[Reader-list] Guardian Unlimited: Daring to dream

[Keith Hart]

>Sanjay Ghosh spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.
>
>To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk
>
>Daring to dream
>Europe is no utopia but, using Britain as a bridge, it can share its global vision with the US
>Jeremy Rifkin
>Wednesday September 01 2004
>The Guardian
>  
>

I am mystified why an article like this should be posted to the list 
without comment and apparently without expectation of discussion. More 
to the point, I haven't a clue how readers might be expected to respond 
to it. Let me briefly summarise what Rifkin has to say in this puff his 
new book.

There is a European dream to match the American dream, but it is about 
transnational community rather than personal enrichment and is "bound to 
the welfare of the planet". The EU economy is now bigger than that of 
the US and in many indicators betters it. Europeans work to live and 
Americans live to work. Britain (wait for this) can be a bridge allowing 
the "two great superpowers of the 21st century" to synthesise their 
differences for the benefit of the world as a whole. But the British 
will have to decide where they think they belong.

I can understand this being peddled in the Guardian to nourish the 
faltering egos of its British readers. But what is it doing on 
reader-list? Would most Indian readers easily see this for the moonshine 
it is or are they expected to adjust their sights to this eternal 
western hegemony? Dream on.

What Rifkin's ecstatic list of economic indicators fails to point out is 
that, thanks to the neo-liberal world economy they have jointly 
sponsored in the last quarter-century, America and Europe have stolen 
vast sums from the rest of the planet through rigged money markets, debt 
interest, rents from 'intellectual property' in drugs, food, culture and 
much else. They have erected a property regime that rewards big money to 
the cost of everyone else. They police the inequality they have 
generated with instruments of legal and military coercion.

But this attempt to establish a global command economy is doomed because 
it depends on unleashing technological and social forces (of which the 
internet is the most obvious manifestation) that are inherently 
progressive and revolutionary. The result is the West is becoming more 
rigid and dependent on high-cost infrastructure while production is 
moving inexorably elsewhere. Manufactures have already been relocated to 
Asia, especially China, and anglophone information services are finding 
their way to India. It is inconceivable to me that the billions of 
cheap, hardworking Asians will not put this self-appointed global 
aristocracy out of business -- and long before the 21st century is out. 
American and Europe economic power is already collapsing under the 
weight of their attempt to con and bully the rest of humanity into 
supporting them at a living standard they can't afford. This shift is at 
one level between generations, since the rich old West can no longer 
reproduce itself. But it will take some intellectual and political 
leadership to give shape to this materialist logic.

As a counter-weight to Rifkin's self-serving twaddle, I would strongly 
recommend a recent posting on the nettime list:

THREE PROPOSALS FOR A REAL DEMOCRACY
Information-Sharing to a Different Tune
by Brian Holmes

This can be found at:

http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0408/msg00095.html

But here we begin to tread on the turf of the commons-law list. And as 
for a dithering Britain, whose creeping constitutional crisis is the 
subject of an article I published in the Times Higher this week, I will 
abstain from more comment until I can post a URL.

Keith Hart







Somehow I have to capture in this pamphlet the absurdity of allowing 
these American and European banks, drugs companies etc to absorb the 
wealth produced by the rest of the world including their own citizens. 
Apart from turning the world's money markets into an unearned bonanza 
for the US economy via Wall Street and the Fed's management of the 
dollar, the rents extracted from commodities like drugs are amazing -- 
the top ten drugs companies in the Fortune 500 made more profit last 
year than the other 490 together. In the meantime US health costs 
tripled in a decade and the job market is collapsing under the strain, 
as it has in France.

My friend Don Billingsley is touting Pat Buchanan's latest, Where the 
right went wrong, for the clarity of its critique, if not for the 
constructive policies. I have ordered it. The problem is that the 
reputation of America and Europe in th erest of the world, like 
Gilligan's Island post-fiat currency, is much higher than is warranted 
by current economic realities. And, if Rifkin is anything to go by, they 
will be able to sit on top of an unending stream of loot indefinitely 
without even acknowledging where it came from. The Hollywood film 
industry is a good example of the tendency, since the Brits, having 
watched their own movie business being killed off by American 
skulduggery in the 20th century, now insist on sheltering behind this 
benign special relationship.

i wonder what readers of the Sarai list make of postings like that.