Challenging the rulers of the world

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My last blog sought to answer two questions. Who rules the world and how do they do it?

In this posting I will answer another question; how do we challenge this appalling state of affairs?

Before proceeding let us summarise the state of play. The world`s uber-rich elites generate their wealth from transnational corporations across all economic sectors. Their profits are, for the most part, shaped by financial interests (ie banks, finance companies,insurance companies, mutual and pension funds, private equity firms, hedge funds, venture capital). Transnational corporates benefit from the prevalence of neo liberal policy regimes and real time networks of electronic communication. Neoliberalism is entrenched within a transnational state comprised of policy development organisations, international institutions and the upper reaches of national governments (finance ministries, policy advice groups and the senior civil service). This loose network of power, I suggested, was on annual display at Davos, home of the World Economic Forum.

These developments have not been unopposed. Before giving my own take on this, some history is required. We musn`t forget that earlier forms of capitalism confronted worldwide networks of opposition. Examples include international socialism, anti-colonial nationalism after World War Two and third world guerrilla insurgencies. During the 1960s and 1970s nationally based peace, feminist, environmental and indigenous peoples organisations started to form international alliances. The 1980s saw major protests in the western and developing world against the brutal nature of IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programmes in the third world (New Zealand experienced something similar, the difference being that a Labour government introduced the programme voluntarily).

With the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 former Eastern bloc economies were dismembered by transnational corporations and the financial interests behind them. From this point on a system of global capitalism took shape. Not that this was obvious ,endless business talk about the end of ideological politics and the arrival of `globalisation` swamped the mainstream media everywhere. Naysayers were deemed out of place and out of date. However, in the 1990s new forms of global activism did emerge. We can learn valuable lessons from the events which transpired. At the 1992 United Nations sponsored Earth Summit at Rio, official plenaries and major government entourages were confronted by the Global Forum, an environmental network of 1000 NGOs. They communicated via interlinked personal computers and bulletin boards, a world first for oppositional activist groups. On January 1st 1994, when the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA), came into effect, the Zapatistas National Liberation Army rose against local state authority in Chiapas, Mexico. This was the world`s first `internet rebellion`. It interlinked, in real time, opposition to transnational logging companies in southern Mexico, indigenous activist groups worldwide and opposition to NAFTA. The same electronic networks which were the nervous system of global capitalism could be used to network activist groups worldwide. In 1995 the OECD`s Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) encountered major transnational opposition. This proposal would have enabled corporations to seek retrospective compensation from states that had regulated foreign companies and investments. This attack on the democratic state was prevented by a worldwide, three year campaign driven by left political parties, NGO`s, trade unions and MAI specific coalitions.

This is the ancestor of todays campaign against the TPPA and the investor-state clauses which it contains. The success of the anti-MAI campaign invigorated opposition against the then recently formed World Trade Organisation (WTO). Subsequent mobilisations against a range of transnational state institutions (eg IMF,World Bank,World Economic Forum) revealed a weakness in the global power structure which still remains today. These organisations have no legitimacy. Ordinary people don`t elect them and their activities are carried out secretively, in wealthy secluded areas beyond prying eyes. The attack on transnational capitalism itself, requires oppositional monitoring groups and alternative policy networks. An example of the former is the Tax Justice Network, an activist think tank which identifies the world`s major tax havens along with the corporations and high net worth individuals who use them (at the expense of national tax jurisdictions).

Right now, the biggest villains here seem to be IT-social media corporations ie Google, Apple, Facebook. The Centre for Media and Democracy incorporates PR Watch. As the name suggests, this group cuts through corporate spin doctoring with embarrassing case studies of how the public is deliberately misinformed. One of the founders of PR Watch, John Stauber wrote a rollicking book entitled` Toxic sludge is good for you`. The Transnational Institute and the World Social Forum have, for a decade or so, put forward alternative development strategies for poorer countries. What these strategies might look like can be found in the peerless work of Warren Bello.

