New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010, pp. 286.
Ha-Joon Chang's book Twenty-Three Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism is a critical analysis of the "free market" (aka, "neoliberal") version of capitalism prevalent for over three decades now, organized around a point-by-point debunking of twenty-three claims of orthodox economic thought.
This school of thought holds that human beings as rational and self-interested actors which most successfully maximize their individual (and by extension, their collective) benefit when the "invisible hand" of the market is given the greatest freedom to allocate resources. Government interventions in this process are held to be injurious because its decisions are necessarily of poorer quality than those of private actors for a number of reasons, including its having priorities besides maximizing the economic gain of its constituents (such as holding on to political power), and the inadequacy of its information (a government bureaucrat presumably knowing a particular situation less well than the businessman actually in the middle of it). Government intervention specifically for egalitarian, redistributive purposes, is harmful in its diminution of the incentive of all actors to create wealth (the rich who will hesitate to invest when they will lose some of their income gains to higher taxes, the poor who will forgo work when they can coast on welfare), while a government's "picking winners and losers" by favoring one enterprise or sector over another (like promoting manufacturing over services, or trying to restrain finance to protect the "real" economy), for the aforementioned reasons, means sub-optimal decisions damaging to economic efficiency. Accordingly, what government should do is get out of the way as much as possible.
By contrast, Chang holds that human rationality is "bounded," limited by such things as the time available in which to make particular decisions, and the finiteness of the individual and collective ability to process information (so that the rationale that a private actor's access to greater information than public policymakers automatically leads to better decisions is doubtful), while human motivations are complex, including not just a selfish pursuit of material gain, but positive traits like self-respect or duty as well (without which, he argues, deceit and mistrust would be so overwhelming as to bring the market to a halt). Moreover, in contrast with the easy confidence that what leads to the maximum benefit of individuals leads to the maximum benefit of society as a whole, there are clashes between the individual and collective interest, evident in such issues as the externalities produced by economic activity (like pollution), while the pursuit of short-term gains may mean losing out on other greater but longer-term gains (as seen in the tendency toward short-termism which has so characterized corporate decision-making in recent decades). The result is that there are many ways in which markets fail, so that there is a role for government to play in economic life far beyond the libertarian minimum of protecting property and enforcing contracts – and government's active and competent performance of that role is crucial to the development, and continued health, of national economies.
Moving past theory, Chang demonstrates that the economic success stories of modern history occurred in precisely those places where economic life did not adhere by the orthodoxy. Those countries which are wealthy generally became that because their governments intervened in their economies in ways like cultivating infant industries – crucial because wealth in the modern world is a function of successful industrialization, an outcome not usually produced by private capital and initiative alone. Britain in the eighteenth century, the United States and Germany in the nineteenth, Japan and South Korea in the twentieth, and China today, all reflect this pattern.1 Moreover, none of these governments ever stopped directing their national economic life, given such realities as national R & D budgets, government control of essential infrastructure and services of various kinds (utilities, the postal service), and immigration policies (a "protectionist" measure directed at the inflow of labor rather than the goods it produces). Additionally, the meritocracy demanded by the imperative of market efficiency requires enough "equalization of outcome" among parents to insure that their children get a fair chance, while social safety nets encourage risk-taking, providing a justification for the welfare state so loathed by the political right. (Indeed, Chang regards the welfare state as the working-class's equivalent of bankruptcy laws for businessmen.)
Equally, the shift to neoliberal policy by the 1980s has been strongly correlated with a sharp drop in the rate of economic growth around the world (something I have repeatedly noted in my own researches). Most pointed is their failure to produce growth in those regions where the reforms have been most aggressive (Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa), which cannot be complacently attributed to problems of geography or culture, as orthodox thinkers would have it. The relationship between development and the received circumstances of geography and culture is in Chang's view actually the opposite of what the orthodoxy posits: development is not a byproduct of favorable circumstances, but rather overcomes unfavorable circumstances like harsh climate or ethnic fragmentation as it proceeds (a pattern seen from Scandinavia to Singapore). The tendency to blame culture can be especially deceptive as the residents of poor countries are, if anything, more entrepreneurial than their rich-country counterparts, as they must be because of the terms of life in the informal economy in which so many of them survive (while the well-paid citizens of wealthy countries are beneficiaries less of their own entrepreneurial talent than the strong institutions their countries developed, and the technological know-how those institutions absorbed, over long periods of time).2
In visiting our most recent troubles Chang does not let orthodox economists off the hook as "innocent technicians who did a decent job within the narrow confines of their expertise until they were collectively wrong-footed by a once-in-a-century disaster that no one could have predicted" (247). Rather he holds that they played a key role in creating the disaster with their simplistic and ideologically-driven prescriptions – which ignored the vast, long-standing and still-growing body of theory and history which made their intellectual errors, and the risks of the course they cheered on, all too clear. He is also quite clear that, despite the hype, recent changes in technology and political economy – the information technology revolution, and the presumed footlooseness of international capital (both overrated in his view) – have not invalidated those earlier lessons.
Those well-acquainted with the subject of economics will appreciate that all of this has been said before, many times, not just by other thinkers from Adam Smith to James Crotty, but by Chang himself, in books like his recent Bad Samaritans.3 Rather than the presentation of original theses, this book's virtue is its accurately and clearly representing ideas gathered from all across the field's vast literature, organized into a coherent critique which is made accessible to the general reader in a series of succinct chapters (each about ten pages long, free of unnecessary jargon and the equations which proponents of orthodoxy use to "blind with science") that make the relevant points and amply support them with germane, concrete examples. In the handy concluding chapter he draws together the many threads of his argument, and outlines an alternative basis for economic policy.
That is not to say that Chang's book is perfect. I found his treatment of inflation and related aspects of monetary policy unpersuasive. Far from tight money having prevailed in recent decades, the loose money policies of Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke have played a major role in creating the bubbles so damaging to the American and world economies in recent years (as Matt Taibbi demonstrates in Griftopia). Chang's discussion of financial crisis would also have benefited from some deepening, as he merely references the crucial work of John Maynard Keynes, Charles Kindleberger and Hyman Minsky in passing, rather than using them to present a picture of how speculative bubbles happen, and send economies running off their rails (a twenty-fourth thing he might have told the reader about capitalism). I might also add that Chang does not address the politics of how neoliberalism came to prevail, or how it has remained so dominant after not just decades of nearly complete failure characterized by economic stagnation and recurrent financial crisis, but the disaster of 2008 in which it all came to a head, through which we are still living – but that is a whole story in itself, which can plausibly be regarded as outside this book's purview.
1. Indeed, no country much larger than a Monaco or a Luxembourg can found its prosperity on international finance, with Switzerland and Singapore – ordinarily thought of as models for this approach – actually among the world's most heavily industrialized.
2. For an interesting journalistic account of the informal economy, see Robert Neuwirth's recent Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy.
3. Perhaps the most iconoclastic point Chang made is his argument that there has been an overemphasis on higher education as a path to national economic advancement. (As he notes, not only is the correlation weak, but much of what is taught in school is of little use in most lines of work, and much of the knowledge needed for work is acquired on the job - while a rush to increase the numbers of graduates can simply mean the fostering of credentialing crises.)
Monday, June 4, 2012
Friday, April 6, 2012
A Sixth-Generation Fighter: Reading Firefox
Tom Clancy is widely remembered as the inventor of the military techno-thriller, but he was preceded by a century-long tradition of writing about future wars and espionage involving imaginary weapons. Among others, Ian Fleming, Martin Woodhouse and Frederick Forsyth laid crucial groundwork – and Craig Thomas has a claim to being the genre's originator with 1977's Firefox.
That novel had British intelligence sending American Vietnam War veteran, and former aggressor squadron pilot, Mitchell Gant into the Soviet Union to steal a prototype MiG-31 fighter--the titular "Firefox." The MiG-31 is depicted as an extreme long-range fighter capable of speeds of up to Mach 6, controlled by a mind-machine interface and invisible to radar--capabilities which, it was feared, would give the Soviet Union air superiority in the event of a conflict unless the West could match it, necessitating Gant's grabbing it and flying it out of the country.
As is usually the case with stories of the type, technical detail takes a backseat to the demands of storytelling, and our increased sophistication about such matters nearly four decades on (as the capabilities of '80s-era aircraft are no longer wholly a matter of speculation) makes some of his speculations seem rather naive. Still, in line with Thomas's depiction, super-cruising and stealth are now characteristic of fifth-generation fighters, like the American F-22, and the Russian T-50 and Chinese J-20 programs. Indeed, stealth technology has gone beyond what he anticipated, in that stealthy aircraft have reduced infra-red signatures, something the MiG-31 lacked, while their sensors and avionics are in many respects even more advanced (with features like active phased array radars and helmet-mounted sights), and their performance more versatile (with thrust-vectoring enhancing their maneuverability). However, hypersonic speed and control via mind-machine interfaces remain far beyond the capabilities of this generation of aircraft, as does the range of the Firefox (3,000 miles, which it manages in the story despite its full-speed flight, which somehow it manages at low altitude, where it flies for long stretches; its carrying full armament; and its evasive maneuvering during a good deal of aerial combat).
