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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2024-101
Last weeks posts on Moon of Alabama:
Middle East:
Ukraine:
Russia:
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Other issues:
Gaza:
ISIS:
Baltimore Key Bridge:
Watching the livestream and reading through the status reports I fail to detect any sense of urgency. The main clearing effort for now seems to be in an area that is irrelevant for reopening the main passage to the port. – b.
Empire:
Simplicius has a very good column today on the subject of Capitalism and the Chinese economy. One of the most peculiar stories of the past week has been that of Yellen asking China’s government not to be so competitive.
It turns out that the capitalist system, as a five year old child can see, is not particularly efficient in any area but that of delivering massive ‘profits’ to the ruling class, which grows progressively smaller, in relative terms, while the populace slides inexorably into declining incomes, living standards and wealth.
In Canada increasingly young people are realising that they will never be able to buy their own homes. Like their immigrant great grandparents most will be renters for life. In the meantime they have the mortgages they incurred getting post secondary education to think about and re-pay.
The article is full of evidence that western capitalism is declining and that systems such as China’s, which regulate and control the capitalist sector, are pulverising it. There is a chart, for example, showing the rate at which industrial robots are being installed in various countries, year by year. China is at the top of the list followed by Japan, the US, S.Korea, Germany, Italy, Taiwan, France, Mexico, Singapore and India. Turkiye, Thailand and Canada come next. The difference between China and Canada is in the order of 300 to less than ten. Britain doesn’t even get on the list: the economy that initiated the modern industrial system is installing fewer robots annually than either Thailand, Mexico or Singapore.
The basic problems in the ‘west’ are easily explained, nothing Simplicius has to tell us on the subject is not well known. Though it is fervently denied by the ideologues of capitalism, like Yellen.
“Western leaders not only are incapable of even grasping the complexities involved of reining in capital, they are unable to do so for the mere fact that they’re totally bought and paid for by the representatives of that very capital class. The cabal of Capital is so deeply rooted and institutionally entwined with Western governmental systems that it’s simply impossible to imagine them being able to see ‘the forest for the trees’ from within the forest itself……”
“…The trade official described China as a system “that we’ve articulated as being not market-based, as being fundamentally nurtured differently, against which a market-based system like ours is going to have trouble competing against and surviving.”
“These are code words: what she means by “market based” is free market capitalism, while China uses more of a centrally-planned directive system, as outlined earlier. Recall just recently I posted complaints from Western officials that their companies are not able to compete with Russian defense manufacturers due to their ‘unfairly’ efficient ‘central planning’ style.
“Here too, what they mean is that the Chinese government creates directives that spurn ‘market logics’ and are aimed at direct improvements to the lives of ordinary citizens. In the West there’s no such thing: all market decisions are based merely on the totally detached financial firms’ speculations and are exclusively at the behest of a tiny claque of finance and banking elite at the top of the pyramid…”
The article in its entirety is highly recommended- there is much more in it than I have outlined. But the basic message is one that is surprisingly novel- in large part because our political discussions are overshadowed by a barely understood history of the post 1917 period in which one side is mired in the most vulgar neo-liberal fundamentalism and the other, that of socialist critics of capitalism, is dominated by obsolete arguments over the desperate measures that the Soviet Union took after 1928 while it prepared to meet what became Operation Barbarossa.
In fact China is following closely in the path that Lenin pointed out as the Civil War in Russia was ending- a New Economic Policy in which central planning for the overall good of society does not stifle originality and innovation. Among the elements from which Chinese technological advances is being built are a vast and efficient educational system enabling and ecnouraging not just the lucky few with deep pockets but the entire population to develop their capacities to the fullest extent. At the same time living standards and particularly those related to individual security are rising on a broad front. He produces another chart showing that the mean worth of Chinese households is close to that of those in the US, whereas the median reflects the greater inequality in US society.
In a word, as the development of the British and other European economies in the post war pre-Thatcher era showed, massive investment in education, health, public transport and housing designed to produce a healthy, productive, secure and confident population is far more likely to produce wealth than the Hugner Games rat race in the face of starvation promoted by neo-liberalism.
Posted by: bevin | Apr 9 2024 15:05 utc | 185
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