sunlore wrote:You people realise that all the Bob-talk is technically a much greater thread derailment then the actual Bob posts, yes?

Does this really need a reply?

Of course.

I just thought I'd share a great resource on the subject on Globalization.

The Centre for Research on Globalisation (founded by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/

Chossudovsky's book "The Globalization of Poverty", is quite thought provoking and I think gets to the heart of the issue.

In the IMF, World Bank context of the word, poverty is exactly what is being globalized and the current 'fleecing' of the American middle class would seem to be a prime example of this in my opinion...

Andrew. wrote:The most devastating thing about capitalism is that, in the final instance, it cannot be reformed. It's the hardest thing to grasp and hold onto about it. Especially in the context of a social reality which has no outside or visionary reference other than capitalism itself.

and:

Andrew. wrote:But this is why it's important to understand what capitalism actually is. And it's understanding this that leads to the conclusion that, while capitalism goes through major transformations (in order to overcome internal limits and maintain profitability), it cannot ultimately be reformed and made sane.

Start with the most basic insight into capitalism as a system. Capitalism is a system with only one ultimate goal: the generation of capital. That's it. That's all capitalism needs and wants to be able to do: turn things into capital ("commodify"). Capitalism needs to extract value from things - land, bodies, minds, relationships - in a "valorization" process that abstracts that value for exchange ad infinitum.

For me this is the clearest expression of the unnegotiable bottom line and why capitalism is such a radical exception to other phases of human history. It's an expression of the indifference of capital, which is easily demonstrable, yet so hard to grasp for some here. Capital is indifferent and ubiquitous; completely without an exterior. It can pretty much erode any limit that we care to set it.

What eludes some--and what Andrew. describes so well--is that capitalism is a machinic system that enslaves, alienates, extracts value in a completely impersonal manner.

Sparky wrote:pretty bleak, no?

Si, this is the sad affect of capitalism, which counter-balances it's more liberatory pleasures.

Sparky wrote:reconfiguration of the way we live our lives.

That's our biggest obstacle towards progressing towards a post-capitalist existence. This will be by no means be easy to imagine or enact. What capitalism does do however is allow society to be self-critical. There is some hope there.

Also: Rick is continually wrong in thinking that value inheres in objects (gold, property) and fails to see that it is labour/human activity and the investment of labour that transforms these objects. Think about it.

When you comment on capitalism (specifically Cranius and Andrew) are you doing so simply from a dispassionate analytical point of view? (in other words from a point of view empty of any value judgement)

Andrew certainly seems to be critical of the system of capitalism but would you not want to change it to something else?

I am presuming you would and presuming Cranius would to, but still don't see how you could possibly do that without identifying the primary agents (be they individuals, families or organisations).

I am reminded of a scene in the film The Corporation where the astonishingly effective activists protest outside the house of the head of BP (I think).
The head comes out with his friendly wifey and they all end up having a nice tea party on the lawn as the head explains that nothing is his fault. The corporation has a life of it's own and even though he's the boss he can't be blamed for all the shit BP does and in fact he agrees with much of what the activists are saying.

Bullshit - I say. I wanted one of them activists to smack him in the face and shit in his tea cup.
He is responsible.
Or - at least - a fuck of a lot more responsible than pretty much anyone else.

Your refusal to look at the 'agents' of capitalism is tantamount to agreeing that no-one should be held accountable for a corporations crimes because a corporation is an entity seperate from the individuals running it.
It's an argument that's extremely fortunate for the managing director of a company whose faulty factories implode killing hundreds of people working in them.

Saying that - even if the steerers of capitalism (or neo conservatism/liberalism) were gotten rid of capitalism would still be there so what's the point in getting rid of them - is tantamount to saying - there'll always be murder so why bother punishing murderers.

At least that's the way it seems to me.

All of what you say is very interesting and as I've said before analysing the system is essential but the dominant economic system of the last 40 years has been led by certain people and they should be held accountable for the massive crimes perpetrated and the lives shattered - millions of them - as a result.

I'm at a loss as to how you could disagree with that to be honest.

Cranius wrote:That's our biggest obstacle towards progressing towards a post-capitalist existence. This will be by no means be easy to imagine or enact. What capitalism does do however is allow society to be self-critical. There is some hope there.

Also: Rick is continually wrong in thinking that value inheres in objects (gold, property) and fails to see that it is labour/human activity and the investment of labour that transforms these objects. Think about it.

The fact capitalism allows society to be self-critical is part of the self-correcting factor of capitalism. People drive the system, not the other way around.

Also, some aspects of capital are inextricable from humanity. Property is a great example - we value property because it provides protection, a roof over our heads. Something we can call our own.

