Summary
1. How capitalism created the nation-state
2 - Nationalism as an instrument of ideological control
3 - To each nation a nation-state?
4. Capitalism magnifies the nation-state in its process of
consolidation
5 - The capitalist globalization
reconfigures the role of the nation-state
5
.1 - Some segments taken from the domain of nation-states
6 - The State, local manager of the
stratification of the Human beings
/// + \\\
5 - The capitalist globalization reconfigures the role of the
nation-state
Globalization
currently develops processes of subordination of nation-states[1] by the creation of
multi-national or international norms and institutions, assuming that the
nation-state level is too narrow.
Between the
nation-state of the past and the unification and uniformity of the planet by
multinationals and financial capital[2] where are peoples and
people? And from an active and prospective standpoint, what attitudes and
choices should people take?
During the predominance of industrial production, the need for labor was
resolved in the first instance internally by young people or coming from the
field in search of opportunity of livelihood and life.
On the other hand, in several countries, where industrial production was
insufficient to absorb the population increases generated in the countryside,
emigration was the alternative to live. Emigrants went to territories of
European colonization and in a great process of capitalist development or, where
the spaces were huge and the indigenous population scarce and marginalized
(mainly Brazil, Argentina, Australia, USA or Canada). For example, a hundred
years ago the Portuguese massively emigrated to Brazil or Argentina, the
Italians for those countries and the US, such as people from many other
European countries; in addition to African Americans moving from the US
agricultural south to the industrial regions of New York or Illinois; a march
drawn on the evolution of the blues.
Migrations entailed problems of social inclusion, xenophobic attitudes, and
ghetto creation. On the other hand,
it also resulted in pressure on the wages of indigenous workers because
migrants, to survive in a foreign land, with difficulties in cultural and
linguistic adaptation, tended to accept lower wages or more painful working
conditions than those in their own country.
The production tended to include all phases in the same space, with
thousands of employees in a single chain of command, accompanying the whole
production, the various components to the final product. As transport was slow
or irregular and logistics rudimentary, no major decentralization was possible
and production would have to be concentrated, if not in the same factory,
within the same city or limited to one region. For the same reasons, the fate
of industrial production was mainly confined to close consumers, in a
relationship that favored the widening of major conurbations.
This concentration of production induced a large concentration of
population and wage earners who lived near the factories, huddled in unhealthy
districts. And this general context of poverty and large families[3] facilitated the union of
workers against capitalists in the defense of their interests - wages, working
conditions, working time - with protests, demonstrations, strikes. The response
of the capitalists and the State was, invariably, one violent repression, with
arrests and assassinations, targeting the workers and their organizations; in
addition to that practiced through the “private” hiring of criminals aimed at
reaching the most active workers in the organization of the protests.
The globalization of capital has involved “its” workers in hard work,
directly linked to value production and military service, as agents of the
destruction of war, for the defense or enhancement of their homeland. Very
early on the workers realized their own globalization and, that across the
border, their comrades had the same problems with capitalists and governments,
with the same attitudes against the working class; It was the time of the
construction of the internationalist consciousness of the workers, which
occurred along the development of the industrial production, the transport
networks, the financial system and, the military technology.
This time of hard struggle just slowed down in the US and Europe, with
the final of the great recession of the 30s, through a plan of public works,
which only came to good overall results with the mobilization of workers and
material resources to the war effort and which underpinned the emergence of
Keynesianism. In Europe, the proliferation of fascist regimes spared few
countries - Britain, Scandinavian countries, Benelux and France despite a
strong fascist threat, declared with the establishment of the Vichy regime,
after the Nazi occupation.
The international competition embodied competition between companies
from various countries, wages and work conditions, as well as in the assault on
the raw materials of colonized or dependent countries. New technologies - machinery,
means of transport, sales and consumer promotion techniques - were quickly
adopted by competitors, constituting ephemeral advantages, requiring, since the
last quarter of the nineteenth century, new investments and mobilization of
capital, with cross-border character. In turn, public investment was geared to
harnessing ports, transport infrastructures, rail and road, canals, etc. as a
way of ensuring the competitiveness of national capitalists.
