Wednesday, March 13, 2024

 

Declining USA imperial power — more Nationalisms in Europe

by Jeffrey Harrod  

abstract: Early in the history if the USA the rulers devised a value-nationalism to prevent conflict between groups of European immigrants who still retained their language, ethnic or religious loyalty. Value-nationalism was thus supposed to be above ethnic nationalism because loyalty was to such values as democracy and justice rather than to a language and culture. All imperial powers seek to spread its beliefs and practices around the world and the USA was no exception which meant it demanded value-nationalism and promoted the immigrant-state. This emerged globally as an anti (ethnic) nationalist policy. The European states were the most receptive to these demands. The USA imperial power is now declining and its anti-nationalist policies are less effective. The result is an increase in Europe of nationalist parties and groups recognising the essential ethnic cultural and religious differences between European states. If and when in power these parties may support a more moderate even progressive nationalism which I have elsewhere described as “nationism.” 

----------------------------- 

For at least three decades the USA as an imperial power has pursued a policy to prevent or oppose expressions of nationalism in states and nations which were subjected to its power. There are many varieties of nationalism and in Europe there were widespread discussions of moderate, positive, progressive, liberal, and “civilized” nationalism. There were also those in different languages who claimed to be autonomists, sovereigntist, independentists, separatists and communitarians. Nevertheless, in USA policy, media and other channels of influence, any sort of nationalism was depicted as extreme and undesirable. 

All imperial powers oppose nationalism because this is the principal force which mobilises populations against imperial rule.

 In this respect then the USA imperialism was no different.

 However, there was another part of USA history which added fuel to the general anti-nationalism imperial rule. 

After the end of the 19 century the USA was composed mainly of European migrants. The task of thinkers and governors was to prevent conflicts arising from ethnicity, and religion of the assembled population. 

 Clearly for this purpose religious-based solidarity and identity within the American population had to be avoided. This was essential to create a peaceful, immigrant-state but, by a twist of history, the USA became the first immigrant-state to achieve imperial power in world history.

 For this exercise a new type of nationalism was needed. A nationalism which would distinguish itself from the nationalisms of Europe which, it was believed, had been the source of the incessant wars between the “old countries.”

 For this reason, then, a unique new nationalism was forged. You could exalt the nation, you could love the flag but not because it represented a language, culture, or religion but because it meant freedom, democracy, and justice. This was coupled with a legal framework guaranteeing so-called freedom of worship.

Academics have called this value-nationalism rather than ethno-nationalism 

 Exporting the Value-Nationalism of the USA 

 In addition to a general policy of opposing nationalism imperial powers always demand that their form of government, institutions and practices are copied by people, nations and states under their influence or control. Of course, the imperial export is not the reality but the formality - what is believed should be the case rather than what is the case. 
 
 The imperial USA demand around the world was that, in accordance with its “new” nationalism that all “old” ethnic or race nationalists should be politically neutered, ignored, not recognized, and occasionally eliminated. It was further required that all religious differences be muted or even denied or kept private and within an acceptable legal framework. Conflicts arising from these should either not be mentioned, or better, ascribed to ideological differences or demonic persons. Often conflicts were simply said to be the result of violation of a set-in-stone “internationally recognised borders” regardless of the nature or the size of the racial or ethnic minorities and majorities inside the borders.
 
 American imperialism was not of the European colonial sort – apart from Hawaii and Puerto Rico the USA did not establish and retain colonial accessions. The imperialism was by influence, by the command of cultural products, political discourses, by purchase via corporations, by establishment of global civic organisations by financial coercion, and by international agreements. International agreements were extensively used partly because “internationalism” was the opposite to nationalism. Through international agreements and international organisations, in which the USA was almost always the most dominant state by constitution or finance, it was able to influence or determine domestic policies in many countries of the world. These were almost always anti-nationalism and anti-state involvement in economic management. Acceptance of these USA global policies were always assisted by a very present military threat.
 
Academics have called this “hegemony” and American academics, more amiably, “soft power”.
 
So, the USA as an imperial power encouraged countries to embark on mass in-migration to emulate the American immigrant-state model and opposed local nationalism to replace it with its own “value-nationalism”.

On a world scale it was the countries of Europe which most willingly accepted these policies. In-migration was convenient and although statistics on immigration are unreliable – as they always exclude illegal migration – citizens foreign born or born of one foreign parent quickly rose to over 10 percent of population in many countries. Ironically and unfortunately, this resulted in an ethnically or racially recognisable low-income group which was indeed in conformity with the American model. 

Partly because the experience of the trauma of aggressive nationalism of the 1930s many European countries also accepted a hybrid form of value nationalism allowing the continued expression of an ethnic collectively. It was the European Union (EU) which most assisted the promotion of value nationalism in Europe. The early European organisation under the Schuman plan was simply designed to amalgamate the weapon supply industries to prevent another war in Europe. That was followed by an attempt under Commission President Delor to make the European organisation a power block between the USA and USSR. The power-bloc initiative failed after the collapse of the USSR and beginning in 1999, with EU Commission President Prodi, the so-called European norms of the EU emerged in strict conformity with the demands of USA value nationalism. 

 It was at this point then that the “West” as opposed to the rest was consolidated.

Global Resistance to Value-Nationalism 

 From the beginning this imperial policy faced several major political problems. The first was that countries emerging from colonialism from the 1950s onwards were based almost exclusively on ethnic or racial nationalism and religions differences. Seventy-five percent of the nations of the world are now distinguished from each other by a single or combined politically-expressed difference in ethnicity, race, religious and occasional cultural differences. So, in many African countries party-based democratic demandsincreasingly collapsed into party-ethnic groups or gangs. The demands then that the American model should be followed simply was not possible, I have elsewhere called this “imperial dysfunction” - when an imperial demand cannot be met because of entirely unsuitable circumstances.

The second problem was that the rising economic powers of China and India did not accept that populations should not be mobilised by values arising from ethnic or religious belonging or that one-person-one-vote democracy was necessarily the best form of government. The richer countries of Asia, for example Japan and South Korea, never accepted the American mass in-migration model and the foreign-born population never rose for many years above 2 percent of the population. 

 Third, it became clear to many politically aware groups that the problem of one nation could not be solved by importing solutions or following internationally-generated policies and that some degree of focus on the special national needs was necessary. 

 It is difficult to pinpoint the start of the decline or resistance to USA value-nationalism policies. Even in 1974 for example, the argument that only international borders and not religion and ethnicity were the criteria for inter-state relations was rejected when Turkey – a NATO member - invaded and occupied part of Cyprus on behalf of the minority Muslim and ethnic Turkish population of the island. During the 1980s more and more countries accepted “multiculturalism” as a policy which allowed minority groups to sustain and promote their ethnicity and religion. The policy of multiculturalism was not part of the USA model and it was never incorporated in that model even though there are differences between states and cities concerning both language and minority rights.

 At the end of the 20th century the resistance to the anti-nationalist policies of the USA became more evident and stronger and the power of the USA to resist them became weaker. There was, of course, an apparent general decline in USA imperial power. It is not intended here to discuss the reasons for the decline in strength of USA hegemony. There are many elements to this - the lack of cohesion between USA state policies and those of their non-state corporations, the instability of internal politics and the incipient conflict between the three great divisions in the USA between African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and European-Americans. All of this is cemented by social media and the internet which revealed that the USA globally-promoted model may not be working or achievable.

From the beginning of the 21st century the European countries which had accepted the imperial model and the domestic intervention originating from international organisations and agreements started to have difficulty in meeting the demands of their populations. Globalisation was the ideology of both corporate and state USA hegemony, at least in relation to trade and free capital movements. The acceptance of globalisation and policies and regulation from treaty organisations as the EU or inter-state organisations as the World Trade Organisation (WTO) had profound effects on domestic policies of EU states. Essentially, they lost control over migration, trade, and finance – the three policy instruments needed to meet the demands of citizens. This was especially the case in those countries which still accepted the post 1930s belief that it was the responsibility of the state to maintain full employment and provide an acceptable minimum standard of welfare.

 In addition, major European states also began to struggle to peacefully incorporate the newly established religious or ethnic minority groups which achieved significant dimensions and concentration. Groups and parties in Europe emerged opposing the idea of a multi-ethnic, religious, or immigrant state in which the inherent conflicts were supposed to be eliminated by a cross-sector belief in tolerance, democracy, freedom, and peace. 

The unspoken argument surfaced again and again that the social and economic problems of a country could not be solved without a greater recourse to local interest and local control of key economic, social, and political dimensions.  

Political Responses: Recognising the Demands to Belong 

 These oppositions gathered momentum over the last twenty years of the 20th century and in in the first quarter of the 21st-century they started to emerge as major and sometimes successful political parties in Europe.

 The basic demand was for greater national control of society and economy. These parties represent a level of resistance to the USA hegemony and model unknown since the end of the World War 11 in 1945. The decline of the American imperial power and its accompanying ideology/practice of globalisation has meant that restrictions imposed against recognition of, racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural differences between nations have weakened. The forces, movements and political parties using these mobilising practices have found new strengths and increased approval by larger sections of the populations.