I don't think this has anything to do with "the American dream" - manifest destiny, or what have you - just a desire to protect those we love, even if that means just ourselves.

unarmedman wrote: Property is a great example - we value property because it provides protection, a roof over our heads. Something we can call our own.

I don't think this has anything to do with "the American dream" - manifest destiny, or what have you - just a desire to protect those we love, even if that means just ourselves.

Yes, property rights are one of the pillars of a free society, as long is it isn't in the way of the proposed TTC or similar projects (Eminent domain)...

Alan Greenspan, Gold and Economic Freedom wrote:In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.

This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold.Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.

sunlore wrote:

Andrew. wrote:With finite resources, capitalism would eventually reach a limit and stop being able to be itself.

I think when you look at, for example, the recent (booming) "cap and trade" in carbon dioxide emissions, that there may be room for a sustainability which may be not all that foreign to the internal logic of capitalism itself.

Have you looked at it? The European Union's Emissions Trading System has thus far not reduced emissions but has generated increased profits for the very polluters it ostensibly checks. The fact that the "cap and trade" market is as you say booming (projected to reach $1 trillion) and emissions are not declining is perhaps telling, no?

As for the U.S., the world's largest polluter and CO2 producer, here's a piece in the Wall Street Journal (I followed a link from this article):

The idea of a cap-and-trade system for limiting carbon-dioxide emissions in the U.S. has become all the rage. Earlier this year, 10 big American companies formed the Climate Action Partnership to lobby for government action on climate change. And this week the private-equity consortium that is bidding to take over Texas utility TXU announced that, as part of the buyout, it would join the forces lobbying for a cap on carbon emissions.

But this is not, as Lenin once said, a case of capitalists selling the rope to hang themselves with. In most cases, it is good old-fashioned rent-seeking with a climate-change patina.

What Duke, Entergy, TXU, BP, Dupont and all the rest want is to make sure that when the right to produce CO2 becomes limited, they're the ones that end up owning the allowances. Because that would mean they could sell them, and make money off something that previously wasn't worth a dime.

Thus, Entergy, a utility that relies heavily on natural gas and nuclear power and thus produces relatively less CO2, would love a cap that distributes the allowances based on how much electricity you churn out, rather than on how much CO2 you produce. Entergy's "carbon footprint" is small compared to some other utilities, so an electrical-output-based cap would be windfall city. Dupont, meanwhile, wants credit for reductions already made because it sees instant profit in costs already paid.

The piece concludes:

And in any case China is putting up a new coal-fired plant every week [...]

The emerging alliance of business and environmental special interests may well prove powerful enough to give us cap-and-trade in CO2. It would make Hollywood elites feel virtuous, and it would make money for some very large corporations. But don't believe for a minute that this charade would do much about global warming.

Cap-and-trade, incidentally, is Obama's proposed method of CO2 reduction. "Don't worry, nothing substantive has to change, and everything will be better." Apparently people buy it.

For a critical round-up on cap-and-trade, offsets, etc, see the Transnational Institute's news page. I also recommend The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation's 382-page primer, Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power, which is a free download. I've only browsed through it, but it's very readable (interview formats!), persuasive, and rigorously researched.

Vandana Shiva, meanwhile, wrote an informative column on the biofuel industry a couple months ago:

President Bush is trying to pass legislation to require the use of 35 billion gallons of biofuels by 2017. M. Alexander of the Sustainable Development Department of FAO has stated: "The gradual move away from oil has begun. Over the next 15 to 20 years we may see biofuels providing a full 25 per cent of the world's energy needs."

Inevitably this massive increase in the demand for grains is going to come at the expense of the satisfaction of human needs, with poor people priced out of the food market. [...] The diversion of food for fuel has already increased the price of corn and soya. There have been riots in Mexico because of the price rise of tortillas. And this is just the beginning. Imagine the land needed for providing 25% of the oil from food.

Industrial biofuels are being promoted as a source of renewable energy and as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, there are two ecological reasons why converting crops like soya, corn and palm oil into liquid fuels can actually aggravate climate chaos and the CO2 burden.

Firstly, deforestation caused by expanding soya plantations and palm oil plantations is leading to increased CO2 emissions. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 1.6 billion tons or 25 to 30 per cent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year comes from deforestation. By 2022, biofuel plantations could destroy 98% of Indonesia's rainforests.

According to Wetlands International, destruction of South East Asia pert lands for palm oil plantations is contributing to 8% of the global CO2 emissions. According to Delft Hydraulics, every tonne of palm oil results in 30 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions or 10 times as much as petroleum producers. However, this additional burden on the atmosphere is treated as a clean development mechanism in the Kyoto Protocol for reducing emissions. Biofuels are thus contributing to the same global warming that they are supposed to reduce. (World Rainforest Bulletin No.112, Nov 2006, Page 22)

Further, the conversion of biomass to liquid fuel uses more fossil fuels than it substitutes.

