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Serf-Expression

March 14, 2022

Serf-Expression

Eventually the “flock of timid and industrious animals” changes their minds about how much exploitation by the few is acceptable.

You may have noticed the news flow beyond the hot war in Ukraine is largely focused on capital: financial capital (markets, liquidity, interest rates, commodities, central bank tightening, etc.) and political capital (geopolitical maneuvering, sanctions, revising energy and defense policies, etc.)

Notice who’s left out, unnoticed and invisible? The serfs, the bottom 90% who have been decapitalized in the developed world and exploited in the developing world for the past 45 years.

With capital ascendant, the vast majority of financial and political gains flowed to the top tier of speculative capital (banks and billionaires) while the purchasing power of labor (i.e. wages) has been in a 45-year descent. (See chart below)

This disemboweling of labor transferred $50 trillion from labor to capital in the U.S. alone. Financialization and globalization devalued labor and working-class assets such as savings and boosted leveraged speculative bets only available to financiers and corporations, for example, stock buybacks funded by the tsunami of free money for financiers unleashed by the Federal Reserve and other central banks. (See chart below)

Even though the corporate media gives it no notice, serf-expression will become increasingly consequential. No, serf-expression is not a typo for self-expression, the core doctrine of modernism. By serf-expression I mean the serf’s expression of what is no longer acceptable. Another term for this is cultural revolution. I address social and cultural revolutions in my new book, Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States.

Is a Cultural Revolution Brewing in America? (April 9, 2021)

When the serfs no longer believe in the divine right of banks and billionaires, then the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of the few will no longer be acceptabl…

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Of grain and gulags: a note on work, labour and self-ownership

December 5, 2021

Of grain and gulags: a note on work, labour and self-ownership

I’ll begin with a brief account of how our modern global grain trading system was invented in Chicago in the 19th century, which is maybe a bit of a jolt from the present focus of this blog cycle on the forms of property but hopefully my purposes will become clear.

Prior to the railroad/grain elevator/futures market nexus that began to emerge in the 1850s, prairie grain farmers sold their product in sacks that retained their identity with the source farm through to the point of sale. The innovation of the railroad/elevator system was to create standardized grades of grain that enabled the harvest from individual farms to be amassed together in vast quantities as a fungible commodity like money. The innovation of the futures market was to remove uncertainty about future price fluctuations, essentially by enabling speculators to assume the burden of the risk by betting on movements in grain prices. Before long, the value of the futures being traded greatly exceeded the value of the physical grain in existence.

These innovations called forth vastly more economic activity than previously possible, created a torrent of cheap grain that flooded global markets and pushed farmers in other places out of grain production (and often out of farming altogether), and stimulated the growth of prairie grain farming, while removing from farmers themselves substantial economic autonomy, fostering perhaps a self-interest on their part in the grading of their grain at the margin, but not a more holistic interest in the story of their grain from field to fork. They also pretty much forged the global economy as we know it today (I’ll ignore the meat/livestock side of the story for brevity, but the globalization of meat production was another prong to the same history)1.

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A world for the many, not the few

June 25, 2018

A world for the many, not the few

“The very notion of ‘charity’ erases a global history of slavery and oppression”. Asad Rehman applauds Labour’s ambition to overhaul neo-colonial development policy

Illustration by Andrzej Krauze

In 1792, pioneering British feminist and social justice activist Mary Wollstonecroft wrote in her seminal book The Rights of Women, ‘It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.’ Two centuries later, the shadow international development minister, Kate Osamor, a black feminist with a background in social justice activism, has anchored that fundamental truth in Labour’s vision for international development, ‘A World For the Many, Not The Few’. In doing so, she has committed the Labour Party to putting social justice at the heart of its international agenda and listening to the voices of those facing the greatest injustices: women in the global south.

For too long, politicians and, to their shame, many in the development sector have ignored the key driver of global poverty: neoliberal capitalism, a failed economic system whose rules are stacked in favour of corporate elites. They have stayed silent on the culpability of Britain in promoting unfair trade rules, creating new debt burdens, forcing privatisations and entrenching oppressive neo-colonial power dynamics on the international stage.

The new colonialism

The idea of ‘international development’ was constructed in the post-war era to cover up the deliberate ‘underdevelopment’ of the global south. During colonialism, Britain and the other industrial powerhouses had enriched themselves by extracting resources and slave labour from their colonies. They deliberately impoverished the south and, in the process, killed countless millions across Latin America, Africa and Asia. It is estimated that the UK extracted £600 trillion during its colonisation of India alone, reducing India’s pre-colonial share of the global economy from 27 per cent to just 3 per cent by the time the British left.

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The return of the peasant: or, the history of the world in 10½ blog posts. 10. The current impasse

November 28, 2017

The return of the peasant: or, the history of the world in 10½ blog posts. 10. The current impasse

I’ve just returned from a short but fascinating meeting in Nicaragua on small-scale farming, which I plan to write about soon. But first I want to finish my history of the world. Apologies if the latter has dragged on too much, but we’re in the home straight now, and we’ll be moving on to other stuff soon. As ever a fully referenced version of this essay is here.

oOo

By the end of World War II, of the four key modern political doctrines I identified above it was liberal-democratic capitalism and communism that were left standing. Agrarian populism had its moments in post-war decolonisation, while fascism has recurred here and there, usually in diluted forms after the image problem it acquired during World War II. But essentially the end of that war marked the start of the capitalist-communist Cold War death battle, with the USA taking over from Britain in the driving seat of global capitalism and enforcing a global and far from peaceful Pax Americana, which has gradually lost its proselytizing zeal in favour of narrower self-interest.