 The decline of promoted USA value-nationalism is enhancing the re-emergence of traditional nationalism.

 It is not certain how these parties and movements will perform if or when they achieve power – whether they will indeed yield to an exclusory, aggressive, nationalism that characterised the European region in the 1930s or whether they will adopt a more moderate acceptance of the importance of the differences between national populations. In government they may develop a different, 21st century, recognition of the human need to belong and to live in at least perceived security and to avoid the inter-ethnic wars of the past - elsewhere I have called this ‘nationism.” 

 Either of these outcomes nevertheless means that the states of Europe are slowly returning to what they were after a thousand years of costly bloody wars and ethnic cleansing — nations and states with boundaries which recognise the differences between ethnicities, religion, and cultures of the region. 

They are returning to the extant and acceptable expression of their differences so long discouraged. Free from imposition they are hopefully prepared to restart the project of the middle of 20th century to secure through local solidarity the best possible economic and social conditions for their populations, and to forge a regionally sourced, modern, international cooperation. A cooperation which builds on, and recognises differences, rather than accepting the conformity to an alien model or the debilitating uniformity demanded by international integration


Monday, March 21, 2022

 

NATIONISM  

In this essay I launch a new concept — “nationism”   

The precipitating cause of this effort was a Dutch politician’s appeal that we should not allow the force of nationalism to be captured, almost always, by the extreme right and there should be something approximating “civilized nationalism”.  As a retired professor of international relations I realized that the current language and discourse concerning nations, states, and countries had no room for anything but extreme nationalism and dismissive internationalism. Hence the need for a new concept.

The whole essay is about 15,000 words long and will be published in two parts. This post is the first part which is an introduction to the concept and a brief summary of the whole essay.   The second part will be a substantial enlargement of the points and arguments made in the summary.  An academic version with references and linkages will be published later.

----------------------

Jeffrey Harrod has degrees in law, international relations and a doctorate in political science. He gave graduate university courses in and wrote articles about international law, organization, international relations and global political economy and lived most of his life as an immigrant. Much of this essay arises from that experience. Specific publications of his on these topics discussed here can be found on his website or on Researchgate, Academia or are available on request.

Nationism

A Brief Summary of the Essay

Nationism is the “ísm” between internationalism and nationalism. Nationism is not nationalism. Nationism can therefore accommodate all or part of the current attempts of those seeking a ‘moderate’ nationalism, ‘positive’ nationalism, ‘progressive’ nationalism, ‘liberal’ nationalism, ‘civilized’ nationalism, ‘neo’-nationalism, ‘good’ nationalism, and those who call themselves sovereigntist, independentists and separatists. 

Nationism is the “ísm” between internationalism and nationalism.

Nationism views a nation-state as broader than the formal legal definition currently used in international relations. In particular a broader definition of nation-state places special emphasis on the existence of majority and minority groups in structures which are in existing nation- states or those in the process of substantial reconfiguration.

A modern nation-state is composed of a defining majority group of similar race, religion or ethnicity and minority groups which differ in some way from the majority. The defining majority is that which usually gives the name to the nation-state. Both majority and minority groups are characterized by class, vocational and political hierarchies.

The nation that is within the state is often the defining majority group and the state is the organization which presides over both majority and minority groups. The broader nation-state is therefore the primary area for politics, power, empowerment, and social justice. It is not a permanent legal entity but it is the largest feasible unit of humanity in which individual and collective participation is possible.

Of the 195 distinguishable national units in the world in 2021 about 160 of them, or at least 75 percent of the world population, are in countries divided from each other by the defining majority differences in race, religion, ethnicity, or unique combinations of them.

 

…. at least 75 percent of the world population, are in countries divided from each other by the defining majority group differences in race, religion, ethnicity, or unique combinations of them.

Nationism is then a policy, practice or ideology which emphasizes the importance of the broader nation-state as a vital element in human history and as an important institution for the management and delivery of welfare, order and justice and which is able to promote some degree of solidarity and community. One of the fundamental aspects of the policy is the primordial human right of self-determination as the right to belong in security. 

 The Reality of Nation-states.

Without the conventional names and borders the world in reality is a patchwork of majority and minority groups in configurations which are only sometimes named nation-states.

The importance of minority groups in the broader nation-state has meant that the management by the majority of relations with and between minority groups in the framework of respect and equal access and has always been a fundamental part of nation-state governance. Such management includes respect for the right of self-determination and demands for various degrees of autonomy.

Without the conventional names and borders the world in reality is a patchwork of majority and minority groups in configurations which are only sometimes named nation-states.

Because the most powerful forces for mobilizing populations are religion and ethnicity, inter-locking majorities and minorities across nation-states have been a principal source of conflict in international politics.

The broader nation-state produces an attachment which is so powerful that people are always reluctant to move internationally. In 2021 less than 3.6 percent of the people of the world are living outside the borders of the nation-state in which they were born. This includes all migrants and refugees. The importance of the divisions that have been created is also indicated by the building of walls to separate one defining majority from another. There are currently 80 walls of separation built or under construction and 60 percent of the world population live in a country which has a wall of separation.

The Need for Nationism

A new concept dealing with the divisions of the global population has become necessary because the old concepts of internationalism and nationalism have become useless or distorted.  Extreme internationalism rejects the nation-state while the nation-state is glorified by nationalism.

Conflicts which are said to be between nation-states as legal entities while ignoring the group and social composition of the states have ended and will end in endless wars and loss of life.

The attempts at internationalism based on legal definitions of states has resulted on the rigid adherence to sovereignty while nationalism posits the extreme domination of the defining majority within the state.  The result has been the marginalization or even denial of the importance of the nation-state as a basis for governance and the source of solidarity mobilization and community.  The insistence on rigid territorial and formal description has frozen dynamics and developments and ignores the group composition of nation-states and the need for continued adjustment of the territory and composition.

Conflicts which are said to be between nation-states as legal entities while ignoring the group class, and social composition of the states have ended, and will end, in endless wars and loss of life.

The residue of failed internationalism and nationalism has meant that there is no room for dialogue, discussion, mediation or synthesis without accusations, recriminations or assumptions of being an internationalist or a nationalist. Nationism presents the possibility of forging amalgams and synthesis without such accusations.

Challenges to Nationism

The centuries of defending internationalism and decades of opposing nationalism have resulted in a widespread, in the terms of this essay, “anti-nationism”.

The three major current challenges to nationism are globalization, the universal promotion of ‘civic’ nationalism and the residues of integrative federalism. 

Globalisation. as with some practices of internationalism, is a hegemonic, if not imperial policy, based upon international trade and finance which has the result of transferring wealth between nation-states. Globalisation capitalizes on the myth that international trade is needed for peace and welfare. Trading relations without democratic control within nation states has brought neither peace nor welfare for the majority of world citizens and has contributed significantly to environmental degradation.

Three major challenges to nationism are globalization, the universal promotion of ‘civic’ nationalism and the residues of integrative federalism.

The second challenge to nationism is the promotion of so-called “civic” nationalism in which citizens are supposed to be united by shared values such as democracy, freedom and justice.. Many countries purport to subscribe to civic nationalism when in reality their internal solidarity is based on ethnicity or religion. The practical effect of this is that any nation which seeks to secure citizen’s unity based on location, region, ethnicity, religion, race or belonginess is considered as nationalist and therefore opposed.  

Finally, the residue of discredited integrative federalism remains extant in regional and international organizations and supports those who oppose nationism.

This results in what can be called “imperial dysfunction” in which the voluntary imported or imposed orders or practices do not fit or are impossible to implement in the new environment.

These three all have a common characteristic in that they require that processes, practices, form, organizations or instructions arising from one or more usually dominant nation-states are received and executed in other nation-states. This results in what can be called “imperial dysfunction” in which the voluntary imported or imposed orders or practices do not fit or are impossible to implement in the new environment. Imperial dysfunction is what has brought down empires as the frustration of coping with unsuitable demands fueled a general revolt against hegemony and domination.

Recognition of the special and usually unique aspects of each nation-state which impede these hegemonic or imperial demands is what nationism emphasizes and permits.  

Conclusion


From a nationist perspective there are a number of important policy deviations from the current practices sourced in nationalism or internationalism. All issues even when global in scope must begin at the level of the nation-state. All governments of nation-states should attempt to achieve as much independence as possible in finance, food, economic factors, demographic, technological and environmental policies. Policies and practices arising in one nation are rarely transferable to another without substantial adaptation.

All governments of nation-states should attempt to achieve as much independence as possible in finance, food, economic factors, demographic, technological and environmental policies.

Maximum emphasis must be given to the internal configuration of majority and minority groups within nation-states. The demands for self-determination, degrees of autonomy, voluntary federations and other forms of cooperative governance between majority and minority must be treated with respect and legitimacy.

Any possible international cooperation must begin at the level of the nation-state. International cooperation should be issue-oriented and in first instance must involve broader nation-states within a region or those with close similar issues.

The argument in the essay is that internationalism and nationalism are either no longer useful or have wholly or partially failed; that their continued promotion is under-mining real international cooperation, the development of governing structures and social solidarity arising from the acceptance and respect of and for the broader nation-state and the groups within it.   This is the form that humanity has decided to use in order to cope with the dramatic diversity between the peoples of the world.

