other African countries are themselves too poor to intervene effectively in Sudan, for example, or the Congo, and would need the troops, arms and logistical support of richer countries. To be seen as legitimate, such intervention would have to come at the invitation of groups in the country or region that had wide popular support. And without raising any suspicion that the intervenors' true goal was to seize natural resources, e.g., oil. Unfortunately, in Collier's view, the U.S.'s bungling in Iraq has given intervention such a bad name that when the French, for example, send troops to a civil war zone, they are ordered to stay in barracks when the fighting breaks out. And we all remember the passivity of the Dutch UN troops in Srebrenica. UN troops in the Congo also seem to be more concerned for their own safety than that of the populace.
"By contrast, the British intervention in Sierra Leone [in 2000], Operation Palliser, has been a huge success. It has imposed security and maintained it once the RUF [rebel movement] was disposed of. The whole operation has been amazingly cheap," Collier writes (p. 127). Another example that seems to me to have been very positive (though I think Collier would disagree) was Cuban intervention in Namibia and Angola, saving both countries from far worse fates -- but of course that occurred during the Cold War, which distorted everything and made all sides' motives suspect.
"So we should intervene," says Collier, "but not necessarily everywhere. Sierra Leone rather than Iraq is the likely future of intervention opportunities in the bottom-billion countries. Look at the contrasts between the two situations. In Sierra Leone our [i.e., British] forces were invited in by the government and hugely welcomed by the local population. In Sierra Leone we could not be accused of going in for the oil, as there wasn't any." (pp. 128-9)
We also need to change laws and charters in the developed world, for example, banking secrecy regulations that permit corrupt dictators to steal their countries' wealth and hide it. (He has much more to say about laws and charters, including a proposed charter for world democracy.)
Finally, he proposes "trade policy for reversing marginalization" -- ending, for example, protective tariffs for European and U.S. agricultural interests that make it impossible for African cotton producers, etc., to compete in the only lucrative markets.
There's a lot of good stuff here, and Collier and his team keep on producing more such pointed analyses. Check out the Paul Collier home page. His statistical work is a good starting point for finding solutions, but it is only a starting point. To understand phenomena such as massive corruption, suicidal terrorism (such as in Mumbai this week), and the consequences and contradictions of rapacious global capitalism requires much more than number-crunching. The "traps" he lists are not all really comparable phenomena, though the statistical method showing only their numerical consequences make them appear so. Being landlocked with few natural resources is a geographical and historical phenomenon. As Collier sagely remarks, the reason so many such countries are in Africa is that, in other parts of the world, territories that are landlocked and have few resources don't become countries -- so that is a historical political problem, dating from the way colonial powers carved up the continent.
"The Natural Resource Trap," i.e., being "too rich" in petroleum, or diamonds, or some other valuable commodity, is not a geographical fatality at all. What makes such natural wealth a "trap" rather than an asset is obviously a problem of the way markets are organized and who has the means to exploit someone else's wealth. Bolivia under Morales, for example, is working to turn its natural gas into an asset.
But if we can think along two or more tracks at the same time, keeping in mind the statistical correlations that Collier and other investigators generate while also thinking broadly and deeply about markets and other social process in the manner of, say, Ulrich Beck, Alain Touraine and others, we may seriously address these problems.
One minor quibble: The cover declares the book a winner of the "Lionel Gelber Prize for excellence in writing on international relations." It seems to me that the writing would have been more excellent had Collier found a better metaphor than "traps" to describe those difficulties and had he not repeatedly referred, with no apparent irony, to landlocked countries as "missing the boat" (of development).
2008/11/12
Mark Engler on Obama's Economic Mandate
More intelligent analysis by friend and colleague Mark Engler in this BBC video interview.
2008/10/25
The larger effects of Obama
The well-known Spanish-language journalist Fidedigna Fuentes has just interviewed me on the larger meaning of the Obama presidential campaign, for the journal Iberomundo. There I try to explain the phenomenon to readers from Latin America and Europe, who are both puzzled and fascinated by these developments. You can read the interview (that is, if you read Spanish) on the blog of my colleague Baltasar Lotroyo. Ms. Fuentes titled the piece, “¿Presidente Obama? - EE.UU. y el mundo”.