One gallon of ethanol production requires 28,000 kcal. This provides 19,400 kcal of energy. Thus the energy efficiency is -- 43%.

The U.S. will use 20% of its corn to produce 5 billion gallons of ethanol which will substitute 1% of oil use. If 100% of corn was used, only 7% of the total oil would be substituted. This is clearly not a solution either to peak oil or climate chaos. (David Pimental at IFG conference on "The Triple Crisis", London, Feb 23-25, 2007)

And it is a source of other crisis. 1700 gallons of water are used to produce a gallon of ethanol. Corn uses more nitrogen fertilizer, more insecticides, more herbicides than any other crop.

These false solutions will increase the climate crisis while aggravating and deepening inequality, hunger and poverty.

Either folks are reading stuff that plausibly rebuts all these studies and criticisms, or the reality is obscene. As Jacques Rancière has said, "reality is radical." It's the radicalism of reality that produces radical analysis. Or as Michael Parenti has said, "we can't help it if sometimes reality is Marxist."

sunlore wrote:Not saying that it is entirely unproblematic, or anything, and with regards to that, your links re: biofuel are much appreciated (and depressing), but I think that capitalism, much like organized crime, is possibly more flexible than you make it out to be, exactly because there is commodity to be found in pretty much anything, including the checks on trade and production themselves.

I should have been clearer about my skepticism of David Graeber's remarks. I used the conditional instead of the future tense (would/will) because I meant to present Graeber's position rather than a determinant future. Capitalism is extraordinarily adaptive - and even more inestimably short-sighted. Like any self-generating system it has no historical register. There is now and tomorrow but never 10 years from now for capitalism (as the actually existing and most probable future cap-and-trade market both illustrate). But just as it does fine with half the earth's human population starving, more than a billion now living in slums, etc, it may continue to thrive with half the planet itself choked in smoke and flood waters. The question (regarding sustainability) is not whether capitalism is adaptive enough to survive but whether it can be reformed in such a way as to exist in an ecologically sustainable manner.

In practice and in theory nothing suggests it can: there is no convincing material evidence demonstrating it can; likewise, its incontrovertible dependency on growth - its M.O. - suggests otherwise. To get into capitalism's extended future in much more detail we'd have to address Marx's distinction between "formal subsumption" and "real subsumption"...

I am of course of the view that even if capitalism were ecologically sustainable, it remains a devastating organization and distribution of life, death, health, and wealth on earth--and must be overcome.

There's other stuff in this thread I'd like to respond to in time (Earwicker), but it might be a while. I also think it'd be interesting to talk about our own experiences of globalization. When I taught English - globalization and capital's lingua franca - in Korea and Taiwan, I gave lucrative private classes in ostentatious Taiwanese homes where Filipina nannies (w/ impeccable English) on 5-year contracts mothered wealthy Taiwanese kids instead of their own. The extraction of mothers from the Phillipines, Sri Lanka, India and Mexico, to do contractual care-giving work for North American, Saudi, and European familes, is a fact of globalization. Sociological studies find that these women come to love their over-seers' kids more than those they left with friends and grandparents at home, where they send their pay. Conversely, one of my ex-pat friends in Taiwan was a gay, middle-aged Australian whose partner was a college-educated Indonesian construction worker (again, with impeccable English) making a tenth of a white ESL instructor's wages working on the high-speed rail line in Taiwan. That kind of romance (which was beautiful and heartbreaking) is also globalization.

sunlore wrote:I think when you look at, for example, the recent (booming) "cap and trade" in carbon dioxide emissions, that there may be room for a sustainability which may be not all that foreign to the internal logic of capitalism itself.

Andrew. wrote:Have you looked at it? The European Union's Emissions Trading System has thus far not reduced emissions but has generated increased profits for the very polluters it ostensibly checks. The fact that the "cap and trade" market is as you say booming (projected to reach $1 trillion) and emissions are not declining is perhaps telling, no?

The lion's share of the criticism of cap-and-trade (that I'm aware of) is centred around the fact that it has been implemented wrongly. Most importantly, that licenses have been undervalued (as a result of oversupply), which essentially undercuts the whole idea (of reduction of emissions within a trade framework). The EU EST readily admits to this, and has already and dramatically severed its protocols and regulations. We'll just have to see how shit pans out.

Meanwhile, cap-and-trade is key to the Kyoto program. Honest question: do you suggest we should reverse it?

Cap-and-trade, incidentally, is Obama's proposed method of CO2 reduction. "Don't worry, nothing substantive has to change, and everything will be better." Apparently people buy it.

First off, there are multiple points of entry in this discussion. I thought the theoretical/radical ground had been thoroughly covered, and you should realize that my comment was more informed by pragmatism than by credulity or ideology. I maintain that there may be a real possibility of a more sustainable capitalism by way of a commodification of environmentally sound initiatives. This of course doesn't mean I am not sceptical. I mean, I am. And for sure, I didn't mean the point to be the be all end all of the matter.