…acceptance that the internationalist and nationalist projects have failed will allow a nationist focus needed to face the social, economic, political and especially environmental challenges of the 21st century.

The new concept of nationism will enable a clearer, more balanced and realistic consideration of the way humanity has divided itself.  Only a reconsideration of the definition and practices associated with the frozen legal concept of a nation-state, and acceptance that the internationalist and nationalist projects have failed will allow a nationist focus needed to face the social, economic, political and especially environmental challenges of the 21st century.

 


Wednesday, December 29, 2021

 

 

The Welfare and Peace Myths of Free Trade          Jeffrey Harrod 

 Extract from “Nationism” blog-essay (forthcoming)

Explanation Part of my forthcoming blog essay which launches the concept of “Nationism” concerns the manner in which contemporary discourses seek to marginalize the nation-state, reduce its powers for organizing and managing life for its citizens and reduce respect for the differences in religion, ethnicity, race and culture which are at the base of the differences between the nearly 200 nation-states of the world. 

 In the main essay I examine many practices and policies which attempt to effectively constrain the nation-state in important areas of democratic governance. One of these is the ideology of free trade which is libertarian in essence and favours those with power over international trade which was, in the past merchants, and is now multinational corporations both private and state. Multinational corporations now control directly and indirectly at least 75 percent of world trade. 

The material relationship of trade in goods produces national and international inequalities and, in many cases, degrades environments. This extract traces how these negative effects have been justified by claiming that trade benefits all and is necessary for peace. 

This is not intended as complete critique of international trade theory and practice. I have already published such a critique in Lecture 10: The Ricardian Myth and Lecture 11: Trade as Power in my 16-lecture online course: Global Political Economy: How the World Works at http://www.jeffreyharrod.eu/avcourse.html 

The slides for these lectures are available on Google Slides at https://docs.google.com/presentation/u/0/?authuser

 

 The ideology of International Trade as a source of Anti-Nationism 

In the past development writing on trade there were two sets of scholars, thinkers and writers who were concerned to justify the inequities produced by international trade. 

Trade-benefits-all scholars: The first group of writers observed in general the wealth that could be generated by international trade.

 So, for example, Ibd Khaldun an Arab Muslim writer in the 1400s said “Through foreign trade, people's satisfaction, merchants’ profit and countries wealth are all increased" and argued from thought and logic rather than observation that international merchants would always buy goods which would serve both the rich and the poor. In this way all benefited from international trade. That he had to say this raises the suspicion that already there were persons who were opposed to the wealth of the merchant traders. 

Khaldun can be seen as a typical proponent of international trade, he was internationally travelled, his family had colonial property in Spain and he believed he could speak universally as he wrote a “History of the World”. Maybe he set the scene for economists some 400 years later such as Ricardo and Smith when they started their promotion of free trade. They claimed that the benefits from international trade accrued to “nations”. Ricardo, who was born into a Jewish banking family and was a very rich and successful London stock-broker, devised a theory which proposed that whole populations in trading nations would benefit from specialization in trade. This was a sophisticated justification of Khaldun’s observations and as it was perhaps the most important step in the process by which international trade became sacrosanct and opposers to it heretics.

 Ricardo’s theory has been revealed as fundamentally flawed when applied to the real world but in this essay the major flaw to be signaled is that, with Khaldun, it was proposed that the whole population of a nation secured benefits from trade. In fact, there were always wide disparities between winners and losers in international trade and those who benefited disproportionally and on a massive scale were the merchants. 

With no theory or local knowledge of value merchants were able to charge what they wanted for goods secured abroad. In two massive trading nations — the Netherlands and England — the merchant class prospered and the rest of the population continued in abject poverty unless they were servants of the merchants. 

Merchants were effective controllers of international trade whether individual, or united into corporations. eventually converted any real “exchange of goods” into a devastating colonialism. The colonialism then became a worldwide system of forced or coerced extraction from people, in the case of slaves, and goods in the case of tropical agricultural products which were mainly of an addictive nature and feed to the citizens of importing nations. 

This category of scholars, however, at least made material gains for the whole nation their main focus. They did permit themselves musing on the effects of commerce – Smith said that it “ought naturally” to create friendship amongst nations and Ricardo that “perfectly free” commerce would create a “universal society of nations throughout the civilized world”. They did not, however, move much beyond the proposition that trade was to be promoted as it benefited all. Marx, a contemporary economist at the time of Ricardo, also supported free trade but cynically because he believed it would help cause the pauperization of the mass which in turn would hasten the communist revolution. He may have been right about the former but wrong on the latter. The trading system did indeed create dramatic dislocations, poverty and conflict and increased the gap between the rich (merchants) and the poor. The simple declaration that trade was beneficial to all was apparently not enough to sustain its political popularity. Then, as now, the poor and lower incomes protested about the dislocations and the dramatic loss of income that trade created. 

The Trade-is-necessary-for-Peace Scholars: This situation of the unpopularity of trade and social and income disparity it created could be observed most clearly in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands both trading and imperial nations. The opposition to international trade meant that something more was needed to justify the continuation of the established trading system and its rich beneficiaries. The answer was to attach to the material arguments that trade had some more vague and mystical benefits such as peace and freedom. The idea of trade as a base of internationalism and as a solution to peace was derived from an unproven assumption that trade brought different cultures and races into contact with each other and that would mean they would have greater understanding and respect. It was an idea, or musing, which occurred to those who were usually rich, traveled and colonialists. 

This idea emerged around 1600 in the so-called enlightenment which corresponded with European trade and extraction from the rest of the world and which required a rationale and excuse. It maybe also that the aristocracies of Europe were under pressure from the decline of feudalism and could already see that their future wealth and status would arise from international merchant activities. Such perhaps was the case of Montesquieu considered by some to be one of the first to propose trade as benign internationalism,. Montesquieu was a French aristocrat able to spend his life in travel and writing and one of the first writers on comparative political regimes. Montesquieu then opined in 1748 that “commerce is a cure for the most destructive prejudices” and “peace is the natural effect of trade…two nations who traffic with each other become reciprocally dependent for, if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling and thus their union is founded on their mutual necessities”. He went further "wherever the ways of man are gentle, there is commerce; and wherever there is commerce, there the ways of men are gentle". These remarks set the scene for viewing nations as people as in one nation “has an interest” and that there were “gentle ways” for the subsequent history of the discussion of trade. At the time of the publication of Montesquieu’s book the British and French East India companies were in the first of vicious battles over the potential trade from India while in Europe a war over the resources of Silesia was developing between Prussia and Austria which eventually lasted seven years. Throughout the world the colonial battles and wars were continuing so it is difficult to see where Montesquieu got his “mutually dependent nations” from let alone the “gentle” ways of men.

 The reality of trade wars and conflicts including the slave colonial trade wars and the resistance to trade by the Chines and Japanese did not, however, prevent the idea of what became known as “gentle commerce” to be taken up by a string of philosophers and writers.

 Typical of these was Emanual Kant who believed that “gentle commerce” would create peace among nations. 

 John Stuart Mill writing two years before Ricardo’s economic justification of trade, pulled out all the stops to praise the internationalist benefits of trade. He wrote in his book of 1848 

 But the economical advantages of commerce are surpassed in importance by those of its effects which are intellectual and moral…… Commercial adventurers from more advanced countries have generally been the first civilizers of barbarians. …. . It is commerce which is rapidly rendering war obsolete, by strengthening and multiplying the personal interests which are in natural opposition to it. And it may be said without exaggeration that the great extent and rapid increase of international trade, in being the principal guarantee of the peace of the world, is the great permanent security for the uninterrupted progress of the ideas, the institutions, and the character of the human race. 

This has been the mantra of the supporter of free trade from the British Imperial Government in 1848 through to the creation of the World Trade Organisation in 1994. When Mill wrote his accolade to trade he was serving in India House and in charge of the relations between the British East India Company and the disparate Indian Rulers. It was a time of enormous and bloody conflicts in Asia in order to protect the East India Company, of financing the tea trade with opium exports to China of widespread child labour in the British export industry. In short, a time of the complete opposite to Mill’s “principal guarantee” of peace in the world. The conclusion must be that he defended the hand that directly or indirectly feed him with resort to quasi-religious postulates that the exchange of goods was a necessity for the peaceful future of humankind. 

Despite the weakness of this idea and argument it has prevailed to the current day and is promoted by major trading nations and in particular European and USA multinational corporations as the successors to the state-owned companies. As before it is still popularly suspect and opposed. In 2008 the Director General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the international organisation devoted to free trade, admitted that citizens had no confidence in international trade when he said "I would only say that restoring citizens' confidence in trade requires governments to ensure that sound domestic policies are in place”. 

There were others at the time who questioned this assumption and indeed of the material value of trade but their voices were drowned out by the power and wealth of those who were able to extract from the rest of the world. But as before this extraction has been based upon financial and sometimes military coercion and bolstered by claims of bonds of “friendship”. When the trading state’s power is unequal the dominate trading partners still, as in colonial times, oppose nationalist movements. When the trade relations are between more equal partners a more subtle anti-nationism is brought into play under the slogans that “protectionism has no place in a globalized world”, or the free movement of goods and finance is an essential for democracy and freedom. These ideas and demands were inherent in the liberalising policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund— the two organisations charged with preventing restraints on trade and finance.

