Tuesday 22 August 2017

Empowering the many or Retaining the few? the battle for domestic-based development in the age of globalisation-neoliberalism

Empowering the many or Retaining the few? 

The battle for domestic-based development 
in the age of globalisation-neoliberalism



"The existence of successful city-states such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai certainly suggests an answer to this question. Whatever we call them, these places are remarkable for their prosperity and their relative absence of politics. In fact, perhaps the only way to make them more stable and secure would be to transform them from effectively family-owned (Singapore and Dubai) or subsidiary (Hong Kong) corporations, to anonymous public ownership, thus eliminating the long-term risk that political violence might develop."

This statement made by Mencius Moldbug seemed to be a most fitting one instead of those that uses politics in order to advance an economic one. Driven by interests, a country whose system used political, economic, and cultural aspects in order to upheld the status quo- that in case of the Philippines, a system led by landlords and compradores are uphelding Semifeudal-Semicolonial rule by having it adjusted to capitalist interests via neoliberalism and globalisation.
Ridiculous isn't it that how cone terms like semifeudalism prevail in a country assuming to be newly industrialised and well-oiled for development? That semicolonialism be heard in a country that speaks thoroughly of its independence?

Perhaps this person, like others concerned, got "triggered" from the statement shunning the idea of self-reliance as one of the foundations of a building society. One example is from a statement brought about by a free trade advocate, as it said:

"Filipinos who stubbornly advocate for a strict National Industrialization model of economic development and job creation, and eschew, reject the notion of tapping into Foreign Direct Investors in order to jumpstart job creation and technology-transfer tend to be totally ignorant of the differences between tropical countries versus temperate countries.

This fundamental difference between these two types of countries explains why it is perfectly possible for Japan's Meiji Restoration to rely mostly on domestically-accumulated savings and domestic sources of investments as their primary engine for development while Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei -- the three richest near-equatorial tropical nations in the world -- relied heavily on Foreign Direct Investments."

Sounds legit at first to say that through industrialisation meant benefiting the oligarchs and hence, "repressive" while letting the economy be at the hands of foreign entities be like "progressive" and "beneficial"; but, at the same time assuming to toy the idea of industrialisation with this statement:

"The key prerequisites for National Industrialization to work are the predisposition of the local population to save and accumulate huge amounts of financial capital and an intense level of scientific and technological scholarship necessary for the country to build homegrown science and technology innovative capacity."

Because of that, one would ask that if industrialisation is necessary according to that statement, then why at the same time telling from that same statement that a domestic-based national development via industrialisation deemed unnecessary in favour of commerce and finance capital? Again, is it because of the oligarchs and parroted by the left? Or because that industrialisation is against the standards of multi/trans-nationals in this age of neoliberalism and globalisation? Such nonsense has made an impression that with industrialisation meant empowering the many as it taps both brain and brawn together- only to be opposed by the few whose interests be harmed because of that patriotically-driven clamour.

And obviously, that decades-old country learned by the west has that capacity to industrialise itself given that it has both material and labor power to tap over, as well as plans to enact (even in this present day setting that still requires the need for steel, petrochemicals, and other necessary needs for a growing nation). The long stalled program for the steel industry needs to be revived to utilise both raw material and labor power not just in pursuit of producing steel but also in supporting existing small and medium-scale industries. True that Japan embarked on a two-pronged approach: (1) That they would hire Western experts and consultants in the various disciplines where they found themselves to be lacking and (2) They would send thousands of their gifted students to study in the West to learn various disciplines in science, engineering and other fields, and got these students to apprentice in these fields in order to gain practical experience before returning to Japan and work along with its Western counterparts they hired in running and developing Japanese industrial enterprises.


Japan's experience somehow became an example for China and Korea in pursuit of development, especially with the latter sending its students to the Soviet Union for assistance; but at the same time it had utilised its domestic intellect in supporting the programs, in whatever ventures as deemed necessary to advance development. And also to facilitate rural development, Land Reform and rural industrialisation has been one of its top priorities in which peasants given arable land and at the same time urging to join cooperatives to improve, intensify production alongside the private sector (national bourgeoisie).
And as for Investments, both local and foreign are allowed as long as it conforms to the national interest, for these will “provide the country with the least costly access to needed technology, products, and markets,” as well as to support existing and future projects that steers development.

Sounds usual as any other country whose openness (and to some extent, dependency) to outside investment meant development (and total pragmatism), but, few countries treat that matter as provisional and as part of a transition to an economy that emphasises state, cooperative, and private enterprises as its active and participating foundations, an alternative to a semifeudal-semicolonial dominance on national affairs.

Singapore's transformation required pragmatism, and in order to keep the country going, it has to become a freeport zone, even almost just to churn development through direct foreign investments, but at same time has to be regulated, at some time, intervened by the state; hence, is Singapore be described a libertarian paradise when in fact it isn't? They do even have a sovereign wealth fund that served as source of investment, a responsible bureaucracy that made its government owned and controlled corporations respectable; so is Singapore a small government entity as well? The Singaporean experience lies in a businesslike view shared both by Ruffles and Lee Kwan Yew, and that example required tolerance and intervention, of dirigism than pragmatism in order to keep the country churning, far from what others think of as a nightwatchman state whose intent is to have an atmosphere of order whilst keeping itself off from economic affairs.
So is in China during Deng Xiaoping's, it may appeared as China's version of the New Economic Policy of Lenin's, and it required currying outside investment and building export economic zones; but that policy China did was meant to be provisional if not temporary and be replaced by another policy that can becoming "neomaoist" in character. Remember: The leftist fad in "communist China" waned subsequently, but with widespread dissatisfaction with rising inequality, official corruption and declining social mores, as well as nationalist sentiment through the decade elicited a new nostalgia for the Mao era among a younger generation of intellectuals and the public starting with an enhanced appreciation of Mao as a ‘great patriot and national hero’ who had liberated China from backwardness and imperialism; and in it may also meant appreciating the policies that involves emphasis on agrarianism and of production (using Dazhai and Daqing for an example). Mao’s revolutionary vision and leadership were favourably reassessed by academics, and in the popular imagination, Mao’s incorruptible and non-nepotistic image posed a stark contrast to the self-serving bureaucrats of the reform era.


These experiences, as observed by this person, expressed how deregulation, privatisation, and its eventual opening to outside investments with rights to take over sovereign assets, in spite of its supposed intent, also created mistakes especially in developing and underdeveloped countries. With Globalisation intensifies repression with all these policies, the developing and underdeveloped countries felt repression, maldevelopment, with enforced dependency to the whims of the first world. These countries are meant to be developed especially those whose resources are sufficient for self-reliance, and if to call it socialistic for being economically independent, so what's wrong with that?
In societies wherein political/economic/cultural power is controlled by a family or under a subsidiary of a bigger entity, everything tends to be consolidated. Pragmatism served as a temporary measure, a strategy prior to making a bigger course that, hopefully speaking, turns out to be better than the other measure- that in case of the Soviet experience, the provisional "New Economic Policy" (NEP) during the Lenin administration has to be replaced by Stalin's First Five Year Plans the way it replaced the "idealistic" War Communism by the NEP.

Anyway, to paraphrase Moldbug's, countries that rather geared towards total development is through transforming them from an effectively family-owned (or an anarchy of families rather) with its subsidiaries to the community with an actively participative public; sounds ideal but unlike those who chose to upheld the status quo due to some practicalities, then why to take pursuit of an ideal, or rather say an impossible cause? In the end these are the effects brought upon by a third world reality.