Days of Revolt - The Making of Global Capitalism

now you talk about Tara I've been around all my all my day hi I'm Chris Hedges welcome to days of revolt today we're going to be speaking with Leo panitch the author with Sam Gindin of the making of global capitalism the role of the state and in particular the American state in creating a new form of empire that denies that it is Empire or is a form of imperialism Thank You Leo it's a view here Chris so let's begin with this concept which you lay out in the book which i think is correct that and I'm gonna quote Harold Ennis 1948 which you quote in the book American imperialism has been made plausible and attractive in part by the insistence that it is not imperialistic and that is a fundamental theme of your book and maybe you can explain how that happened it's goes all the way back I guess to the American Revolution which was an anti Imperial Revolution and the United States therefore conceived itself politically and culturally as a non Imperial force while engaging in Imperial behavior especially at a Native American especially on this continent initially and then as the most dynamic of modern capitalism's on the face of the earth and developed within the United States very much encouraged by the American state at various points of the 19th century it was never a lace a fair state there was always a highly interventionist like you talk about the tariffs you know which essentially built walls that allowed America to become an industrial no yes and through many other direct interventions the building of infrastructure at public expense and often as public projects or selling it off now they're selling some of it for their weddings including the US Post Office that's really a lot of money actually but they're letting a lot of it atrophy so the the it isn't a formal Empire the United States even though Teddy Roosevelt either by formal Empire you mean in terms of the physical occupation like King Leopold in the Congo kind of Empire the British in India yeah although Argentina and eventually the white dominions like my own country Canada I had a different status than India as a colony despite the development of you know similar types of companies within the two of them Argentina after the breakaway from Spain and Canada in its movement from colony to independent state to Dominion as they were called remained very much within the orbit of the British state but as independent states right and that has that became the model for how the American Empire evolved people who thought that Teddy Roosevelt was about creating colonies that what was happening between 1998 and 1902 was America turning itself into a formal Empire that proves to be the exception much more than the rule and and that's not to say that independent states don't exist within the panoply of this informal American Empire Canadians know very well the extent to which is substantive terms we move from having been a colony to an independent Dominion to a colony in substantive terms that's not in formal terms of the American Empire yes of course when you talk about the effectiveness of American imperialism you highlight the fact that part of the reason it's so effective is because it has been able to be largely invisible and it has been invisible you point out through I think two mechanisms one that it trains the elites in other countries in order to manage affairs on behalf of American imperialism and also because it disseminates through popular media images of America that in essence I'm not sure you use this word exactly indoctrinate or brainwash a population into allowing them to believe that America is instilled with values that in fact it doesn't have the ability of imperialistic forces to supposedly give these values to the countries they dominate I mean that is is a kind of raised on d'etre for economic and even military intervention as we saw in Iraq implanting democracy in Baghdad and letting it spread out across the Middle East or going into Afghanistan to liberate the women of Afghanistan that as somebody who spent 20 years on the outer edges of Empires Ally it depends how cynical you think they are and and I think it varies depending on the administration in question and indeed different personnel inside each administration going back to the types of interventions we were discussing under Teddy Roosevelt there were some people who quite genuinely and naive we believe that by supporting reactionary forces against rebellions in Central America they nevertheless could establish a liberal democracy in those countries and they ended up getting in bed with and in cahoots with extremely reactionary and conservative forces that they would have preferred would become like the United States but we're unable to make them do so the imperial power and the Romans discovered this first of all of course is not absolute and even when the Americans become a very powerful social and political force inside other countries their ability to make those countries into a image of the United States which is they main that naively have thought they were going to do has always been limited Oh Graham Greene kind of eviscerated this kind of American and I think it does break down between those who are very cynical and for lack of a better word those were very stupid and we saw a lot of stupid people with Cheney pearl and others who know nothing about the Middle East and nothing about the instrument of war and certainly knew nothing about the culture and history of Iraq believe that they could implant this very naive vision and and and what always happens in cases like that is rivers of blood yeah no I think that's true I think that the American Empire is most powerful actually not in those regions of the world in which it has intervened militarily it at least in recent decades it's more powerful in those regions of the world that had become if I may use the word Canadian eyes that is where American capital has penetrated where economic relations are extremely deep where American multinational corporations are a social force inside those countries and therefore I think the strongest linkages are with the former old imperial countries of Europe right a lot of them and Germany represents that so you know you see the mess in Iran or Iraq etc I mean Iran was the Shah back in the 70s in Iraq in the current millennium but but the strongest linkages of Empire are those amongst the advanced capitalist states which also operate under the rubric of the American Treasury the Federal Reserve etc nevertheless even there as you see with Germany's behavior visa to Greece which the American administration the Treasury wouldn't have wanted they aren't able to give them orders it's you know that that does show you the relative autonomy that states within an informal