 The Mill belief that trade cements internationalism and peace between nations has been discredited but it is still promoted in its anti-nationist disguise through major powers, corporations and regional organisations.


Sunday, May 3, 2020

 

First Posted: Thursday, June 16, 2016
 
Corporatism: 21st Century Governing System? 

Jeffrey Harrod


2020 Note:  This essay was written in 2013, posted in 2016 and now re-posted in order to make this note. This post is unchanged from that as posted in 2016

 In my view the seven problems of corporatism – the last section of the 2016 post— have all been developing in the last seven years.  Some of them emerged in politics as the attempts to assert power at the national level and the distrust in globalisation as represented by regional and global trade patterns. But it has taken the unusual development of a pandemic and the requirements of disruption of routine and established global networks to highlight the seven problems and to at least start a discussion of them. It is instructive to read the analysis of 2013 of these seven problems and then the following brief notes on the outcome 7 years later and within the pandemic period.

The seven problems of Corporatism and how they are now being seen

First: resistance to inequality – current demands that CEO salaries and bonuses be stopped and surveys indicated that “the rich must pay”  as reported in France for example, 03/05/2020

Second: an underclass reaction – the rise of right and left populism in Europe and nationalist movements elsewhere (eg. India) are fuelled by support from the lowest paid and underprivileged groups.

Third: efficiency and imperial dysfunction – the practice of multi-national sources of essentials such as pharmaceuticals has revealed imperial dysfunction and the lack of flexibility in recreating national production is extant at least in all products associated with the health sector.

Fourth: corporation versus nation?  The demands for national rather than multinational production solutions have raised the corporation v nation geopolitics to new heights.

Fifth: financial uncertainty – inflation or long-term debt and austerity or both are possible.
 
Sixth: environmental limits – the already emerging problems of pollution and trade-induced environmental destruction have been demonstrated by the brief halt to the global production machine.

Seventh: weakness of the market explanation – the pandemic could not be solved by any other instuition than the state and nation-state.

These are notes and are not predictions. Those who believe there will be major changes after the end of the pandemic must look to see what changes in political coalitions or formation before believing that discussion and rhetoric will lead to change. So far there is little indication of the dramatic political changes which would precede any serious transition to new policies. The only positive factor is that many of the issues identified in the original article are now making the symbolic front page of information.   




2016 Note: A previous version of this essay was initially published on the Indian website “Philosophers for Change” in 2013 under the title Feudalism, Capitalism, Corporatism?  As no permission is required several websites have re-published the essay. This blog version uploaded in June 2016 includes some minor alterations which do not change the argument or position found in the original.)

Abstract 

This essay argues that the capitalism that Marx and his contemporaries observed during the industrialisation of the UK was a successor to many earlier systems of control and extraction from the population by a small dominant group. For reasons to be discussed the 18th  century type of capitalism weakened in the 20th  century and in the 21st century we are  witnessing an attempt to develop and replace it with a new system.  This attempt is based on the dominance of large corporations which do not behave nor resemble in any way the “firms” of the earlier capitalist period. It is a system of interlocking corporations exercising global political, social and economic power and could therefore be called corporatism.  Such a designation breaks with the academic and intellectual use of the term “corporatism” to indicate a unity between competing forces. The attempt to create corporatism as a governing system has resulted in severe social, economic and environmental problems which in turn has led to an increasing and overt opposition to it. 


Contents


The 18th Century Capitalist Model

1) Not one Land Owner but Many Capitalists
2) The Factory Form of Production
3) Mass of Workers 
4) No Reason Given – just Work or Starve

The 20th Century Capitalist Model

1) The Rise in the Power of the State
2) The Factory Form of Production in Decline
3) The Emergence of “Surplus” Labour    
4) The weakening of the Hungriness motive

The 21st Century Emergence of Corporatism

1) The Dominant Corporation
2) Finance as a multi-level extraction process 
3) Neo-Imperialism/Globalisation
4) The Market as a Justification for Inequality

Seven problems of the Corporatism

First: resistance to inequality
Second: an underclass reaction
Third: efficiency and imperial dysfunction
Fourth: corporation versus nation?
Fifth: financial uncertainty
Sixth: environmental limits
Seventh: weakness of the market explanation


Introduction

Currently there is a great deal of protest about so-called free trade agreements. It seems to have been discovered that these agreements give even more power to corporations to undermine or control governments.  However, the increase of power of the corporation over governments or the state – elected or otherwise – has been of concern for commentators and analysts for decades.

During that time the real change which has occurred is an increasing power of the corporations. One of the blocks to successful action to deal with the super-ordinate increase in corporate power has been the use of the word "capitalism” to describe a global economic system.

The problem is that originally "capitalism" was used to describe an economic process in which capitalists owned industry, producers competed for customers, prices responded to demand and supply, wealth could be extracted from the environment without reserve, wages were determined by a “free” labour market and government had minimal intervention in the economy,

In the 21st century there is almost no element of that system which remains intact, monopoly or near monopoly has reduced competition and has likewise manipulated prices, environmental depletion prevents unrestrained extraction and waste, banks and finance control industry and, most important, governments have yielded power to corporations.

This essay argues that the capitalism in the classical literature of Karl Marx, Adam Smith and others - which may have been an accurate description at the time - no longer exists.  Instead we are in a transition period between forms of classical capitalism and a new form of politics and economics in which the corporation is the leading power

Sometimes this new situation is referred to as monopoly-capitalism or corporate-capitalism but these names do not sufficiently indicate which aspects of the original of capitalism is included. This new system deserves a new name which reflects the 200 years of development since capitalism was first discussed and recognises the changed power structure.

It is suggested here that "corporatism" would be a suitable name.

This essay traces the history of the capitalist model from its origins emerging from feudalism through to the current situation and the dominance of the corporation. Finally eight side effects of this transition are identified which separately or together may prevent the complete emergence of a corporatist system.


History seen as a succession of different ways to empower the Rich  

The French historian and progressive philosopher Fernand Braudel observed that throughout history there seemed to be a small minority of people who held power and wealth, ruled society and exploited the population to sustain their power and privilege. If this were the case then the human history question of primordial importance is – “how does this minority do it?”

The answer to this question involves power.  That is the concept with which social scientists, and particularly economists, have greatest difficulty.  Power cannot easily be measured, the holders of power, unlike the weak, can resist being studied and the structures of power created are designed to prevent power being revealed. But equally there is always a resistance to power so that the structure in which dominant power is set also has to deal with/eliminate/neutralize resistance.

From such a standpoint the 18th century capitalism as described by Marx is a successor form of domination and subordination which had historical antecedents of which feudalism is the most studied. If capitalism is production and distribution controlled by a small group of specifically identifiable persons, variously known as bourgeois, capitalists or power elites, then these conditions have existed since any recorded activity of humanity.

But every form of domination is different and certainly the 18th century model of capitalism was dramatically different from that which preceded it.  In the 1700s the European enlightenment enabled a materialist view of the world. That power could be shown to be sourced overtly in the ownership of the material means of production meant that the religious view that power could only be derived from God could be challenged.

 But there is clearly more to the nature of power, domination and exploitation than the simple ownership of capital even as important as it is.  Ideology, religious beliefs, prejudices, history of thought, cultures and ideas are all needed to create a stable system of domination where a minority extracts from the majority. Marx relegated such social and psychological forces to the “superstructure” and argued that they were developed from the struggle to divide up both the ownership and the fruits of production.  Weber, Gramsci, Polanyi, Mumford and now Bischler and Nitzan in their book Capitalism as Power and many others challenged this view but they only moved cautiously to the holistic idea that in order to establish domination and exploitation all aspects of humanity would have to be used. 

If 1760 is taken at the starting point of the industrial revolution and 2014 as the contemporary period then three stages of capitalism can be seen. 1760 to 1890 as the development of a capitalist model as described by Marx in 1867; 1867 to 1970 as a hundred years in which major inroads into this model were made and 1970 to the present when further changes occurred which raises the question of the viability of the early model.  For convenience these are referred to at the 18th century model, the changes of the 20th century and the emergence of a new model in the 21st century. Periodisation is only to help understanding – history is a continuum so there should be no substantive arguments about the labels and periods made only for the sake of comprehension.

There is then a need to ask what the users of the idea of capitalism really mean in terms of power, both currently and historically. Of more importance perhaps is to consider the possibilities of a move from one form or system to another that will continue to sustain privileged elites and dramatic differences of material welfare within populations. 

The 18th Century Capitalist Model

The origin of Marx’s description of capitalism was in the 1700s in the United Kingdom.  Capitalism was then said to emerge at the same time as industrialism.  Any attempt to disentangle the two is difficult.  But there is some agreement that industrialisation emerged before capitalism which means that industrialisation could have well been the  resistance to feudalism but which then later became captured by capitalists controlling the very means by which feudal lords were challenged.   This observation is important because it indicates how systems of resistance are transformed into instruments of power.

