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Vertaal:
              Chomsky: De antidemocratische Aard van het Kapitalisme van de V.S. wordt blootgesteld
Maandag, 13 Oktober, 2008 Door Noam Chomsky Het GELIJKTIJDIGE openen van de het presidentiële campagne van de V.S. en ontrafelen van de financiële markten stelt één van die gelegenheden voor waar de politieke en economische systemen grimmig hun aard openbaren. De hartstocht over de campagne kan niet universeel worden gedeeld maar bijna kan iedereen de bezorgdheid van de verhindering van miljoen huizen, en zorgen over banen, besparingen en gezondheidszorg op risico voelen. De aanvankelijke voorstellen van Bush om de crisis te behandelen reeked zo van totalitarianism dat zij snel werden gewijzigd. Onder intense lobbyistdruk, werden zij een nieuwe vorm gegeven aangezien „duidelijk voor de grootste instellingen in het systeem wint. . . een manier om activa te dumpen zonder moeten ontbreken of sluiten“, zoals beschreven door James Rickards, die federale bailout voor de haag besprak financiert HoofdBeheer Op lange termijn in 1998, eraan herinnerend ons dat wij vertrouwd gras betreden. De directe oorsprong van de huidige afsmelting ligt in de instorting van de huisvestingsbel die door Federale Reserve voorzitter Alan Greenspan gecontroleerd, die de worstelende economie door de jaren van Bush door op schuld-gebaseerde van de consument samen met in het buitenland het lenen van te besteden ondersteunde. Maar de wortels zijn dieper. Voor een deel liggen zij in de triomf van financiële liberalisering in het verleden de 30 jaar - namelijk zoveel mogelijk bevrijdend de markten van overheidsregelgeving. Deze stappen verhoogden voorspelbaar de frequentie en de diepte van strenge omkeringen, die nu dreigen om de slechtste crisis sinds de Grote Depressie te bewerkstelligen. Ook voorspelbaar, verzoeken de smalle sectoren die enorme winsten van liberalisering oogstten massieve staatsinterventie om instortende financiële instellingen te redden. Dergelijke interventionism is een regelmatige eigenschap van staatskapitalisme, hoewel de schaal vandaag ongebruikelijk is. Een studie door internationale economen Winfried Ruigrok en Rob van Tulder 15 jaar geleden gevonden dat minstens 20 bedrijven in Fortuin 100 niet zouden overleefd hebben als zij niet door hun respectieve overheden waren bewaard, en dat veel van de rest die wezenlijk door te eisen wordt bereikt dat de overheden „hun verliezen,“ zoals in belastingbetaler-gefinancierde bailout van vandaag socialiseren. Dergelijke overheidsinterventie is „de regel eerder dan de uitzondering in de loop van de afgelopen twee eeuwen“ geweest, besluiten zij. In de goed werkende democratische maatschappij, zou een politieke campagne dergelijke fundamentele kwesties die behandelen, die worteloorzaken en behandelingen onderzoeken, en de middelen voorstellen waardoor de mensen die aan de gevolgen lijden efficiënte controle kunnen nemen. The financial market “underprices risk” and is “systematically inefficient”, as economists John Eatwell and Lance Taylor wrote a decade ago, warning of the extreme dangers of financial liberalisation and reviewing the substantial costs already incurred - and proposing solutions, which have been ignored. One factor is failure to calculate the costs to those who do not participate in transactions. These “externalities” can be huge. Ignoring systemic risk leads to more risk-taking than would take place in an efficient economy, even by the narrowest measures. The task of financial institutions is to take risks and, if well-managed, to ensure that potential losses to themselves will be covered. The emphasis is on “to themselves”. Under state capitalist rules, it is not their business to consider the cost to others - the “externalities” of decent survival - if their practices lead to financial crisis, as they regularly do. Financial liberalisation has effects well beyond the economy. It has long been understood that it is a powerful weapon against democracy. Free capital movement creates what some have called a “virtual parliament” of investors and lenders, who closely monitor government programmes and “vote” against them if they are considered irrational: for the benefit of people, rather than concentrated private power. Investors and lenders can “vote” by capital flight, attacks on currencies and other devices offered by financial liberalisation. That is one reason why the Bretton Woods system established by the United States and Britain after the second World War instituted capital controls and regulated currencies.