Is the Hokey Pokey REALLY what it's all about?

The unfortunate reality of frequent injustice and widespread inequality present in the world today, gives good reason for one to ask the question 'why?' and moreover, what are the alternatives to the dominant systems of market capitalism and liberal democracies that have allowed these inequalities to continue. A brief reading of Fukuyama's 'End of History' may lead you to believe that there are currently no alternatives, or at least, no viable alternatives to capitalist liberal democracies. Whether you understand Fukuyama's thesis as the grand triumph of 'western' social, political and economic systems, or as a disheartening realisation that there are limits to the extent of selfless human nature, either way it certainly encourages me to seek out a more encompassing and thorough understanding of the alternatives.

One such alternative has been presented in some of Chomsky's earlier work on anarchism and I was hopeful that it would contain a few refreshing ideas. It seems that in many ways anarchism applies a similar understanding of society as socialism or communism, however different in their conception of authority. Anarchism has the same reliance on participation being freely undertaken by the individual. I do not wish to retract my earlier sentiment and favour for selfless human nature but I do not intend to have blind faith in humanity either. It is the reliance on work as being freely undertaken that I question. That everyone will participate in the community and become involved because of an inner impulse to this 'highest want in life' is highly questionable. Clearly, Chomsky does not envisage himself as part of a socialist, communist or anarchist state in the waste management or service industry. Anarchism does not provide an answer to how is it that the debilitating, menial and dangerous jobs will just be 'freely undertaken' by the individual, perhaps society should engage in some form of individual subsistence farming so that these jobs do not exist?? And for this we must somehow deny our tendency to value items that we have a particular affinity for.

By placing a value on products we are simply formalising the preference for one item over another. This is all that capitalism is; nothing more, nothing less, and personally I do value things differently. The enjoyment I get from reading a book is far greater than the convenience of having an object to stop a door from closing, and so I place a higher value on a book than I do on a doorstop. A system that is able to assign value to products in this way will be successful because it reflects natural human behaviour. Assigning different values to products is market capitalism. Which is all good and well but when the free market enables such a gross inequality in the distribution of wealth there should be some measures taken, as there must be some way, to achieve a more balanced distribution of wealth.

I think in many ways it does come back to the individual, theirs choices and involvement with collective action. Most of us are capable of volunteering our time, if not money, to local charity organisations or community groups. Alternatively, the many overseas or internationally focused organisations and NGOs that deal with humanitarian aid, famine relief, microloans, global justice and human rights, not only depend on their volunteers and charitable donations but also benefit from any increased awareness and public support for their cause. Furthermore, we should support the politicians that take up these issues. Though admittedly, the individual can be somewhat removed from the political process and when politicians lie, cheat, deceive, drink like sailors on leave, get blowjobs in the Whitehouse, take paper bag bribes and then attack the poor wait staff of a restaurant, it is hard not to think of politics as some tawdry wheel o' fortune game show.



Unfortunately, the consequence is that more and more people have become disillusioned and feel alienated from the political process but the responsibility does not lie solely with the political elite. If you won't take action yourself, there's no point expecting your representative to do so. Especially given the fact that governments are increasingly beholden to the transnational corporate hegemons which operate virtually unrestricted by national borders in a global marketplace that has no moral or ethical basis for the distribution of wealth. TNCs financially support the political parties that allow them to freely operate and also provide often desperately needed capital for the national economy, but in doing so TNCs cede power from government bodies and diminish state sovereignty. This is discussed at length in some of Saskia Sassen's work that is well worth taking the time to read.