Might such capabilities be part of the sixth generation, however? Certainly the X-15 achieved hypersonic flight almost a half century ago, but (longstanding rumors about the Aurora notwithstanding) such capability has remained the purview of experimental aircraft. Moreover, even were these to be made viable for service, it remains to be seen that a hypersonic-capable aircraft can be made versatile enough for the air superiority mission--able to operate effectively at low altitudes and low speeds as well as high, to dogfight as well as to make high-speed intercepts, let alone perform other tactical missions, like close-air support. Should such planes fail to materialize, hypersonic fighters would only be possible with a return of air forces to a wider assortment of specialized aircraft (like what we saw in the second generation of jet fighters, which was divided between high-speed interceptors like the F-104 Starfighter and "fighter-bombers" like the F-105 Thunderchief). This arrangement, awkward even then, is all the more problematic now as a result of the skyrocketing cost of procurement programs.
Naturally, I have to admit I'm doubtful about either prospect materializing, and suspect that if we do get a generation of high-performance fighters after the F-22, these higher speeds will not be part of the package. That leaves the mind-machine interfaces. Certainly neuroscience is seen as an excitingly dynamic field now, and the gurus of techno-hype are abuzz with speculation about the feasibility of neural control of technology (combat aircraft included), seemingly supported by demonstrations in which the brain activity of people and animals controls electronic devices--but such have been ongoing for quite some years now, without practical consequences. Not only does the well-publicized thought-controlled wheelchair remain in the lab, without anything like an anticipated date for actual availability even mentioned (according to the most recent report I have been able to find, this March 2012 piece from the BBC), but even toys based on the principle (often a precursor to practical applications) seem nowhere close to hitting the market.
That does not mean this is an area which may never yield results--but it is a reminder that this technology's near-term practicality is far from being a resolved matter. Moreover, even if such technology were to come into use as an aid to the disabled, for example (as I hope it will), it remains to be seen that this will be suited to the control of high-performance aircraft in combat situations--quite a different thing. Additionally, if ongoing work in artificial intelligence turns out to yield the results promised for it, that may mean an alternative method of control which may prove superior, or simply more cost-effective than a fighter directly controlled by the human mind. In short, not only must the technology overcome significant hurdles to be usable in this capacity, but it is necessarily in competition with that other technology which may make such a vast difference in how the coming decades plays out, "strong" AI.
That novel had British intelligence sending American Vietnam War veteran, and former aggressor squadron pilot, Mitchell Gant into the Soviet Union to steal a prototype MiG-31 fighter--the titular "Firefox." The MiG-31 is depicted as an extreme long-range fighter capable of speeds of up to Mach 6, controlled by a mind-machine interface and invisible to radar--capabilities which, it was feared, would give the Soviet Union air superiority in the event of a conflict unless the West could match it, necessitating Gant's grabbing it and flying it out of the country.
As is usually the case with stories of the type, technical detail takes a backseat to the demands of storytelling, and our increased sophistication about such matters nearly four decades on (as the capabilities of '80s-era aircraft are no longer wholly a matter of speculation) makes some of his speculations seem rather naive. Still, in line with Thomas's depiction, super-cruising and stealth are now characteristic of fifth-generation fighters, like the American F-22, and the Russian T-50 and Chinese J-20 programs. Indeed, stealth technology has gone beyond what he anticipated, in that stealthy aircraft have reduced infra-red signatures, something the MiG-31 lacked, while their sensors and avionics are in many respects even more advanced (with features like active phased array radars and helmet-mounted sights), and their performance more versatile (with thrust-vectoring enhancing their maneuverability). However, hypersonic speed and control via mind-machine interfaces remain far beyond the capabilities of this generation of aircraft, as does the range of the Firefox (3,000 miles, which it manages in the story despite its full-speed flight, which somehow it manages at low altitude, where it flies for long stretches; its carrying full armament; and its evasive maneuvering during a good deal of aerial combat).
Might such capabilities be part of the sixth generation, however? Certainly the X-15 achieved hypersonic flight almost a half century ago, but (longstanding rumors about the Aurora notwithstanding) such capability has remained the purview of experimental aircraft. Moreover, even were these to be made viable for service, it remains to be seen that a hypersonic-capable aircraft can be made versatile enough for the air superiority mission--able to operate effectively at low altitudes and low speeds as well as high, to dogfight as well as to make high-speed intercepts, let alone perform other tactical missions, like close-air support. Should such planes fail to materialize, hypersonic fighters would only be possible with a return of air forces to a wider assortment of specialized aircraft (like what we saw in the second generation of jet fighters, which was divided between high-speed interceptors like the F-104 Starfighter and "fighter-bombers" like the F-105 Thunderchief). This arrangement, awkward even then, is all the more problematic now as a result of the skyrocketing cost of procurement programs.
Naturally, I have to admit I'm doubtful about either prospect materializing, and suspect that if we do get a generation of high-performance fighters after the F-22, these higher speeds will not be part of the package. That leaves the mind-machine interfaces. Certainly neuroscience is seen as an excitingly dynamic field now, and the gurus of techno-hype are abuzz with speculation about the feasibility of neural control of technology (combat aircraft included), seemingly supported by demonstrations in which the brain activity of people and animals controls electronic devices--but such have been ongoing for quite some years now, without practical consequences. Not only does the well-publicized thought-controlled wheelchair remain in the lab, without anything like an anticipated date for actual availability even mentioned (according to the most recent report I have been able to find, this March 2012 piece from the BBC), but even toys based on the principle (often a precursor to practical applications) seem nowhere close to hitting the market.
That does not mean this is an area which may never yield results--but it is a reminder that this technology's near-term practicality is far from being a resolved matter. Moreover, even if such technology were to come into use as an aid to the disabled, for example (as I hope it will), it remains to be seen that this will be suited to the control of high-performance aircraft in combat situations--quite a different thing. Additionally, if ongoing work in artificial intelligence turns out to yield the results promised for it, that may mean an alternative method of control which may prove superior, or simply more cost-effective than a fighter directly controlled by the human mind. In short, not only must the technology overcome significant hurdles to be usable in this capacity, but it is necessarily in competition with that other technology which may make such a vast difference in how the coming decades plays out, "strong" AI.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Review: White Collar: The American Middle Classes, by C. Wright Mills
New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 416.
C. Wright Mills is best known for writing The Power Elite, in which he offered an analysis of the uppermost strata of society and its institutions (business, governmental and military). However, it was not his only sociological bestseller, his first being 1951's White Collar, which dealt with many of the same concerns, but focusing on the much vaster "white collar" salariat beneath those strata.
In approaching this subject Mills begins by attempting to situate it in the larger social context as it has traditionally been understood, and in particular as part of the "middle class"--the fuzziness of which term Mills addresses by drawing a distinction between what he terms the "Old" and "New" Middle Classes. The Old Middle Class is characterized by its economic independence, which is based on its ownership of the means of production with which it works--the small farmer cultivating his own land, the merchant running his own store, and the like. The New Middle Class consists of dependent employees who work with means of production owned by others, at the direction of those others, inside of a context of centralized property and bureaucratized and rationalized business operations--as with the personnel of large businesses.
Mills holds that industrialization has sharply reduced and marginalized the Old Middle Class, which is a far cry from the Jeffersonian mythology surrounding it. What remains of small business, contrary to popular belief, is generally an exercise in futility, afflicted by a high rate of turnover as small businesses fail and are typically replaced by other small businesses which fail in their turn. Even this activity is largely confined to particular economic sectors, namely the retail and service industries (by contrast, "Manufacturing is no longer a small business world" (24)), and when even these survive for any length of time, they tend to do so by "becoming direct satellites" of Big Businesses of various kinds (27) (as with retailers which are "maintenance agencies and distributors for big manufacturers"). He also contends that, for all their free market rhetoric, the "scared" small entrepreneur, especially sensitive to the ups and downs of the business cycle, is in practice preoccupied with seeking protection from marketplace competition (through "fair trade" laws, the prices set by national brands, and the like).1 Indeed, Mills argues, the old image of small business persists principally because it serves the big business interests that, despite some imagined solidarity, have in reality pushed them to the fringes of economic life.
The result is that they have largely given way to the New Middle Class as the predominant "middle" group, and its character is the book's focus: the ways in which it works, what that work means to it, and the political significance of these facts. In examining these he finds a number of parallels between the New Middle Class and the Marxist proletariat, extending beyond their mutual lack of property to the terms of their labor. As Mills notes, the office and the salesroom, "the two great locales of white collar activity" (226-227), have become rather more like the factory, and undergone the same evolution in the direction of rationalization, mechanization and deskilling, so that their staff operate machines under the supervision of a small cadre of specialists--the secretary at their typewriter, the cashier at their cash register not so different from employees of a light manufacturing facility. Medicine has traveled the same path, the old-style general practitioners giving way to narrowly specialized, hospital-based M.D.s, backed up by large numbers of less well-trained support staff (the better to hold down the number of working doctors, and restrict the supply of their skills), while the legal profession has followed a parallel line of development with the emergence of the large firms once termed "law-factories."
