Mon, 2 Feb 1998 05:26:20 GMT
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 05:26:20 GMT
To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu (world-system network)
From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore)
Subject: Re: EU & globalism (Dennis)

I wrote
  >> Japanese TNC's, for example, are becoming entities whose stock is traded
  >> globally and which produce goods in Asia for exportation to world markets
  >> while paying minimal taxes to anyone - what has that, really, to do with
  >> Japan?

2/01/98, Dennis R Redmond responded:
  >Everything. Japanese TNCs are competitive because of a huge hidden
  >infrastructure of national subcontractors, small and medium-size firms,
  >plus a canny and effective developmental state which invests in education
  >and retraining and socializes the cost of R & D for big firms.


Dennis,

Again, you're presenting a familiar mainstream analysis, but one that is
being rapidly outdated by globalization.  Government subsidies and
protectionist policies are being globally scaled down by reduced budgets
(lower corporate taxes) and by WTO directives against "anti-competitive"
practices.  One example of the latter is the ruling that the EU could no
longer subisidize imports of Carribean bananna growers.  This is the
direction things are clearly going.

The global development model is substantially different now than it was for
the first two decades or so of the postwar period.  During that period
development in the core had a national focus, as had been the case for
centuries.  But as the perspective of TNC's has become increasingly global,
and with neoliberal downsizing of governments' budgets and prerogatives,
government's role in economic planning is diminishing, along with the
public benefit from corporate growth.  You're describing the history of the
Japanese economy, not its future.


  >Also, the
  >Japanese multis are not autonomous actors in the sense of American
  >corporations or their rentier elites: most of 'em are part of still larger
  >"keiretsu"

This is a different topic altogether.  Keiretsu may well be a pattern that
spreads.

What's been happening in all industries, at different rates, is a
concentration of global ownership into the hands of a few mega-TNC
operators, as we've long had in petroleum with the seven-sister majors.  In
other words, in each industry (automobiles, communications, transportation,
food, etc.) there is developing a clique of global operators who dominate
that industry.  As these shakeouts begin to stabilize, keiretsu linkages
may well emerge among the cliques.

But under globalization, we can expect keiretsu links to jump national and
even regional boundaries.  If an automobile manufacturer needs a steel
"partner" for example, the search will be for the best synergy-match on a
global basis, not just the best match among companies which share the same
home nation or region.  In fact the whole concept of home-nation is
becoming antiquated.  Increasingly only the corporte headquarters has any
sense of permanent location: everything else from R&D through manufacturing
to sales might be anywhere.

There may well be "German" and "Japanese" companies in the same keiretsu at
some point (if not already).  But Japan, Germany or the EU, as nations,
don't play any particular role or gain any particular benefit from whatever
success that keiretsu might enjoy.  The creation of the EU is irrelevant to
these developments, and the people of the EU nations can expect no
significant long-term benefits from the arrangement.  And whatever benefits
do accrue are pence as compared to the pounds lost in democratic
sovereignty and globalist exploitation.


  >In true dialectical fashion,
  >global capitalism is forcing firms to create what are essentially
  >non-market structures of sharing and cooperation in order to remain
  >competitive --

Yes, partnerships, joint ventures, mergers, acquisitions, and keiretsu's
are all means by which corporations can grow and/or increase their
competitiveness.  But that has no relevance to whether the EU makes sense.


Later clarification:
  >It means, basically, that in the midst of the current
  >relapse into neoliberal barbarism, capitalism is beginning to eat itself.
  >It's not just the increasing networking of the professional classes who
  >work for the TNCs, it's economic, too: that allegedly invincible and
  >autonomous market is requiring bigger and bigger Government bailouts and
  >regulation, in order to avoid a 1929-style implosion. We've gone from S &
  >L bailouts in the Eighties to Japanese bank bailouts in the Nineties, to
  >West Germany's bailout of the ex-GDR, and now the bailout of the whole
  >damn Pacific Rim economy (a neat one-third of the world economy).

There is a dangerous instability in financial markets, and there will be
corporate failures, but capitalism as a system is not threatened by the
events you allude to, nor even by the global depression that many
anticipate.  Korea is not scrambling to socialism, it's scrambling to the
IMF.  And Korea isn't being bailed out, it's being sold off.  It will be
given a little dole money to bolster its currency, but it's indusrtries are
being bought up at distressed prices.  Korea is being robbed and the
globalist weapon is financial destabiliztion instead of gunboats.  The
beneficiaries are the Western and Japanese corporations that are picking up
the bargains.


  >At the
  >same time, global capitalism is spawning whole new techniques of workplace
  >input and democracy, via the electronic media as well as a multinational
  >labor-force with the potential of organizing itself into global unions and
  >Left parties. Which isn't to say it'll automatically happen -- this is our
  >job as activists, of course. But the potential for a 21st-century
  >socialism is being created in front of our very eyes.

Organized labor is becoming weaker, not stronger, under globalization.
There is certainly a job for activists, but every day globalization
proceeds makes the task of counter-revolution more difficult.  Despite
whatever minor percs may filter down in the process, delay only increases
the net dominance of the corporatist elite.


  >OK. I'm way, way over quota on my WSN postings, so I'll shut up now & let
  >other folks have their say for awhile.

On the contrary.  You've posted your perspective, repeated it a time or
two, and you have yet to respond to critiques which have been offered.
Your response would be quite in order.


rkm