How companies work
and what conditions must be met for their proper operation, seems pretty clear.
Manufacturing enterprises rely on an infrastructure that allows a constant and reliable
supply of energy and raw materials (or primary products). Furthermore they
usually require a state-run educational system, which provides the company with
the necessary "human material". They have a margin of discretion with
regard to the sharing of profits between employees and owners.
Modern industrialized
Nations are more and more similar to large Corporations
In order to get the
needed supply of energy and mineral resources, they depend on a global network,
which has to be absolutely reliable. A disruption, such as that triggered by the
oil crisis of 1973, can bring any economy to a standstill as soon as domestic reservoirs
have been emptied. To prevent such disruption, the US not only maintains military
bases around the world - in total between 800 and 1000 - but also ensures that,
as far as possible, friendly-minded regimes at potential trouble spots ensure order.
Dictatorships seem to have worked best for this purpose.
The American
Way of Life
This fundamental
orientation of American politics has never been made the subject of democratic debate,
for it concerns nothing less than the “American way of life”, which would be
jeopardized without the constant influx of raw materials and energy (even if
the dependency on outward sources of energy has been reduced due to shale mining).
It is not the American people who decide on these basic matters, but the Deep State,
which includes the Military-Industrial Complex and that one percent of the richest
Americans who by means of donations in election campaigns determine who may and
who may not become the President of their country. The US has turned into a plutocracy
with the formal trappings of a democracy. This happened not because a new aristocracy
hijacked the state in a coup d'état, but because the country has become a mega-enterprise
that only works smoothly if it exercises a strict control over that daily
intake of energy and resources which is the very fundament of its wealth. The president
of the United States is basically nothing more than the CEO of a large corporation,
albeit equipped with far greater power, because in order to enforce corporate policy
– the American way of life - he has at his
disposal the world’s most powerful military apparatus.
The parallel
between the state apparatus and companies is even more striking in China
No other country plans and
organizes its progress to wealth and power so rationally, so scientifically and
so systematically as China. The desired goal is clearly defined and so are the methods
that serve to achieve it. The country aims at conferring material prosperity to
its citizens, global superiority to its military, and to its power elite the greatest
possible say on the world stage. The official ideology "Socialism with Chinese
characteristics" - actually capitalism directed from the top - has so far proved
to be brilliantly up to the task. Not unlike any successful company, the
Communist party actively promotes individual initiative as long as the latter
adheres to the goals prescribed from above. But there is no arguing about the
goals themselves - these are proclaimed from above. In this way, any large
projects like airports, railways and roads, once their realization has been
decided at the center, are forcefully pushed through against any protests and
resistance from below. China may indeed be regarded as the very embodiment on
the level of a modern state of a typical private company which gives full reign
to private initiative only when and so far as it does not collide with goals
set by the central management.
One important difference does,
however, remain. Companies not content with employees merely fire them, the Chinese
government behaves quite differently with nonconformists: it either makes them disappear
in labor camps or simply kills them.
The large-scale
enterprise China has recorded breathtaking progress
The regime of Xi Jin Ping (the
man sporting the sympathetic face of a good-natured grandpapa) is brutal, but
its success is beyond doubt. Not only did China succeed in creating in no time
at all a functioning pension system that extends to most of the population, it also
provided modern medical care, installed the largest and most advanced rail network
in the world and managed to develop an advanced space program that makes it a
serious competitor with NASA. But more important for the rest of the word: China
- for thousands of years a state of philosophizing literati, who had nothing but
contempt for the military - is about to move up to the top rank of a great military
power, and it does so faster than any other country. This is especially true of
the fleet, new warships being launched at ever shorter intervals.
Xi Jin Ping and
Donald Trump are alike
in that both are the CEOs of states
that they govern as if they were indeed mere corporations. There can be no
doubt, however, that the Corporation “Middle Kingdom” is nowadays much more successful,
as the population becomes more prosperous every year. In the coastal regions, a
new middle class has been created that can afford to travel all over the world.
Wherever these people go, they learn that their country now has a respected place
next to Europe and the US. Although what the government calls the “Chinese
Dream” has been copied from America, one billion do believe in it, while the American
dream turned into an illusion. The income of a majority of the US population stagnates
since the 1980s. Moreover, the US is heavily indebted, its infrastructure –
railways, roads, bridges - is in rapid decay, and - by far the most alarming –
its population is deeply divided. For more than half of Americans Donald Trump is
not "their" president.
The
diverging trend of the two states
has profound ideological reasons.
Modern China is still influenced by its traditional creed, Confucianism. A ruler
only enjoys the grace of heaven as long as he feeds the belly of his subjects
for that is his responsibility. A majority of Chinese people accepts the dictatorial
rule of the Communist party, because through its success it demonstrates heavenly
grace. Still bitterly poor no longer than half a century ago, China has ceased to
be a developing nation in the opulently rich coastal regions. It has become a
very powerful country. It is for this reason that the ruling party enjoys the confidence
of a predominant majority.
