PB: Compradorism and elite capture, mainly. Fanon read the ANC trajectory best. Lots of other pressure points, too, of course. A mix of structure and agency.
>PB: The defeat of labour was one important reason for a temporary uptick in
>profits, but other deep-seated contradictions continue appearing,
especially
>in the financial circuitry and ecosystems.
DH: Sometimes folks like you take a problem, even a serious problem, to be a crisis.
PB: No, I'll take the Coxian idea of crisis, namely when a systemic problem emerges which doesn't have a solution within the internal logic of the system in question. An exogenous intervention is needed.
DH: I don't doubt the severity of ecological stresses, but I can't shake the suspicion that a lot of crisis-philes, from the admirable (O'Connor) to the risible (Proyect) have shifted their attention from the economic to the natural realms. Isn't there always the chance we'll just muddle through?
PB: Let's see, where *definitely* running out of oil in a few decades, and we daren't use up that left in the ground now because of potentially calamitous global warming (you saw the Pentagon report earlier this year?, to add to the vast amount of mainstream science?). We've got dozens of pockets of severe water shortages leading to terrible stress. The fisheries are at their lowest recorded levels, species extinction is running at a record pace, and ancient forests are under fire. A third of arable land has been degraded over the past 50 years. And we've got GM threats, degradation of factory farming food, rampant biopiracy, and a nonsense market to deal with C02 emissions through carbon trading. Aside from a bit more land under reserve and diminished CFC levels (about the only good multilateral treaty result I can think of), there's not much good news. Only a crank, or Bush supporter, could promote muddling-through, and I know you're neither, Doug - just not up to speed on the literature?
DH: Here's an instance of exaggerating a serious problem - the SE Asia panic - into a major crisis. Most of the Asian economies have recovered from the 1998 mess. As for the gluts, surely you've heard that Chinese demand is creating shortages and price spikes in crucial commodities.
PB: Sure, uneven development means much of Asia is up and much of Latin America and Africa are down again, while a few commodities are a *bit* higher, including gold which should tell you something, Doug. But not enough to get cars rolling and aluminum plants built, as South Africa is finding out to its regret. As you know, a spike can disguise a longterm trend line, and the commodity price decline since the early 1970s has been much faster than during any other recorded period aside from the late 1910s.
>PB: ... various symptoms of amplified
>combined/uneven development.
DH: I wish you'd explain how China and India, which between them account for over a third of the world's population, fit into this.
PB: Arrighi/Silver and Frank may want to place their bets on Asia, but I'm not sure. I'll see if I can get permission to send you some excellent statistical analysis by Alan Freeman (of Ken Livingstone's office) about the mystification of China/India (especially in PPP terms), if you like. Here's his summary: "China and India have a specific statistical impact because since globalisation began, their Purchasing Power Parity has increased exceptionally rapidly. Chart 4 shows the ratio of GDP, for China and India, measured in PPPs and constant US dollars at current market exchange rates. It can be seen that the GDP of these two countries, measured in PPPs, has effectively been multiplied by 250 per cent since the present phase of globalisation began. This rise in the PPP dollar is clearly itself a specific effect of globalisation. The capacity of these nations to appropriate wealth in the world market has fallen precipitately, because local prices have fallen much faster than US prices. It is moreover unique to the developing countries, and particularly pronounced for India and China. This has two profound implications. First, it means that globalisation has worsened the terms of trade. An Asian producer must work on average over four times longer to acquire US goods than a US producer, and seven times more than a Japanese producer to acquire Japanese goods. Developing countries, particularly Asian countries, are far less equipped to acquire on the market the produce of the advanced countries - which are precisely what they need in order to invest competitively, and moreover are precisely the goods which the IMF structural adjustment plans oblige them to buy. A central feature of these plans is the developing countries are supposed to concentrate on exporting labour-intensive, primary produce. The substantial extra supply of these goods created has played a major role in producing a catastrophic fall in commodity prices, vitiating the whole strategy. Although the divergence of PPP and current-exchange measures is universal throughout the non-advanced countries, its statistical effect on aggregates is heavily concentrated on China and India because of their size."
DH: Why is the Golden Age the standard? What if it was an anomaly, and the real norm is more like an average of history less the 1950-73 period?
PB: A fair point. It was the breakout from a long depression, so hence would have logically higher rates of growth. But that's the point about capitalism - the search for the highest rate of profit gets ever more desperate, *anomaly or not*, as overaccumulation pressures build up in the system. And it's that - not some ridiculous idea of 'GDP' (with its vast flaws) - which is really at stake here, right? If you want to talk 'growth', we'd want to correct GDP, right? Here's what we'd do in a place like South Africa: GDP treats the depletion of natural capital as income, instead of depreciation of an asset, which in South Africa is an extraordinary failing that adversely affects the welfare of future generations, given that the value of natural minerals capital fell from US$112 billion in 1960 to US$55 bn in 2000, according to a 2004 UN estimate; GDP ignores the non-market economy of household and community, in turn devaluing childcare, elder care, other home-based tasks and volunteer work, which in South Africa are the dominant means through which the majority of the population remain productive; GDP treats problems such as natural disasters, pollution and crime as economic gain (because of associated service sector employment and repair/clean-up/replacement opportunities), not as a debit from social welfare, a major problem in South Africa where not only have drought and flooding periodically caused severe damage, but where pollution is rampant and the number of crimes recorded by the police rose from below 1.5 million in 1994/95 to above 2.5 million in 2001/02; GDP takes no account of income distribution, which again in South Africa is a profound failure given the vast scale of the inequality problem; and GDP does not take into account vulnerability to external shocks, especially international financial panics that can devastate an exposed economy such as post-apartheid South Africa. Doug, you could do the same for the US, but I think the group Redefining Progress is already at work. Here are their recommendations for your own bullshit-detection when you next look at US stats on 'growth': subtract crime and family breakdown; add household and volunteer work; correct for income distribution (rewarding equality); subtract resource depletion; subtract pollution; subtract long-term environmental damage (climate change, nuclear waste generation); add opportunities for increased leisure time; factor in lifespan of consumer durables and public infrastructure; and subtract vulnerability upon foreign assets.
DH: You've got to admit that the state bailout engineers have done a pretty good job of it. Sometimes you sound like an Austrian, skeptical that state intervention can solve anything.
PB: No, not at all. I'm working through as much material as I can find on the Treasury, which during the 1980s-90s (maybe even still today) was the nerve centre - even the 'brain' - of bailouts. How come we've got such great books (like Greider's) and advocacy networks (like Tom Schlesinger's) on the Fed, but nothing from the left on Treasury? If we knew more about the problems they faced in, for example, early 1995 getting congressional permission to bail out Goldman Sachs in Mexico, we'd perhaps not be so blase about future deals, especially if they become ever more expensive.
DH: What's the positive program of anti-capitalism anyway?
PB: I'd call it decommodification, with strong gender-equity and eco-social components, and using 'deglobalisation' strategies to get more space. I think you get these programmes from looking at real people in real struggle. Fortunately, SA has a wonderful set of campaigns and struggles (aside from standard labour wage/benefit struggles), as you see from the debate listserve. Here are a few: anti-retroviral medicines to combat AIDS; free lifeline water (the standard demand has been 50 litres/person/day) and electricity (Sowetan activists insist on at least 1 kiloWatt hour/person/day); land reform; an end to housing evictions; a Basic Income Grant ($15/person/month on a universal basis); debt repudiation and reparations for apartheid-era profits by foreign and domestic capital; and security from domestic violence. Join us, comrade.