Given the circumstances of their work, neither the Protestant work ethic, nor the ideal of the Renaissance craftsman, has much relevance to their actual experience.2 Rather they tend to experience their work as alienated labor, time taken away from living instead of a crucial dimension of life, let alone a development of themselves as human beings. (Indeed, Mills even deepens Marx's analysis of worker alienation by considering a new dimension of it--the alienation of white collar workers not just from their labor, but from their very selves as they "sell themselves" in the "personality market."3) Such satisfaction as they derive from their work is a matter of the income, status and personal power the job affords, with the result that satisfaction is strongly correlated with socioeconomic ranking--professionals, for instance, far more satisfied with their positions than clerical workers that are part of the same white collar category.
Mills notes alongside this change in the manner of work, and the attitude toward it--which make the experience of the white collar worker closer to that of the blue collar employee--a tendency to equalization in their incomes and job security. There is also an equalization of their prospects for upward mobility--closed off not just by the aforementioned deskilling and rationalization (which eliminates the chance to, for instance, "learn the whole operation" at an enterprise), but by the rising level of education among the work force (which has created a credentialing crisis, and even talk of "surplus graduates" and the "management" of ambition). Unsurprisingly, older ideals about the pursuit of "success" through a cultivation of traditionally "middle class" virtues associated with Victorian entrepreneurship, or later, the salesman-like attitude and demeanor supposed to make possible a successful ascent up the corporate ladder, seem decreasingly relevant, even discredited. In their place there is a greater willingness to pursue unionization (especially among those most inclined to feel that "the way up" is blocked or inaccessible).4
Nonetheless, Mills rejects the idea that white collar workers will "go politically 'proletarian'" (353), however much their objective circumstances come to resemble those of blue collar workers. The option is simply not on the table, there being no proletariat for the white collars to join, politically speaking, even the organized "blue collars" failing to count as such (in their unions' emphasis on bettering the conditions of their members' employment rather than broader or more principled social change)--which points to the larger factor determining their political future, namely the apathy with which Americans regard politics in the mid-twentieth century. The combination of their relative material contentment, their intensely private way of looking at their concerns and attitudes (a reflection of the history of immigration and American geographical mobility in Mills' view), and their distance from the centers of decision, leaves them detached, scarcely interested spectators. This tendency is reinforced by a mass media which utterly fails (after hardly trying) to make politics comprehensible and meaningful to them--while being consistently excellent at distraction, especially by way of fantasies of personal status and consumption (with which he identifies the content of most pop culture, and leisure activity more generally).5
Moreover, generalized as this apathy is, white collar workers seem even more susceptible to it than other groups. The significant division between Old and New middle class aside, white collar workers' weaker consciousness of themselves as a class, their more limited and more belated organization, their greater response to the kind of distraction he describes, leaves them more atomized and less likely to emerge as an independent political force. Indeed, they seem bound to follow rather than lead, and to do so opportunistically.
In making this case, Mills' book offers a formidable combination of sweep and detail. Portions of the analysis have admittedly dated, perhaps the most significant of these his discussion of unionization--a trend which has long since been reversed. However, this is more than outweighed by what remains valid in Mills' study for our own time, not least the corrective he offers to the pieties of his day, which all too often remain the pieties of our own, regarding such matters as the character of social class in America, the role of small business in the economy, and the prospects for genuine personal satisfaction through post-secondary education and the "right" career (recently characterized by Barbara Ehrenreich as a case of "bait and switch"). Indeed, some of the problems he described have, in line with his expectations, grown only more pronounced, like the problems raised by a credentialing crisis, and the withdrawal of much of the public from political life. The result is a book well worth reading not just for its insights into mid-twentieth century America, but its grasp of our situation now, with which few works written in the six decades since can compare.
1. By contrast, in the world of the large corporation, the "Unseen Hand" of executive decision has to a great degree displaced the "Invisible Hand" prevailing in a less thoroughly organized economic field.
2. Mills refers here to the Renaissance vision of the life of the craftsman as "a fully idealized model of work gratification" entailing no "split of work and play, or work and culture," a laborer's work "and his entire mode of living" instead comprising a single whole (220). This model has its requirements, however, among them the worker's control of "his own working action"; the absence of "ulterior motive," enabling their concentration on the product and process; and in this process, his opportunity "to learn from his work; and to use and develop his capacities in its prosecution" (220); none of which is operative in today's business environment. Indeed, Mills notes that "as practice, craftsmanship has largely been trivialized into 'hobbies,' part of leisure not of work" (224).
3. As he notes, workers are obliged to "instrumentalize and externalize intimate features" of their "person and disposition" (225) as part of the process of production.
4. Mills also identifies an emerging "new style of aspiration" (282) focusing on "the peace of the inner man" (283) rather than material accomplishment (with which he identifies such works as Arthur Miller's play Death of A Salesman).
5. Mills also notes that those who would be intellectuals are co-opted by the ideological machines of vested interests, which they must represent (or to which they must at least make themselves acceptable), or face marginalization. In either case they are reduced to irrelevance as a political force, with one result their tendency to style themselves "technicians" outside or above politics, or succumb to the cult of alienation. (College professors in particular are constrained by the expectations of academic life, not the least of them the expectation of specialization--or in his view, overspecialization.)
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C. Wright Mills is best known for writing The Power Elite, in which he offered an analysis of the uppermost strata of society and its institutions (business, governmental and military). However, it was not his only sociological bestseller, his first being 1951's White Collar, which dealt with many of the same concerns, but focusing on the much vaster "white collar" salariat beneath those strata.
In approaching this subject Mills begins by attempting to situate it in the larger social context as it has traditionally been understood, and in particular as part of the "middle class"--the fuzziness of which term Mills addresses by drawing a distinction between what he terms the "Old" and "New" Middle Classes. The Old Middle Class is characterized by its economic independence, which is based on its ownership of the means of production with which it works--the small farmer cultivating his own land, the merchant running his own store, and the like. The New Middle Class consists of dependent employees who work with means of production owned by others, at the direction of those others, inside of a context of centralized property and bureaucratized and rationalized business operations--as with the personnel of large businesses.
Mills holds that industrialization has sharply reduced and marginalized the Old Middle Class, which is a far cry from the Jeffersonian mythology surrounding it. What remains of small business, contrary to popular belief, is generally an exercise in futility, afflicted by a high rate of turnover as small businesses fail and are typically replaced by other small businesses which fail in their turn. Even this activity is largely confined to particular economic sectors, namely the retail and service industries (by contrast, "Manufacturing is no longer a small business world" (24)), and when even these survive for any length of time, they tend to do so by "becoming direct satellites" of Big Businesses of various kinds (27) (as with retailers which are "maintenance agencies and distributors for big manufacturers"). He also contends that, for all their free market rhetoric, the "scared" small entrepreneur, especially sensitive to the ups and downs of the business cycle, is in practice preoccupied with seeking protection from marketplace competition (through "fair trade" laws, the prices set by national brands, and the like).1 Indeed, Mills argues, the old image of small business persists principally because it serves the big business interests that, despite some imagined solidarity, have in reality pushed them to the fringes of economic life.
The result is that they have largely given way to the New Middle Class as the predominant "middle" group, and its character is the book's focus: the ways in which it works, what that work means to it, and the political significance of these facts. In examining these he finds a number of parallels between the New Middle Class and the Marxist proletariat, extending beyond their mutual lack of property to the terms of their labor. As Mills notes, the office and the salesroom, "the two great locales of white collar activity" (226-227), have become rather more like the factory, and undergone the same evolution in the direction of rationalization, mechanization and deskilling, so that their staff operate machines under the supervision of a small cadre of specialists--the secretary at their typewriter, the cashier at their cash register not so different from employees of a light manufacturing facility. Medicine has traveled the same path, the old-style general practitioners giving way to narrowly specialized, hospital-based M.D.s, backed up by large numbers of less well-trained support staff (the better to hold down the number of working doctors, and restrict the supply of their skills), while the legal profession has followed a parallel line of development with the emergence of the large firms once termed "law-factories."
Given the circumstances of their work, neither the Protestant work ethic, nor the ideal of the Renaissance craftsman, has much relevance to their actual experience.2 Rather they tend to experience their work as alienated labor, time taken away from living instead of a crucial dimension of life, let alone a development of themselves as human beings. (Indeed, Mills even deepens Marx's analysis of worker alienation by considering a new dimension of it--the alienation of white collar workers not just from their labor, but from their very selves as they "sell themselves" in the "personality market."3) Such satisfaction as they derive from their work is a matter of the income, status and personal power the job affords, with the result that satisfaction is strongly correlated with socioeconomic ranking--professionals, for instance, far more satisfied with their positions than clerical workers that are part of the same white collar category.
