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Sunday, August 29, 2004 8:41 PM

Chomsky for dummies like me

 

 

Soupletter Volume 9 Number 12: 8/6/04

 

 

--------

 

The Soupletter

Volume 9 Number 13 August 29, 2004

 

 

" Life shouldn't be printed on dollar bills. "

 

-Clifford Odets

***

Note: The following lecture was delivered Saturday, Aug. 28, 2004 at the

Southern Energy & Environment Expo in Asheville, N. Car. Regular readers will

recognize a small portion from earlier Soups.

 

At the event there was discussion of the word " planetization " which is a

mouthful, however apt it might be. One participant suggested " relocalization " as

a better label. Reader input on this or other alternatives would be very much

appreciated. -C

***

 

Planetization: or Chomsky for dummies like me

by Cecil Bothwell

 

 

We've all seen the images, a ragtag collection of angry rebels up against

the phalanx of uniformed troops. We know about the issues -- a global

corporation running roughshod over local communities, exploiting resources and

then moving on, buying government influence to put the power of the military

behind the captains of industry and all the rest.

 

 

And we know what the successful response was -- it started with something

remembered as the Boston Tea Party.

 

 

Thom Hartmann made a point in his book Unequal Protection, that most of us

weren't taught in school -- the East India Company was a transnational

corporation and it was hugely responsible for settling North America. We

celebrate the Pilgrims and sort of vaguely think of them as religious rebels

striking out on their own to find freedom from persecution. The truth of the

matter is that the Mayflower, owned by the East India Company, had made three

previous trips to this continent before the Pilgrims chartered that boat for

their venture. And the formal settling of eastern North America by England had

occurred 19 years earlier when the East India Company staked out all of the

territory from the Atlantic ocean to the Mississippi River.

 

 

Fast forward a hundred and fifty years, and the East India Company was

still running the show.

 

 

The Tea Party, which textbooks tend to treat as a nose-tweaking by

colonists dressed in Indian garb -- sort of like anarchist kids spray-painting

messages on McDonald's and Nike shops in Seattle -- was far more serious. Over

90,000 pounds of tea, worth more than $1 million dollars in today's currency,

was dumped and ruined that night.

 

 

When viewed that way, it look's a whole lot like al Sadr's militia blowing

up oil pipelines in Iraq. It is attacking a foreign military/corporate

occupation by direct intervention in the commodity flow. Of course, as always,

the winners will end up defining who the bad guys were, and in the case of the

American revolution, the Tea Party came to be known as an act of heroism. Here,

at least.

 

 

The British and the East India Company put a less positive spin on our

heroes.

 

 

I mention this to illustrate how storytelling affects our understanding.

My childhood was divided between the north and the south. I remember how

startled I was, in 9th grade, to suddenly discover that the Civil War I had

learned about in history lessons was labeled the War of Northern Aggression down

here. It seemed like the only point of agreement was a grudging concession that

the north had won.

 

 

For now, at any rate.

 

 

Again, the point is that the language we use to describe events and ideas

can have as much or more power than the thing that is being described.

 

 

A month or so ago I devoted one of my Duck Soup columns to this discussion

of language - specifically the way those in power massage meanings until words

relax into spinelessness. Adoption of " the recovery " as a substitute for " the

economy " was my launch point.

 

 

Have you noticed that many politicians and some media sources always refer

to " the recovery " these days? As in, " $50 per barrel oil may have a negative

impact on the recovery. " or, " The loss of 3 million jobs since the Bush

administration took over has dampened the recovery. "

 

 

Somehow, it seems to me that " recovery " means things are getting better.

If I were suffering from cancer, say, and my doctor told me that it had spread

to 25 percent of my body since my treatments began, I would be hard pressed to

call my condition The Recovery. Or if The Recovering Alcoholic gets sloshed

every night, we might say the adjective is misplaced. Or if the police announced

The Recovery of my stolen car -- minus the stereo, wheels, engine and front and

rear quarter panels, I might not think of it as Recovered at all.

 

 

Among the many e-mails I received in response to that column was a

suggestion from Larry Crenshaw, a poet, essayist and environmental activist,

based in Birmingham. Larry observed that the term " globalization " has been

adopted by corporations and the media to describe an economic model that

includes " free trade. " Most government discussion of this model has a positive

spin and a certain air of inevitability.

 

 

Those who oppose that model end up being branded as " anti-globalization "

or " protectionist " - terms with a distinctly negative flavor, even an air of

futility. And when you couple that negative branding with pictures of hooligans

throwing bottles and rocks, the public perception is all but certain. The big

corporations are the wave of the future and we have to learn to live with that.

