RE: [PEN-L:12677] international dynamics

["Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Marty Hart-Landsberg wrote:

Second, as has been widely pointed out, Brenner focuses on capitalist
competition as the primary cause of capitalism's post 1970s profit squeeze
and growth slowdown.  To what extent is the global merger movement a
response to this competition and how successful do people think this
movement will be in regaining control over markets and overproduction.
Would we look to price movements as an indicator of MNC success?

Third, how should we understand the WTO in light of this analysis and the
current instabilities and crises.  Assuming that the worst comes true, we
get the MAI, the Government Procurement Agreement, etc., will this
intensify competition and thus tensions, or will it enable MNCs to stamp
out contenders and consolidate their strategic position?  Any thoughts
greatly appreciated.

Marty Hart-Landsberg


Response:

Hi Marty, see you at the teach-in on the 23rd. I'll be doing a presentation
on "Globalization, Homogenization, Ethnocide and Genocide: Special Reference
to Indigenous Societies".

I think from Marx's analysis of economic concentration and centralization as
central and derivative dynamics from the core dynamics of capitalist
competition, accumulation and expanded reproduction, what emerges is a very
dialectical picture: economic concentration and centralization via mergers,
hostile take-overs, cherrypicking failing businesses and their assets for
acquisition etc become not only processes for suppressing effective
competition within given markets and industries, but also become processes
that serve to intensify rat-race competition--and diversify the means of
effective competition--on other levels (the more one acquires, the more
there is to protect and expand and therefore the more vicious the
competition on other levels beyond particular markets and industries in
which effective competition is being progressively extinguished).

That was part of the reason Lenin rejected Kautsky's "Superimperialism" or
"Supraimperialism" and the notion of some common agreement of global
partitions of respective speres of influence and domination by respective
imperialist systems and thus the suspension of inter-imperialist rivalries.
Personally, I think Lenin was correct. Clearly some of the imperialist
powers see the WTO, IMF, World Bank etc as agencies in which they will
continue to hold effective veto power and thus essential influence, and thus
potential instruments for managing--or even mitigating--some of the more
deleterious effects (including volatilities of outcomes etc) of
inter-imperialist rivalries (as well as agencies for homogenizing the global
economy with what the imperialists consider essential rules, value systems,
institutions and elements of "social capital" requisite for capitalist
globalization led and dominated by those who presently lead and dominate),
but alas I believe that it is an illusion. Like the old joke: "The Cold War
is over--Japan and Europe won", even when the power blocs are transnational,
and include dominant capitalist from various nations acting in concert
within a defined power bloc, there are various and contending power blocs
that have more to lose with any potential suspensions-of-
competition-and-divisions-of-spoils/spheres agreements than by pursuing some
of the usual--and some new--forms and means of vicious competition on a
global level as well as on sub-global levels.

Jim C.