Empire have as compared to ones that are subjected militarily some countries are well you write a lot about you know the the kind of collapse because of the war of European economies after World War Two and the recreation with you know the help of the American labor movement the afl-cio which was going over there working on behalf of the CIA to break what they deemed communist or leftist or socialist unions and much of the book I think makes a very strong argument that especially after World War two we recreated economic political systems in our own image which wasn't complete yeah as you point out correctly visa V Greece does not mean that we had iron control but they work within those imperialistic capitalist globalist parameters that's right the difference is that even the Germans who are so central to contemporary global capitalism especially to European capitalism have never taken the responsibility upon themselves that the Americans did trying to do with with Wilson that the end of World War one but then effectively did during the course of World War two have never taken responsibility on themselves for managing a global capitalism and for all of the headaches that that involves in terms of the difficulties and contradictions of that the Germans have primarily in Europe try to ensure that the international institutions are replicas of the old German central bank the Bundesbank and they primarily oriented the euro let us say to play the kind of role that the deutsche mark used to play they're mainly concerned in other words with the competitiveness and status of the German economy the Americans have carried a burden all empires carry a burden and their burden has been and it's then an enormous headache and they screw it up often as a rack shows of trying to manage a global capitalism and and the German state doesn't do that the norm is different right well let's not feel too sorry for the Americans they killed three million Vietnamese and 1 million Iraqis the responsibilities of power often go with dirty dirt very very dirty hands right I'm not trying to use the word responsibility I think I think we have to see it that way I think we do have I know a lot of the left doesn't like to see it that way but I think it's more a structural thing and I think if you and I were dropped into being head of the Federal Reserve without having the type of political forces behind us that can allow us to transform its utter nature we wouldn't behaving all that differently than the current chair of the Federal Reserve right well they would never ask me to come to Orleans so I mean capitalism in America has changed you know from the old aphorism the Rockefellers the Carnegie which produced manufactured broke labor unions as you correctly highlight in your book broke are radical movements and it's shifted into the hands of Finance ears into insurance into real estate who now virtually control the global economy at the expense of industrial capitalism and often I would argue at the expense of governments and I wouldn't I know you wouldn't I don't think that there's a divorce and an antagonism between industrial and financial capital I think they're highly integrated I think that finance performs an absolutely crucial function for multinational industrial corporations an essential one in terms of the productive networks around the globe there isn't just speculation although it is speculation it isn't just speculation finance moreover I think it isn't that the expense of states I think that let me just ask I mean they're hoarding you know how many trillions of dollars overseas to escape taxation well whether that's industrial capital or the expensive states and and it and and and the essentially the migration of manufacturing first over the border with NAFTA to Mexico Vietnam Bangladesh where people are earning 22 cents an hour a global capitalism is saying if you want to be competitive on a global marketplace you have to be a serf and we're seeing that I mean you just look at the whole the nationalization of GM that we negotiate in a contracts the the diminishing of the power of losing states in an idealistic way I think if you understand that as I think they are that states are the handmaidens of capital if one abandons this mistaken conception that comes from and from neoclassical economics then one doesn't have this notion that there's an opposition between them of course where you have democracies where working classes have won the right to vote that does at least create a tendency on the part of states to be sensitive to presenting themselves in ways that look democratic and introducing the type of policies that bind working classes more deeply to the capitalist state sometimes that involves just redistribution sometime involves benefits to them but it is you know you point out in your book that the American working class in particular was bought off that and you quote from I think it's a letter that Roosevelt wrote that in essence says you know to the oligarchical II you know I'm kind of paraphrasing you better give up some of your money or we're gonna get a revolution and you're gonna lose all your money I mean II so use that word revolution yeah and and so that the whole reforms of the New Deal we're not and I don't argue with you here some kind of beneficence on the part of and Roosevelt came out of the oligarchic class because of their good-heartedness or because they cared about the suffering but because of the pressure of radical movements that have now have been largely destroyed but that rose with the breakdown of capitalism it that's right but it also happens when derivatives are used to secure mortgages for black Americans who have been excluded from the New Deal housing reforms for most of the era up 1990s there are two politicians encourage the development of derivative markets and we're talking about Democratic politicians right now this has occurred more in the Clinton era than any other initially and they took pride in the fact that capitalists around the world were investing in the derivative mortgage markets in the United States and this was allowing the black poor of Cleveland to buy houses and that too was represented as meeting Democratic right but until they were repossessed and there were foreclosures which the banks and financial firms like Goldman Sachs knew were coming it was a scam so I mean the idea that at that point I think it's an evidence of a breakdown of democracy Clinton being the kind of poster child for this where they spoke in that traditional feel your pain language and concern for the poor on the underclass in the working-class and yet rammed through or allowed to go through a series of policies that were completely predatory in terms of the poor I think that neither politicians nor businessmen think in