Massive use of the automobile and mass transportation was possible only
with the abundance of oil, with the creation of the pipeline and the tanker,
whose size and load capacity reached an unprecedented 500000 t during the
closing of Suez, not coming to realize the plans for ships with a capacity of
one million tons. The ores, mostly of iron and copper, reached the industrial
metropolises of Europe, North America, and Japan in huge bulk carriers,
requiring specialized and expensive port structures. Recently, there was the
relocation of heavy metallurgy and pollution for mining countries, ending units
in richer countries that purchase only, processed products; leaving CO2
emissions in poor countries.
Standardized container and container ships have substantially increased
reliability and speed in loading/unloading, helping to reduce the cost of
transport per unit of cargo. This has led to intermodal transport where several
logistics operators are articulated for an optimized solution involving various
modes of transport, from leaving the place of production to the place of
destination, probably thousands of kilometers away.
At the same time, at each point of change of means of transport, such as
at the place of origin or destination, stock management techniques (kanban, just in time…) are used to
minimize storage time (and costs) and developing night work and permanent work,
to make the investments profitable. An old business phrase has never been taken
so seriously: "time is money"[4].
Linked to these technological developments in mobility and logistics is
the current segmentation and relocation of material production. Rather than a
single factory that incorporates all stages of manufacturing, current
capitalism, segments this production into parcels, distributing them to
geographically distinct locations. This segmentation in simple installments is
necessary but, meaningless if isolated and, is applied to take advantage of low
price work, by itself or, in relation to the required level of knowledge; it
needs of places where any wage or labor demand is prohibited or suppressed by
the government ; in situations where unemployment is high and any factory, even
with low wages, is welcome - Volkswagen
in Palmela (Portugal) in the 1990s; in addition to other advantages, such as
the price of energy, the abundance of water, the militarization of labor, the
overexploitation of domestic work, especially of women and children; or , where
there are corrupt unions and governments. The workers' movements that since the
end of World War II had been adopting postures of collaboration with the
capitalists and of accepting a very dubious and arbitrary role of the
governments, suffered a brutal blow with the relocation, as factors of
separation and competition between workers of diverse geographies. These are
some of the great advantages of the relocation, related to the level of
production to the multinationals so constituted, that act on a level far beyond
the scope of a nation-state.
The number of large companies that build those networks draws enormous
power over nation-states hosts, whose acceptance requirements is assured,
because the use of the old weapon of nationalization not even make sense in the
context of a targeted production components, per se, useless outside the
network set up by the mother company. And, under that power over the
nation-state, the multinational - usually located in a rich country - can even
get local government subsidies to maintain employment to hundreds or thousands
of workers and put in competition different countries, poor and unstructured,
where are installed the relocated units.
The impotence of the vast majority of nation-states is even more evident
you when using entities off-shore in the circuit, with formulas ingenious of
overcharging or under-invoicing of elements produced in a country and billing
issued in off-shore, for minimize tax burden and maximization of
"value" for shareholders and management; that means, good conditions
for profit formation, capital accumulation and, dividend distribution. A case
released a few years ago[5] gave the lead to Swatch, a
Swiss company whose export was materialized by an invoice issued by a company -
consisting of a simple post office box - registered at the Madeira
International Business Center, based in Funchal; hence Madeira officially
figured as an exporter of watches… even if not even a pointer was made there.
Of course, the "export of watches" can change instantly and often
from “location”.
In the field of goods for final consumption, it can be offered for sale
in various corners of the globe, by companies captured by leonine contracts,
with a priori fixed prices, namely under franchise contracts, where the
franchised invests in infrastructure, which is determined in detail, by the
multinational company; and, having that company an assured performance with all
the risk under the responsibility of the local franchised.
In the case of communications, financial, marketing, health, education,
consulting… the dependency on the motherhouse does not differ except on the
nationality of the workers;
multinationals carry out some levels of decentralizations, supranational,
national, regional, to have an agile sells machine or production management.
And the internet has introduced a technical element of enormous shortening of
information exchange, accelerating the processes of transformation and avoids
the physical movement of workers and managers, as they did decades ago.
The banalization of air travel, especially tourism, facilitated the
links between people and knowledge of other realities, despite the
environmental impact (air pollution, noise); also the motorway networks, the
high-speed railways, the urban infrastructure , all substantially expanded the
area of operation and movement of people and goods , making porous borders and
tendencies of separation that no one connects , but, one day … for a future
framing in tourist itineraries; except at airports where governments fear of
bombings and hidden bombs.