Mills notes alongside this change in the manner of work, and the attitude toward it--which make the experience of the white collar worker closer to that of the blue collar employee--a tendency to equalization in their incomes and job security. There is also an equalization of their prospects for upward mobility--closed off not just by the aforementioned deskilling and rationalization (which eliminates the chance to, for instance, "learn the whole operation" at an enterprise), but by the rising level of education among the work force (which has created a credentialing crisis, and even talk of "surplus graduates" and the "management" of ambition). Unsurprisingly, older ideals about the pursuit of "success" through a cultivation of traditionally "middle class" virtues associated with Victorian entrepreneurship, or later, the salesman-like attitude and demeanor supposed to make possible a successful ascent up the corporate ladder, seem decreasingly relevant, even discredited. In their place there is a greater willingness to pursue unionization (especially among those most inclined to feel that "the way up" is blocked or inaccessible).4
Nonetheless, Mills rejects the idea that white collar workers will "go politically 'proletarian'" (353), however much their objective circumstances come to resemble those of blue collar workers. The option is simply not on the table, there being no proletariat for the white collars to join, politically speaking, even the organized "blue collars" failing to count as such (in their unions' emphasis on bettering the conditions of their members' employment rather than broader or more principled social change)--which points to the larger factor determining their political future, namely the apathy with which Americans regard politics in the mid-twentieth century. The combination of their relative material contentment, their intensely private way of looking at their concerns and attitudes (a reflection of the history of immigration and American geographical mobility in Mills' view), and their distance from the centers of decision, leaves them detached, scarcely interested spectators. This tendency is reinforced by a mass media which utterly fails (after hardly trying) to make politics comprehensible and meaningful to them--while being consistently excellent at distraction, especially by way of fantasies of personal status and consumption (with which he identifies the content of most pop culture, and leisure activity more generally).5
Moreover, generalized as this apathy is, white collar workers seem even more susceptible to it than other groups. The significant division between Old and New middle class aside, white collar workers' weaker consciousness of themselves as a class, their more limited and more belated organization, their greater response to the kind of distraction he describes, leaves them more atomized and less likely to emerge as an independent political force. Indeed, they seem bound to follow rather than lead, and to do so opportunistically.
In making this case, Mills' book offers a formidable combination of sweep and detail. Portions of the analysis have admittedly dated, perhaps the most significant of these his discussion of unionization--a trend which has long since been reversed. However, this is more than outweighed by what remains valid in Mills' study for our own time, not least the corrective he offers to the pieties of his day, which all too often remain the pieties of our own, regarding such matters as the character of social class in America, the role of small business in the economy, and the prospects for genuine personal satisfaction through post-secondary education and the "right" career (recently characterized by Barbara Ehrenreich as a case of "bait and switch"). Indeed, some of the problems he described have, in line with his expectations, grown only more pronounced, like the problems raised by a credentialing crisis, and the withdrawal of much of the public from political life. The result is a book well worth reading not just for its insights into mid-twentieth century America, but its grasp of our situation now, with which few works written in the six decades since can compare.
1. By contrast, in the world of the large corporation, the "Unseen Hand" of executive decision has to a great degree displaced the "Invisible Hand" prevailing in a less thoroughly organized economic field.
2. Mills refers here to the Renaissance vision of the life of the craftsman as "a fully idealized model of work gratification" entailing no "split of work and play, or work and culture," a laborer's work "and his entire mode of living" instead comprising a single whole (220). This model has its requirements, however, among them the worker's control of "his own working action"; the absence of "ulterior motive," enabling their concentration on the product and process; and in this process, his opportunity "to learn from his work; and to use and develop his capacities in its prosecution" (220); none of which is operative in today's business environment. Indeed, Mills notes that "as practice, craftsmanship has largely been trivialized into 'hobbies,' part of leisure not of work" (224).
3. As he notes, workers are obliged to "instrumentalize and externalize intimate features" of their "person and disposition" (225) as part of the process of production.
4. Mills also identifies an emerging "new style of aspiration" (282) focusing on "the peace of the inner man" (283) rather than material accomplishment (with which he identifies such works as Arthur Miller's play Death of A Salesman).
5. Mills also notes that those who would be intellectuals are co-opted by the ideological machines of vested interests, which they must represent (or to which they must at least make themselves acceptable), or face marginalization. In either case they are reduced to irrelevance as a political force, with one result their tendency to style themselves "technicians" outside or above politics, or succumb to the cult of alienation. (College professors in particular are constrained by the expectations of academic life, not the least of them the expectation of specialization--or in his view, overspecialization.)
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Thursday, March 29, 2012
Review: Pity the Billionaire, by Thomas Frank
New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012, pp. 240.
Almost from before the economic crisis hit in 2008 (writing this I think of Kevin Phillips' 2007 Bad Money, which described the earliest phase of the housing bubble's bursting), we have seen a veritable library of books explaining the event and its consequences. I have yet to find a single volume that does justice to the whole of this huge, and hugely complex, story, and doubt I ever will (it goes back too far, involves too much), but many do a good job with particular pieces of it.
In Pity the Billionaire: The Hard Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right, Thomas Frank adds his distinctive take on recent events. In his previous books, One Market Under God (2000), What's The Matter With Kansas? (2004) and The Wrecking Crew (2008), Frank traced the country's rightward march, and the tactics conservatives used to bring it about. He extends this line of research with this latest work, which treats the most recent part of that story: the transmutation of the failure of economic prescriptions advocated and implemented by conservatives into yet another rightist "revolution" exemplified by the Tea Party movement, which is extraordinary not just for its timing, but for its character. The culture wars have not died, but according to Frank the movement has not used them as ideological cover for neoliberal economic policies; rather, such policies are themselves the sales pitch, with the disgruntled calling for more of the same economic prescriptions (like deregulation) that produced the crisis in the first place. Moreover, the speculators who have traditionally been cast as villains in the "producerist" narrative historically favored by American right-wing populism have been made into heroes, not just identified with "the people," but made to seem the very best and most victimized of them.1
How did this come about? Frank argues that the right succeeded through a presentation of a simple, comprehensible explanation of a situation (however inaccurate, or even incoherent), and its use of the rhetoric of victimization, dissent and rebellion, in a period of genuine crisis when people have genuine grievances--which "liberals" utterly failed to address, as the Obama administration delivered not a sequel to FDR (for all the right-wing ranting), but "Clinton II."2 Frank holds, moreover, that there is more continuity than rupture in the phenomenon, from the use of traditional right-populist ideas (a selective scapegoating of elites, conspiracism, apocalypticism), to the tactics and rhetoric borrowed from the left--the latter an old theme of Frank's work, which he revisits here.3 (Indeed, one of the more memorable portions of this book is Frank's reading of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged as an inversion of proletarian literature, using the genre's techniques to deliver exactly the opposite message.)
It is a strong argument, and well-presented in a book that is witty, informed and lucid throughout. However, I must admit that as a longtime reader I found it something of a letdown. Easily the shortest of Frank's books, it is also the least fresh and original, for the most part applying ideas Frank had developed in earlier books to new events, rather than exploring new intellectual territory--worthwhile as the results are.
1. In Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons' Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close For Comfort (Guilford Press, New York, 2000), the authors define populist movements as those which exalt the people and are antielitist; a repressive populism as one which combines "antielite scapegoating with . . . efforts to maintain or intensify systems of social privilege and power"--that is to say, the singling out of some vulnerable part of the elite for hostility, while more generally shoring up the status quo; and right-wing populism as a repressive populism "motivated or defined centrally by a backlash against liberation movements, social reform, or revolution."
2. The dire warnings of such takeovers have been a recurrent theme of American history (as Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" makes clear), and routine in the aftermath of electoral victories by Democrats (like the 1992 presidential election). Interestingly, this does not seem to be an exclusively American phenomenon; arguably '70s-era Britain, where exaggerated rhetoric about economic troubles and union militancy were widespread, offers parallels.
3. While eschewing the traditional producerist hostility to finance, the Tea Party otherwise embraces many of the ideology's concepts, like drawing a sharp line between the "productive" and "unproductive" in the country's population. Additionally the scapegoating, conspiracism and apocalypticism common to American right-populism are evident in the movement's combination of celebration of business, markets and capitalism with selective attacks on particular enterprises, its hostility to "government bureaucrats" and intellectuals, convoluted theories of how the crisis came about, and hysterical rhetoric about imminent radical takeover.
Almost from before the economic crisis hit in 2008 (writing this I think of Kevin Phillips' 2007 Bad Money, which described the earliest phase of the housing bubble's bursting), we have seen a veritable library of books explaining the event and its consequences. I have yet to find a single volume that does justice to the whole of this huge, and hugely complex, story, and doubt I ever will (it goes back too far, involves too much), but many do a good job with particular pieces of it.
In Pity the Billionaire: The Hard Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right, Thomas Frank adds his distinctive take on recent events. In his previous books, One Market Under God (2000), What's The Matter With Kansas? (2004) and The Wrecking Crew (2008), Frank traced the country's rightward march, and the tactics conservatives used to bring it about. He extends this line of research with this latest work, which treats the most recent part of that story: the transmutation of the failure of economic prescriptions advocated and implemented by conservatives into yet another rightist "revolution" exemplified by the Tea Party movement, which is extraordinary not just for its timing, but for its character. The culture wars have not died, but according to Frank the movement has not used them as ideological cover for neoliberal economic policies; rather, such policies are themselves the sales pitch, with the disgruntled calling for more of the same economic prescriptions (like deregulation) that produced the crisis in the first place. Moreover, the speculators who have traditionally been cast as villains in the "producerist" narrative historically favored by American right-wing populism have been made into heroes, not just identified with "the people," but made to seem the very best and most victimized of them.1
How did this come about? Frank argues that the right succeeded through a presentation of a simple, comprehensible explanation of a situation (however inaccurate, or even incoherent), and its use of the rhetoric of victimization, dissent and rebellion, in a period of genuine crisis when people have genuine grievances--which "liberals" utterly failed to address, as the Obama administration delivered not a sequel to FDR (for all the right-wing ranting), but "Clinton II."2 Frank holds, moreover, that there is more continuity than rupture in the phenomenon, from the use of traditional right-populist ideas (a selective scapegoating of elites, conspiracism, apocalypticism), to the tactics and rhetoric borrowed from the left--the latter an old theme of Frank's work, which he revisits here.3 (Indeed, one of the more memorable portions of this book is Frank's reading of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged as an inversion of proletarian literature, using the genre's techniques to deliver exactly the opposite message.)