Secondly, surely something substantive has to change, perhaps most importantly global consumer behavior. As for overcoming capitalism, I would suggest that this is single most important incentive for actively investing in a global community, now that advanced capitalism has transgressed beyond the confines of the nation state, a nation state which in the process (with the possible exception of the United States) has become obsolete where it concerns addressing economical, financial and, yeah, environmental issues. The only workable solutions (and this of course relates to the discussion re:cap-and-trade), may very well be in facing capitalism on its own terms.

The question (regarding sustainability) is not whether capitalism is adaptive enough to survive but whether it can be reformed in such a way as to exist in an ecologically sustainable manner.

In practice and in theory nothing suggests it can: there is no convincing material evidence demonstrating it can; likewise, its incontrovertible dependency on growth - its M.O. - suggests otherwise.

The evidence is scant, but look at recent developments with regard to tobacco legislation: within the next few years, smoking will be completely banned from public spaces in most of the EU and North America. Where is the tobacco lobby in all of this? Either they are somehow less dependent on growth and happy to scale back, or there is a real-world possibly of taking on mcCapital in the face of "environmental" issues.

I am of course of the view that even if capitalism were ecologically sustainable, it remains a devastating organization and distribution of life, death, health, and wealth on earth--and must be overcome.

We don't disagree. But there's always more ways to fight a disease, and in the absence of a real cure, I think it maybe best go antiretroviral.

Or something.

There's certainly a whole lot to chew on here, though. Thanks much for the links (though from you citing the Wall Street Journal as a source, I fear that the sky may be falling, globalisation or not).

Andrew. wrote:

What Duke, Entergy, TXU, BP, Dupont and all the rest want is to make sure that when the right to produce CO2 becomes limited, they're the ones that end up owning the allowances. Because that would mean they could sell them, and make money off something that previously wasn't worth a dime.

Thus, Entergy, a utility that relies heavily on natural gas and nuclear power and thus produces relatively less CO2, would love a cap that distributes the allowances based on how much electricity you churn out, rather than on how much CO2 you produce. Entergy's "carbon footprint" is small compared to some other utilities, so an electrical-output-based cap would be windfall city. Dupont, meanwhile, wants credit for reductions already made because it sees instant profit in costs already paid.

The piece concludes:

And in any case China is putting up a new coal-fired plant every week [...]

The emerging alliance of business and environmental special interests may well prove powerful enough to give us cap-and-trade in CO2. It would make Hollywood elites feel virtuous, and it would make money for some very large corporations. But don't believe for a minute that this charade would do much about global warming.

My brain's hanging out my arse at the moment, though I pulled together a couple of raggedy thoughts on the plane I might be able to cohere later. However, in brief: regarding this criticism of the cap 'n' trade as not being really used to prevent global warming - i.e. being about making a cheap profit - I think that a distinction should be made here between the intention and the result. Sure, the corporations playing with these derivatives might not give a shit about the "public purpose" of them, but by using them I still think that they might do some good anyway. You know, by accident...

This reminds me a little of the distinction I read in the latest Zizek (reaches for bookshelf - yes, I'm a whore); or rather, his citation of Marx's analysis of the 1848 French Revolution between the conviction of the Royalists who participated in parliament and the reality of what they were doing:

Everyone's friend in "Violence" wrote:...So it is not that they were royalists who were simply wearing a republican mask, although they experienced themselves as such. It was their very inner royalist conviction which was the deceptive front masking their true social role. In short, far from being the hidden truth of their public republicanism, their sincere royalism was the fantasmatic support of their actual republicanism.

Likewise, I would suggest the possibility that the open profit-seeking of the cap 'n' traders could be a mist around a genuine drive to reduce pollution.

Although my weasel get-out is that I see that it is just as likely that the cap 'n' trades will result in a mess of loop-the-loopholing which does no good whatsoever.

However, what I think that I am moving towards is the idea that on some level, many of the most vociferous businessmen and entities that they reside in are feeling trapped and horrified themselves, though this is not conscious. I am too knackered and incoherent to go further, but I'll try to put together the bits that I gather en route for this spurious argument. Typically, I have invented it on a plane whilst reading a single newspaper - the Financial Times - and decided to fit a global pattern over maybe two or three comments that I picked out of there. But hey, we love that stuff.

EDIT: I have just realised the irony of talking about emission reduction having just yapped about spending most of the past day on jet planes. How drole.

sparky wrote:Sure, the corporations playing with these derivatives might not give a shit about the "public purpose" of them, but by using them I still think that they might do some good anyway.

Yeah. Though they can still go fucking die.