I want now to suggest that opponents of the system have reasons to be hopeful. Firstly, global capitalism is not a monolithic system. It is very fragile and in danger of falling over at any time, largely because of the myopic greed of investment banks and other major financial interests. This became self evidently clear after the collapse of Lehman brothers in September 2008. The resulting worldwide recession combined with the taxpayer bailouts of the largest anglo-American banks produced a slogan for decades to come `We are the 99 percent`.

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As Mervyn King of the Bank of England admits, the preconditions for another financial collapse are securely in place. If this is worse than last time expect major fissures within the global ruling class.

Secondly, there are also hopeful prospects for oppositional activism if certain conditions are met. There needs to be a loose coalition which brings together union militancy, social media protest hubs and nationally based left political parties. In recent years there have been major developments in all three areas. Strikes and worker protests in China`s industrial heartlands has put the squeeze on those who benefit from supply chain capitalism eg Foxconn and Apple Corporation. The Occupy movement demonstrated the potential for globally synchronised protest and information campaigns against `the 1%`, the rise of Greece`s anti-austerity Syriza party has exposed the anti-democratic collusion among private European banks, EU financial technocrats and corrupt within Greece`s political system. In short this is the transnational state exposed as an enemy of electoral democracy.

The requirement now is to expand and coordinate these three kinds of political action simultaneously, on a mass scale, in different parts of the world. Such an eventuality would bring back the guiding mantra of the 1990s activists `Another world is possible`. It may take the next financial collapse and a severe depression to open up the political scenario described here. When that opportunity comes we need to seize it, for the planet’s sake.

17 COMMENTS

  1. Thank you, Wayne, for this very important series of posts. You have clearly laid out the context, the problems and a way forward.

    The problem we face is not a monolithic carefully organised right, but, as you say:

    Neoliberalism is entrenched within a transnational state comprised of policy development organisations, international institutions and the upper reaches of national governments (finance ministries, policy advice groups and the senior civil service). This loose network of power, I suggested, was on annual display at Davos, home of the World Economic Forum.

    And it has cracks and weaknesses where it can be challenged. So the way forward as you say:

    There needs to be a loose coalition which brings together union militancy, social media protest hubs and nationally based left political parties.

    A loose left wing network with international reach. I would add offline organisations to that as well (albeit probably with an online presence) – student groups, environmental groups, feminist, Maori and other ethnic and community-based groups, etc.

    However, I hope we don’t need to wait for the misery of a severe depression (worse than we already have) for movement towards an alternative, more just, collaborative and inclusive “other world” to be fully activated.

    • “However, I hope we don’t need to wait for the misery of a severe depression (worse than we already have) for movement towards an alternative, more just, collaborative and inclusive “other world” to be fully activated.”

      You are still hopeful, but I am rather sceptical, and I fear, that the collapse of systems will need to happen, before “the masses” (the wider public) will finally be shaken up enough, to take action.

      Even then we will have populists and other opportunists try to take hold of the moment, and woe for support, that the desperate may offer them, only to follow them down another wrong and disastrous track.

      More real, firm and resolute activism, at all levels, and not just reliant on internet and social media, that is the only means to prepare for a change. The mainstream media must be exposed and neutered first of all, as they are complicit in the maintenance of the status quo, and do not want a “revolution” or challenge of whatever type, that may also endanger their crucial role and power base.

  2. While I understand the underlying message and intentions of this post, some in it is confusing, to say the least:

    a) “The world`s uber-rich elites generate their wealth from transnational corporations across all economic sectors. Their profits are, for the most part, shaped by financial interests (ie banks, finance companies,insurance companies, mutual and pension funds, private equity firms, hedge funds, venture capital).”

    How do “financial interests” by banks finance companies and investment funds “shape” profits?

    Profits are of course made and invested, either directly through direct new investment to expand operations and increase market share through more business expansion, or by investing them in banks and investment funds, to earn interest on lending it to others to do the same.

    b) “With the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 former Eastern bloc economies were dismembered by transnational corporations and the financial interests behind them. From this point on a system of global capitalism took shape.”