It is a strong argument, and well-presented in a book that is witty, informed and lucid throughout. However, I must admit that as a longtime reader I found it something of a letdown. Easily the shortest of Frank's books, it is also the least fresh and original, for the most part applying ideas Frank had developed in earlier books to new events, rather than exploring new intellectual territory--worthwhile as the results are.
1. In Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons' Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close For Comfort (Guilford Press, New York, 2000), the authors define populist movements as those which exalt the people and are antielitist; a repressive populism as one which combines "antielite scapegoating with . . . efforts to maintain or intensify systems of social privilege and power"--that is to say, the singling out of some vulnerable part of the elite for hostility, while more generally shoring up the status quo; and right-wing populism as a repressive populism "motivated or defined centrally by a backlash against liberation movements, social reform, or revolution."
2. The dire warnings of such takeovers have been a recurrent theme of American history (as Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" makes clear), and routine in the aftermath of electoral victories by Democrats (like the 1992 presidential election). Interestingly, this does not seem to be an exclusively American phenomenon; arguably '70s-era Britain, where exaggerated rhetoric about economic troubles and union militancy were widespread, offers parallels.
3. While eschewing the traditional producerist hostility to finance, the Tea Party otherwise embraces many of the ideology's concepts, like drawing a sharp line between the "productive" and "unproductive" in the country's population. Additionally the scapegoating, conspiracism and apocalypticism common to American right-populism are evident in the movement's combination of celebration of business, markets and capitalism with selective attacks on particular enterprises, its hostility to "government bureaucrats" and intellectuals, convoluted theories of how the crisis came about, and hysterical rhetoric about imminent radical takeover.
Friday, March 23, 2012
After Empire
Studies of the rise and fall of great powers pay great attention to the period in which those powers are first-tier actors – and little to their management of the final dissolution of their empires. Britain's conduct of international affairs, for example, gets a lot of attention during the period from the late sixteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, and very little after 1945.
This is not unreasonable when the central concern is the state of the international system as a whole, but it has resulted in a neglect of some not unimportant factors, and some aspects of recent history. After World War II, Britain and France, and after the Cold War, Russia, all sought to preserve something of their old position. Their particular approaches varied greatly, but there were similarities in their objectives and efforts, five of which seem especially worth discussing:
1. Working to Retain Relationships With Old Colonies and Vassals.
Britain has had the Commonwealth of Nations, France Francophonie, Russia the Commonwealth of Independent States. A significant dimension of this is the retention of a military presence in areas where it seems this can be done at low cost (as with Britain in the Middle East prior to its withdrawal "east of Suez," France's post-colonial role in western and central Africa, and Russia's interventions in "Near Abroad" countries like Tajikistan, Moldova and Georgia since 1991), and special efforts to retain sites of particular strategic value (as with Britain in the cases of Singapore, Suez and Cyprus, and Russia in the energy-rich Caspian Sea basin).
2. Placing a Special Emphasis on Select Military Resources.
The most noteworthy example of these is strategic nuclear weaponry, which all three of these countries possess, and on which have played special roles in their foreign policies. France developed its nuclear deterrent to assure itself an independent foreign position outside of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In the 1990s, with the deterioration of Russia's conventional military capability, it was widely recognized that Russia relied more heavily on its nuclear capability for its international status, and its capacity to defend its interests.
However, less dramatically, all three countries strove to preserve a defense industrial base, even where they have eschewed meaningful industrial policies in other ways (Britain the outstanding example of this). As a result they remained major producers of the kinds of high-end arms which only a few countries are capable of building – armor, aircraft, naval vessels, and anti-aircraft systems. Their ability to produce saleable weaponry not only gives them the measure of additional independence that comes with meeting a larger part of their military needs domestically, but through their exports makes them a larger factor in international questions – as seen in the issue of Russian sales of arms to Iran in recent years.
3. Utilizing Old Privileges in International Institutions.
Their leading roles in the British Commonwealth of Nations and its French and Russian counterparts aside, Britain, France and Russia all became permanent members of the United Nations Security Council at a time when they were still plausibly regarded as Great Powers, and retained those seats long after they ceased to be such. The use of those seats, however, has given them disproportionate influence and prestige, and often been their principal means of responding to American initiatives – as with French and Russian efforts to deny the U.S. a UN mandate for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
4. The Promotion of Regionalism.
Britain, and especially France, have both participated in the development of a European Union, in part as a way of compensating for their diminished positions. In 2001, Russia was a founding member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which brought together several former Soviet republics with China in a common organization.
5. The Cultivation of Close Relationships With Ascendant Powers.
The best known example of this is Britain's "special relationship" with the U.S.. However, France has also relied on close relations with the U.S. (as in its war to retain Indochina as a colony in the late 1940s and early 1950s), and with the Federal Republic of Germany (which was crucial to its activity in the European Union). After 1991, Russia has reconciled with China and cooperated with it on a number of international issues (like the questions raised by the break-up of Yugoslavia, the Iranian nuclear program, and most recently, the unrest in Syria).
Such strategies have tended to achieve only limited results, and to be decreasingly tenable over time. A former metropole's magnetism for lost colonies fades quickly after the loss of formal empire, and the material power that supported it (as has been the case with the British Commonwealth), while the costs of preserving a place in seemingly low-cost regions tends to go up over time (as Britain discovered in the Middle East, and France in Africa).1 Their ability to invest in even limited areas of military capability does not match that of other more affluent powers, and reflects the fact. (Britain's nuclear deterrent was already reliant on American-made missiles by the early 1960s, and the country's weapons programs are increasingly dependent on foreign partnerships – as with every British fighter since the Lightning.) Their special status in international institutions increasingly seems dubious (the retention of permanent Security Council seats by Britain and France has long seemed to many a relic and an injustice, especially with countries like Japan, India, Brazil and Germany lacking such places), while yielding few practical returns (given the limited effect of UN votes, as seen in the case of Iraq). Meanwhile their cultivation of regional blocs tends to dilute their voice (as has happened with the expansion of the EU) while frequently falling short of crucial objectives (like a coherent EU foreign and defense policy), while their "junior partner" role in such associations leaves them followers rather than leaders (as has arguably been the case with Britain).
Britain and France's transition away from great power status essentially ran their courses decades ago. By contrast Russia, which suffered in similar ways even after the resurgence in energy prices after 1998 permitted a partial recovery from the Soviet collapse (as former satellite countries entered NATO, Russia turned to foreign partners for support for its fifth-generation fighter program, and so on), remains in the midst of that process, which seems almost certain to continue (quite in contrast with the predictions some have made about a "mini-Cold War" between Russia and the U.S.).
In the end, where the game of great powers is concerned, there is simply no substitute for broad-based military strength, and the broad-based economic strength required to sustain it.
NOTES
1. In the Middle East pillars of British strategy like client relationships with local monarchies, the Suez base and the Baghdad Pact did not last long in the face of local nationalism; the U.S. and Soviet Union soon eclipsed Britain as external presences; and on top of that, many Middle Eastern countries became significant military powers in their own right – all as Britain had to repeatedly cut its defense spending. Likewise, France's confrontation with Libya over Chad in the 1980s showed the limits of "Jaguar diplomacy," while the 1990s brought additional setbacks (particularly the loss of friendly client regimes in Rwanda and the former Zaire).
This is not unreasonable when the central concern is the state of the international system as a whole, but it has resulted in a neglect of some not unimportant factors, and some aspects of recent history. After World War II, Britain and France, and after the Cold War, Russia, all sought to preserve something of their old position. Their particular approaches varied greatly, but there were similarities in their objectives and efforts, five of which seem especially worth discussing:
1. Working to Retain Relationships With Old Colonies and Vassals.
Britain has had the Commonwealth of Nations, France Francophonie, Russia the Commonwealth of Independent States. A significant dimension of this is the retention of a military presence in areas where it seems this can be done at low cost (as with Britain in the Middle East prior to its withdrawal "east of Suez," France's post-colonial role in western and central Africa, and Russia's interventions in "Near Abroad" countries like Tajikistan, Moldova and Georgia since 1991), and special efforts to retain sites of particular strategic value (as with Britain in the cases of Singapore, Suez and Cyprus, and Russia in the energy-rich Caspian Sea basin).
2. Placing a Special Emphasis on Select Military Resources.
The most noteworthy example of these is strategic nuclear weaponry, which all three of these countries possess, and on which have played special roles in their foreign policies. France developed its nuclear deterrent to assure itself an independent foreign position outside of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In the 1990s, with the deterioration of Russia's conventional military capability, it was widely recognized that Russia relied more heavily on its nuclear capability for its international status, and its capacity to defend its interests.
