``I think the fear isn't necessarily of violence, but of ungovernability, that ungovernability at times take the form of non-violent civil disobedience (for instance, a lot of the civil rights stuff in the south was really designed to shut stuff down, to destroy the workings of segregation in day to day life), at other times it takes the form of property destruction, and physical violence against people (the most notable form of this really isn't the black bloc historically, its most prominent in labor history.)''
robert wood
--------
These are important distinctions, which I've been mulling over in some less articulate fashion. Shutting down the west coast ports and interrupting the trucking-transportation hubs will get every group of the elite's attention, provided: it's sustained and not symbolic, and is coordinated with the east coast. The flow of goods through trade represents, in my mind, the flow of global capital. Even a temporary interruption or slow down from the Pacific Rim and the EU would ... make a very costly mess.
The fatal neoliberal flaw is built in with Just In Time Inventory systems. The speed up of Just in Time, also means it slows down faster and stops sooner.
I was thinking about the discussion this morning on Democracy Now with Charles Duhigg (NYT) and Mike Daisey, `The Agony and Ecstacy of Steve Jobs'. Forget all that Apple stuff and listen to how fast Foxconn can re-tool and what they put their labor force through. That means, it can also layoff and or shift trade markets just as fast. By substituting hand assembly for all kinds of production technology, they gain great flexibility because they are not locked into any particular production technology.
That note somebody posted on the cops union in Greece was pretty stunning. The general revolt in Greece is pretty stunning in any event. In fact, Greece has probably become ungovernable.
Here's my one and only Rosa Luxemburg quote:
`` `Order prevails in Warsaw!' `Order prevails in Paris!' `Order prevails in Berlin!' Every half-century that is what the bulletins from the guardians of `order' proclaim from one center of the world-historic struggle to the next. And the jubilant `victors' fail to notice that any `order' that needs to be regularly maintained through bloody slaughter heads inexorably toward its historic destiny; its own demise.'' (From Order Prevails in Berlin, 1919)
Yes things are different now, but the basic idea is still relevant. If global capital is so hegemonic and powerful, how come its worst fears are coming true daily. Order is hardly prevailing in a list so long, I can't remember all the places.
Now I am thinking about Noami Klein's thesis of the shock doctrine where financial disaster is used to install austerity. Like shock and awe in Iraq, I am beginning to think disaster capital just causes disaster in social, economic, and political crisis that breaks down the capitalist order.
If the EU-ECB can't IMF the Greeks...? Here's the latest on Greece:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/11/us-greece-idUSTRE8120HI20120211
``One of the attached documents, which spells out the reforms Greece will have to undertake in return for the aid, says the target of cutting the debt to `about' 120 percent of GDP by 2020 from about 160 percent now will be achieved.''
Even the arithmetic doesn't add up, but I am not an economist. It reminds me of the mysterious economy of a jobless recovery.
CG