What was new in 1700’s industrialisation was the form of domination and exploitation. There were four essential characteristics of this form: 1) power, which had been centred on small feudal aristocracy and to a lesser extent governments, became dispersed to large number of individual capitalists 2) the factory form of production was introduced 3) as a result for the first time a mass of workers were in the same place doing similar tasks, and 4)there was no moral, ethical or spiritual justification given for work undertaken by the factory workers or the  social conditions which prevailed.

1) Not one Land Owner but Many Capitalists

Under Feudalism power was concentrated in few feudal barons, in kings, clan leaders and officers of religion.  The advent of capitalism dispersed the social power to a larger number of capitalists.  The numerous mill owners, factory owners and their professional servants were the power successors to the feudal lord.  Power in the society became dispersed.

This dispersion of power caused Marx and his followers to identify a class of capital holders. Likewise classical economics could see the hundreds of individual firms headed by capitalists as a “market” in which they competed against each other.  “Class” and “market” were the attempt to construct aggregates of power out of dispersed powerful individuals.

2) The Factory Form of Production

What was more obviously new to the world was the factory system in which a mass of workers produced mass goods and, above all, were forced to work and be exploited because otherwise they would starve to death.  This was indeed different from previous ways of disciplining and exploiting the poor in feudalism but from the standpoint of the poor the results were the same - crushing material poverty, low life expectancy from disease, malnutrition and inhuman work conditions. Despite all the historical hype proposing that the industrial revolution and capitalism meant an improvement for the poor, in the first 100 years of capitalism life expectancy in the United Kingdom only moved from 33 years to 41 years.

3|) Mass of Workers 

The development of a “mass” of workers was absolutely new. In the previous rural systems of exploitation, even on large farms, the workers were divided by space and by the different farms on which they worked.  In France after land reform there were individual peasants and that Marx described their revolutionary potential as low because together they were more like a “sack of potatoes” rather than a class. In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels talked of people in rural areas being condemned to isolation.

Marx’s lionisation of the mass of workers as the “working class” was understandable and his view that such a mass of workers could be the base for a revolution, at least on the surface, would appear to be well founded.  The possibilities of agitation, education and collective action were certainly enhanced by the social proximity of a mass of roughly equally exploited people. 


4) No Reason Given – just Work or Starve

Perhaps, however, the most important difference between the new industrial/capitalist system and the old forms of exploitation of the poor was the absence in the new system of any justification for it. Prior to the industrial revolution each of the different systems of domination-subordination were accompanied by powerful psychological, non-material reasons for poverty.  Peasants were pressured to believe in the “divine-right” of landlords, feudal serfs were told they needed the lords for security, lower caste members were told that the caste structure was necessary for an orderly and stable society as required by the Gods.  Even slaves were told that it was “‘Gods will” as claimed to be in the Christian bible that they were destined to be inferior and needed to be civilised by their owners. All of this was cemented into place by theology which preached the principle of the legitimacy of the existing power of the exploiters. These justifications associated with the feudal system started their dramatic decline with the French Revolution of 1789 when the lords lost their heads along with the myths concerning the divine need for aristocratic land ownership.

The industrial/capitalist system was then entirely different.  The only way of dominating people and forcing them to work was the threat of starvation.  For this to be a real threat the possibility of securing food and shelter other than from work in the factory had to be prevented.  The work-survival connection was made permanent. No explanation for this was given.  In a long discourse about wages and poverty Adam Smith gave no reason for the gruelling work other than that it would avoid starvation or secure “present subsistence”.

 That Adam Smith should not refer to any higher or spiritual reason to work hard and long for a “superior” master should be of no surprise because he was just following a trend of the Enlightenment thinking.   The philosophers of the Enlightenment, such as Spinoza, Locke and Voltaire, argued for rational, as opposed to spiritual and suspicious thinking; in doing so they provided the possibility of logical opposition to heredity and hierarchy and from that to the development of political theories of democracy.

 But Enlightenment thinking also allowed the birth of a materialism based on economic production and it led to the proposition that work was only to secure the material (food, housing, and clothing) necessary for survival. Thus if work was lost starvation an early death ensued.  This was considered the driving force of humanity and the motivation for work and production.

  In 1982 Paul Samuelson, a world famous American economist text-book writer, said that the problem with the USA economy was that “it lacked the hungriness motive.”


The 20th Century Capitalist Model

The story, however, did not end with the establishment of industrialism and capitalism in the UK and elsewhere in the 19th century.  The current discourse about “capitalism” in that sense is then frozen in the 18th century model as described by Marx and based on his contemporary economists.  In the 20th century there were changes which so weakened the nature of the early capitalism that its relevance can now be questioned.

The changes and challenges to capitalism in the 20th century were 1) the dispersed power to the individual capitalist was re-concentrated, first in the state and then in the corporation 2) the factory form of production diminished 3) the mass of workers originally associated with factories became globally dispersed and large numbers of workers were no longer needed for production raising the “surplus” labour issue 4) in many countries of the world the “hungriness” motivation for work was severely undermined


1) The Rise in the Power of the State

The 20th century witnessed throughout the world the rise of the power of the state.  The power of the bourgeoisie and of the “market” was constrained by the rise of the state especially in its redistributed form.

The relationship of the state to capitalism is controversial amongst Marxists because if the state was to change capitalism then it would not have been as Marx predicted nor for Lenin for whom the state was simply “the executive committee of the bourgeoisie”.

Outside the Marxist debate, however, it can be easily shown that the activities of the state in major economies and imperial powers between 1920 and 1975 profoundly affected the power of the 18th century type capitalists and, as will be noted later, undermined many other motivational aspects of the original model.

The core of this story rested on the state and its redistributive policies. There is a history to the level of state power. Perhaps the most important event was the coming to power of the communists in Russia in 1919.  This meant that there was extant a form of confiscatory socialism in the world — a political regime in which the capital and material goods of elites was actually removed (confiscated) — from them.

Furthermore, many advisors to elites had convinced themselves that Marx predication of the revolutionary potential of the pauperisation of the mass was true.  The “material deprivation” theory of revolution was widely accepted. Mass agitation and social movements both labour and political also pushed the state into a redistributive role. It seemed then that state redistribution was the key, elite property would be relatively protected if material deprivation and pauperisation of the mass was prevented and the material conditions would be better for the poor.

In the Anglo-Saxon economies there were three markers of this development – the Keynes- written pamphlet of 1929 in which he argued that the state should accept responsibility for full employment, the New Deal legislation in USA 1933-36 in which Keynes was involved and the subsequent establishment of welfare provisions in UK post 1945. The precursors to these developments were in Continental Europe and even in tribal cultures of Africa but the UK and USA were imperial powers which meant their institutions were spread around the world.  The intellectual and technical basis of all these was Keynesian economics in which government expenditure was key in managing material deprivation.

The state redistributed through Keynesian policies throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Then from the 1950s onwards “military Keynesianism” prevailed in the USA and elsewhere supported by the Cold War.  The state retained its power basically via the military budget and the military hierarchy prevented the excesses of accumulation in the private sector which was witnessed in the last part of the century. In many countries in the 1970s the state was redistributing against the higher incomes to the extent of 50 percent of income earned. In 1963 retiring President of USA, Eisenhower, warned against the dominance of a “military-industrial complex” as a threat to democracy but in 1980 the complex had reversed itself and it was now “industrial-military complex” governed by corporations.    This ascending semi-circular graph of state power is matched inversely by the accumulation of the top one percent in the USA.  The percentage share of net wealth of the top one percent began to decline in the 1930s with the introduction of the new Deal and did not rise to even pre-1940 levels until the end of the Cold War in 1989 as the state began to lose control of private accumulation. 

From 1980s onwards the corporations in global sectors began to concentrate and their relative power increased – so by 1980 in the imperial countries the zenith of the state and state redistributive power had passed.  The process of weakening state authority continued in the Global South through “structural adjustment” programmes.

These events in the 20th century did not destroy 18th capitalism as described by Marx but they changed its form significantly and had profound effects on the other distinguishing factors of the model.


2) The Factory Form of Production in Decline

The factory system was introduced as a control device in the 18th century model.  Before that industrial production was by the "putting-out" system when textiles were produced on looms in workers homes and collected by a middleman to be sold by a merchant.  Having workers in one place reduced supervisory costs and enable the pace of work to be increased   But as Marx predicted there was a contradiction in such a mass of workers because they took collective action and help bolster the power of the state against the capitalists and corporations.  So from the 1980s the factories in the major economies began to close — some scholars have argued this was the end of “Fordism” (after the Ford motor company in USA which was one of the first mass production factories).   It would be easy to believe that the factory system has declined in the rich and powerful countries only to be resurrected in the poorer countries to supply imports. But that is only partially true because, for example, manufacturing imports from the low wage countries to the high wage countries is still less than 20 percent of the total.  What has happened is that everywhere employment in large-unit manufacturing has declined mainly because of automation, robotisation and digitalisation.