The consolidation of the nation-state matrix has come to an end[6]; new nation-states no
longer appear as in the period of decolonization. English overseas territories
(the Caribbean offshores, Gibraltar or
Bermuda, Southern Atlantic territories, and Diego Garcia, leased to the US for
military control of South Asia, after eviction from its population) as well as
the French (in America, the Indian and the Pacific oceans) are small units with
little or no population but with important marine resources or strategic
positions, important for powers that still claim a global
performance they no longer have. Except as U.S. accessories to
configure the label of "international community".
In parallel with this segmentation that leads to the capture of
nation-states by the networks of multinationals, the financial system and the
capital of crime, is the construction of multi-national, essentially sectorial
coordinating organizations that develop plans on specific matters applicable to
their members. - NATO, WTO, WHO, SEATO, APEC… The most comprehensive have
limited powers over their members (UN, OSCE, UNASUR, OAS, ECOWAS, EEA, SCO…).
The European Union is the clearest and most developed case of multi-national, economic
and political integration which obviously restructures and re-hierarchized
spaces, maintaining huge differences in income and living conditions among the
peoples, as well as within each nation-state; in addition to a shy autonomy
claim towards the US who clearly are , overall, in a strategic loss. Still, it
is not advisable politically, nor economically fruitful for the life of the
people, a breakdown of the EU, mainly because it is not available a social and
political movement with an alternative and democratic framework of goals and
performances. Rightmost, the link to capital is clearly expressed; and, out of
the right political area, there is no strategy other than maintaining small
clienteles and raising public funds by focusing on short-term or media shows.
The interest of the peoples is subordinated to the accumulation of
capital and to the performance of the political classes in the above-mentioned
organizations, where the nation-states are represented. In other cases -
Bilderberg, Davos… - they fraternize, in a context of great secrecy, members of
international organizations, leading political classes, CEOs of multinationals,
big bankers, think-tanks …; beyond experimental convocation of politicians on
the rise in countries of smaller relevance.
Within productive and financial
infrastructure, of segmented production, a globalized capitalist class was
developed - the known 1% of the world population, popularized by Occupy Wall
Street movement[7]
- using each nation-state like a space suited to the development of, one or
another portion of a transforming process, which may be either the material
manufacturing, the production of a service, the circulation of electronic
impulses, generators of financial gain or, the installation of military bases.
On the other hand, technologies of information, social networks,
internet, overtake State checks, dispensing its intervention or presence The
process of globalization, of participation and sharing of information through
networks, is completely devoid of any concern regarding the integration or
densification of the intersectoral matrix within each nation-state, the balance
of external accounts or a greater complementarity among the companies of that
same nation-state; something that was of great concern at the time of the
planning structures typical in the state apparatus in the Keynesian era and
which continues in the ideas of the supposed leftists, as a rule, nationalists.
Thus, nation-states and their governments show they are small and
powerless to deal with all these realities, competing with each other in the
search for investments of multinationals, offering material, financial and tax
facilities to attract investors; and show service in the upcoming elections.
This dilution of boundaries and the power of the nation-states are resulting as
primary reactions, regionalist or nationalist drifts, xenophobic purity, religious
- evangelical sects, Christian, ISIS, the Taliban ... - with the support
of significant parts of frightened populations; and to an auto-centered focus,
that beyond the gods, focuses on family, sometimes in the community or, in the
most important belongings (home, car, mobile phone, money in the bank ...) and,
in US, the inescapable power of weapons. The awareness of the ineffectiveness
of the political classes is shown by the growth of electoral abstention, as
well as by the securitization, with the proliferation of guardians, in the
entry of companies, public services, supermarkets...
5 .1 - Some segments taken from the domain of nation-states
Of course, multinationals and the financial system are not preparing a
secret application of an anarchist project, without the nation-state, nor state
apparatus. National segmentation is useful for localized crowd supervision by
the respective political classes; it serves to maintain a certain degree of
competition, between geographical spaces, to secure investment by large
multinational groups. The existence of own state structures - repressive,
judicial and legislative apparatus - managed by a specific political class is a
generating factor of nationalism, of antagonism vis-à-vis other nation-states
and other peoples, for the benefit of those who know how to divide and reign.