The capitalist west’s answer to the threat of communism – other than naked military power – was a Keynesian settlement between capital and labour, in which the working class was offered full (male – and then, increasingly, female) employment and rising prosperity in return for political docility. This was quite easily achieved in the thirty years after World War II – the ‘trente glorieuses’ – with prodigious economic growth keeping both the owners of capital and the owners of labour happy. There were a few dissonant voices – environmentalists arguing that the cost of economic growth was ecological damage and the drawdown of non-renewable resources, prophets foretelling the impossibility of endless compound growth, and malcontents bemoaning the absurdity and ennui of a hyper-materialist modernity, but they gained limited traction at best.

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Money v Fiat

December 8, 2015

Money v Fiat

Money-Transaction-r

QUESTION: Why do you do not see that money must be backed by something tangible?

CHINAPAP-2

ANSWER: That is a barter perspective which is so antiquated you are blind to reality. Your proposition is only gold has value and you yourself are worthless. This idea of fiat money is just out of line with reality. The traditional definition of a fiat currency such as a paper currency has no worth unless backed by something with a defined tangible commodity value is preposterous. That is still a derivative of barter. Paper currency that is not backed by something of tangible value is by no means worthless. China invented paper money during the 13th century and never issued gold coins. You are confusing money with politicians.

This traditional definition of a fiat currency is primitive. A currency is backed by the productive capacity of its people like a share in a corporation. If this were not true then Germany, Japan, and China would never have been able to rise from the ashes with no gold. Obviously, it was the productive ability of their people absent gold. Under Socialism, a currency is also backed by the taxpayers being shaken down to pay the interest on the debt. That is very tangible for you go to prison ig you do not obey their command.

invisible-hand

The Wealth of a Nation is not its gold, land, or natural resources for it still takes labor to bring any commodity to market. The Wealth of a Nation is its people. Look at Germany. Its productive capacity was the highest in Europe and it rightly rose to the top. Africa and places in South America where the people are not educated as a whole or productive from an international trade perspective, have been unable to rise to the top at any point in their history.

Money-Assets

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Chinese Company Moves to Replace 90% of its Workforce with Robots

May 7, 2015

Chinese Company Moves to Replace 90% of its Workforce with Robots

I’m not one of those people who thinks robots taking over menial labor from human employees is a bad thing. On the contrary, I think such a displacement could ultimately prove very positive for the species. Nevertheless, the short-term pain and suffering that this could cause for displaced workers and their families likely will have tremendous negative repercussions to the societies that are most affected in the near and intermediate-term.

Since robots entering the workforce is probably one of the most significant economic trends in the decades ahead, we should all start thinking about how to deal with what will be a major adjustment for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people.

From the South China Morning Post:

Construction work has begun on the first factory in China’s manufacturing hub of Dongguan to use only robots for production, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

A total of 1,000 robots would be introduced at the factory initially, run by Shenzhen Evenwin Precision Technology Co, with the aim of reducing the current workforce of 1,800 by 90 per cent to only about 200, Chen Xingqi, the chairman of the company’s board, was quoted as saying in the report.

Robots are set to take over in many factories in the Pearl River Delta, the area of southern China known as the ‘world’s workshop’ because of the huge export manufacturing industry there, as labour shortages bite and local authorities face the need to spur innovation to counter the economic slowdown.

Since September, a total of 505 factories across Dongguan have invested 4.2 billion yuan in robots, aiming to replace more than 30,000 workers, according to the Dongguan Economy and Information Technology Bureau.

By 2016, up to 1,500 of the city’s industrial enterprises will began replacing humans with robots.

 

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Eh is not OK: Canada’s Jobs Begin to Unravel

March 16, 2015

Eh is not OK: Canada’s Jobs Begin to Unravel

Canada’s employment stats for February were not what most expected – there was a huge jump in full time jobs. Most commentators tried to put a positive spin on this but I have to disagree. Canada’s labour market is struggling and the outlook for the near future isn’t looking any better.

The chart below is what the Bank of Canada tracks as a measure of the broader health of the labour market. As you can see aggregate hours (the sum of all hours worked by full time and part time employees) have been flat over the past year.

mar16

What limited strength exists in the labour market comes from two unsustainable sources: construction and the public sector.

mar162

What’s worrisome is the impact of oil prices in Alberta. As per Macquarie, half of the gains in construction employment across Canada occurred in Alberta, a province where construction activity is likely to retreat. As you can see in 1986 in the months following the decline in oil, Alberta’s construction industry employment fell by 17%. A similar decline in coming months would mean nearly 50K in construction job losses in Alberta.

 

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charles hugh smith-Our New Robot Overlords & The Third Type of Capital

October 18, 2014

charles hugh smith-Our New Robot Overlords & The Third Type of Capital.

Our New Robot Overlords & The Third Type of Capital   (October 18, 2014)

Fortune will instead favor a third group: those who can innovate and create new products, services, and business models.A recent issue of Foreign Affairs sported a catchy cover teaser: Our New Robot Overlords. This brings to mind various sci-fi scenarios, but the actual article title is academic to the point of obscurity: Labor, Capital and Ideas in the Power Law Economy.

Rather than rehash the usual failed Keynesian Cargo Cult economics, the authors describe three powerful ideas that resonate very strongly with my own work:

1. Digital technologies (networked software, automation and robotics) are radically reducing the need for human labor and the leverage of traditional capital (land, fixed assets and cash) globally.

2. Premiums flow to whatever inputs are scarce. Labor and traditional capital are no longer scarce; what’s scarce is innovative, practical ideas. Ideas (for new models, products, services, processes, etc.) are a third form of capital that will accrue most of the rewards.

3. This distribution of premiums/rewards follows a power law, i.e. the Pareto Distribution where the “vital few” with the 3rd type of capital (good ideas) reap most of the rewards.

…click on the link above for the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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