The opposition forces are feckless kids with no respect for property rights or

the law. Some of them are even anarchists and wear black clothing, and that is

just so obviously dangerous!

 

 

Larry's suggestion was that we can take back the language in this debate

by substituting " planetization " for " anti-globalization. "

 

 

Why not?

 

 

Globalization is all about minimizing manufacturing costs by moving

production facilities to countries with low wages and no environmental

protection regulations. This is an inherently short-term goal with the first-ins

garnering the highest benefits. If Nike can produce $150 sneakers with 15¢ per

hour labor and sell them to $15 per hour workers in the U.S., Nike makes a

killing.

 

The ideal worker in a globalized economy is a slave while the ideal

consumer has a comfortable disposable income.

 

 

It is obvious, of course, that if enough producers adopt such a scheme,

wages and prices will level out. Wal-Mart is the role model in the globalization

game, with such huge economic clout that it depresses wages and prices

nationwide, even worldwide. Wal-Martization only works in a given location as

long as prices fall faster than wages. Eventually there is nowhere down to go.

When we are all making 15¢ per hour no one will be able to afford $150 sneakers

-- or even Wal-Mart's $30 ones.

 

 

Globalization also permits producers to externalize costs. The simplest

approach to this is tax avoidance. Businesses that incorporate in offshore

tax-havens don't pay for the infrastructure that supports their trade. So

consumer-citizens in the U.S. pay for ports, roads, power grids, water and waste

treatment and military protection which the untaxed corporation uses to its

advantage. Meanwhile production-citizens in sweatshop nations are denied

corporate taxes as well, taxes that could support badly needed water systems,

schools, hospitals, roads and other pieces of first-world modernity.

 

 

At the same time, because transnationals escape environmental

responsibility, the health costs of environmental despoliation are paid for by

the poisoned population in either treatment dollars here, or shorter, more

miserable lives, there.

 

 

It is essential to remember that what passes for " free trade " refers to

international trade free of local control. Globalization subsumes local effects

to the benefit of international traders. When multinational corporations

eliminate jobs or coerce workers to take lower wages, when they destroy small

businesses and damage the environment it is just so much collateral damage -

part of the cost of doing business in a global economy.

 

 

This collateral damage moves to another level when local governments

outbid each other to attract or keep employers. Just recently, Buncombe County

put up over $1 million dollars to outbid other municipalities for a new

manufacturing plant. The rationale is that the tax base will increase, but study

after study has shown that as cities grow, per capita taxes always rise.

 

So we are paying more now to ensure that we will pay even more in the

future, while there is no guarantee that subsidized industries will stick around

when their economic equations change. The Ball jar company, for instance, was

locally subsidized by our taxes before they decided to move on.

 

 

As I said in a talk at last year's Expo,

 

" One of the stranger side effects of the industrial model is that those

who most deeply embrace it seem to become unbending capitalists, who somehow

have become known as conservatives. But in fact, the model tends to work against

conservation. Meanwhile, agrarians, who were at the heart of the populist

movement at the beginning of the 20th century and who today tend to be

progressive and populist, are called liberals -- when everything they do and

believe tends to lead to conservation of land, air and water. My take on it is

that only someone who deals in abstractions can convince himself that his

children and grandchildren won't suffer the consequences of environmental

degradation as long as he leaves them with enough money to buy a moon suit and a

slot on the escape flight to Mars. "

 

 

Planetization can be used as a positive referent to a system that places

benefit for people and all living systems at the top of the chart, with " FAIR

trade " as the goal. The basis for planetized trade is that we only exchange

those things whose place of production is dictated geographically. For example,

coffee and bananas don't' grow in Alaska and cranberries don't grow in the

tropics. A steel mill needs to be near an iron ore source or a transportation

route for recycling. Methanol requires fields of corn, biodiesel needs fields of

soybeans and paper needs hemp, kenaf or trees.

 

 

Globalists monetize everything and then turn currency into a commodity

that is also part of their international trading game. It has become a system

completely out of touch with life. A currency trader doesn't care if his actions

promote healthy communities or starvation and disease, as long as the dollars

add up. And the accounting system used to keep track of all that trade is

approximately insane.

 

 

Economists track what they call the Gross Domestic Product, and when that

goes up at a rapid rate, they say we are better off. If GDP falls or, more

often, fails to go up as fast as the economists think it should, we are,

supposedly, worse off.

 

 

You probably heard about Hurricane Charley two weeks ago. A couple of

dozen people killed, many more injured. Lots of homes and autos and boats

destroyed. Businesses wiped out so that some of these newly homeless people

don't even have jobs to go back to. Billions of dollars worth of damage. It was

really a terrible natural disaster.