* The Great Depression and the war had aroused powerful radical democratic currents, ranging from the anti-fascist resistance to working class organisation. These pressures made it necessary to permit social democratic policies. The Bretton Woods system was designed in part to create a space for government action responding to public will - for some measure of democracy. John Maynard Keynes, the British negotiator, considered the most important achievement of Bretton Woods to be the establishment of the right of governments to restrict capital movement. In dramatic contrast, in the neoliberal phase after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s, the US treasury now regards free capital mobility as a “fundamental right”, unlike such alleged “rights” as those guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: health, education, decent employment, security and other rights that the Reagan and Bush administrations have dismissed as “letters to Santa Claus”, “preposterous”, mere “myths”. In earlier years, the public had not been much of a problem. The reasons are reviewed by Barry Eichengreen in his standard scholarly history of the international monetary system. He explains that in the 19th century, governments had not yet been “politicised by universal male suffrage and the rise of trade unionism and parliamentary labour parties”. Therefore, the severe costs imposed by the virtual parliament could be transferred to the general population. But with the radicalisation of the general public during the Great Depression and the anti-fascist war, that luxury was no longer available to private power and wealth. Hence in the Bretton Woods system, “limits on capital mobility substituted for limits on democracy as a source of insulation from market pressures”. The obvious corollary is that after the dismantling of the postwar system, democracy is restricted. It has therefore become necessary to control and marginalise the public in some fashion, processes particularly evident in the more business-run societies like the United States. The management of electoral extravaganzas by the public relations industry is one illustration. “Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business,” concluded America’s leading 20th century social philosopher John Dewey, and will remain so as long as power resides in “business for private profit through private control of banking, land, industry, reinforced by command of the press, press agents and other means of publicity and propaganda”. The United States effectively has a one-party system, the business party, with two factions, Republicans and Democrats. There are differences between them. In his study Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, Larry Bartels shows that during the past six decades “real incomes of middle-class families have grown twice as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans, while the real incomes of working-poor families have grown six times as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans”. Differences can be detected in the current election as well. Voters should consider them, but without illusions about the political parties, and with the recognition that consistently over the centuries, progressive legislation and social welfare have been won by popular struggles, not gifts from above. Those struggles follow a cycle of success and setback. They must be waged every day, not just once every four years, always with the goal of creating a genuinely responsive democratic society, from the voting booth to the workplace. * The Bretton Woods system of global financial management was created by 730 delegates from all 44 Allied second World War nations who attended a UN-hosted Monetary and Financial Conference at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods in New Hampshire in 1944. Bretton Woods, which collapsed in 1971, was the system of rules, institutions, and procedures that regulated the international monetary system, under which were set up the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) (now one of five institutions in the World Bank Group) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which came into effect in 1945. The chief feature of Bretton Woods was an obligation for each country to adopt a monetary policy that maintained the exchange rate of its currency within a fixed value. The system collapsed when the US suspended convertibility from dollars to gold. This created the unique situation whereby the US dollar became the “reserve currency” for the other countries within Bretton Woods. Noam Chomsky is professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His writings on linguistics and politics have just been collected in The Essential Chomsky, edited by Anthony Arnove, from the New Press. Have Your Say: Chomsky: Anti-Democratic Nature of US Capitalism is Being Exposed Please read our posting guidelines before posting. Alternatively you can discuss this report here. One Response to “Chomsky: Anti-Democratic Nature of US Capitalism is Being Exposed”
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ian commented on: Chomsky: Anti-Democratic Nature of US Capitalism is Being Exposed Noam has hit it on the head again. His clarity is impresionable and demands... Continue Reading & Reply bricbuck commented on: Army scientists want to create ‘brain-wave helmet’ Seriously, the military doesn’t move as fast as gamers? Well if... Continue Reading & Reply Horus commented on: How to Control the AMERICAN Population Young people, especialy imigrants seem to have many babies as that is what is normal to them and sadly... Continue Reading & Reply ZingPao commented on: Bush To Provide $6.4 Billion In Arms To Taiwan Well with $700 billion what the hell. Plenty to spread around right? May Bush, all of them,... Continue Reading & Reply |
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Noam has hit it on the head again. His clarity is impresionable and demands attention. If only those in power would see thing in the same light, perhaps this world would have some sort of a fighting chance.