The Fate of Man

Nasser’s forthcoming book is about the common destiny of men currently being shaped by speculative capital.

Much has been said about how globalization eliminates the local differences and turns the areas it touches into a bland sameness. Walk into any upscale mall in Taipei, Istanbul, Los Angeles or Dubai, and you will not be able to tell one city from another, not with the “location-neutral” Gucci, Hermes, Cartier and Prada stores surrounding you. Walk to Downtown and it is dotted with the familiar junk food outlets and Gaps and Starbuckses, 7-11’s and now, the Apple stores.

But it is not only the retail business that has been made standard. The symphony orchestras also sound the same, as I discussed in No Country. More pernicious, though, is the sameness of politics, as in setting policies. That, too, has been pushed into the single, there-is-no-alternative track dictated by speculative capital.

In the U.S., the shift began with Regan and gained speed under Bill Clinton; credit Sleek Willy with divorcing policies from the politicians. Since then, presidential elections in the U.S. have been reduced to choosing the ‘lesser evil’. The idea seems sensible; only Lucifer would vote for the greater evil. The trick is that the semi-illiterate electorate is programmed to see evil in terms of surface issues: abortion, gay marriage, gun control, “family values” – the usual election hot buttons. No one ponders why evil, no matter what its degree, should be prerequisite for the presidency. That evil is the policy direction about which the rabble has no say and on which both parties are in full agreement. No matter who wins, the ship of state maintains its per-arranged course.

Post-War Europe prior to Tony Blair and the EU was different. The political parties offered alternative visions of government and, once in power, put them into action. Even with the military dictatorships in Spain, Portugal and Greece, one knew where he stood.

Globalization changed that. The rule of finance capital which operates under the nom de guerre globalization does not permit any deviation from the path most profitable to it. It punishes dissent with the pincer strategy of financing the competition and choking off the funding sources. Incessantly pressured by that force, out went the goals, principles, ideas and platforms of the political parties in Europe. Sure, they could still differentiate themselves on local matters – we will encourage women’s participation in workforce – and their candidates could talk to their hearts’ content – remember Hollande describing finance capital as “faceless enemy”? – but upon assuming power they had to govern as per finance capital’s diktat. Absolutely and all times. Observe:

Portugal: Social Democrat Passos Coelho replaced Socialist Socrates. The result?

The prime minister, announced a 7 per cent increase in the social security contributions to be deducted from workers’ pay next year while employers’ contributions are to be cut by a similar amount ... Mr Passos Coelho said unemployment, currently above 15 per cent, could reach 17 per cent next year if the social security changes were nor implemented. (FT, September 17, 2012)

Spain: Center-right Rajoy replaced Socialist Zapatero. The result?

Mariano Rajoy, the new prime minister, warned this week that the economic outlook “could not be more somber”, and laid out another round of deep spending cuts on top of existing austerity measures. (FT, December 21, 2011)

Greece: Center-right Samars replaced Socialist Papandreou. The result?

On July 6, Mr. Samaras laid out the coalition’s plans, a bold program of selling government assets and reducing state spending. (NYT, July 10, 2012)

Notice the word bold.

France: Socialist Hollande replaced center right Sarkozy. The result?

The French prime minister has appealed for a “massive vote” in favor of the EU’s new fiscal discipline pact by his ruling Socialist party despite criticism that President François Hollande failed to deliver on his election promise to renegotiate the accord. (FT, September 20, 2012)

Hollande had campaigned on opposing the EU mandated austerity measures, so much so that after he was elected, some (fools) saw his presidency as the harbinger of a weakened EU. Daily Telegrph wrote:  François Hollande victory sets EU on course for turmoil. Fat chance.

UK: Conservative Cameron (in coalition with the Liberal Democrats) replaced Unprincipled Blair. The result?

George Osborne, chancellor of the exchequer, will map out spending cuts and tax rises that analysts believe could amount to £85bn ($126bn, €102bn). Treasury officials say it will be the most brutal budget for almost 30 years. (FT, June 22, 2010)

You get the idea. Democrat, Social Democrat, Liberal, Labour, Conservative, right, left, center-right or center left – they all act in the same way. They must, else they will not be allowed to assume power.

With the main policy direction prefixed and untouchable, governing is no longer about the public service, the term properly understood. It’s reduced to the petty stuff, of the kind that has always been practiced at the local level but was not the main thing in conducting national policy: influencing laws to benefit benefactors, installing the backers as judges and administrators, putting relatives on the government payroll, and, of course, securing one’s own future by being in good terms with the powers that be, as in here and here.

And yet – and this is the central point of this post – none of this should be taken to mean that anything is preordained. Or that the die is cast. Or the conclusion is foregone.

Yesterday, a strong public reaction in Portugal forced a volte-face on the part of the prime minister. He had to rescind the order reducing workers’ wages by 7% as part of his “fiscal devaluation”. He will instead increase taxes, which means that the populace has to pay through a different venue.

