I'm really not sure what you mean by East Asia, or what you're referring to as present reality. The class relations that gave rise to the 'developmental state' just don't exist outside of Japan (about which I don't know enough to say either way).
I also really don't understand how you can admire Adorno and yet be fascinated by the most 'rational' and 'efficient' form of rapacious, brutal and ecologically toxic growth that we know of, but I guess that dialectics!
I'm absolutely certain that any the genesis of any new age will come from somewhere completely unexpected.
Cheers,
JL
At 04:31 PM 1/9/2004, you wrote:
>Quoting Jonathan Lassen <jjlassen at chinastudygroup.org>:
>
> > But if this is the future that is
> > awaiting us after Mordor falls, please show me another path.
>
>It's not really the future. It's the present reality of East Asia -- the
>reason
>why Japan, China et. al. are pulverizing the US industrial base into tiny
>shards of silicon. But East Asia will have to become more like the EU in the
>future -- the dollar decline means the US can no longer serve as a source of
>final demand. The big shift may already be here: Japan's investment rates are
>down to 23% of GDP, way below the 30% of the 1980s, and China, South Korea
>and
>Taiwan are all experimenting with consumer credit.
>
>My own wild guess on the genesis of the Fourth Age: it'll start somewhere in
>the EU.
>
>-- DRR
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