 

 

Except on paper. When looked at as part of the GDP, it is all a plus.

Every home repaired or replaced. Every auto fixed or totaled and paid off with

insurance or through savings or with a new loan. Every piece of the power grid

that has to be restored or replaced. All of the supplies to restock emergency

shelters. All of the food and water delivered. Even all of the caskets for the

victims. Every bit of it counts as a plus in the Gross Domestic Product.

 

 

Only a fool would call Charley a benefit. And any accounting system that

tells us it was beneficial should be laughed at, not listened to like some

oracle of the gods.

 

 

I think it's useful to remember how intrinsic death is to that system.

Whether it is amortization of expenses, or the mortgage at interest that lets

anyone be a homeowner by paying three times the value of a home in affordable

monthly payments, death is right there on the books. (As Rob Roy explains in his

Mortgage Free talk at this Expo, " mortgage " comes from the French for 'death

pledge'.)

 

 

Another tenet of planetization is that a region should only trade surplus

goods. That is, local products should first go to satisfy local needs, with the

excess exchanged for other community's oversupplies.

 

 

Today we are dealing in a system where the poorest countries in the world,

where many people are malnourished or starving, are exporting food to the U.S.

to pay off World Bank loans. Such loans primarily benefit the wealthy developers

in those countries. I really think there is something terribly wrong with that

picture.

 

 

In one sense, planetization turns an old slogan on its head. It requires

us to think locally before we act globally.

 

Knowledge is local. Experience is local. And the direct application of

knowledge and experience is local as well.

 

 

Even the most intensively mechanized farm requires machines that plant one

corn seed at a time, and anyone who has ever owned a lemon, knows that no matter

how many hundred thousand identical autos were built, each one is, at least in

some small way, different.

 

 

Virgil made this observation in The Georgics, written in about 30 B.C.

 

 

" ... before we plow an unfamiliar patch

It is well to be informed about the winds,

About the variations in the sky,

The native traits and habits of the place,

What each locale permits, and what denies. "

 

 

The key to planetization is a very different understanding of the world

than the view proffered by globalists. The globalist perspective reduces

everything to dollars, to flows of capital and efficiencies of scale. The

planetist bottom line is the survival of living things, the flows of nutrients

and conservation of the resource base.

 

 

Globalists have hijacked the idea of a sustainable economy and bent it to

their purposes with the phrase " sustainable growth. " Planetists preserve the

dictionary meaning of sustainable, which is a system that can be maintained at a

certain rate or level.

 

Sustainable implies no-growth, because no living system grows forever.

Living systems cycle. Waste is food. A sustainable economy will look more like a

garden with a compost pile than a nuclear power plant with spent fuel rods that

require safe sequestration for 300,000 years.

 

 

As Wendell Berry wrote on this theme,

 

" The goal is a harmony between the human economy and nature that will

preserve both nature and humanity ... The world is now divided between those who

adhere to this ancient purpose and those who by intention do not - a division

that is of far more portent for the future of the world than any of the

presently recognized national or political or economic divisions. "

 

 

Planetization is protectionist in the very best sense - it seeks to

protect life. Planetization is anti-globalist, rejecting the despoliation and

resource waste inherent in a system where money markets, interest rates and

tyranny dictate the place of production.

 

 

What can you do?

 

 

Buy, grow, invest and talk up local enterprises. Think of your economic

life as a dart board composed of concentric rings and award yourself more points

when your toss lands closer to the center. The reason " Made in U.S.A. " is a

healthy choice is not due to empty patriotism, but because the production is

closer to your home. If you live on one of our borders, " Hecho en Mexico " or

" Assembled in Canada, eh? " may be a more local selection than a product made in

Rhode Island or grown in California.

 

 

I recently met David Eisenberg who co-founded the Development Center for

Appropriate Technology in 1991. I say, " met, " which suggests shaking hands and

so forth, but we actually met online -- he's based in Tucson. In the course of

our conversation he offered a short list of " First Principles Questions " that he

has been mulling. This is a work in progress, but he agreed to let me share them

with you.

***

" First Principles Questions "

Proposed by David Eisenberg, co-founder, Development Center for

Appropriate Technology

 

 

Does the system, technology, or financial enterprise enhance or undermine

the ability for people and their community to meet their own needs

locally/regionally?

 

 

Does the system, technology, or financial enterprise benefit ordinary

people and their community without creating dependence on systems over

which they have no or limited control?

 

 

Does the system, technology, or financial enterprise transfer wealth out

of the community?

 

 

Does the system, technology, or financial enterprise embed people in the

physical place or displace them or compel them to become transients?

