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Nationalist and autarkic movements, once thought to have died with the fascist regimes of the 1940s, are resurgent once again today. The experiment of European Union faces the possibility of political and economic disunity and dissolution with calls for border controls in the face of the Syrian refugee crisis. Populist movements favoring right-wing authoritarians are gaining ground in Europe and America in response to the prospect of a worsening inequitable economic future and a crisis of identity against the Muslim/non-white Other. Free trade agreements and globalized capital that is purported to lift all boats economically across the world has been seen to fracture the working and middle-classes and shrink their share of returns on GDP while enriching the already-wealthy. The promise of a global citizenry is marred by the specter of xenophobia and anger of the many at the feeling of being betrayed what they were once promised. That said, how do we reconcile this growing nationalism with the desire to progress to a world that views itself not in terms of borders and political division but a globalized exchange of people, ideas and culture; a population educated and directed towards working across country borders irrespective of birth origin? History is not an interminable march towards progress and enlightenment, so can we view this neo-autarkic nationalism as a one-off event or speedbump on the way towards further globalization? Or is it a distinct rebellion against globalization? Can populist nationalism coexist with the philosophy and economics of globalization? I welcome your thoughts and debate.
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Mar 4, 2016 20:51
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:Free trade agreements and globalized capital that is purported to lift all boats economically across the world has been seen to fracture the working and middle-classes and shrink their share of returns on GDP while enriching the already-wealthy. The promise of a global citizenry is marred by the specter of xenophobia and anger of the many at the feeling of being betrayed what they were once promised. The record is a bit more complicated. While there's a lot of misunderstanding of China's economy (which isn't a paragon of free markets) the fact stands that changes in the global economy that tend to get lumped under the not terribly useful label of "globalization" have allowed China to import capital and access foreign markets (while manipulating their own domestic economy to protect it from foreign competition) that have actually lifted tens of millions out of poverty. Whether that's sustainable and whether that should be attributed to capitalism or globalization rather than, say, technological change or internal political developments, can be debated. But if you can't acknowledge some of the positive developments of the last few decades then you're going to struggle to convince people to take your more negative assessment seriously. quote:That said, how do we reconcile this growing nationalism with the desire to progress to a world that views itself not in terms of borders and political division but a globalized exchange of people, ideas and culture; a population educated and directed towards working across country borders irrespective of birth origin? Is this actually desirable? quote:History is not an interminable march towards progress and enlightenment, so can we view this neo-autarkic nationalism as a one-off event or speedbump on the way towards further globalization? Or is it a distinct rebellion against globalization? Can populist nationalism coexist with the philosophy and economics of globalization? You haven't actually defined the philosophy or economics of globalization so this is a hard question to answer. Is there a single monolithic philosophy of globalization or are we actually just watching the world divide into separate economic regions taht each have their own unique strategy for adapting to a post Cold War world? Also I do not see any country outside of North Korea that could really be described as autarkic or aspiring to autarky. In many ways the most successful countries of this era have been the ones who based their strategy around strategic exporting. Asian countries like South Korea, China or Vietnam have pioneered a successful strategy of exporting products to the west, Germany has secured its economic position in large part by turning the Eurozone into a captive trading area in which superior German exports can be dumped into peripheral markets, absorbing surplus production that can't be bought by Germany's domestic market. For that matter, every country relies on imported raw materials and, usually, imported technology as well.
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Mar 4, 2016 21:48
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The problem is that the whole project of reforging the nation state will fall apart, technology and worldwide logistics have integrated to such a point that autarky cannot work. That's not strictly goods either, as information has itself become commoditized, as so is specialist knowledge. The reaction against migration is mostly targeting unskilled labor. So what's probably going to happen as these groups gain power, is you'll end up with a two-tier system of interchangeable & localized disenfranchised, and a formless shifting elite global class. It's actually kind of what we already have, but it'll get worse. And who gets screwed under that case? That's right, the locals. The whole global cosmopolitan thing will essentially become a luxury for the well off, and the people most responsible for that state of affairs will be the nativists, in an odd kind of way.Helsing posted:Is this actually desirable? rudatron fucked around with this message at 10:30 on Mar 5, 2016 |
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Mar 5, 2016 10:28
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We're all proper hosed. We'll all be smashed between the Scylla of growing globalization and the Chardybrys of fascism.