    While it is true that the fall of the Berlin Wall and Iron Curtain and the collapse of the former Eastern Bloc countries swiftly accelerated global capitalism, it is simply not true, that those countries in the Eastern Bloc were “dismembered” by “global capitalism”. The countries in Eastern Europe simply collapsed due to internal pressures, wanting an end to failed regimes, that had lost credibility in most of the populations, and then it was global capitalism in the form of “western” and some “Asian” corporations, but also many smaller enterprises, as well as individuals with cash and/or influence, who seized the momentum and the opportunity, to take over heavy industry, retail and service industries, even much of agriculture there, to replace the formerly state operated and managed economic players.

    Just by looking at the investment of cash rich farmers from former West Germany, into wide areas of soon privatised landholdings in former East Germany, and even a large percentage of farm land in countries like Hungary, one gets an impression of what went on. Certain industrialists or industry corporations did the same with various heavy and not so heavy industry in former Eastern Bloc countries. It was not so much “dismembering” by them, they simply took hold of what they could grab, that the new (more “free market friendly”, often naive) governments made available.

    c) “At the 1992 United Nations sponsored Earth Summit at Rio, official plenaries and major government entourages were confronted by the Global Forum, an environmental network of 1000 NGOs. They communicated via interlinked personal computers and bulletin boards, a world first for oppositional activist groups.”

    This is generally correct, but this new “activism” was rather short lived, and not well concerted, as the wide array of groupings may have had similar goals, but they were in the end anything but a unified force, and hence largely fizzled away.

    d) “Subsequent mobilisations against a range of transnational state institutions (eg IMF,World Bank,World Economic Forum) revealed a weakness in the global power structure which still remains today. These organisations have no legitimacy.”

    I am sorry, these organisations have some legitimacy, as they have representatives from voted in governments from member countries sit in them. They are also not to be seen as one and the same kind of organisations – all simply supposed to being part of the global capitalism, although of course the global capitalist players have much influence, given the fact that they influence elections in various states, that they own or have interests in the banking and finance sectors, and so forth. But there are a variety of countries members of these organsiations, which have also different purposes to exist.

    And while the GFC showed the weakness of the present global capitalist system and finance system, I think we must not underestimate the very dominant power the system has through the many dominant players, and through governments that feel they have no choice but strictly cooperate with them.

    e) “Right now, the biggest villains here seem to be IT-social media corporations ie Google, Apple, Facebook. The Centre for Media and Democracy incorporates PR Watch. As the name suggests, this group cuts through corporate spin doctoring with embarrassing case studies of how the public is deliberately misinformed.”

    Yes, indeed the public is deliberately and intensively misinformed, and that includes largely distraction from realities and challenges that matter, by “corrupting” the minds of people by indoctrinating them with consumerist and commercialised thinking and behaviour, by manipulating people, and by even harvesting user data, to analyse it, and to use it for own – or sold on advertising intelligence purposes. All these social media enterprises do this, and many more. They even cooperate with the US NSA, to keep a check on people and “suspicious” behaviour, and by letting them harvest data to store for years to come, for later “analysis” to “protect” states from alleged “threats”.

    The biggest problem is, they are actually very successful, and too few day to day users of internet services are seriously concerned, and let all this happen.

    e) “This became self evidently clear after the collapse of Lehman brothers in September 2008. The resulting worldwide recession combined with the taxpayer bailouts of the largest anglo-American banks produced a slogan for decades to come `We are the 99 percent`.”

    Well, what reason is there to be hopeful, when the 99 percent movement has fallen apart and vanished, almost as quickly as it surfaced?

    f) “The Occupy movement demonstrated the potential for globally synchronised protest and information campaigns against `the 1%`, the rise of Greece`s anti-austerity Syriza party has exposed the anti-democratic collusion among private European banks, EU financial technocrats and corrupt within Greece`s political system. In short this is the transnational state exposed as an enemy of electoral democracy.”

    What is happening in Greece is one thing, and it is hardly coordinated with activism in other places. The Arab Spring was largely another failure (in most places), and the cyber revolution is dependent on corporate social media enterprises cooperating, which is a bit like relying on the commercial tranport companies being relied on to take masses of demonstrators out to the assembly points, from where they may want to organise the nationalisation of those privately owner transport companies.