2008/08/25
Alternatives: Cuba tries to make a socialism that grows
But can it succeed? The Cubans have proven so resilient and Cuban institutions so resistant to joining the "There is no alternative" crowd, that they may just make this work. It's a small economy, but its methods may again -- as they have been repeatedly through the 1960s and 1970s -- be a model for other low-income countries. From the Financial Times: A revolution to repair: New friends come to the aid of Raúl’s Cuba By Richard Lapper
2008/08/23
Alternatives to and within capitalism
Baumol, William J., Robert E. Litan, and Carl J. Schramm. Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2007.
Baumol et al. start from the common premise that, since the collapse of the Socialist bloc, "There is no alternative" ("TINA") to capitalism, by which they mean an economy where “most or at least a substantial proportion of its means of production -- its farms, its factories, its complex machinery -- are in private hands, rather than being owned and operated by the government." (p. 62) Socialized ownership of the means of production and central planning collapsed with the Berlin wall, and what they call “precapitalist” economies, as in Afghanistan and Somalia, where the only property rights are those defended by warring clans, are just not viable.
But, the authors insist, there are at least four alternative forms of capitalism, some much better at promoting growth and prosperity than others.
"Oligarchic” capitalism, where a few rich families own everything that produces wealth and make sure nobody else gets any, is “bad” capitalism. Not just because of its unfairness, but because the oligarchs are too ignorant, too indolent and too self-occupied to invest in anything productive. Of course, they really don't have a lot of margin -- after their country club dues, luxury estate management, imported automobiles, foreign vacations, and other obligations of their class, they have to spend much of their country's wealth on army and police to shoot, beat or intimidate those pesky peasants who want to change things -- which, as we have seen in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Vietnam and other places, can get very, very expensive if those rebels are serious, well-organized, and can get funded somehow.
“State directed” capitalism, where the state picks sectors or even particular firms to favor (e.g. by subsidies or high tariffs against competing imports), hasn't proven efficient either. A major historical example was the "import substitution" policy promoted by Argentinian economist Raúl Prebisch for Latin America. The problem is that governments -- being run by human beings with their own interests and prejudices and corruptibilities -- are not very good at making such decisions. Most likely, the minister of the economy will pick the companies run by his brother-in-law. Or, even absent corruption, the inertia of bureaucracy (and pressure from interest groups) will keep the government supporting a sector whose growth potential has passed.
"Big firm" capitalism, free from the strictures of government, is better (for promoting growth), since big firms have the capital and need to invest. But they tend to be cautious and (with a few exceptions, like Bell Labs in the old days and Apple today) discourage innovation.
"Entrepreunerial" capitalism -- meaning the kind that breaks into the market by inventing new technology or new marketing techniques -- is the real hero of this book. But the wild-eyed entrepreneurs can survive and grow only if they get the backing of capital from big firms, until they turn into big firms themselves. When that happens, they either have to make special efforts to keep the innovation going (e.g., Bell Labs or Xerox) or look outside to back and buy rights to inventions made by new entrepreneurs. That kind of marriage (big firm/small innovator) is what has given the U.S. economy its dynamism in recent years and is the best bet for other economies seeking to grow.
In the real world (as the authors recognize), every economy has some mix of the four forms. The U.S. (like France and other economies) protects its agribusinesses ("state-directed" capitalism), and "big firm" and "oligarchic" systems are sometimes hard to distinguish. (E.g., the big business families of Italy, or the Fords in the U.S., where business power is hereditary.) The important question is which form prevails.
Baumol et al. also lay out four elements (they like that number) that they think are necessary to encourage such big firm/small innovator successes:
1, ease of forming or abandoning a business (if a company cannot declare bankruptcy if things go wrong, then the risks may be too high for anybody to start up in the first place);
2, rewards (they mean big money payoffs) for ”socially useful entrepreneurial activity." They specify "socially useful" to exclude such entrepreneurial activity as cocaine production and distribution, hedge-fund manipulation and other big money-making enterprises.
3, economic growth should be favored over redistribution of existing wealth -- which sounds like, Let the rich get richer as long as they invest in things that will make us all richer.
4, continuing incentives to companies to innovate and grow.
The most important thought I took from the book was what they call their “fundamental proposition”:
I'm not convinced that "There is no alternative," that growth and prosperity are impossible unless all major means of production are in private hands. We'll have to see if China, for example, can continue to innovate with its mix of capitalism and socialism. Or if Hugo Chávez's "Twenty-First Century Socialism" (which so far appears to be another mix of state-ownership and private enterprise) matures and survives. But it is obvious that there are many alternative systems within capitalism.