In the US, a very different ideology
has taken root right from the beginning of its history. "Rugged individualism"
allows private persons to put their own interests above that of the state. The very
moment that American corporate CEOs realized that they would make far greater
profits, if cheap Chinese workers and not the much more expensive American ones
produced the goods they sold in the US, they started to outsource production. The
result can be viewed nationwide. From New York to Los Angeles rust belts have
sprung up, prompting millions of Americans to regard government and Wall Street
as their greatest enemies. For in this way American corporations have made China
the workbench for the whole world (an offer the Chinese did, of course, gratefully
accept). One percent of Americans - with Trump as one of their most conspicuous
representatives - have put their own interests ahead of the welfare of the state
and thus seriously jeopardized the future status of the US as a leading world power.
Putin's Russia
occupies a special position
The country does not need to search
beyond its own borders for energy and raw materials, because it has both in abundance.
So Russia does not need to defend raw material sources abroad as do the US and
China. Nor is it forced to defend its markets, because customers for oil and gas
wait at its door. In other words, Russia is highly self-sufficient.
Xi Jin Ping and Donald Trump resemble
each other in that the mega-enterprises, over which they preside, stretch their
sucking tentacles all over the globe. Even more than the US, China depends on the
resources of other countries. Its economic interests in South America and
particularly in Africa impel the government towards similarly ruthless power politics.
The first Chinese military base recently built in Djibouti only marks the beginning
of a foreseeable future trend. Only Putin's Russia can do without such a policy
of securing raw materials. That's a remarkable difference when compared to the US
and China.
The threat emanating
from Russia
has other causes. It is based on
the humiliation of this country after the break-up of the Soviet Union. Under the
communist regime, which directed all economic life from above and completely
stifled individual initiative - the most important asset of the capitalist system
- the country fell far behind, eventually collapsing. The so-called reform of
the Russian economy prescribed by the West and carried out by Jeffrey Sachs during
the 90s led to an almost total breakdown and general impoverishment while at
the same time creating an oligarchy of the super-rich who were ready to sell the
country's oil fields – the only asset left at that time - to the West. It was Vladimir
Putin who resisted the sell-off.
The West also took advantage of
Russia's weakness when it started to sever the Ukraine from the Russian sphere of
influence, according to Brzezinski's text book (The great Chessboard). For
Russia this move had strategic implications as it would bring its Black Sea port
Sevastopol under Western control. This project too was thwarted by Putin.
In retrospect, it must be said
that the West did not help a country in need and thus made it an ally, but deliberately
exploited its weakness in order to make it even weaker. In this sense, Putin is
a product of wrong Western politics.
The sanctions imposed on
Russia are, certainly, a reaction to acts of aggression. If war is out of the
question, what else is left but economic measures, since Russia's actions in
Crimea and Ukraine could not simply be tacitly accepted? But, on the other
hand, Putin’s aggression was in its turn a reaction to the previous misconduct of
the West.
As a matter of fact, these sanctions
are quite unsuccessful. They have not significantly affected trade, only
barring Russia's access to credit by Western banks. All those who believed that
Russia would collapse after three or four years at the latest have been thoroughly
mistaken. It testifies to Putin's statesmanship that he even managed to turn Western
sanctions into a weapon against the West, for he is generally believed when calling
it a conspiracy against Russia. The sanctions serve as a welcome excuse to
incite his people to unconditional love and sacrifice for the Fatherland. At the
same time, he succeeded - with far fewer resources than the US or China - to modernize
the military machinery so that a first strike against his country would be a suicide
for any aggressor. If one can trust him in the matter, present day Russia is
now even superior to the US in weaponry since it has developed missiles of allegedly
up to ten Mach top speed. If this is true, these new rockets can break through any
defense system – a strategic advantage for Russia.
The West wanted
to punish Russia
In fact, it looks as if Putin in
reaction to Western punishment has sparked a will to self-assertion in his
country that could well initiate a similar development as in China. Russia now focuses
all its efforts on the sole goal of accelerating industrial progress. On the one
hand, it achieves strength and independence vis-à-vis the outside world, while,
on the other, it enlists the solidarity of its population with growing prosperity.
Doing so, it seems to be looking less towards Europe with its modest growth
rates than to China, which leads the world with rates between 6 to 7 percent.
Nor does it surprise that in practical politics Putin again follows the East
rather than nearby Europe. Opponents of Putin’s regime risk being murdered even
if such cares are few when compared with China. But there remains no
independent press, it has been all but strangled.