So the force that is speculative capital keeps doing what forces always do: exert pressure. But in the social realm, as in the realm of nature, any force can be counteracted, neutralized by even a greater force that lies dormant in society.

The Ship of Fools [in control]: Diagnosis of a Social Unease

The unease of the citizenry about the “conditions” in the U.S. strongly comes through in every poll. The malaise is usually expressed in economic terms – lack of jobs, underwater mortgages, unaffordable insurance – but it transcends economics. It is a broader and deeper despair about what has gone before and what looms on the horizon. I wrote about the sentiment which Cormack McCarthy had touched upon in No Country for Old Men.

In the concluding part of the series we arrived at infantilism, a condition where grown men and women speak – because they think – like children.

Socially, being a child is defined by the absence of experience, more specifically, the absence of the opportunity to come into contact with the real world. So a toddler who has never seen a tiger will approach the beast without fear, as nothing in his mind associates a tiger with danger.

A developmentally retarded adult who has seen tigers before will also approach the beast without fear but only because he does not understand the danger. In this case, it is the inability to conceptualize and thus, comprehend the already experienced, that amounts to the absence of experience.

There is a difference between the two which language captures and coveys. One is innocence. The other, to use a very common word in the U.S., is stupidity. Innocent children; stupid adults: that’s how we frame our references.

All this by way of saying that when I say Nicholas Sambanis is a stupid man I am not hurling insults at him. All I am saying is that he is incapable of comprehending the world. See what he wrote this past Sunday in the New York Times about the EU crisis, beginning with an explanation of its causes:

There are many reasons behind the crisis, from corruption and collective irresponsibility in Greece to European institutional rigidities … But this is not just a story about profligate spending and rigid monetary policy… It is an escalating identity conflict – and ethnic conflict.

Greeks are corrupt. They are collectively irresponsible. Profligate spenders, too, especially when it is other people’s money, as we all know. Europeans institutions are rigid.

After this display of stupidity, he gets into the history:

The European Union was a political concept, designed to tame a bellicose Germany … Elites could sell that concept to their publics as long as Europe prospered and had high international status.

Vulgarity, thy name is Sambanis! Even reading this crap is embarrassing, an adult saying something like “international status of Europe”.

Nasser dissected the EU crisis in a 6-part series last year. Read it for an adult perspective. See how intelligently he defines Europe there.

Then note Sambani’s reference to the “elites”. It is telling. Who are the elites? What is he talking about?

Nasser explained that the EU was created in response to capital's falling rate of profit. To reverse the unacceptable fall, there had to be an EU through which labor costs would be reduced; that was the only way under the circumstances to raise the rate of profit. That the European people opposed the “initiative” – because however dimly, they understood it – mattered not a bit. In a democratic process, capital rules and overrules people, as we repeatedly saw.

Sambanis would not know that. But he has noticed that the idea of the EU came from high places; German butchers, Italian tailors and French bakers could not have conceived it, much less rammed it through the various governmental and legislatives labyrinths. So, who could have done it? The only answer he can imagine is “elites”. The “elites” did it.

We continue.

As Europe’s status declines, the already shaky European identity will weaken further … The result is a vicious circle: as ethnic identities return, ethnic differences become more pronounced, and all sides fall back on stereotypes and the stigmatization of the adversary through language or actions intended to dehumanize, thereby justifying hostile actions.

He is concerned that corrupt and irresponsible Greeks will stereotype bellicose Germans and vice versa and the ground will be set for hostilities.

Is there no hope, then? Happily, there is.

Germans must have a frank public discussion about what it means to be European, how good European citizens should behave toward other Europeans and why a strong Europe is good for German interests… Without such a discussion, and real concessions to Greece, a Greek exit is inevitable — and with it the triumph of parochialism in Europe.

Albert, Herbert, Heinz, Willy! Call up your friends and siblings and let's all sit down and talk about what it means to be good European citizens. Why? Because the fool across the Atlantic says so.

Alice in Wonderland characters would shake their heads in disbelief.

But the writer of this drivel is in earnest. He cannot not be earnest, being a “professor of political science and the director of Program in Ethics, Politics and Economics at Yale”. In that capacity, he trains the next generation of American leaders in the New Haven morgue.

His position also makes him a member of the establishment and the intellectual elite in the U.S. Together with the Rachmans, Friedmans and Krugmans, he influences and, at times shapes, the policies of the United States in Europe, the Middle East and South Pacific.

Imagine.

Of course, the drivel is not neutral. It is constructed in support of a certain worldview which supports certain conduct. But it is drivel nonetheless and must bend to the realities of the world.

The populace dimly recognizes that fact. The realization is dim, hence its vagueness. But it is realization nonetheless, hence the unease.