The International is not part of the hymns most sung by the capitalists from
the base to the top.
The
debt
Capitalism has for decades ceased to be a dynamic force in the field of
material production, and now, is anchored in a financial drift, constituting
rising cascades of debt[8] which is self- feeding,
leaving behind a ballast of charges that, directly or indirect, are falling on
populations; it is a strict group, closed, of speculators, seeking as
instantaneous as possible for profits and, that no way favor the not involved
in that voluptuousness; but, whose fall is transmitted to the general
population, by the hand of governments and political classes close and paid by
the said financial system[9]. The political classes, on
one hand, surrender public goods and business to the sacrosanct private
initiative and, by creating deficits as routine, issue debt securities that are
quickly absorbed by speculators who surrender them as collateral to central
banks. In the event of a global financial disaster, no one will remember to
write off public debts, as nation-states will always have the population to
repay them.
Information Control
The needs of the global infrastructure where information circulates,
almost instantaneously, are permanent and, derived in large part from the whims
anchored in the proper functioning of the financial system; and, as a result,
that global infrastructure is shared by a wide range of interests, from the
common personal communication, access to information without warranty of
widespread reliability and even less privacy. Those reservations about the
circulating on the internet became more evident with the massive introduction
of the famous fake news.
Personal data and opinions are captured and explored by data collection
companies, notably social networking, messaging or other platforms such as the
famous Cambridge Analytics … whose mentor is Boris Johnson's instructor. Data
mining, in real-time and huge amounts, allow the capture of personal
information, where each person lives or circulates any moment, once the mobile
phone, the GPS and the computer are antennas in a true service to those
companies… as well as spy or police services. In turn, capital transfers, the
tax evasion of the powerful, the accumulation of capital in offshore accounts
are not disturbed because they constitute essential interfaces between the
financial system, the criminal world and, the political classes. At the same
time, the migration of the occupation of time watching TV - which required some
physical immobilization - to the mobile phone, makes the use of the internet
more extensive in space and more intensive in time; not to mention the
emptiness of what invades the brains, especially of the young. In all these
processes, the intervention of the political structures of each nation-state is
minimal because the operators of these technologies have much greater
intervention powers than those of the heavy physical and localized equipment.
What matters to them is the fluidity compatible with market appetite for data
collection and advertising.
Treaties that depreciate nation-states
The recent formulations of the major treaties emanate from arbitral
tribunals (a kind of parallel courts, outside the jurisdiction of any country)
- Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), Comprehensive Economic
and Trade Agreement (CETA ) and Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) - place the
rights of multinationals above those imputed to the nation-states . They are
inserted on power transfer logic to large capitalist enterprises, putting the
nation-states, in a subaltern situation face those; any transgression results
in high penalties in favor of multinationals that ultimately will correspond to
higher tax burdens or public debt, which will burden incomes of the population
or promote reduction of public social spending, on behalf of the sacrosanct
balanced budget.
A
global monetary system without currency
The availability of cards with chip,
custom use, debit, credit, purchases of goods or services, enables information
to commercial companies, as for the global financial system networks on housing,
types of consumption, income, personal relationships; hence there is a long
pressure to generate card buying and payment habits, an ongoing trend that will
lead in the medium term to the abolition of physical money ... accused of
having a high cost of production and circulation.
Its abolition will also make disappear all and any monetary movement
beyond what is embedded in the financial system databases and intermediary
companies that live around, as the "old" type cards Visa and many
others; it will be the domain of Big Brother and the desired end of
"informal economies". A serious flaw, the product of computer
sabotage, or war, can put millions of people with no way to buy or trade
anything, with catastrophic consequences that will put the old direct exchange
back on the ground.
On the other hand, since money is only symbols circulating on the
Internet and controlled by the financial system, states no longer issue notes
and coins and the central bank no longer has money to manage; just as the mass
of values embodied in so-called derivative products is not managed today.
Anticipating this scenario, a virtual currency type bitcoin or libra
(currency announced by Facebook), point to a near future, the existence of
means of payment with a total intangibility, based on chains of electronic
impulses, constantly moving and accelerated, embedded in the logic of
self-reproduction, cumulative, disconnected from materiality and any
nation-state.