However, less dramatically, all three countries strove to preserve a defense industrial base, even where they have eschewed meaningful industrial policies in other ways (Britain the outstanding example of this). As a result they remained major producers of the kinds of high-end arms which only a few countries are capable of building – armor, aircraft, naval vessels, and anti-aircraft systems. Their ability to produce saleable weaponry not only gives them the measure of additional independence that comes with meeting a larger part of their military needs domestically, but through their exports makes them a larger factor in international questions – as seen in the issue of Russian sales of arms to Iran in recent years.
3. Utilizing Old Privileges in International Institutions.
Their leading roles in the British Commonwealth of Nations and its French and Russian counterparts aside, Britain, France and Russia all became permanent members of the United Nations Security Council at a time when they were still plausibly regarded as Great Powers, and retained those seats long after they ceased to be such. The use of those seats, however, has given them disproportionate influence and prestige, and often been their principal means of responding to American initiatives – as with French and Russian efforts to deny the U.S. a UN mandate for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
4. The Promotion of Regionalism.
Britain, and especially France, have both participated in the development of a European Union, in part as a way of compensating for their diminished positions. In 2001, Russia was a founding member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which brought together several former Soviet republics with China in a common organization.
5. The Cultivation of Close Relationships With Ascendant Powers.
The best known example of this is Britain's "special relationship" with the U.S.. However, France has also relied on close relations with the U.S. (as in its war to retain Indochina as a colony in the late 1940s and early 1950s), and with the Federal Republic of Germany (which was crucial to its activity in the European Union). After 1991, Russia has reconciled with China and cooperated with it on a number of international issues (like the questions raised by the break-up of Yugoslavia, the Iranian nuclear program, and most recently, the unrest in Syria).
Such strategies have tended to achieve only limited results, and to be decreasingly tenable over time. A former metropole's magnetism for lost colonies fades quickly after the loss of formal empire, and the material power that supported it (as has been the case with the British Commonwealth), while the costs of preserving a place in seemingly low-cost regions tends to go up over time (as Britain discovered in the Middle East, and France in Africa).1 Their ability to invest in even limited areas of military capability does not match that of other more affluent powers, and reflects the fact. (Britain's nuclear deterrent was already reliant on American-made missiles by the early 1960s, and the country's weapons programs are increasingly dependent on foreign partnerships – as with every British fighter since the Lightning.) Their special status in international institutions increasingly seems dubious (the retention of permanent Security Council seats by Britain and France has long seemed to many a relic and an injustice, especially with countries like Japan, India, Brazil and Germany lacking such places), while yielding few practical returns (given the limited effect of UN votes, as seen in the case of Iraq). Meanwhile their cultivation of regional blocs tends to dilute their voice (as has happened with the expansion of the EU) while frequently falling short of crucial objectives (like a coherent EU foreign and defense policy), while their "junior partner" role in such associations leaves them followers rather than leaders (as has arguably been the case with Britain).
Britain and France's transition away from great power status essentially ran their courses decades ago. By contrast Russia, which suffered in similar ways even after the resurgence in energy prices after 1998 permitted a partial recovery from the Soviet collapse (as former satellite countries entered NATO, Russia turned to foreign partners for support for its fifth-generation fighter program, and so on), remains in the midst of that process, which seems almost certain to continue (quite in contrast with the predictions some have made about a "mini-Cold War" between Russia and the U.S.).
In the end, where the game of great powers is concerned, there is simply no substitute for broad-based military strength, and the broad-based economic strength required to sustain it.
NOTES
1. In the Middle East pillars of British strategy like client relationships with local monarchies, the Suez base and the Baghdad Pact did not last long in the face of local nationalism; the U.S. and Soviet Union soon eclipsed Britain as external presences; and on top of that, many Middle Eastern countries became significant military powers in their own right – all as Britain had to repeatedly cut its defense spending. Likewise, France's confrontation with Libya over Chad in the 1980s showed the limits of "Jaguar diplomacy," while the 1990s brought additional setbacks (particularly the loss of friendly client regimes in Rwanda and the former Zaire).
Sunday, March 11, 2012
The Myth of Decline?
Neoconservative pundit Robert Kagan's essay in the New Republic "Not Fade Away: Against The Myth of American Decline," has made something of a stir as of late. Among other things, it has been credited with influencing this year's state of the union speech, as noted on the page at the Brookings Institute where it has been republished, with the result that, once again, Kagan has spun a small book out of it.
In the original piece, at any rate, Kagan makes reasonable arguments about the limits to the influence of countries like Brazil, Turkey, India and even China (given its low per-capita income and constraining geopolitical position); the appearance of seemingly daunting challenges for primacy (like the Soviet Union and Japan), and serious frustrations on the international scene (like the "loss of China" and the Vietnam War), in the past, which proved to be less consequential than was first assumed; and the sheer distance of other actors from anything comparable to the military capabilities the U.S. enjoys.
However, his examination of the U.S.'s economic and fiscal problems is conveniently superficial, all but ignoring such issues as the country's deindustrialization, balance of payments problems, and mounting foreign and central government debt, problematic trends which are interconnected, long-running, well advanced and not easily ameliorated, let alone reversed.1 The result is that, while Kagan puts some of the recent exaggerations in perspective, he remains overoptimistic in his reading of the situation, as is evident when he (all too predictably) trots out the old analogy between the United States and the British Empire, and offers as his final judgment a rough equality between the United States' present position, and Britain's circa 1870--a reading which makes little sense when one crunches those numbers. That this is not more evident owes much more to the weaknesses of other actors (the European Union, China) than the irrelevance of the issues he fails to address.
1. Indeed, Kagan has some of his facts wrong. The U.S.'s share of world GDP has not remained constant during the past few decades as he claims, but slowly eroded, from 31.3 percent of Gross World Product to 23.2 percent between 1970 and 2008, according to United Nations data (cited here). This 26 percent drop in its share is not an insignificant difference in itself, but milder than another, sharper change: that of the U.S.'s share of world manufacturing, which has fallen from 28.4 to 17.6 percent of the global total--a 38 percent drop--in the same time period, one result of which has been China's overtaking the U.S. as the world's biggest manufacturer.
In the original piece, at any rate, Kagan makes reasonable arguments about the limits to the influence of countries like Brazil, Turkey, India and even China (given its low per-capita income and constraining geopolitical position); the appearance of seemingly daunting challenges for primacy (like the Soviet Union and Japan), and serious frustrations on the international scene (like the "loss of China" and the Vietnam War), in the past, which proved to be less consequential than was first assumed; and the sheer distance of other actors from anything comparable to the military capabilities the U.S. enjoys.
However, his examination of the U.S.'s economic and fiscal problems is conveniently superficial, all but ignoring such issues as the country's deindustrialization, balance of payments problems, and mounting foreign and central government debt, problematic trends which are interconnected, long-running, well advanced and not easily ameliorated, let alone reversed.1 The result is that, while Kagan puts some of the recent exaggerations in perspective, he remains overoptimistic in his reading of the situation, as is evident when he (all too predictably) trots out the old analogy between the United States and the British Empire, and offers as his final judgment a rough equality between the United States' present position, and Britain's circa 1870--a reading which makes little sense when one crunches those numbers. That this is not more evident owes much more to the weaknesses of other actors (the European Union, China) than the irrelevance of the issues he fails to address.
1. Indeed, Kagan has some of his facts wrong. The U.S.'s share of world GDP has not remained constant during the past few decades as he claims, but slowly eroded, from 31.3 percent of Gross World Product to 23.2 percent between 1970 and 2008, according to United Nations data (cited here). This 26 percent drop in its share is not an insignificant difference in itself, but milder than another, sharper change: that of the U.S.'s share of world manufacturing, which has fallen from 28.4 to 17.6 percent of the global total--a 38 percent drop--in the same time period, one result of which has been China's overtaking the U.S. as the world's biggest manufacturer.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Fourth Reich Rising?
I remember recently thinking of how quickly the depictions of a newly imperialistic Germany after the Cold War's end (for a while, popular with thriller novelists like Larry Bond and Harold Coyle) proved passé. However, the news coverage of European economic affairs during the past year increasingly seems to echo this, with alarmed talk of a "Fourth Reich"
becoming a commonplace, and not at all limited to countries like Greece facing harsh austerity measures as the price of a bail-out. British right-wingers are now routinely publishing such rhetoric in mainstream venues, as in these pieces by Simon Heffer and thriller writer Frederick Forsyth, who claimed that Germany is creating a new empire in which countries like Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland are turned from manufacturing competitors into colonies (his term) which will "provide cheap labour, raw materials, agricultural produce and a ready market for the trinkets" produced in the German metropole. Quite rightly, historian Richard J. Evans recently wrote in The New Statesman that "We haven't seen this kind of language since the 1990s, when German reunification led to a spate of Germanophobic commentary in politics and the media."
The hysterics point to Germany's economic strength, the popular view of which represents quite the turnaround from the disdain once fashionable among orthodox economic thinkers. Germany, of course, is not just the largest national economy in the EU by a significant margin (more than a third larger than the number two country, Britain), but in per-capita terms, the biggest manufacturer among the major economic powers ($9,300 per head, compared to $8,200 for Japan, and $6,000 for the U.S. in 2009), and by far the biggest manufacturing power in the EU in aggregate terms (out-producing the next two largest manufacturers, Italy and France, combined) – but so it has been for a long time.