The question here was how important was the factory system in the 18th century model?  It was important as the principle instrument of disciplining and exploiting the workers in   it.  But it was also important as one of the contradictions of the arrangement – the mass of workers organised and became the principal and practical opposition to continued exploitation.  On it was built the whole history of labour movements, social struggles and redistributive achievements.  With its decline has come the decline in power of trade unions based on mass membership of one industry.   The mass war cries based on the old history of trade unions now do not have meaning to the partially or precariously employed service worker.  This was not the end of work-place collective action but the end of it as a major force as it was in the 20th century.


3) The Emergence of “Surplus” Labour    

In the labour area there was always an important internal contradiction of 18th century capitalism. The reliance on material or economic coercion to make people work without support from religion, ethics, moral or ideas was always weak. So from the beginning it became clear that to maximise wealth at the top and avoid revolt and insurrection from the bottom fewer and fewer workers had to be used – in political economy terms the productivity of labour had to be raised. But both classical and Marxist theory of capital accumulation accepted that the rich would be richer (accumulation) if there was full employment.  Marx’s labour theory of value meant that each capitalist extracted from a worker surplus value which meant that the more the number of workers the greater the surplus value. 

It was clear in the 18th century that there was a labour surplus. Marx called it “the reserve army of labour” which was deliberately developed and assisted by the advancement of capitalism driving people from the land, from the changes in the needs of industrial production and from general overpopulation. This surplus labour and reserve army played an integral role in the determination of wages and the general advancement of capital accumulation

However in the 20th century the increase in labour productivity anticipated by Marx was accompanied by the state attempting to control the size of the “reserve army”.  In addition, the corporation could not act as capitalist at the head of a firm with workers because of restraints imposed by trade unions and governments. The result was a mass of surplus labour which was not integrated into the capitalist system as a reserve army as in the 18th century model. In many countries unemployment and wages increased at the same time.

The extra productivity arising from automation, digitalisation and then robotisation started to make a permanent and impermeable divide between those with permanent jobs and those without.  In the mid-1990s two German journalists —Martin and Schumann— talked of the “20-80 society” in which 20 percent owned assets or were permanent employers of production machines and 80 percent were basically excluded.

While 20-80 maybe an exaggeration the recent crises have easily demonstrated that the swathes of unemployment produced in countries across the world has not affected the top 20 percent of income and wealth holders. In London in 2011, 2.1 million people were decreed to be in poverty while in the same year 2,714 bankers mostly living in the London area earned over $3 million each. The top earners and those with well-paid and permanent work are beginning to be “ring-fenced” from the “underclass” “working poor” and other such labels applied to the people who cannot find a place of worth in the production system.

The result of this is a form of global ghettoisation in which the poor are increasingly distinguishable by ethnicity or religion and effectively kept apart as an underclass. This has always been the case in the USA but it has a more recent introduction in Europe.  It has been argued that this was part of the imitation of the USA model – the insistence that the ethno-nation states should become the multi-cultural civic nations similar to that which is claimed for the USA.  But this argument ignores that the same process of creating an unwanted labour force was inherent in Europe in the continued application of the policies of attempting strong productivity growth together distributional mechanisms favouring the rich.

This has once again raised “the fear of the mass” so much a part of the mid-20th century.  Is the development of mass marginalisation in fact Marx’s prediction of the “pauperisation of the mass”? The process bears little similarity with capitalist theorist’s under-consumption theory. Further, the political mobilizing forces of these populations tend to be ethnicity and religion combined with social class but not class alone as in Marx’s mono-cultural, mono-religious model.
Religious mobilisation which has raised security issues throughout the world is sometimes seen as sourced in this development. Regardless of such speculation it again means that the 20th century model was drifting further and further away from the 18th century model 

4) The weakening of the Hungriness motive

The original means of controlling work and labour was, as noted, the threat of starvation.  At the beginning of the 20th century there was a move to a positive rather than a negative reward for part of the workforce – from “work hard or you will starve” to “work hard and you will get more”.  This was partly an expression of defeat for governing elites because it made the privilege of the rich dependent upon a continued and permanent increase in employed workers’ output (increased productivity and economic growth). 

So movements which had a moral reason and ideology - in particular the labour (and to a lesser extent) the socialist movement - had considerable success against opponents who could have no resort to ethics.  The result was that in industrially advanced countries of the world, starvation, death by untreated illness and low life expectancy was no longer accepted by populations who then looked to the state to create a “safety net” against life-destroying poverty.

The disciplining function “work or starve” was then lost as one of the key factors of the 18th   century model. Without a strong and overt system of discipline and sanctions no form of extraction can have long-term stability.   There have been attempts to restore hunger as a motivational force. Poverty and inequality have increased in the richest of countries.  Poverty is increasing and will increase in Europe as the result of the austerity policies most of which have elements that make the loss of work more materially serious.

Attempts to restore harsh conditions have been made at least since 1975.  Yet government spending on welfare has not declined dramatically.  Even extreme conservative governments have been forced to pass laws which placate the material demands of the underclass.  One of these was The USA American Dream Downpayment Initiative (ADDI) signed by President Bush (junior) in 2003 which was the last of several acts to help provide houses to citizens who could not afford them.  This practice of subsidising the USA poor at the expense of the rest of the world was one of the causes of the 2008 so-called financial crisis.  In other countries pressures to reduce or end social welfare have not been successful and welfare payments have remained stable or increased.  A tough labour system was introduced into Germany which has resulted in Germany reporting about 16 percent of households in relative poverty (less that 60 percent of the median income).  Yet recently the government was forced to introduce a minimum wage. Similar attacks on the welfare provisions are faced with strong political opposition.

No system generating privilege and exploitation can be sustained without a powerful goad for people to work hard and long and to have a social discipline which prevents attempts at redressing of inequalities. Attempts to restore the hungriness threat have not succeeded or are failing. The 18th century model of capitalism is left without one of its principle mechanisms for survival.

So in the last quarter of the 20th century what had changed from the model that Marx described?  The state increased its power and in doing so changed the power configurations between capitalists and corporations permanently, and at the same time laid an enduring resistance to exploitation based on the threat of starvation.  Large masses of impoverished people were pushed outside of the capitalist system, and the mass production factory system is being replaced.  These factors alone should cause reflection on whether the 18th century Marx model of capitalism now can deliver predictions and assist in the development of progressive strategies for the 21st century.  The importance of these changes has been recognised by some writers distinguishing the current period as “late capitalism”.  It is suggested here that the changes do not merely result in versions of capitalism as in “early” and “late” but are an ongoing attempt to transform capitalism into another distinct regime creating privilege and poverty.


The 21st Century Emergence of Corporatism

The last quarter of the 20th century until the present saw an acceleration of trends which had started earlier but which became more proven and in some cases more noticed by mainstream observers.  From 1970 four factors changed the 20th century nature of capitalism: 1) the rapid rise of corporate power changed the power structure of capitalism 2) this event set off an extreme rise in the power of financial corporations (banks) 3) there was an attempt to create a justification of exploitation based on the market 4) the development of the globalisation practice and ideology to consolidate neo-imperial power of corporations.


1) The Dominant Corporation

Since at least the 1970s there has been an ongoing and accelerating process of concentration of corporations in almost all global sectors. This means that by 2010 it was estimated that that the global economy was controlled by about 200 corporations and banks.

This fact has yet to be understood by journalists, academics and producers of statistics who are still involved in a statist discourse and use the statistics of economies of states rather than corporations.  They are entrapped by the discourse and the residue of the zenith of the power of the state at the mid-20th century.

Seventy percent of world trade is controlled by multinational corporations; 30-40 percent from exchanges between the subsidiaries of the same corporation and a further 30-40 percent sales between different corporations.  Ninety-five percent of all foreign investment is corporate.  Yet statistics, academic papers and politician’s arguments are still based on “foreign direct investment” rather than “foreign corporate investment” and inter- country (international) trade without ever mentioning the corporate presence. Smart-phones are not exported from South Korea they are exported from Samsung Electric Co., which controls 35 percent of the global market in these phones and contributed 17 percent of South Korean GDP.  USA does not export disk operating system software, Microsoft does.

The power of the corporation is now a constant, regardless of the political regime. The Chinese state-owned corporations (SOEs) are now listed with the so-called independent corporations from Europe, USA, Japan and elsewhere.  While most commentators argued that SOEs are simply an arm of the state, deeper research would indicate that the relationship party-state-corporation is not characterised by a simply dominance of one party. These Chinese corporations when they invest overseas begin to adopt the same strategy of action and finance as the non-state owned counterparts.

The discussions of the “globalisations” and international trade and investment in terms of state exports of good and foreign investment are merely shadow discussions behind which are the corporate controls of these transactions. 