Nation-states have traditionally been thirsty for controlling people and
their incomes. This new situation of dematerialization of the currency and its
full integration into the globalized financial system means that the state
apparatus will also introduce all its flows, all acts related to its functions
- taxes collection and maintenance of health services, education, application
of justice, military and police corps ... under the control of the financial
system. Is it the abolition of state power and the absolute dominance of the
globalized financial system?
The
education systems
Standardization of education systems is an essential desire for big
business that wants to broaden the mid-range and upper recruitment base by
introducing a common way of thinking and acting that allows a standardized
"employability" that can serve any multinational enterprise, anywhere
on the planet. In China, and according to the tradition of producing a
competent public administration (dating back to the 14th century),
"leadership academies" such as CELAP in Shanghai, CELAJ in Jingaushan
and CELAY in Yan'na have been created since 2005 following similar institutions
opened in Singapore; even students continue to go to … Silicon Valley, to
familiarize with innovation. Two worlds, two single-purpose systems -
maximizing capital accumulation or, more popularly, GDP growth, in the context
of commercial, technological and geopolitical competition that could lead to
global or regionalized proxy wars.
Teaching is intended to produce value creation agents, armed with the
necessary entrepreneurship that allows a winning competition against the
competitors, with a spirit of sacrifice that subordinates family and personal
life; and yet it will remain in a precarious context because labor rights are
aberrations today. Management techniques are presented as ways to produce
productivity gains, competitiveness, through computer programs with adequate
rigidity to avoid discussions, doubts and, creativity on the part of the users.
Integration into obedience and sacrifice as a rule.
In this normalized context, the social sciences or the arts are
depreciated as instruments for understanding reality because, as they are not
inserted in the competitive environment, they do not have
"employability".
For young people, higher education is a factory of obedience, of neoliberal
format and very standardized. Those who remain critical will also have to keep
quiet to secure the job and, whoever does not restrain himself from his
insignificance is devalued and pushed into useless bureaucratic tasks - the
Bullshit jobs[10]
- in the margins of value creation.
6
- State, local manager of human stratification
The
existence of a framework of political dominance requires a segmentation of the
society - and every person – in the convenient aspects to a peaceful continuity
of the condition of a subject. To do this, each helot must be transformed into
a zealot of the motherland and capital, without the awareness that he behaves
like an idiot.
In very distant times, the first human being whom others believed to be
able to foresee the storms and heal the sick, gained authority over the rest,
as he was given the power to communicate with the unknown, powerful beings who
ruled the earth, rain and drought, life and death, what happened on earth or the
stars. These predestined, in communication with the unknown, deserve the
respect of the rest who, in their turn, they thought they needed priestly
support[11] to intervene with the
Beyond to give them rain, good crops, and good health; that would be the
subject of human sacrifice or animals, to elevate the power of the gods and
their intermediates, removing, therefore the recourse to the divine
intervention to puerile questions.
Thus was found the priestly caste, whose dedication to the revelation of
the divine moods was a difficult work which the community could not do, nor
could dispense; hence it was accepted his exemption from the hard work of
securing his livelihood.
To ensure a life well, with good or bad harvests, independently of the
mood of the gods, the priestly caste demanded the people a material
contribution (grain, cattle, work or currency). Having into consideration
ordinary people do not always want or could give their contributions, the
priestly caste created one coercive power and the means to ensure it - armed
individuals to exercise tax collection functions, to defend the priests riches
against invaders and, oblige people to work for the realization of the
appropriate "investments" to the visibility of the greatness of the
kings-priests for eternity.
From this merger started the beginning of the legitimation, exclusively,
of fiscal exaction, the exercise of coercion and violence in which the royal
and priestly powers were merged, since immemorial time; and for this to happen
legitimacy is essential to be accepted by those who will be subordinate under
those hierarchical structures. Through the centuries and in any form of
society, the emergence of hierarchies has been concomitant with dominance
relations; and the endogenization of these social and mental structures in the
various peoples and all historical eras following the
"specialization" of functions referred to above. Over the centuries,
a long-term state of mind - an empire - has sedimented itself, in which some in
each generation stands as rulers, deciding for all others, and in which this
domain is taken naturally, an inherence of the species; or, who accept this
preponderance, this power, by comfort or fear, and integrate within themselves
that state of mind, reproducing it, accepting this division between dominant
and dominated, as part of human nature. This imperial spirit is transverse in
time and space, revealing itself at the moment when someone emerged as having
powers of communication with the beyond and when this was accepted by the
others, thus emerging the primordial social division between human beings.
