2023-08-07 00:31:00
The irruption of capitalism as a form of organization of production and of a significant part of humanity, bringing by its hand the Contemporary Age –according to some historiographical schools–, it materialized from the invention of the steam engine, which revolutionized production, increasing its scale and giving rise to the working and bourgeois classes. The bourgeoisie, the antithesis of the overthrown aristocracy, played an important role in the French Revolution and in the adjoining Industrial Revolution, when actors with financial power and determination appeared to unite their economic objectives with their political ones.
Since I was wearing shorts, capitalism has been considered with different optics and multiple formats: from the non-intervention of the State in the market (liberalism), from the postulation as a new stage of the proletarian revolution and socialism (Marxism), from the expansion of fiscal policy and market regulation (Keynesianism), from the crowning of the free market as the best mechanism to allocate resources and promote growth (neoliberalism). The ideological characterization of each one of these aspects has caused the inevitable and hasty political phenomenon of preferring to attack in droves against the thoughts that are not shared, and to lateralize the analysis of the predominant phases of capitalism and its future.
Homecoming of the Pope
Beginning in the year 1800, wealth and per capita income multiplied as never before in history. The standard of living of the towns experienced sustained growth. No classical economist had envisioned this behavior, not even as a theoretical possibility, according to Nobel Prize winner Robert Lucas, one of the creators of the theory of rational expectations. As the years passed, today’s figures conclude in a phrase that is not easy to forget: “I have bad news”.
The current phase of global monopoly capitalism shows material fatigue and is propelled with a reckless flight plan. Among many, I am interested in highlighting these aspects: the predominance of financial activity over the real economy; the increase in the concentration of capital and the inequitable distribution of income; the structuring of the technology market in few economic agents; the deterioration of the environment (which refreshes us with Nicanor Parra’s reflection: “Good news! The Earth will recover in a million years: we are the ones who will disappear”).
From my point of view a phase change is inevitable, which will be preceded by geopolitical conflicts with portentous domestic repercussionswhere some phrases that are repeated daily will no longer lose operational force, but their direct meaning.
Elegant ostracism of Cristina and Macri
Material fatigue is noticed in:
a) if the financial economy is the one that deals with markets, investments, credits and financial instruments, and the real economy is the one that refers to the production, consumption, employment and income of goods and services , the value of global financial assets – depending on how they are measured – is between 3 and 10 times greater than the world’s gross domestic product. Triple or tenfold it, this signals an irreversible financialization of this phase of capitalism;
b) In order not to repeat the most shaken figures, in 2021 the US Federal Reserve announced one more bank merger than the 4,506 approved over 16 years. Mónica Peralta Ramos writes that between 1999 and 2022 the number of banks and financial institutions with official guarantee of deposits fell by 54%, and that financial concentration is greater if one considers that in September 2022 only four megabanks owned 39 % of the total of the 23.6 billion (trillions) dollars of assets belonging to the 4,674 banks and financial institutions with official guarantee of deposits. That is to say: 0.08% of financial entities today control 39% of the assets;
c) as technological development is concentrated in a few companies from privileged countries, the enormous mass of capital derived from their activities has followed the prevailing criteria of the market: after a stingy 2022, in 2023 giants like Microsoft and Apple launched a rally that does not stop The index that brings together the 10 North American technology giants, the NYSE FAANG, recovered from the losses registered last year (-40%) and with an increase of 74.2% so far in 2023, it is close to the maximum registered in November 2021;
d) in the last 150 years, the industrialization process, to which deforestation and large-scale agriculture have been added, have produced an increase in greenhouse gases to levels never experienced in three million years. In the last 30 years, and as a consequence of the burning of fossil fuels, more than half of the CO2 expelled into the atmosphere has been emitted. In that period, the role played by the great powers is undeniable. Diseases, food security, migrations, deterioration of balance. In India, a rise of just one meter in sea level due to melting ice would force the displacement of 40 million people. That is, climate change has a decisive geopolitical dimension and countries not responsible for the phenomenon suffer its consequences.
Elections: the survey that will hit
This discomfort in the formats that capitalism adopts challenges politics, which in some cases runs from the fourth to the pole. It doesn’t make sense to continue saying that due to Vaca Muerta Argentina has gas for 300 years, because gas is also a fossil fuel, although “soft”; It is better to talk about a resource for the energy transition. Neither trust the wealth of lithium. Just as natural rubber was extracted from Hevea brasiliensis and for many years was a source of fever and prosperity, synthetic rubber displaced it and left ruins where there was flourishing. A new sodium-ion battery has begun to be developed, which recharges to 80% of its capacity in 15 minutes, promises high energy density and good thermal stability. Neither continue to believe that the possibility of choosing between buying (or selling) China or the United States will last: that alternative that considers our interests must be intelligent and hard worked. Institutionally strong integrations are expensive, lengthy, and require leadership; It is enough to see what the institutions that we already have offer the inhabitants. Those of us who are most vulnerable must unite with more flexible ties.
Nobody will wait for us. Time is faster than ever. We will have to fight against complexity. Finding a wise balance between facilitating urgent changes and preventing catastrophes. Having the will to fight, without which the government is not power. Doubling the cycle of economic indicators that breaks the image that society had of itself and hurts self-esteem. Learning to live in multipolarity without bottles and without crying to breastfeed. That is the demand facing Argentine politics. Effort well distributed, patience, intelligence, honesty and not believing in shortcuts. There will be no shortcuts, nothing will be easy.
For the aborigines who speak in headlines, bad news: the North American State seems to be adopting a new format for its economy, which implies accepting in whole or in part the panorama developed up to here. From the Kingdom of Finance to the Industrial Property. The market will be displaced by the State, which will allocate resources to sectors of strategic importance for the “resilience” of the economy and “national security”. Those who learned the Washington Consensus by heart, to defend it and attack others, or to defend it as a manual of systematic theology, will now have to make an enormous effort. If they’re concerned about consistency, they’ll say that when they said “x”, they really meant “y”. And to those who don’t (the majority), they will officiate matins, as if they had always said the same thing. It is the problem that reciting without having written a word brings.
What with this panorama is everything uphill? Of course, but no one in his right mind could have thought of anything else. Borges wrote that: “Ours are the women who left us, no longer subject to the eve, which is anxiety, and to the alarms and terrors of hope. There are no other paradises than the lost paradises.” Accepting that we have lost paradise may make us think about ourselves as a community, that being conditioned is not the same as being determined, that politics has the challenge of imagining the answers and finding the strength to face forces so brutal that they cannot be considered within the framework of the old ideas.
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