The process through which the new situation has arrived is 30 years of corporate mergers and acquisitions on a global scale which has meant that almost every global sector is now governed by 2 to 5 multinationals.  There is a rule of thumb used by economists that if 40 percent of sales are governed by 4 corporations or less in an industry then oligopoly exists.  Such a narrow control of the industry would mean that almost all global sectors are technically oligopolies.  The global wide-bodied jet sector has two dominant corporations —
 Boeing and Airbus; the disc operating software has one company dominant corporation — Microsoft; the iron ore industry has two corporations, the cement industry five corporations.  Almost every sector shows a history of increasing concentration. The banana sector, for example, saw the top three USA corporations Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte which in 1972 had 54 percent of the global market move to 66 percent in 2007. The top five banana corporations control 86 percent of the global production and consumption of bananas.  Statistics from the USA show how fast this process is moving. In 2002, the top 10 banks controlled 55 percent of all U.S. banking – in 2012 that figure is now 77 percent. In 1983 50 media corporations controlled most of the news in the USA - the same news is now delivered by six corporations.  Japanese corporations have always had quasi monopolies internally despite the attempts to break up their internal domination after 1945. Japanese and Chinese corporations have developed regional spheres of power rather than global but this situation is changing fast.

The modern multinational does not compete in the product market as in the 18th century model.  At the maximum there is “friendly rivalry” which does not affect prices as they would do in the classical model.  When there is competition it tends to be nationally based rather than product-based.  Bischler and Nitzan claim that all corporations monitor the average return on capital invested and when their sector drops below that level they use their power to engineer an increase though political and social means including influencing states in relation to armed conflicts.

One study by a group of researchers from Switzerland has become well-known because they showed with mathematical sophistication in 2011 what Charles Levinson, an international trade unionist, predicted in 1969, that less than 200 corporations control the production and output of the world.  The study looked as 43,000 multinational corporations and discovered, using network analysis, that 1,318 of them controlled the network and within that group there were 147 which in turn controlled more than 40 percent of the entire network.
(The Network of Global Corporate Control by Stefania Vitali, James B. Glattfelder, Stefano Battiston, Published: Oct 26, 2011http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0025995

 Adam Smith saw that firms became monopolies as the result of the tendency of businessmen to conspire to prevent competition.  Baran and Sweezy in their book Monopoly Capital put monopolies at the centre of the economic scene. These arguments focussed on the economic aspects but none of them correctly foresaw the political form rather than the economic form of monopoly.

The political form of the tendency to prevent competition is the modern global corporation which is far more than an economic monopoly or oligopoly dominating economic life by manipulations of prices and wages. The modern corporation is as much a political and bureaucratic entity as it is a monopoly enterprise.  In maintaining the dominant position the corporation uses every element of societal existence. In the natural resource sectors corporations have become virtual state administrations. The modern corporation can hire private armies, which are also corporations, can publish its views through the press which are also corporations.

This is a new situation. When corporations dominated the world via imperialism they were state corporations supported by state monopolies in the imperial countries. State and corporation were merged as in the British, Dutch, French and Portuguese versions of the East India Company.  Now the state merely supports the independent activities of its large corporations via diplomacy and consular services.

Now states and corporate elites are merging.  More and more corporate chief executives are appearing formally and openly at the heads of states.  President Fox of Mexico came from Coco-Cola, Thaksin Shinawatra from mobile phones became prime minister for Thailand, Prime minister Berlusconi in Italy from his media empire; G.W. Bush as President of USA from an oil company, Mario Monti successor to Berlusconi in Italy was from the bank Goldman Sachs while Somali appointed a businessman as prime minister in 2012. Even more heads of state later become businessmen – in the Netherlands former trade union leader, then prime minister, Wim Kok went to the board of the Shell Corporation. This is no longer the so-called revolving door between the corporation and the state but rather the integrated entry to the world of corporate power.

Multinational corporations are not transnational.  They exist by manipulating the segmented labour and product market of a world divided into over 180 units.  The surplus goes back to the headquarter countries.  In some cases the surplus generated serves not only the rich in the headquarter country but sometimes also to ordinary employers – profits made globally by General Motors go to help pay the health and pension benefits of retired workers in the USA.

Marx’s withering away of the state in socialism has become the withering away of the state in corporatism.  Adam’s Smith’s hope that the laws would enforce competition failed, and Baran and Sweezy’s prediction of more imperialism to dispose of surplus did not foresee the global power of the corporation which adjusts capacity globally. 

The modern corporation has not only destroyed the market but has also assumed governmental functions.  

Neither the neo-classical theory of capitalism nor the Marxists theory of capitalism can predict what a single corporation with 90 percent of its global market will do next year.  The economic theories of behaviour are not equipped to deal with the processes of power in which the economic objectives are clear but the economic restraints are minimal.

The power of the modern corporation is in the process of replacing the capitalist of the 18th century with dominant owners and controllers of corporations and thus ushering in a 21st century corporatism. 

2) Finance as a multi-level extraction process  

All contemporary events and developments can be traced back to these transformational changes to the 18th century model of capitalism. In that model extraction from the working population was from manufacturing work in which the owner of capital took a disproportionate share of total productivity.  Marx also saw that at some time and in some countries financiers would challenge manufacturing.  In his analysis of French society in 1850 he stated:-

While the finance aristocracy made the laws, was at the head of the administration of the State, had command of all the organised public powers, dominated public opinion through facts and through the Press, the same prostitution, the same shameless cheating, the same mania to get rich, was repeated in every sphere….. to get rich not by production, but by pocketing the already available wealth of others. In particular there broke out, at the top of bourgeois society, an unbridled display of unhealthy and dissolute appetites, which clashed every moment with the bourgeois laws themselves, wherein the wealth having its source in gambling naturally seeks its satisfaction, where pleasure becomes crapuleux, where gold, and dirt and blood flow together. The finance aristocracy, in its mode of acquisition as well as in its pleasures, is nothing but the resurrection of the lumpen proletariat at the top of bourgeois society.” Marx: “Class Struggles in France 1848: The Defeat of June, 1848” 

This account appears at first sight to reflect almost exactly what is happening in Europe and North America today.

But in fact this is not what is happening.

Marx thought the financiers were parasites and were in opposition to the industrialists and that the industrialists would fight back and eventually displace the financiers.   His view, accurate at the time, was of a large number of industrial enterprises whose principal purpose was to extract profit from the population through organising work and manufacturing.

This is no longer the case. In the 1970s and 1980s corporations increased their oligopoly and monopoly position.  This meant that when they needed finance they simply increased their prices to yield an investable surplus.  The banks were then without their usual investment customers.  But by mid 1990s financiers and industrialists saw the advantages of working together with the banks and finance as a multi-level means of extraction.   Now the politically active corporations are either controlled by finance or there has been a cosy alliance between banks and corporations.  The Network study cited earlier claimed that a “large portion” of the control over the corporations which control global production and consumption “flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions”.

This means that one of the new ways of exploitation in corporatism is through finance and debt rather than manufacturing.  An employee sees part of  his/her production taken by the employer  as in the 18th  century capitalist model, now a second part is taken as interest on his/her personal debt and then a further third part is taken through taxes to the owners of national debt.  The mechanism of extraction via debt is now greater than from production.

This manner of extraction is practiced at all levels from individual to state. At the state level it reached a great level of sophistication in the 1980s and 1990s when applied to countries of the Global South and some East-European communist countries.  The states were encouraged to take loans even under clearly unstable conditions.  When the loans could not be paid back, sometimes because of the manipulations of raw material prices on which the states were dependent, the International Monetary Fund , backed by the financial sector, imposed penalties and sanctions on the governing elites unless they undertook “structural adjustment”. One of the main features of this was to sell state assets at low prices usually to foreign corporations. The so-called “Third World Debt Crisis” was not a crisis for the lenders – the debt was paid back to the banks and government and the corporations acquired valuable assets cheaply. This process is now being applied to some countries in Europe. 

Marx description was right about the behaviour of individual bankers and corporate chief executive officers but wrong about their collective behaviour — industrial corporations did not oppose the financiers.  Under corporatism they allied with the bankers as another useful form of extraction.  Corporatism unlike Marx’s capitalism does not rely on direct production and is able to integrate newer forms mechanisms of control and extraction.

3) Neo-Imperialism/Globalisation

The ideology of the multinational corporation is globalisation.  There is one core reason for this. Globalisation is a process by which the state is weakened. Weakened, that is, at any attempt to control the economic destiny of its people via regulation at the borders or through internal political processes.  A multinational has a single basic need which is access, access that is to the economy, wealth, resources and labour of any country. Access-denying programmes are usually introduced by the state which in turn is connected by political movements that claim autonomy, sovereignty or are nationalist. The development in the 20th century convinced corporate elites that the major threat anywhere in the world would be the action of states.  For this reason major international powers of mid-20th century, in the pretence of opposing communists also attempted to destroy nationalist movements in already independent states.

The creation of corporatism is an imperial project – in the Network study quoted above   no information was given concerning the nationality of the 147 corporations in control of the global economy but just on the basis of the numbers of corporations in existence it is certain that they are predominately from Europe and North America.
 