Thus began the creation of a structured power of human groups, elevated
to a status of dominance over the rest of the population, by the sacralization
of their functions from which the imposition of fiscal duties and the
obligation to perform military functions, in a context of acceptance of a
general duty of obedience and submission to this elite; with greater or lesser
use of the sacred. Those who did not belong to the caste were segmented by the
caste as worker, taxpayer, soldier, spectator or just a thing if they were
slaves; a classification that has changed designations - but not functions -
according to historical times.
Conversely, in the twentieth century, according to René Dumont, in the
context of colonized Africa, there were three structuring entities in the lives
of peoples - le militaire, le
missionnaire, le marchand; the first as aggressor, the second to generate domestication and the third to
plunder.
Of course, Dumont's analysis reflected the racist behavior of Europeans,
to deal with "wild", without specialization but, needing of
domestication, to be integrated into the wonderful society of work. Race is
especially valuable as a way of assignment of the toughest tasks and very low
price to a population for this purpose, subordinated, infantilized.
In what we call market democracies, power is exercised less brutally and
more mellifluously in the domestication of peoples. The regular election of
leaders as representatives of the people in the selection of caretakers for the
fulfillment of the multiple duties assigned to the people; it is intended to be
done peacefully, with consent, as a rule, by the alternation between two little
differentiated parties. "Something
needs to change for everything to stay the same" (Giuseppe Tomaso di
Lampedusa).
In the view of dominant political and economic structures, human beings
are, in the first instance, classified by their nationality, by the
nation-state normally attributed to them at birth. The absence of this primary registration
will have as consequences real non-existence and is complemented throughout
life by many other frameworks, granted by the State in its various facets, as
undertakings for the financial system and even, instances of other
nation-states. This gives rise to the appreciation (positive or negative) that
is given to each person who is thus controlled and conditioned throughout his
or her life, leaving even post mortem
duties to the heirs.
However, there are several situations of double, triple… nationality,
especially for those who are wealthy. And also there are situations of absolute
refusal, targeting poor or refugees, in situations of humanitarian care; then
nationality matters little or is even anathema.
This conditioning to humans is multifaceted. In the first instance, it
shows the segmentation of individuals according to their relevance on the scale
of capitalist returns in general;
·
At the top are the individuals who
manage the reproduction of capital, either directly as participants in the production
process or through intervention in the circulation of goods and capital;
·
The following are individuals who - not
performing any productive functions - are essential for the maintenance of the
capitalist system and its political structures. In this context, are included
the political classes and members of the apparatus with functions in the area
of repression, ideological or social control and the judicial strains. They
are, as a whole, a simple cost, but profitable from a systemic point of view;
·
Who follows are the performers of
working functions, subordinated workers,
incorporated in the corporate hierarchy or the State apparatus; and
that, in turn, they are staggered, according to their specializations and labor
links, placing at the end, the most undifferentiated or precarious;
·
At a lower level are those who are
unnecessary or surplus to the system but who marginally allow the viability of
less noble sectors of capitalists with lower profit rates, such as the
"social economy"; or the subsidized unemployed who are obliged to pay
a perform as "social work";
·
In the end, at the level of the
hierarchy built by capital, are the tout
court surpluses - unemployed, especially the long-term ones or, pensioners
- for whom the system reserves emigration, deprivation, shortening life,
invisibility and, disappearance.
Each individual from his birth record presents himself as a single and
indivisible monad; however, this monad has the form of a polyhedron, with many
faces, using essentially according to the interests of capital accumulation and
its managers, at the level of State or other instances, political, economic,
social or ideological. Thus, each person is considered in a fragmented way,
according to the functions in which capitalism integrates and uses it (or does
not want to use it). Such use may be made from a strictly economic point of
view as a producer, consumer or debtor; as a political entity, with rights and
duties; as thinking being - in the development of immanent capacities; or, as
manure to recycle, more slowly in a cemetery, or by diluting in a crematorium,
leaving as remnants, a gray box and the tax registration.
