Leth.hate, membre de la communauté Amilova

Leth.hate dit

Globalisation. It's kind of the new buzzword like 'information superhighway' was in the 90's and 'fetch me some penicillin because I'm pissing fire and razor blades.' in the 1940's.
But what does it mean? Is it a good thing, a bad thing? What the fucken?

What it means is that we are no longer living in an era of self contained nations. It is no longer possible to shut the door, tell everyone to fuck off and run your country as a hermit... North Korea has been trying to do this for decades and they are now in a state where a bowl of spaghetti would feed five families. They are not doing so well.

Globalisation has met a lot of opposition for various groups. It's uncomfortable, scary and it can bring a whole lot of unwanted baggage.
Think of it this way. Say you've been living with your parents. You only got a couple of people to deal with so you've manage to work out rules and protocols that allow you to live in sort of harmony. Suddenly, your entire family moves in. Cousins, uncles, long lost relatives. This will cause a lot of friction. Everyone has their own idea of how to run things and how to deal with each other. Suddenly your routine, protocols and bathroom is thrown in disarray. You're no longer as important as you thought you were.

In the 80's , it's first victim was communism. Capitalist saw this as confirmation that capitalism was the way forward and they went full steam ahead. Now capitalism is on life support and I don't think it will be waking up from its coma. Maybe we can draw a funny moustache with a marker before it kicks the bucket.
You see, the thing about communism and capitalism it that their demise was not due to them not working or being ineffective. Under the right conditions, both system have demonstrated that they can work. What happened was that they simply became obsolete. Both systems encourage despotism. Communism with despotism of state and capitalism with despotism of elite classes. Thanks to a wired, on-line and always connected world population, that shit don't fly anymore.

Now we're in a state of flux. There is a power struggle of different ideas and factions battling it out to become the next dominant philosophy that guides the world. Religious and fringe political groups are in upheaval for that same reason. I suspect they are wasting their time.

Just as Socialism was an answer to the exploited working class of the 18th century or environmental parties came out as an answer to the reckless environmental damage of the 20th century, I believe a new political/philosophical movement shall rise in this new world. A movement that defies national boundaries and not so much ignores cultural differences but acknowledges the common bonds that ties us all as a human family.
It won't be easy. We have an enormous amount of baggage to throw away. Nationalism, racial prejudices, socio-economic elitism. Heck, there are some countries out there that still haven't realised that they are but a small part of a very big planet and see themselves as more important that the rest of the world. I wish them luck because some of them are already paying the price for their self-importance.

No one can survive on their own anymore. For a few countries, these lessons will not be learned but beaten into by the circumstances.
It will not be pretty and a lot will be lost. Some individual cultures will cease to exist and the world as a whole will be a bit poorer for it. But really, it is what may need to happen for us to survive. In the end, that's the name of the game, survival.

27janv.2013

Since I'm coming from a ex-communist country, I have to disagree with you - "Under the right conditions, both system have demonstrated that they can work". No, they haven't. And it's pretty simple. Communism has proven very quickly his inability to be viable regime (famine in Russia several years after the overthrowing of the tsar, then famine in Ukranie in the 1930's). Even you yourself wrote about it - a bowl of spaghetti could feed a whole family in North Korea.
Communism was built on a presumption, that every man is equal and shall be equal with the others in his possessions as well as in his social status. This NEVER worked. Social differencies in communist countries were huge, party member were treated completely different than the rest of the people, even particular nations in the Soviet Union weren't equal. The fall of communism in the 80's wasn't caused by globalization. It simply was economically dead. Because - yeah - lies won't feed the people. You have to actually produce something and be capable of selling it and getting something in return. This also never worked - with the exception of Yugoslavia, which separated from the rest of the "Eastern Bloc" in 1950's and focused on doing business with the West. But national problems in Yugoslavia ended the system only a bit later than communism's economical death in the rest of Europe.
This is also the difference between Europe and North Korea - North Korea's northern neighbour is semi-communist China and southern neighbour is minefields and wired fences. It's not so hard to keep the people out of touch with the outside world. In Europe, there were many neighbour states - and even the western communist republics were completely different than the eastern ones, so you could see the difference only by travelling to another "communist country".
IMHO globalisation will lead to one thing: in the end, people will become apathetic to the problems of the outside world and focus on their own problems. And we will go back to the civil society :) And maybe not :)

And I would counter this by saying that I came from a country where cut-throat capitalism was implemented with an iron fist. It destroyed the middle class leaving but a few elitist. This caused the economy to collapse as there was no consumer base to sustain the economy.
And I would also counter by saying that communism was indeed killed by globalisation. It attempted to create a self sustained bloc of nations while ignoring the rest of the world. What caused the economic collapse of the soviet union? One of the reasons was that they entered into a dick size competition with the USA. It was keeping up with it's neighbours that it could not ignore. this is a direct result of Globalisation.
Going at it alone may have been possible in the 18th or even the 19th century but in the 20th, you had to deal with the rest of the world.
But the truth is that like it or not, it did work for a while. After Stalin's death, Russia was lifted from an agrarian state into a scientific and cultural superpower, compared to many other countries, people in the Soviet union had it relatively good.
The system deteriorated quite quickly afterwards though, with far too many people wanting to get their hands on some pie rather that using logic and sense to look after it's own people.
Nobody said it was pretty, but it did work for a while under the right conditions. Like I said, communism collapsed because it ignored global realities, then in a panic it tried to catch up but it collapsed under it's own weight and lack of flexibility.

I'm not saying that capitalism isn't dead or dying, but democracy lives on. Communism could work only by threatening all the people to collaborate and sustaining a large army & police forces. Soviet Union did not fail in the cold war, communism did. Soviet communists were in many ways dependant on artificial market export/import with other countries of the Eastern bloc - and when they became falling apart, the whole system collapsed. For example - Soviets wouldn't be able to construct so many nuclear bombs had they not been supplied by cheap uranium from Czechoslovakia, where it was mined by political prisoners.
Capitalism slowly transformed into something else, communism simply collapsed, leaving the people mostly with nothing left. In other words - capitalism was a system economicaly strong enough to transform smoothly into something else, communism was never that strong. Also, Soviet Russia was a scientific superpower, in its own terms, but never a cultural superpower. Last great times of russian culture were in the early 1900's (silver age of russian culture).
And one more thing - Russia is a very specific country - as well as China. These countries could never really exist under a democratic rule, although they tried. Even today, globalisation impact is not as big there as expected.
People have many theories about almost everything, but they're still just people. They act the same for thousands of years - only the technology changes :) Communism, feudalism, capitalism, imperialism... something like that always existed and will always exist. I hope, that after we tried the extremes in the 20th century, we will ease up a bit :)

Of course democracy lives on, but democracy requires a wealth distribution system.
Capitalism was made strong through brutality an exploitation. North America and Western Europe were the face of capitalism but the truth was that the reason they lived so well was due to the exploitation and misery they were inflicting in places like Latin America. Brutal dictatorship states were imposed by Western powers to protect their own political interests and corporations.
But because of globalisation, the back end of capitalism is collapsing due to previously exploited nations building stronger democracies, policies and even economic models.

What we're seeing is a normalisation of extremes. Something new will come of it. I believe we will see a lot more mixtures of free market and socialism in the one pot.

I can agree with that statement :)

BDs, mangas, communauté !

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