Sat, 3 Jan 1998 03:46:52 GMT Date: Sat, 3 Jan 1998 03:46:52 GMT To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu (world-system network), activ-l , philofhi@yorku.ca (philosophy of history) From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: rkm's model of the world, 12/97 version ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~-~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~ rkm's model of the world, 12/97 version -- assuming no intervening revolution ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 1. What is true today: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ (a) There is, today, an elite who benefit from and ultimately control the overall direction of global events and who determine the basic framework of public propaganda, namely (surprise) the _capitalist_ elite. The megacorp (TNC) is the fundamental tool of capitalist operations: the ship-of-the-line of the elite fleet. (b) This elite, even though it collectively benefits from basic global policies, is by no means a monolith: it has its own complex hierarchical structures and winners and losers -- but as a whole it functions with collaborative strategic coherence. (c) Part of what unifies the elite is a common philosophy, and that philosophy is a simple one: the sovereignty of capital, the primacy of the investor, the sacrifice of all other values to the facilitation of global capital growth and the efficiency of investor transactions. (d) What this philosophy leads to is the dominance of the global economy by the international banking and brokerage industry, out of all proportion to the relative wealth of that industry compared to others. This industry has been invested, via deregulation, with immense power over the global economy, on behalf of capitalism generally, due to the for-the-time-being alignment of that industry's interests with elite philosophy and policies. (e) The coherence of elite strategy and policy comes from a network of think tanks and other institutions; the Council On Foreign Relations (CFR), for example, more or less embodies elite consciousness on geopolitical matters, and its publications, properly interpreted, reveal in advance with surprising candor the global plans being made by the elite, and the basic propaganda lines by which those plans are to be sold. (f) Globalization is a two-level political revolution: a centralized world government is being set up, while simultaneously nation states are being aggressively undermined by a whole range of assaults from privatization to engineered currency crises to massive anti-government propaganda. National sovereignty and democracy are being replaced by global bureaucracies under direct elite control, thus officially and permanently institutionalizing absolute elite hegemony. (g) Nation states are devolving downward, both in size and function: the Soviet breakup is a foretaste of more widespread physical devolutions to come, with Scotland and Wales indicating a gradualist path, and the Northern-Italy movement indicating a more rapid path; the Third-World indicates the basic functionality that will be expected of national governments: keeping the population under control, commerce functioning, and debt repayments timely. (h) The EU -- although justified by all sorts of rhetoric, from a "stronger Europe", to fear of America, to fear of neo-fascism -- has really only one essential purpose: lubricating the transition of Europe, the home of the world's most robust democracies, into the globalist trap. It's a setup, a ruse, a trojan horse -- the EU has no special standing at the WTO, anymore than any other nation or group of nations, and its existence will be meaningless when the globalist regime is fully established. 2. What is looming on the horizon: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ (a) There are three primary geopolitical problems to be solved by globalist planners: (1) the safe completion of the destruction of the former USSR, reducing it to total chaos, so that it can be "properly" rebuilt from the ground up, (2) the taming of China, by whatever means necessary including selective nuclear strikes, and (3) the establishment of a new global ordering principle, given the demise of sovereign nation states. (b) The new global order is being based on a high-tech mobile elite corps, to maintain strategic global order, and regional client strong-man regimes (eg, Turkey), with second-tier weaponry, to maintain tactical order within designated "cultural regions", more or less as outlined by (CFR spokesman) Samuel P. Huntington in "Clash of Civilizations". (c) Global peace and harmony, as a scenario for world order, is perceived by the elite to be unstable and unmanageable; ongoing tension and chronic localized conflict are preferred: this is a scenario the elite knows how to manage -- an ongoing version of dynamic "divide and conquer" -- and it has the secondary benefit of funding a profitable arms industry. (d) The role of the elite corps is currently being played on a de facto basis by the Pentagon and NATO, legitimized by one-at-a-time authorizations from the UN. How this prototype arrangement will be regularized is not yet clear, but one possibility is that a new international agency will be created (the "World Peace Organization"?) that will have control over the elite corps, removing it from the vagaries of the deteriorating political processes in the US and Europe under globalization. Most likely funding will be spread among the global population, perhaps leading to the first globally administrated taxation. (e) The prognosis for humanity is extremely bleak: chronic conflict; universal disenfranchisement; hi-tech surveillance and suppression; heartless bureaucratic domination and corporate exploitation. (f) One outcome of laissez-faire free-trade globalist policies is abundantly clear: a competitive global shakeout is occurring which will lead to a handful of megacorps owning most of the world's wealth and controlling all of its major commerce. What will happen then is of momentous importance, and this is a scenario to which the elite must surely have devoted considerable thought. (g) Marx predicted what would happen if the elite turned off their collective brain and simply kept the laissez-faire throttle on "full speed ahead", running directly into the the shoals of an apocalyptic collapse. The experience of the petroleum industry provides a much more likely scenario: when the shakeout comes down to a few majors in each industry, they will cease serious competition and will instead collaboratively manage production, distribution, and pricing to their mutual benefit. Similarly, one can expect financial markets to be ultimately stabilized, and a single global currency to be adopted. 3. What threatens just over the horizon: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ (a) If these events transpire, then the elite philosophy (see 3 above) will be outmoded -- _capital growth_ will have been effectively replaced by _property management_ as the paradigm of the global economy. A paradigm shift in elite philosophy would be the intelligent, and therefore expected, outcome -- presumably toward something more like that of feudal aristocracies. (b) During a transition to a post-capitalist regime, presided over by an elite undergoing a radical change of consciousness, profound societal changes must be expected. The whole Western pre-occupation with growth and progress will be outmoded, just as globalization has outmoded nationalism, and new societal paradigms will be required, more in tune with economic and political realities. One's crystal ball gets blurry at this distance, but some kind of hi-tech medievalism, with a static rather than dynamic world view, and ruled by a hierarchy of aristocratic elites, seems inevitable. ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~-~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~ ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~--~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~ Posted by Richard K. 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