Materially, each person is present in a great diversity of databases,
and parameterized from various angles, with some aspects here and others there,
according to specific analyzes performed on huge masses of information. That
information is held by the State, the private consultants and, increasingly, the
global big data compilers who sell it for commercial, trend-setting, political,
military or media manipulation.
Let us now look at the main facets of this polyhedron that mirror the
fragmentation of individuals according to the interests of capitalism as a
whole and certain segments of its economic, political or ideological structures,
in particular:
·
The consumer is a courted
individual, land seen through the potential of his income or the bank cards he
has.
Rich
or poor, the consumer is a lode to exploit, to charm with the satisfaction of
obvious or other needs resulting from display, the satisfaction of small
jealousies, the occupation of more or less cultural activities, such as idiotic
or barbarous distractions, where the protagonists reveal themselves in their
most beastly repressions. The market is vast, creative, comprehensive,
insinuating, mellifluous and amoral; it flatters the consumer only as long as
he has means, current or future, to use
in consumption.
·
The collaborator is the
designation of the wage earner in the novilingua
of neoliberalism. It is no longer the worker, the wage earner, the labor force,
the factory worker, or another epithet revealing the subordination and
antagonism towards the boss, who is now also metamorphosed into "employer.
These designations embody intended to iron out the social contradictions and
point the "employer" as a successful case of struggling creator of
value and employment, using as a resource the "collaborator", a happy
marriage that, with the entrepreneurship of both parties will promote the
creation of wealth and employment, per
omnia secula seculorum. The employer is a benefactor because he creates
employment and the employee will be the devoted and eternal thankful, for the
mercy of the job ... until the dismissal comes.
The
collaborator designation is a figure appearing in the business
"literature", in documents and sites of the companies and also under
the resource designation, knowing that is disposable, a gender of inflatable,
which both fills as it can drain out. Employees are often dismissed as
unemployed as a result of internal restructuring while not becoming (yet) a
waste.
·
The debtor is a usual consequence
of employee and consumer situations as it is the income associated with the
first category that makes banks open to credit for consumption. Those who are
not collaborators do not get the banks' collaboration, even though it justifies
their need for credit; Nor he will have access to credit cards, with those
fabulous designations such as "gold", "golden",
"platinum," "premium", which serve to elevate the
customer's ego and convince them of his great importance to the institution.
Banks
are always beckoning - credit for homes, cars, travel, furniture, computers,
anything that can anchor the income of any unwary to bank repayment for
decades. Any bank will be happy to have, for several decades, a guaranteed
income, a mortgage and insurance in its favor, paid by the debtor, happy for
access to property and consumption.
Particularly
due to the deference of the political class, the employees and consumers also
carry the burden of State debt, contracted by the political class and
immediately socialized under a phrase as stupid as common as false "the
State is all of us".
·
The access to the glorious category of taxpayer
is assumed at birth; the first diaper pays VAT; and that's just a smooth,
unconscious beginning of the financial obligations to the State, the
nation-state manager. The famous Tax ID Number (TIN) is the pivot that will accompany each other's lives and even burden the
lives of children or heirs. The shadow is extinguished with death, but the TIN
does not.
Behind
the TIN is always the State, thirsty to increase the amount of taxes to bridge
the deficit, to invest and helps the competitiveness of the capitalists; since
without those, the figure of the collaborator would not exist. In other words,
God, after creating the capitalist, decided to create the collaborator to serve
that one.
In
his role as a patriotic taxpayer, the individual will provide the State so that
the political class can distribute welfare, tranquility… to everyone. For the
illiterate in politics, the payment of taxes is a change from the pocket of the
pants to the pocket of the coat because the State is a common house. And paying
taxes is supporting governments to help national banks and guarantee… national
independence.
·
In the bad show that is what we call
market democracy, to the adult population is offered the voter status,
which thus decides who will appropriate the proceeds of tax collection; knowing
that, as a rule, the voter generally has no right to be a candidate. To become
eligible, the voter must belong to a party oligarchy, enjoy the sympathy of the
party boss, or fill the party's treasury with important donations.