such long-run terms I think insofar as those derivative mortgage markets were growing and we're growing for 5-10 years that's the terms that they think in yes I think you're right that all of them none of them are take for a moment seriously the notions of neoclassical economists about market equilibrium they all know that crises happen they expect them to happen they just hope they aren't going to happen on our watch you know Goldman Sachs did think in a long term and that had bet against those derivatives and subprime mortgages through AIG eventually they knew they were gonna call out well of course derivatives are all about counter hedging and Goldman Sachs was smart enough to counter as earlier and and they haven't sinc they had done it during the nineteen seventy when Goldman Sachs wasn't a major player they had done it during the nineteen seventies commercial paper crisis where they were selling off commercial paper to municipalities and universities knowing that Penn State was going to go bankrupt right well there's a word for that it's called fraud yeah and they you know they pay off some they paid off some fines they were in court in the 1970s etcetera you know they the LIBOR they fixed the for five years they fake the world currency rates they make 80 plus billion dollars profit they pay a nine billion dollar fine that's not a bad business well there's always been a phenomenon of double agents in the and political system corporate lawyers who have worked for the major corporations taught them how to get around regulations gone into the states right and then written the regulation become a symbiotic incestuous relationship where the very people who are gaming the system then go into the system and I think in the book you you actually say that they go into the system to essentially fight you know the the entities that they come out of I'm not sure I would agree with that I mean you can look at Liz Fowler the person who wrote the disastrous for-profit health care bill in the United States known as Obamacare where she worked I think these people work on behalf of you know essentially writing regulations into a kind of a two-tiered system where corporations like Goldman Sachs can write laws and regulations that allow them to carry out fraud and then these people like Fowler fund are funneled right back into the system and amply rewarded for their work yes but the private health agencies don't have to worry about the types of popular pressures that produce this ariseth public health system in the United States so when she's brought in she's brought in to do something that she doesn't have to do when she's working for these private corporations similarly when Robert Rubin leaves goldman sachs and becomes secretary treasurer he is performing a function that is about reproducing goldman sachs reproduce on Wall Street but nevertheless using his knowledge to engage in the management of global capitalism which is an entirely different set of responsibilities then he occupies with Goldman Sachs and that often involves him calling in the principal's of Wall Street and telling them to do things that they otherwise wouldn't do in which they do in order to reproduce the system but wouldn't do it the room right but if there's a single figure was you know we had to pick one responsible for the 2008 meltdown it's Robert Rubin yes I mean though I mean it's not knowledge it's idiocy do you mean American capitalism continues to thrive in relative terms well because it loses the US Treasury to the tune of trillions of dollars and because the Fed gives it virtually zero percent interest rate money sure but that's not capitalism it's extortion oh well if you want to call it extortion it's not merely extortion it's accumulation if I don't see how it's extortion insofar as the state legalizes this and and it's extortion of a taxpayer because the average citizen gets austerity rammed down their throat to pay for it and the average citizen for a period and for a long period was able to thrive on financial markets I mean the point is we are all integrated into this system we are all dependent on it you know had radical journalists like Michael Moore got in their way and and let Wall Street collapse instead of being bailed out by the tarp program which you know of course it was designed to save the banks who would have suffered most the point is that we are all dependent and why you know why we need to be really radical in trying to change this system is precisely because we need to recognize the extent to which we are all embedded but there was an alternative to to bailing out the banks and it wasn't letting it collapse it was creating regional banks capitalizing them at ten billion dollars leveraging them ten to one helping people deal with their mortgages rather than giving this money to zombie banks that there was alternatives and that was never discussed well that would have have involved of course and I've been advocating this for a very long time turning the American banking system and above all the principles of the American banking system that big commercial investment banks into public utility that's what we should do any of course and it isn't just a matter of creating a regional bank like the Bank of North Dakota where do they put their surpluses every night they put them into wall stride so it's a matter of taking the whole system in nationalizing it right oh and you know I think that's an old-fashioned term in fact because it does imply something that I would not like to imply about the type of state we would like to have but it doesn't ball turning them into democratic public utilities as part of a democratic economic planning system now for that you need to change not only the bourgeoisie you need to change the way in which the working class is integrated into the system the way even unemployed black people are integrated into the system and are so embedded in it right are so dependent on right for the for the house over their heads right well there was the roof over their head work for that it's called socialism yeah so we're called socialism which we're both happy to you know how we agree and thank you for watching days of revolt how to eat out the watermelon patch and you don't it put me on our side you

Channel: TeleSUR English

Views: 10,360

Rating: 4.9298244 out of 5

Keywords: Politics, Chris Hedges, Leo Panitch, The Making Of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy Of American Empire, United States Of America (Country), Capitalism, American Imperialism, Canada, Economic Imperialism, Free Trade, Finance, Goldman Sachs, Democratic Public Utility, Labor Unions In The United States (Literature Subject), Revolving Door

Id: N-5dGq84uIQ

Length: 25min 2sec (1502 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 07 2015