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Mar 5, 2016 11:40
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I use autarky very loosely (ie concerns over bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US, what to do about low-education/low-skilled workers in the US that Trump is pandering to, being defensive against China and Mexico, etc), sorry if that part was confusing. Maybe protectionist would be a better term? Either way, it seems very anachronistic and flies in the face of this globalized future we keep heading towards. That's the thrust of what this topic is about and created to discuss this seeming contradiction. Teriyaki Koinku fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Mar 5, 2016 |
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Mar 5, 2016 17:51
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rudatron posted:
Depending on how its implemented it would seem like it'd be quite easy to over ride any kind of local sovereignty or decision making. It's not clear to me how any kind of global administration could be remotely democratic, so without a fair amount of devolved power (which would, it seems ,inevitably have some negative impact on free movements of peoples and goods) I can imagine a lot of problems with a globe spanning federation that ensures the total free movement of peoples and seeks the total elimination of any national boundaries. Your Dunkle Sans posted:I use autarky very loosely (ie concerns over bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US, what to do about low-education/low-skilled workers in the US that Trump is pandering to, being defensive against China and Mexico, etc), sorry if that part was confusing. Well by this definition arguably all that we're seeing is the collapse of America's attempt to keep the entire globe inside of the American-centric US economic system that was developed after WWII and globalized in the 1990s following the collapse of state socialism. I would be cautious about reading some kind of grand teleological momentum into globalization. Just because we had a couple decades of increasing global trade doesn't mean there's some kind of implicit direction toward total freedom of capital and people in our future. The last time we had global free trade and movement (we're talking a world in which it was considered unusual, backwards and politically suspect if you were one of those rare governments like Russia that even demanded a passport to cross the boarder) would be the late 19th and early 20th century, and that global system produced a multidecade on-and-off series of World Wars that arguably lasted from 1914 to 1991. In every historical era people tend to think that the trend of the last decade or two will continue indefinitely into the future. But that's the kind of thinking that leads you to conclude that Japan will be the world's largest economy by 2000 or that we'd have moon colonies and flying cars by the 21st century.
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Mar 5, 2016 19:35
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I'm happy that I was born in my country vs. any other country, because it's the best country.
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Mar 6, 2016 05:58
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Given the changes we are experiencing and the rank negative effects they have had on the vast majority of my neighbors, friends, and family here in rustbeltland- I can easily see why nationalism is on the rise. If we do not take care of our own, who will? We need more localized control and targeted development and policy. The globalization experiment is a catastrophe for all- who won with NAFTA save for some feckless transnational types and their multinational corporate holdings? Mexican peasants lost their livelihoods and American labor was further marginalized. In the states, globalization has wrought a death rate for the dispossessed rivaling Yeltsin's Russia. People groups with vastly differing norms, mores, and customs are being forced into close proximity at a rate that is likely to lead to hatred and strife rather than acceptance. The extra coin made from trade rests largely on labor arbitrage and avoiding environmental regulations- and in the end doesn't bolster any but the already wealthy. I could see protectionism making a comeback both here and abroad. Perhaps bilateral trade agreements, time limited and subject to renegotiation, with a focus on internal development would be best for all parties, save the rentiers.
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Mar 6, 2016 06:37
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But you can't turn the clock back, you can't afford to let go of international shipping, which means there's plenty of ways for people to move around, but you also can't let go of international capital or internationally mobile highly skilled workers. There's a reason embargoes are used as tools against 'rogue states', because getting cut out of the global network leads to a crash in living standards. The only 'localism' on the table is localism for the majority. Do you think that actually empowers them, or are we just going to get that same international capital shopping around for the most exploitable 'locals', hmmm? And depending on how its implemented, I could of imagine of huge list of advantages of such a federation. Who cares about local sovereignty? All manufactured borders to is justify stupidity, because 'that's the way the world is'. Those problems, over there, they don't matter to us, but if we can help ourselves at their expense, well that's just good statesmanship. How is everyone living in armed camps more democratic?
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Mar 6, 2016 09:37
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rudatron posted:
The closest precedents we have for what a global federation would look like are arguably the WTO or maybe the European Union. If there's actually some clear and viable path toward a genuine democratic world federation then it might be worth fighting for but right now the only models of global governance we have on hand are pretty clearly a lot worse than the problematic but functional system of separate nation states which show at least some baseline of inconsistent accountability to their own populations.
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Mar 8, 2016 01:26
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Helsing posted:The closest precedents we have for what a global federation would look like are arguably the WTO or maybe the European Union. If there's actually some clear and viable path toward a genuine democratic world federation then it might be worth fighting for but right now the only models of global governance we have on hand are pretty clearly a lot worse than the problematic but functional system of separate nation states which show at least some baseline of inconsistent accountability to their own populations. I'd argue that this is something that needs to happen in our future, if nothing else than to better control the activities and flow of transnational corporations and capital (eg, the issue of, say, Apple holding their non-taxed US income in Ireland; investment firms holding their savings in the Caribbean; manufacturing organizations exploiting the labor of "free trade zones" under less restrictive labor laws than their home countries, etc). Right now, companies are able to easily juke and evade regulation due to the laws of countries (mostly) operating within political borders while finance and capital operate on a transnational basis. 21st century capitalism leaves 20th century style political rules in the dust and the majority of the people worldwide suffer for it.
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Mar 8, 2016 19:13
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