·
In addition to the aforementioned
functions, the market offers elements for the filling of time, fixing the
individual in activities as a spectator. Attentive, the market offers
many alternatives for the viewer, all of them encouraging a consumer activity,
the appropriation of goods. A spectacle is mounted around each person to integrate
and qualify all the moments ass acts of consumption; a consumption that does
not satisfy other needs than the capture of the available time, especially
through the image and a primary hedonism and, little reflection; a consumption
covering the free spectacle of wrestling provided by the political class.
The capitalist system is invasive and would not be content to free
people after a day's work; it appropriates their time not devoted to the
production of goods or services and, to this aim, has increased the relevance
of the part devoted to ideological content, the flattening of deductive
capacities, the diversion of activities of social or political protagonism, the
generation of social numbness. Capitalism seizes space-time, rebuilding it
incessantly; it is a biopolitical control system. The market offers everything,
makes everything available, it is a complete system that, like an amoeba, does
not need the other to reproduce. The market is the system and the system is the
market.
Like any element necessary for commodity production, man has a period of
maturity as an instrument for the reproduction of capital; another, where it is
downright productive; and a third to which the theory of decreasing yields is
applied, where an increase in age corresponds to a lower productivity for the
system as a whole.
Including people as waste has several origins. They are the
oldest, with a retirement pension increasingly close to biological longevity
and increasingly short replacement incomes; a range of the youngest, unskilled
or unskilled by the "market", with occasional occupations or away
from their specializations… so uncompetitive; and those that increase the flow
of refugees, of wars, hunger or the environmental impacts of the disruptions
contained in the functioning of "markets" and subjected to
humiliation, violations, underpaid and precarious work, always at the risk of
racist violence or of expulsion.
In the present time of financial capital predominance, value generation
through the production of goods and services leads to various problems in which
human beings are parameters rather than objectives. Information technologies
and robotization reduce the incorporation of direct labor into the production
of goods and services, and what is incorporated carries higher qualifications;
this results in increased productivity, increased competition and large
populations in unemployment, underemployment, and the abandonment of
populations based outside of the advanced and globalized capitalism, living in
the midst of all needs, insecurity, ecological and climatic problems.
The ecological problems[12] are growing and become
popular but within some passivity or technocratic approaches contained within
the operating parameters of the capitalist system as well in the naive belief
in a more committed role of the political classes. If this continues to be the
case, capitalism will do something to prevent environmental catastrophes,
damage to the insurance (and financial) sector, taking into account the return
of invested capital and investor expectations. It will put on stage
technologies and measures with environmental impacts less harmful, taking into
account various assumptions, such as proper financial amortization of
investments present on the ground and impacting negatively; the opportunity to
invest large capital in new, "environmentally friendly" technologies
as is often referred by technocratic, tolerant ecologism towards capitalism;
and will seek to outsource to the poorest countries and regions of the capitalist
periphery, the most environmentally damaging activities, counting find there
the tolerance, elements of political and economic disruption or, the presence
of clearly venal political classes.
Solutions that can be called ecofascism are foreshadowed, with a world
population diminished from its present "excess" to 1000/2000 million
human beings in the sign of the century[13]; or even 600 million, a
figure that was pointed out at a Bilderberg meeting[14]where secrecy is the rule.
Nation-state, nationalism, instruments of capitalism (1/3)
https://www.slideshare.net/durgarrai/nationstate-nationalism-instruments-of-capitalism-1-part
(english)
Nation-state, nationalism, instruments of capitalism (2/3)
This and other documents in:
[3]
The large number of children led to the designation of factory workers
as proletarians, even though child mortality was very high, as opposed to low
life expectancy.
[4] To the extent that
Montu-branded 28-hour standard watches have been invented and produced by the
Japanese company Sports Train (quoted in Anselm –Jappe et al. El Absurdo
Mercado de Los Hombres Sin Cualidades)
Other texts in English and Portuguese, see
- http://grazia-tanta.blogspot.com/
[9] Obama has tried for several
months to contain the repercussions of the subprime crisis on the financial
environment but has stopped resisting and has decided to prevent a more
catastrophic recession with a substantial increase in public debt.
[10]
Bullshit Jobs: A Theory” - David Graeber
[11] For many centuries in
Christianity, masses were said in Latin which the Most High would surely know,
but ordinary believers did not; as a result, the intervention of the priests
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