    No, I am not as hopeful as Wayne seems here, I think the challenge is huge, and sadly fewer and fewer are seen and herd to be involved in real activism. The keyboard activism is in the meantime being “commercialised” like most of the web, and it relies on services that are being “observed” and watched by the likes of the GCSB. You have to be a fool to believe that you will change things as they are that way.

  3. Thanks Wayne for this interesting piece

    But surely you mean Walden Bello, not Warren (para 6 last line)? Walden is the Filipino politician scientist and professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman who is a renowned critic of globalisation and neoliberal economics from a Global South perspective.

    Cheers

    David

  4. A flaw in the monetary system

    To get the changes we need we need to start with the monetary system. Make it so that the richest can no longer be the bludgers upon the rest of humanity.
    1:) Get rid of interest
    2:) Make it so that the private banks can no longer create money

    • Not sure about getting rid of interest, but I tell what I would like to see and that is that money ceases to be a tradeable commodity with a few wide boys trading currency around the world, deciding how much a particular country’s money is worth. That’s the one I want done away with

      • Raegun – a single global currency would eliminate currency speculation forever. In the meantime, a Financial transactions tax would be helpful, with government’s taxing money as it flowed between borders.

        Especially “hot money”.

        An FTT would have to be organised internationally, with tax havens being cut out of the global economy if they failed to comply.

        Capitalists would bleat and scream and their sycophants would plead “freedom” and other garbage. Care factor for their concerns: nil.

        • Capitalists won’t bleat because it won’t ever happen. There is simply no way you would be able to institute and effective global currency.

          • @ Gosman: Off course a global currency is possible. Almost anything is possible if humans have sufficient determination.

            The Euro is a good example of a trans-national currency.

            • The Euro is a good example of the problems with a transnational currency. Greece’s economic issues have been exacerbated by being part of the Eurozone and not having the flexibility of controlling their own monetary policy.

      • Not sure about getting rid of interest

        It’s actually the only way to save the economy from the rich pricks. Interest is what keeps the money flowing in ever greater amounts to the few at the top making poverty worse at the bottom. This has been known for the better [art of 5000 years but we keep forgetting and letting the greedy people set up our economy how they please. Not surprisingly, they set it up so that only they benefit.

  5. Great Post Dr Wayne . Thank you .
    As I’ve said before .
    We , the 99% should kick out the foreign owned banks , fire wall our currency against it being manipulated , write off mortgage debt , write off credit card debt then instal a capital gains tax . We should invest heavily in rural infrastructure ie a free passenger rail service to the hinterlands along with new hospitals , dental clinics , schools and agricultural education facilities . Just like the ones roger douglas , pig muldoon and others took from us . We could reacquaint ourselves with our traditional trading partners then conduct a series of public enquiries into the past , and present , financial relationships between our politicians and our larger business entities .

    That’s what we should do .
    But what will we do ?
    Ever watched sheep walk into a freezing works ?
    Have you seen pictures of the Jews in the rail cars ?
    Been to a WINZ office recently ?
    Worked in a factory recently ?
    Borrowed money recently ?

    Here’s what we can do .
    Study and understand the social experiments of Professor Stanley Milgram . While he’s not the be-all and end-all , he’s a start . Follow the vines . Know your enemy .
    We Kiwis are living on a living , breathing gold mine . A vast land in per head of population to land area comparisons . We have billions of tons of fresh water , huge tracts of arable land and we’re thousands of miles from other bastards .

    And we have the most traitorous , vile , treasonous scum bags here as well . And they’re here and they’re bloated on the excesses that a lie can afford them .

    Print out the above Post by Professor Wayne Hope and nail it onto your fridge . And isn’t that where you keep your food ? Is that irony at its driest ?

    • How do you firewall a currency pray tell? If you have the answer you would be best to make millions by passing on the idea to places like Venezuela and Argentina whose governments are failing miserably trying to protect the value of their respective currencies.

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