It testifies
to the great ability of this man
that he fights the West with
the latter’s own weapons. Russia Today is a popular forum for Western intellectuals
and outsiders who have no chance of being heard in their own country. It is
true that in the US or in England no one disappears in a prison for his or her
opinion or is murdered at the behest of the government. In a very positive way,
this trait distinguishes American plutocracy from the Russian and Chinese autocracies.
A man like Noam Chomsky, who calls his own country and his government by the
name of a “rogue state”, would have signed his death sentence in China as well
as in Russia.
Western outsiders do not
disappear and they are not killed, they are simply not heard in the official media
of their country because these media belong to that one percent, which dominates
politics as well as business. Putin knows this, and so he offers RT as a kind
of democratic forum to Western dissidents, even though he does not tolerate any
dissidents in his own country. This is, of course, a stroke of genius by which
he further promotes polarization within Western countries.
If it is true
that the model of the private company
is being adopted by entire states,
so that they behave like mega-corporations, then we may reasonably expect the people
living in them to bear more and more resemblance with men of business. A modern
day German or Englishman would not have been able to communicate with a Chinese
Mandarin or an Indian Brahman as these lived in completely different worlds, but
scientists and CEOs speak the same language everywhere; there are hardly any differences
between Englishmen, French, Chinese or Russians.
This development should be welcome,
but it would be naïve to see only its positive aspects. In a company people are
merely employed, they can be replaced by others at any time, and they are
present not as entire human beings but serve as functions in the fulfillment of
certain tasks. When states behave like companies and mutate into mere "locations",
their citizens too feel like being transformed into a kind of employees, replaceable
at any time and reduced to their respective functional roles. Such a development
bodes ill, as it has dangerous consequences. Men definitely want to be more than
just the cogs in a huge gearbox. They need enthusiasm, love, joyance, and these
belong to a different sphere. In business, feelings are left behind in the cloakroom.
Professionals are required to offer their technical and economic intelligence –
that’s all.
When states as a whole behave like
businesses, increasingly curtailing any private retreat, there is a risk that the
place for this basic human dimension is becoming ever smaller, though the need for
it remains, of course, undiminished. This easily leads governments to look for artificial
replacements. Nationalism, is the first ersatz they usually hit upon in order
to fill the vacuum. Virulent nationalism creeps into the emptiness of human
beings when these function like mechanical cogs. It blows up hot emotions and
binds these cogs together in an artificial community. It does not seem to be
mere coincidence that nationalism in China and Russia as well as in the US of
president Trump is on the rise.
People around
the world are becoming ever more alike
because science and economics operate
globally according to identical principles, but it does not follow that the distance
between them would disappear – in fact, it does not even become substantially
smaller. Scientific, technical and economic knowledge means strength - and strength
is what competing states aim at just like competing companies. Indeed, they
employ all means of modern industrial espionage in order to gain the strength
conferred by superior knowledge. For them its primary carriers, that is
scientists, researchers, engineers, are factors of power. They are so in
private companies where they are required by law to guard all secrets entrusted
to them, and they are even more so in a modern state-enterprise. Scientists in
the Chinese military complex work exclusively for China - everything else would
be considered a treason - while in Russia or the US they are just as much bound
to the service of these government. Thus, the same people who resemble each
other ever more because of similar professions are separated from one another
by their state affiliation with definite nations.
This need not
worry us,
if the US, China, and Russia
were islands, or if any of these powers would be the only one to dominate the
globe. In this case, people would quickly get weary of the one-sided pursuit of
ever greater material wealth, their demonstration of military power would be
superfluous anyway. They would be drawn to the enchantment of spiritual things,
normally called culture, because there man may quench his thirst for freedom,
whereas technical civilization does not provide much room for freedom as it
operates like a big machine where every part must assume its specific function.
Culture is the epitome of all that man is able to create and conceive beyond
technical constraints. Left to itself, every society that has attained a
minimum level of material welfare strives to conquer the spiritual sphere.
It is the misfortune of our
time that the three superpowers are not located on separate islands, but that China
and the US are superpowers with globally spreading tentacles, getting more and
more in each other’s way. With only five percent of the world's population, the
US consumes about twenty-five percent of fossil resources in order to realize
the American dream. The Middle Kingdom is home to fifteen percent of the
world's population. What share of resources will they claim for themselves in
order to realize the Chinese dream? Perhaps three times as much that is seventy
five percent as their population is three times as big?
These are mere speculations,
but it is evident why they are not willing to end the race for greater military,
economic and political power. Of all three, Putin alone would have a chance to
break away from this race, all the more as Russia seems strong enough to cope
with any external enemy. But Putin is obsessed with the surrounding world. He
constantly measures himself and his own country against other politicians and
nations, he longs for being respected, and, if that should be impossible, at
least for being feared. In order to achieve this goal he seems prepared to take
at least as high risks as the unpredictable Trump or the much more cautious Xi.
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen