Lenin (and all those BS neo-Marxists) turned upside down
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 at 12:07AM 
Ah, but we know that capitalism and free markets are thoroughly discredited now that our global quarter-century boom came to an end. If it could not last forever, it all had to be revealed as false--right?
And, of course, the crisis revealed that the have/have-not gap was globalization's greatest legacy, despite the unprecedented rise of a global middle class that occupies the middle 60%.
So what is the way forward, besides all of us living under "superior" Chinese rule?
Well, it seems that the only way forward for globalization's Old Core West is to get better at selling to the bottom of the pyramid.
CANYOUBELIEVETHAT? The ONLY way the Old Core can stay rich is by shrinking the Gap!
So it turns out Lenin and all the neo-Marxists had it right--just completely backwards once the American model of globalization truly surpassed the colonial legacies and Cold War divisions.
Whew! What a relief!
Here I thought my whole vision was just a regurgitation of the 1970s neo-Marxists, when it turns out to be their complete ideological opposite!
Thank God I finally saw the light.
This rant was inspired by a Samuelson column in Newsweek--a very good one. He quotes Arvind Subramanian (a current favorite, for good reason) on the need to cross the "Hobbesian threshold."
In Pentagon's New Map, I said much the same back in 2004: the Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance ideological journey was from Hobbes to Locke to Kant--as in, security to good laws to peace-enhancing connectivity.
Core/Gap map, global economy, ideology | in Citation Post | Email Article | Permalink | Print Article 
Reader Comments (1)
This is probably a very dumb question. But let me go ahead and ask it anyway:
Would it be wrong to think of (periods of) globalization -- as with certain other economic phenomenon -- to simply be larger scale/longer-running economic "bubbles," with all the positive and negative aspects of economic "bubbles" generally, and with societies attempting to adjust and get back to "normal"/"stability" via new rules, etc., after certain of the more serious "globalization"/"bubble" problems are revealed and are experienced? The proper approach going forward to be (1) expect "globalization"/"bubbles" to continue to happen and plan/act accordingly to avoid/eliminate as many of the adverse aspects of these phenomenon as is possible?