Control and extraction from the global political economy is assisted by the activities of inter-state agencies at the universal and regional level.  The corporations discovered that by working through existing inter-state agencies - the World Bank - the IMF, the UN or the EU – they could achieve outcomes that could have never been achieved by acting alone or at the national level.  Once corporate power had increased on the domestic level it was a short step to allow the corporate and financial interest to “capture” inter-state organisations.  The structural adjustment programmes executed in the Global South reached a level of imperialism which perhaps not even the original imperial powers could achieve based on the imperial policies of military oppression and divide and rule.  Structural adjustment delivered the economy, lives and destinies of countries to the dictates of the IMF and World Bank themselves representing the core financial and corporate sectors.  The policies that these latter proposed were to privatise, liberalise and economise.  Privatise to corporations, liberalise to corporate products and economise to serve debt repayments to banks. The EU, which is supposed to be neutral on the issue of public and private enterprise, recently agreed that privatisation was a condition of receiving loans in Greece and Italy which are in part derived from European citizen’s taxation.

The economies of these countries were restructured to suit an imperial mandate which was to have un-impeded access for foreign banks and corporations.

For Lenin the state was the “executive committee of the bourgeoisie” under capitalism.  Under corporatism the state is made a partner and previous state-constructed institutions became the global executive committee of the dominant corporations and banks.


4) The Market as a Justification for Inequality

The elites of corporatism are aware, it seems, that one of the weaknesses of the 18th century model of capitalism was the lack of a non-material justification for dominance and exploitation compared with other such systems. The exaltation of the market as an explanation for the outcomes in social affairs had been largely confined to theoretical economists rather than a general explanation for social ills and problems. 

In the late 20th century, however, the market was launched to the public as an explanation for all social and economic events which might be ascribed to a policy, institution or person.

The reason for the timing of the launch of the market as an explanatory myth is the arrival of corporate elites in position of global and national power which challenge the state. At the very moment when the competitive market was destroyed by the monopoly or oligopoly of the corporation the market was launched on the world as an explanatory variable.

The corporation had arrived as a lead institution. Dominant institutions always had a non-material, mythical answer to questions concerning misery and inequality.  In answer to the questions “why am I poor and others not” the religion and church answer was (and is) “it is Gods will”. When the state became the dominant power in many countries the answer to the same question was “it is the people’s will”.  Now that the corporation is so dominant the expectation would be that “it is the will of the market”. 

Thus the market is given as the explanation of austerity because “the financial markets demand” it and for high executive salaries “we must pay what the market price for these people”. The market is anthropomorphised – given human qualities – it thinks, it tells people, it reacts.

But compared with other justifications for poverty and exploitation based on religion, security or solidarity the market explanation is extremely weak and gets weaker as the myth of it is exploded by revelations of fraud and collusion. The market is revealed in these cases as nothing but people manipulating policies directed at other people in order to secure material privileges.

As a justification for poverty and unemployment then it lacks the all-embracing power of the previous explanation for these conditions. In an attempt to boost its power, it has been recently linked to democracy and human rights. The argument is that the “free market” yields political freedom. The organisation of liberals, Liberal International, describes itself as the preeminent network for “promoting liberalism, individual freedom, human rights, the rule of law, tolerance, equality of opportunity, social justice, free trade and a market economy”.  But the contradiction is that the greater the austerity poverty and general un-social conditions the greater the response for non-democratic controls and oppressions.

These attempts to attach more attractive ideas to the myth of the market  has the same parallel with “free trade” which has been presented for more than 150 years as a necessity for  political freedom.  Yet in 2008 The Director-General of the World Trade Organisation talked of “restoring citizen’s confidence in trade” because, as with the market, citizens will no longer accept it as a governing force in their lives.

Seven problems of the Corporatism

In academic literature “corporatism” is used to mean a political regime characterised by official representation at the level of the state of representatives of business and trade unions. The state in the theory was supposed to preside over mediation between the representatives for the common good.  Its origins are from the Catholic Church in the late 19th century, a revised version by the fascist theorists in the 1930s and a further revised liberal version in the 1970s. It is said that corporatism was launched to prevent the class war predicted by Marx.

However, when this type of mediation was installed there was a tendency for the state to become dominant hence the expression “state corporatism” which was associated with the dictatorships in Latin America and Spain.  The more political liberal version was named “social corporatism” and was characterised by bargaining at the state level between business and trade unions – the so-called “social partner” model of Continental Europe.  There were other versions of this system – some one-party states in Africa and institutionalised one-party states in Sweden, Mexico and India were said to also be forms of corporatism.

So history has yielded a “state” corporatism and a “social partner” corporatism expressing the predominant holders of power in the system but never until the current period has there been an attempt at a “corporate” corporatism in which it is the corporation and not the state or the social partners that has the power to determine the core variables of any society.

The creation of dominant corporations, financial extraction, global access and market justification represent just such an attempt to install a “corporate corporatism”; an attempt to reconstitute the 18th century model of capitalism as modified and weakened by the 20th century to make a new form or structure of extraction by a minority group from the majority for the 21st century. But it is an attempt not yet an achievement.

Any new model or construct must, as noted above, be able to deal with the contradictions inherent in action and counter action.  In the current situation the contradictions, complexities and opposition may be greater than the attempt to move from capitalism to corporatism.

First, the mid-20th century rise of the redistributive state may have left a confidence in key populations that social justice is needed and inequality not acceptable. Major countries have not been able to completely destroy redistribution and welfare provisions and where it has been attempted it has been characterised by increasing political turbulence. Throughout the world populations are taking to the streets and expressing their anger through political action against corruption and governments not seen to be delivering social justice.  A political reaction may not always be progressive or effective but for an analyst of political risk it is nevertheless a political reaction.

Second, the political reactions of the so-called underclass are not certain.  Corporatism has produced a mass of marginalised and excluded people and at the national level often identifiable by ethnicity or religion.  The greatest mobilising forces known to humankind – religion, ethnicity and belongingness are more powerful than the class motive alone as assumed by Marx.  How far these will be used or can be used to disrupt the transition to corporatism is difficult to predict but this uncertainty itself means that the architects of the transition are faced with a potential political opposition.

Third, the basis of the corporatist system is dominant corporations domestically and globally but the monopoly and oligopoly needed for this dominance raise issues of functional efficiency.  Without oversight and regulations based on the longer term, the efficient delivery of products and services becomes problematic.  How does a corporate executive who is assured of a lifetime of excessive material benefits judge what he/she should do for the future and what does the future mean for him/her?  Prudent investment for the future is not noticeable in corporate finance. In addition, in the case of multinationals, “imperial dysfunction” sets in when designs and decisions are made for a core market which do not suit the periphery. When material and technical efficiency declines under conditions when surpluses must be maintained fraud and criminality increases.  The nature of the corporation at the core of corporatism may be the contradiction which prevents the complete fulfilment of the system.

Fourth, the opposing force is to global corporatism is sovereignty.  Any competition between corporations globally is based on nationalism rather than price or quality of products as in the Marxists and neo-classical view. When many countries in the world are capable of production and distribution within their own politically controlled area there is no reason to pass that power to a foreign corporation.  Will the emerging corporations from outside Europe and North America be asked to join the global power cartel?  Even if asked, will they refuse? The discussion in Europe about “competition” and the fear of countries increasing their economic power is not based on trade and productivity but on how long will such countries allow their domestic market to be controlled by foreign corporations.   Japan has always resisted foreign corporate investment and indeed foreign investment is referred to as the “black ships” of the original colonizing attempt of the USA.  Western European and USA corporations are aware that their dominance in foreign markets is in decline.   The only solution to regain their power position would be to resort to armed imperialism and that is constrained in scope by the security potential of the major states of the world.  Geo-politics does not favour the advent of global corporatism.

 Fifth, the financial form of extraction via personal and national debt is extremely volatile and precarious and yet it is an important element of corporatism.  It is volatile because there is always a risk of a collective default.  At the personal level the system can only be sustained with repressive instruments for servicing the debt.  At the international level it is dependent on similar factors.  That nations borrow to purchase essential goods not locally available can always be expected but when the debt is incurred, as in the many recent cases, to serve patronage demands and the inefficiencies of corporatism default is always possible.

Sixth, corporatism, lacking as it does any public good ethic, will continue the production-destruction and consumption growth paradigms of 20th century capitalism on which it has been partially built. These practices are at the core of resource depletion and environmental problems. As long as corporation is able to resist the weak environmental political pressures their decision-making will be short term and surplus maximising regardless of external or long term costs. Corporatism will certainly be as environmentally destructive as 20th century capitalism. Dealing with environmental restraints will also present challenges to those attempting the inauguration of the system.

Seventh, and finally, the market justification for all the problems currently encountered was already weak but is now defunct.  The financial events of 2008 not only showed how the market was not working in finance but revealed on a daily basis how national elites have become appendages to the corporate world and were complicit in the development of these events.  The serial failures of so-called market-based policies which usually meant either creating monopolies or passing from a state monopoly to a collusive private monopoly has finally enabled the myth to be broken. 

These problems and weaknesses are, and should be, the focus for civil society opposition to the installation of corporatism.  The modern corporation will not disappear but it may not be able to be the foundation of a successor to capitalism. From the above analysis it would seem the world is caught within a transition process in which there can be no going back but the future aims of global corporate power may not be achieved and are certainly not socially and humanly desirable.

This situation presents opportunities provided that the opposition can be forward-thinking and creative and not stuck fighting the current battles with the perceptions and tools of the past.




posted by Jeffrey Harrod Thursday, June 16, 2016

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Subscribe to Posts [Atom]