Baumol et al. start from the common premise that, since the collapse of the Socialist bloc, "There is no alternative" ("TINA") to capitalism, by which they mean an economy where “most or at least a substantial proportion of its means of production -- its farms, its factories, its complex machinery -- are in private hands, rather than being owned and operated by the government." (p. 62) Socialized ownership of the means of production and central planning collapsed with the Berlin wall, and what they call “precapitalist” economies, as in Afghanistan and Somalia, where the only property rights are those defended by warring clans, are just not viable.
But, the authors insist, there are at least four alternative forms of capitalism, some much better at promoting growth and prosperity than others.
"Oligarchic” capitalism, where a few rich families own everything that produces wealth and make sure nobody else gets any, is “bad” capitalism. Not just because of its unfairness, but because the oligarchs are too ignorant, too indolent and too self-occupied to invest in anything productive. Of course, they really don't have a lot of margin -- after their country club dues, luxury estate management, imported automobiles, foreign vacations, and other obligations of their class, they have to spend much of their country's wealth on army and police to shoot, beat or intimidate those pesky peasants who want to change things -- which, as we have seen in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Vietnam and other places, can get very, very expensive if those rebels are serious, well-organized, and can get funded somehow.
“State directed” capitalism, where the state picks sectors or even particular firms to favor (e.g. by subsidies or high tariffs against competing imports), hasn't proven efficient either. A major historical example was the "import substitution" policy promoted by Argentinian economist Raúl Prebisch for Latin America. The problem is that governments -- being run by human beings with their own interests and prejudices and corruptibilities -- are not very good at making such decisions. Most likely, the minister of the economy will pick the companies run by his brother-in-law. Or, even absent corruption, the inertia of bureaucracy (and pressure from interest groups) will keep the government supporting a sector whose growth potential has passed.
"Big firm" capitalism, free from the strictures of government, is better (for promoting growth), since big firms have the capital and need to invest. But they tend to be cautious and (with a few exceptions, like Bell Labs in the old days and Apple today) discourage innovation.
"Entrepreunerial" capitalism -- meaning the kind that breaks into the market by inventing new technology or new marketing techniques -- is the real hero of this book. But the wild-eyed entrepreneurs can survive and grow only if they get the backing of capital from big firms, until they turn into big firms themselves. When that happens, they either have to make special efforts to keep the innovation going (e.g., Bell Labs or Xerox) or look outside to back and buy rights to inventions made by new entrepreneurs. That kind of marriage (big firm/small innovator) is what has given the U.S. economy its dynamism in recent years and is the best bet for other economies seeking to grow.
In the real world (as the authors recognize), every economy has some mix of the four forms. The U.S. (like France and other economies) protects its agribusinesses ("state-directed" capitalism), and "big firm" and "oligarchic" systems are sometimes hard to distinguish. (E.g., the big business families of Italy, or the Fords in the U.S., where business power is hereditary.) The important question is which form prevails.
Baumol et al. also lay out four elements (they like that number) that they think are necessary to encourage such big firm/small innovator successes:
1, ease of forming or abandoning a business (if a company cannot declare bankruptcy if things go wrong, then the risks may be too high for anybody to start up in the first place);
2, rewards (they mean big money payoffs) for ”socially useful entrepreneurial activity." They specify "socially useful" to exclude such entrepreneurial activity as cocaine production and distribution, hedge-fund manipulation and other big money-making enterprises.
3, economic growth should be favored over redistribution of existing wealth -- which sounds like, Let the rich get richer as long as they invest in things that will make us all richer.
4, continuing incentives to companies to innovate and grow.
The most important thought I took from the book was what they call their “fundamental proposition”:
that economies are complicated systems that cannot be reduced to one or two central driving forces, and cannot be turned around by applying one or even a few of the policy prescriptions various development economisys or institutions have recommended over the years. (p. 59)In sum, I found the book useful in clarifying categories (such as those four types of capitalism), though its arguments are too general and abstract, and say too little about the political forces involved, to explain much about the current world recession, or the surge in the price of oil, or what's at stake in the Georgia-Russia conflict (we know economics is a big part of it, but just how?) or other issues.
I'm not convinced that "There is no alternative," that growth and prosperity are impossible unless all major means of production are in private hands. We'll have to see if China, for example, can continue to innovate with its mix of capitalism and socialism. Or if Hugo Chávez's "Twenty-First Century Socialism" (which so far appears to be another mix of state-ownership and private enterprise) matures and survives. But it is obvious that there are many alternative systems within capitalism.
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