What is more novel is the country's export performance in the last decade, which has made it the world's second-largest exporter (after only China, and actually ahead of the U.S.), and given it a consistently favorable balance of trade. One might also add that its central government budget deficits and unemployment have been (relatively) low in recent years, even after the outbreak of the 2008- crisis (the two figures put at 1.7 percent of GDP and 6 percent of the work force for 2011 according to the CIA's World Factbook, figures the United States can only envy).
Looking at such data one might forget that Germany's economic and industrial weight has actually receded since the early 1990s, both globally and within the EU – a fact reflecting the country's slow economic growth (less reflective of the "Eurosclerosis" theory than the broad stagnation of the world economy since the 1970s), the ascendancy of East Asia (and especially China), and the frantic expansion of the European Union (which has seen Germany "offshore" much of its production to Eastern Europe).1 One might forget, too, that the largest part of those trade surpluses comes from trade inside of the EU, and that here at least, this export-led strategy (which has led some to compare Germany with China) is bumping up against its limits, as the debt crisis shows how unsustainable those surpluses really are. And of course, one should remember that Germany is itself the bearer of one of the world's largest external debt burdens, behind only the U.S., U.K. and France in this regard, equal to more than 150 percent of the country's GDP – making it bigger than the U.S.'s in relative terms (if considerably smaller than those of the other major EU economies).
As this situation suggests, Germany's present position on the continent seems at least as much a question of the weakness of its European partners as its sometimes exaggerated strengths. While Germany, like other mature industrial states, has seen manufacturing fall as a share of employment and Gross Domestic Product (down to 21 percent now, from 24 percent in 1992), its neighbors have suffered deeper deindustrialization (the figures for Italy, Britain and France are 17, 12 and 11 percent, respectively) – too much, as the trade imbalances demonstrate. It also seems to me that the celebration of Germany's export boom reflects an overeagerness on the part of some to find validation for neoliberal prescriptions in the country's recent steps in that direction (or what at least look like such steps, as some interpret the matter differently) – the same neoliberalism that, far more than some predatory mercantilism, seems to be the defining feature of the austerity packages the European Central Bank is imposing on countries like Italy and Greece.2
The result is that while Germany has been more successful than most in holding on to its position as an industrial power (not a minor or unimportant accomplishment), its current position is no basis for the fantasies of German empire so many writers are spinning out – even if that were an actual object of the country's policy - and a questionable one even where lasting prosperity is concerned. In its emphasis on advanced manufacturing Germany has the prescription only half-right; there needs to be a commitment to full employment and rising wages as well, such as prevailed in the first half of the post-World War II era, not just in Germany, but in its trading partners also - and no plausible increase in exports to China can substitute for this, especially given the country's own internal challenges. Unfortunately, I think that is exactly what we are least likely to see in the foreseeable future.
1. According to the UN data I cited in my Parameters article last year, Germany accounted for 8.3 percent of Gross World Product, and 9.7 percent of world industrial output, in 1992. By 2008 those figures had fallen to 6 and 7.4 percent respectively – a drop of roughly 25 percent.
2. This is not to dispute the fact that such policies have generally worked against developing nations, and favored developed ones, but the beneficiaries have tended to be selected economic interests in the latter, rather than countries as a whole (just as the developed world has seen its economic growth stagnate and its living standards eroded in the same neoliberal rush stunting, or even reversing, the development of poorer countries).
The hysterics point to Germany's economic strength, the popular view of which represents quite the turnaround from the disdain once fashionable among orthodox economic thinkers. Germany, of course, is not just the largest national economy in the EU by a significant margin (more than a third larger than the number two country, Britain), but in per-capita terms, the biggest manufacturer among the major economic powers ($9,300 per head, compared to $8,200 for Japan, and $6,000 for the U.S. in 2009), and by far the biggest manufacturing power in the EU in aggregate terms (out-producing the next two largest manufacturers, Italy and France, combined) – but so it has been for a long time.
What is more novel is the country's export performance in the last decade, which has made it the world's second-largest exporter (after only China, and actually ahead of the U.S.), and given it a consistently favorable balance of trade. One might also add that its central government budget deficits and unemployment have been (relatively) low in recent years, even after the outbreak of the 2008- crisis (the two figures put at 1.7 percent of GDP and 6 percent of the work force for 2011 according to the CIA's World Factbook, figures the United States can only envy).
Looking at such data one might forget that Germany's economic and industrial weight has actually receded since the early 1990s, both globally and within the EU – a fact reflecting the country's slow economic growth (less reflective of the "Eurosclerosis" theory than the broad stagnation of the world economy since the 1970s), the ascendancy of East Asia (and especially China), and the frantic expansion of the European Union (which has seen Germany "offshore" much of its production to Eastern Europe).1 One might forget, too, that the largest part of those trade surpluses comes from trade inside of the EU, and that here at least, this export-led strategy (which has led some to compare Germany with China) is bumping up against its limits, as the debt crisis shows how unsustainable those surpluses really are. And of course, one should remember that Germany is itself the bearer of one of the world's largest external debt burdens, behind only the U.S., U.K. and France in this regard, equal to more than 150 percent of the country's GDP – making it bigger than the U.S.'s in relative terms (if considerably smaller than those of the other major EU economies).
As this situation suggests, Germany's present position on the continent seems at least as much a question of the weakness of its European partners as its sometimes exaggerated strengths. While Germany, like other mature industrial states, has seen manufacturing fall as a share of employment and Gross Domestic Product (down to 21 percent now, from 24 percent in 1992), its neighbors have suffered deeper deindustrialization (the figures for Italy, Britain and France are 17, 12 and 11 percent, respectively) – too much, as the trade imbalances demonstrate. It also seems to me that the celebration of Germany's export boom reflects an overeagerness on the part of some to find validation for neoliberal prescriptions in the country's recent steps in that direction (or what at least look like such steps, as some interpret the matter differently) – the same neoliberalism that, far more than some predatory mercantilism, seems to be the defining feature of the austerity packages the European Central Bank is imposing on countries like Italy and Greece.2
The result is that while Germany has been more successful than most in holding on to its position as an industrial power (not a minor or unimportant accomplishment), its current position is no basis for the fantasies of German empire so many writers are spinning out – even if that were an actual object of the country's policy - and a questionable one even where lasting prosperity is concerned. In its emphasis on advanced manufacturing Germany has the prescription only half-right; there needs to be a commitment to full employment and rising wages as well, such as prevailed in the first half of the post-World War II era, not just in Germany, but in its trading partners also - and no plausible increase in exports to China can substitute for this, especially given the country's own internal challenges. Unfortunately, I think that is exactly what we are least likely to see in the foreseeable future.
1. According to the UN data I cited in my Parameters article last year, Germany accounted for 8.3 percent of Gross World Product, and 9.7 percent of world industrial output, in 1992. By 2008 those figures had fallen to 6 and 7.4 percent respectively – a drop of roughly 25 percent.
2. This is not to dispute the fact that such policies have generally worked against developing nations, and favored developed ones, but the beneficiaries have tended to be selected economic interests in the latter, rather than countries as a whole (just as the developed world has seen its economic growth stagnate and its living standards eroded in the same neoliberal rush stunting, or even reversing, the development of poorer countries).
Friday, January 27, 2012
2011 Round-Up, Part II: The Year's Biggest Security Stories
With the end of 2011, many news outlets have proffered their lists of the year's biggest stories.
The list from the Wired Danger Room includes the killing of Osama bin Laden and other setbacks to al-Qaida; the "Arab Spring" in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya (and the international intervention there); the "end" of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, and the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq - while a substantial force of private contractors remains behind and the covert, "shadow" side of the War on Terror intensifies; and the revelation of startling anti-Muslim ignorance and bigotry in FBI training materials.
As these stories demonstrate, the list is rather focused on the War on Terror and the Middle East, but it also includes problems with high-tech aircraft programs (the grounding of the F-22 fleet, the beleaguered F-35 program), the revelations of previously secret programs (like the stealth helicopter used in the operation against bin Laden, and Pentagon research into crowdsourcing), the activities of Mexican drug cartels, and the U.S. armed forces' reaction to the massive budget cuts facing them in the coming years.
Still, there is much that the quick recaps of those items misses. The discussion of the Arab Spring is far from complete without mention of events in states besides the three North African nations that got so much press – like Bahrain (which responded with a brutal crackdown, in which it was backed by Saudi and UAE forces, events which were underreported, and which Western governments generally shied away from criticizing) and Yemen (where events have also turned bloody), which are not even mentioned in the Danger Room round-up. Additionally, the U.S. is not the only country recently forced to make sharp cuts in defense spending by its economic difficulties. (In relative terms, Britain's cuts seem far more dramatic, and are not irrelevant to the U.S. given the import of British participation in American-led interventions in the past two decades.)
One might add that during 2011 China reached two milestones in the modernization (repeat, modernization, not build-up) of its forces – its testing of a fifth-generation fighter, the J-20, and the maiden voyage of its first aircraft carrier. (The significance of these events – which represent only an early stage in the development of both those capabilities - has been grossly exaggerated by scare-mongers, but I can't help feeling that an overview of the year would not be complete without mention of them.)