 

 

Does the system, technology, or financial enterprise enhance or destroy

equity - both the social/cultural equity related to fairness and justice, and

the tangible physical/economic benefits of belonging to and being " invested in "

a place-based community?

 

http://www.dcat.net/

***

 

 

The very good news, in a historical context, is that we who oppose

globalization seem to have history on our side. That doesn't mean it will be

easy or painless to throw off the death promise demanded by the current system.

But it means that it can be done.

 

 

The American Revolution was only the first of many rejections of corporate

empire, and it worked here for something over 100 years.

 

Our early laws very explicitly limited corporate power. With over a

century of experience with the East India Company, the Founders were painfully

aware of the danger posed by corporations. At the heart of incorporation is the

principle that owners of such a business cannot be held individually liable for

actions or debts of the entity.

 

 

In the United States, the first corporate charters were only granted to

companies that were necessary to the well being of the people and for purposes

that couldn't be financed by individuals. An easy modern example is the national

power grid which is far too expensive for one person to build and has far too

much potential liability for one person to personally underwrite, but it

provides an overwhelming benefit to most citizens. When corporate charters came

up for renewal every seven years, the companies had to prove that they were

fulfilling their original purpose or else the charter was withdrawn.

 

 

Then in the late 1800s, actions in the Supreme Court were interpreted to

give corporations personhood. That is, they were granted all of the

constitutional rights accorded to natural persons. And suddenly their power

rocketed -- because they had acquired all of the rights but still ducked all of

the responsibilities of natural persons.

 

When a later Supreme Court decision equated money with free speech, the

system became pretty completely rigged in their favor. They could make

fraudulent loans, like Neil Bush, the president's brother, did with Silverado

Savings and Loan, and the taxpayers end up with the bill. They could do

incalculable environmental damage, like the Exxon Valdez, and never pay one

penny of cleanup costs or damages. They could lobby for war like Halliburton,

but never have to fight in one. They could cause the death or injury of

thousands of people, like Union Carbide in Bhopal, and no individual would ever

be punished.

But they have only won some battles, the wars haven't gone in their favor.

 

 

wrote about this in his recent book, The Unconquerable

World. He discusses the successful resistance to that system of empire, both

militarily (in the form of national liberation movements) and by aggressively

nonviolent means. His analysis is very hopeful.

 

 

In discussing the book, he has pointed out,

 

" one theme of the book was that the age of empires was over. The newly

expired twentieth century, I pointed out, was one huge boneyard of empires: the

British, the French, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Ottomans, the Germans, the

Japanese, the Russians. Imperial rulers had repeatedly been amazed to find

themselves overmatched by the localized, intense, and finally unquenchable

forces of national resistance movements. More startling still, the success of

those movements invariably depended mainly on political, not military strength.

In some cases, such as Gandhi's independence movement against the British in

India, and the Polish rebellion against the Soviet empire, the struggles

succeeded without using violence at all. "

 

 

He went on to say,

 

" The twentieth-century anti-imperial movement triumphed almost everywhere.

No political creed, feudal or modern, was able to defeat it. "

 

And I should note that Schell predicts that the latest round of American

empire building in Iraq will inevitably fail for the same reasons.

 

 

This loops me back to where I started, because if anti-imperial movements

succeed because of political strength, they succeed because of words, and the

word choices we make are fundamental.

 

Those of us who embrace life-based instead of capital-based economics are

not anti-globalists, we are for the planet, for the living systems that have and

always will underwrite human society. Those of us who focus on local solutions

and local control of our lives are not knee-jerk protectionists, we are

nurturers. We see that no matter how many bits of data are collected and

analyzed about markets and production and resource flow and demographic trends,

lives are lived individually. And those individual lives are inextricably linked

to a local community, not to abstract world markets.

 

 

Again, as I said in last year's talk:

 

 

" ... it turns out that due to our evolution and our brain size and the

length of our lives and the cycle of the seasons and probably the length of our

arms and the span of our stride, we are only able to get to know a couple of

hundred people well enough to call them friends. That's the size of the circle

of intimate trust. Beyond that, trust becomes hearsay. Beyond that the system is

too big to really understand it, and too big for us to have an immediate,

personal effect. "

 

 

Local control of our lives, our wherewithal, our hopes, our dreams, is the

wellspring of everything we are as human beings, everything we can become as

individuals, as a community as a nation and as a planetary civilization. We need

to think locally before we act globally.

 

Planetization, by whatever name we call it, is the path of freedom and joy

and life.

 

****

Copyright 2004 Cecil Bothwell

 

All rights reserved

 

http://www.dcat.net/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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