The distribution of goods and services in a capitalist market economy does not require a completely unregulated and unfettered 'free market' for it to operate. The overwhelming consensus in favour of economic liberalisation and deregulation is a relatively recent change in economic policy. Baffled by the combination of stagnant economic growth and continued inflation (stagflation) in the 1970s President Nixon followed by Reagan in the United States and later Thatcher in England opted to pursue the liberal economic theory of Friedrich Hayek. Unsure as to why the policies of controlled economic management were not sufficiently guiding the economy to provide steady growth, the once popular Keynesian economic modeling was all but abandoned. By lowering tariffs, offshoring manufacturing, floating the national currency and the privatisation of the public sector, governments integrated into a world economy. Often implemented as a 'shock therapy' solution to stimulate growth or stem hyperinflation. Trade liberalisation is a means of destructive creation, whereby the initial effect is that prices would rise and growth would slow, but further on economies are then able to achieve sustained growth. As Paul Keating declared to Australia it was 'the recession we had to have'. There is an excellent three part series called 'Commanding Heights' produced by PBS that covers the history of dominant economic theories in the 20th Century and if you have read this far, it is probably of some interest to you.

In countries with weak political and financial institutions, or without the legal and regulatory bodies to implement the process of integration with the world economy, economic liberalisation was disastrous. The most notable example is the Asian economic crisis of the 1990s, but also in Latin America with the collapse of the Mexican and Bolivian economies. Of course, this did not stop the developed countries and the IMF from providing (and I use the word 'providing' very loosely) their cure-all economic liberalisation pill, for whom they were ultimately the beneficiaries. Hayek's liberal economic theory saw market economies as more akin to a force of nature that will, and should be allowed to, dictate its own direction, rather than an intricate machine that could be controlled by governments. The United States for most of the 20th Century pursued a relatively liberal economic policy, with the exception of agricultural tariffs. However, the United States has on several occasions facilitated incredible debt relief, notably in Mexico, that seems to be quite contradictory in terms of their history and conviction that capital markets pursue a natural path, guided as they are by what Adam Smith described as the invisible hand of supply and demand. The United States latest attempt to circumvent the natural corrections of a free market is in relation to their recent financial crisis. Where the artificially inflated real estate market was propped up by the rampant and largely unregulated home loans and credit sector. Now that the 700 billion dollar economic relief package has finally passed through the US Senate, perhaps we are once again leaning towards the controlled economies put forth by John Maynard Keynes.

Over the past thirty years the economic divide has continued to grow. The United Nations Development Report (2004) showed that the world's richest third of countries increased their per capita income on average by 1.9% every year between 1970 and 1995, whilst the middle third increased by an average only 0.7% and the world's poorest countries showed no increase whatsoever over the quarter century. One figure provided by the UN Development Report (1995-2005) that is often used as a measure of poverty is the number of people living on less than US$1 a day, and indeed between 1995 and 2005 this figure dropped significantly. However, the number of people that live on less than US$2 a day, a staggering 2.8 billion people, more than accounts for the drop in US$1 a day figures. This does not mean that more people are now twice as wealthy, US$2 buys about the same amount of poverty as one dollar used to.



Thankfully, many developed countries, the IMF, the World Bank and international institutions, such as the UN and ASEAN, have realised the devastating effects these policies had. Now abandoning the false assumptions of a 'win-win' situation that was predicted by many economists and disseminated by a flurry of 'free traders' in the late 20th Century. No doubt, in part assisted by the anti-globalisation, G8 and G20 summit protests that have run furiously around the world. Personally, I don't agree with their exact opinions or the sentiment that drove so many people to speak out against globalisation and international cooperation. Nevertheless, I applaud any effort to question and challenge the dominant theories and policies that guide our world system. It is now a matter of voting not only with your ballot paper, but your voice, your feet and your consumer dollar as well.

In allowing myself a modest glimpse of optimism, I will believe that through the international cooperative efforts of ASEAN, the G8 and G20 summits and the UN, combined with the new direction of the less politically encumbered IMF and World Bank the influence of TNCs to direct policy will be increasingly quelled and sovereignty will become the coordination of mutually beneficial joint efforts between states, a kind of shared sovereignty. This may seem like the wide-eyed aspirations of an idealist that has been somewhat tempered by a dose of cynicism. Held together in a protracted, prolonged and lingering diatribe that ends with the overly optimistic hopes and dreams of an oxymoronic notion of 'shared sovereignty' as the future of international relations. And on all counts you'd be exactly right, but you chose to read The Ambivalent Soapbox and you can't very well unread it.