Offering a more global view (in contrast with the strongly American outlook of the Danger Room), as well as greater attention to less "traditional" (but arguably more important) issues is the list of The New Security Beat's most-viewed posts. Six of the top ten explicitly discuss demographics in some way (among other things, the role it played in the revolution in Tunisia, the implications for food security, and the revelation of a new, higher UN estimate about where population growth will go in the 21st century), two deal with water security issues, and one with the interaction between the two ("Peter Gleick: Population Dynamics Key to Sustainable Water Solutions"). There is also an attempt at developing a big picture ("In Search of A New Security Narrative").
However, the items presented by The New Security Beat is less news-y and more analytical than the Danger Room, so that while the pieces discussed above certainly demand attention, they do not quite function as a comprehensive round-up of the year's events. Indeed, two of the biggest stories in energy and environmental security during 2011 are not mentioned in it – the Fukushima nuclear disaster (the most dramatic nuclear energy incident in a generation, which will profoundly affect our handling of this energy source) and the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference (the agreement produced by which represents a step further than we have gone before, but even on paper is short on both the commitment and ambition needed to tackle the problem, while in real life carbon emissions continue to shoot up).
At the same time, there is the matter of the world's financial system, which remains deeply troubled as one G-7 member after another sees its credit rating suffer (the U.S. got downgraded in August), and the Eurozone crisis tediously drags on and on and on – simply some of the more conspicuous signs of the continuation of the 2008 economic crisis. It would be simplistic to set this problem above the others – economic security is hardly extricable from the kinds described above – but it seems to me the area of greatest short-term vulnerability. Unfortunately, as recent events show, nothing significant has been done about any aspect of this (not trade imbalances, or income inequality, or stagnant consumption, or the destabilizing overfinancialization of the world economy). Indeed, the problem hardly seems to have been acknowledged – precisely because such acknowledgment flies in the face of the neoliberalism that remains the orthodoxy, even as it has been shown to be bankrupt again and again, and the fact seems unlikely to change anytime soon.
The list from the Wired Danger Room includes the killing of Osama bin Laden and other setbacks to al-Qaida; the "Arab Spring" in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya (and the international intervention there); the "end" of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, and the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq - while a substantial force of private contractors remains behind and the covert, "shadow" side of the War on Terror intensifies; and the revelation of startling anti-Muslim ignorance and bigotry in FBI training materials.
As these stories demonstrate, the list is rather focused on the War on Terror and the Middle East, but it also includes problems with high-tech aircraft programs (the grounding of the F-22 fleet, the beleaguered F-35 program), the revelations of previously secret programs (like the stealth helicopter used in the operation against bin Laden, and Pentagon research into crowdsourcing), the activities of Mexican drug cartels, and the U.S. armed forces' reaction to the massive budget cuts facing them in the coming years.
Still, there is much that the quick recaps of those items misses. The discussion of the Arab Spring is far from complete without mention of events in states besides the three North African nations that got so much press – like Bahrain (which responded with a brutal crackdown, in which it was backed by Saudi and UAE forces, events which were underreported, and which Western governments generally shied away from criticizing) and Yemen (where events have also turned bloody), which are not even mentioned in the Danger Room round-up. Additionally, the U.S. is not the only country recently forced to make sharp cuts in defense spending by its economic difficulties. (In relative terms, Britain's cuts seem far more dramatic, and are not irrelevant to the U.S. given the import of British participation in American-led interventions in the past two decades.)
One might add that during 2011 China reached two milestones in the modernization (repeat, modernization, not build-up) of its forces – its testing of a fifth-generation fighter, the J-20, and the maiden voyage of its first aircraft carrier. (The significance of these events – which represent only an early stage in the development of both those capabilities - has been grossly exaggerated by scare-mongers, but I can't help feeling that an overview of the year would not be complete without mention of them.)
Offering a more global view (in contrast with the strongly American outlook of the Danger Room), as well as greater attention to less "traditional" (but arguably more important) issues is the list of The New Security Beat's most-viewed posts. Six of the top ten explicitly discuss demographics in some way (among other things, the role it played in the revolution in Tunisia, the implications for food security, and the revelation of a new, higher UN estimate about where population growth will go in the 21st century), two deal with water security issues, and one with the interaction between the two ("Peter Gleick: Population Dynamics Key to Sustainable Water Solutions"). There is also an attempt at developing a big picture ("In Search of A New Security Narrative").
However, the items presented by The New Security Beat is less news-y and more analytical than the Danger Room, so that while the pieces discussed above certainly demand attention, they do not quite function as a comprehensive round-up of the year's events. Indeed, two of the biggest stories in energy and environmental security during 2011 are not mentioned in it – the Fukushima nuclear disaster (the most dramatic nuclear energy incident in a generation, which will profoundly affect our handling of this energy source) and the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference (the agreement produced by which represents a step further than we have gone before, but even on paper is short on both the commitment and ambition needed to tackle the problem, while in real life carbon emissions continue to shoot up).
At the same time, there is the matter of the world's financial system, which remains deeply troubled as one G-7 member after another sees its credit rating suffer (the U.S. got downgraded in August), and the Eurozone crisis tediously drags on and on and on – simply some of the more conspicuous signs of the continuation of the 2008 economic crisis. It would be simplistic to set this problem above the others – economic security is hardly extricable from the kinds described above – but it seems to me the area of greatest short-term vulnerability. Unfortunately, as recent events show, nothing significant has been done about any aspect of this (not trade imbalances, or income inequality, or stagnant consumption, or the destabilizing overfinancialization of the world economy). Indeed, the problem hardly seems to have been acknowledged – precisely because such acknowledgment flies in the face of the neoliberalism that remains the orthodoxy, even as it has been shown to be bankrupt again and again, and the fact seems unlikely to change anytime soon.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
SOPA Blackout Protest
I found out about the protest against SOPA (H.R. Bill 3261, innocuously named the "Stop Online Piracy Act") too late to participate properly. So I'm posting this message to indicate my solidarity with the protestors - and offering this link to blackout participant Wikipedia's FAQ on the subject.
Until tomorrow, please regard this site as also blacked out.
This blog will resume its normal operations then.
Until tomorrow, please regard this site as also blacked out.
This blog will resume its normal operations then.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
A Sixth-Generation Fighter: Artificial Intelligence?
One possibility that has appeared in discussions of the sixth-generation fighter is that it might be unmanned. The advantages of such an approach are obvious. Eliminating the pilot means being able to do away with the space and weight needed for human accommodation, while the aircraft's performance would no longer be constrained by human endurance. Additionally, this eliminates the risk of human losses in aerial operations. That at least some of the next generation of fighters might be remotely piloted seems plausible enough, given the increased use of such aircraft in reconnaissance and strike missions.
More radical, however, is the question of aircraft which are fully autonomous. Doing away with remote control would reduce the reliance on a vulnerable communications link, on the inevitable time-delay and disruptions to the data transfer between the aircraft and a distant operator, and human reflexes. Additionally, a fully autonomous aircraft would greatly simplify the trouble and expense of training operators.
However, this mode of operation is far less common at this point, requiring as it does more advanced artificial intelligence than anything available. Yet, those who are bullish on this issue speculate that human-grade artificial intelligence might be available by the 2020s, just in time to be an option for the designers of the first crop of sixth-generation fighters. And of course, assuming continued progress on AI past that point, better-than-human artificial intelligence would set the standard, pushing human beings out of the cockpit once and for all.
Still, even if the optimists are right about this trajectory, it is unlikely to come about all at once. We might see intermediate steps, such as smarter aircraft systems, like the "intelligent flight control system" currently under study in some research programs, and sufficient automation to enable designers of strike aircraft like the F-15E Strike Eagle and F-18F Super Hornet to dispense with Weapons Systems Officers. This is not the limit of present ambition, however; Russian publicists for the PAK-FA promise the aircraft will have an expert system with near-human capability. And capability which is merely "near-human" might still be seen as adequate for an autonomous aircraft because of the other advantages it offers.
More radical, however, is the question of aircraft which are fully autonomous. Doing away with remote control would reduce the reliance on a vulnerable communications link, on the inevitable time-delay and disruptions to the data transfer between the aircraft and a distant operator, and human reflexes. Additionally, a fully autonomous aircraft would greatly simplify the trouble and expense of training operators.
However, this mode of operation is far less common at this point, requiring as it does more advanced artificial intelligence than anything available. Yet, those who are bullish on this issue speculate that human-grade artificial intelligence might be available by the 2020s, just in time to be an option for the designers of the first crop of sixth-generation fighters. And of course, assuming continued progress on AI past that point, better-than-human artificial intelligence would set the standard, pushing human beings out of the cockpit once and for all.
Still, even if the optimists are right about this trajectory, it is unlikely to come about all at once. We might see intermediate steps, such as smarter aircraft systems, like the "intelligent flight control system" currently under study in some research programs, and sufficient automation to enable designers of strike aircraft like the F-15E Strike Eagle and F-18F Super Hornet to dispense with Weapons Systems Officers. This is not the limit of present ambition, however; Russian publicists for the PAK-FA promise the aircraft will have an expert system with near-human capability. And capability which is merely "near-human" might still be seen as adequate for an autonomous aircraft because of the other advantages it offers.
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