Economic Update: The Emerging New World Economy

[Music] thank you Welcome Friends to another edition of economic update a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives and those of our children I'm your host Richard Wolff today's program has a particular style to it I want to talk with you about the emerging New World economic order I do that because enough of the outlines of that New Order enough of the profiles of the key players are now clear that we can take a step back from the daily and weekly events we normally analyze to look at the dark the larger picture for a moment I almost said darker picture it isn't all dark but it is larger it's an overview if you like of what's happening in the world and I mean it to inform our understanding of all the details that we'll be talking about in the future programs that we will be developing and the way I'm going to do this today is organize it around four major developments that are happening at the same time interacting with one another but together give us a clear sense of where this new world economic order is coming okay we begin over the last 30 40 50 years depending on how you count we have been involved in what is called neoliberal capitalism or if you like global capitalism and here's really all that that meant that coming out of the Great Depression and World War II private-led capitalism had a new chance to rebuild after the war to try to recoup after the Great Depression and to have another growth spurt which it did by the 1970s that growth spurt was beginning to have a problem keeping going Not Unusual in the history of capitalism as a system it is growth spurt driven but after the 1970s the growth spurt took an unusual form where before capitalism had spurted from New England to the Midwest from the Midwest to the Far West from all of those areas to the American South now after the 1960s and 70s capitalism's next growth spurt was out of the country to Asia above all else but also to the other parts of what has come to be called the global South more money was to be made there wages were much cheaper there Environmental Protection less there and governments everywhere eager to provide jobs for their people and American corporations just like European and Japanese corporations eager to have access to cheaper labor eager to have access to huge Asian markets and so neoliberal globalization took hold huge numbers of jobs moved from the old centers of capitalism Western Europe North America Japan to the new Dynamic Center's China India Brazil and so on a remarkable process of explosive growth and in this situation we find ourselves living with the results of that process the first result a hollowing out of the old working class in the old centers of capitalism what do I mean I mean that jobs left the jobs that left first say from the United States with the highest paid the unionized jobs the factory jobs where workers struggles had built up decent livelihoods for people that's where there was the most gain in profit if you could move that production to the cheap labor in other parts of the world and so we lost our steel factories our Auto factories our aluminum production all of the basic industry of the country why because it was profitable for capitalists to move and move they did and the middle class fell apart the jobs disappeared from being a high-paid industrial worker you became a low-paid greeter at Walmart etc etc inequality grew because the 10 who own all the shares made all the big profits and the mass over the working class took a real hit because those in America had to compete with the cheaper labor in China India and we all know the result and it had one more effect it created capitalist Powers outside of the United States Europe and Japan who hadn't seen that before China above all but also India Brazil and others emerging so that the Western capitalist old centers had a dynamic new center competing with them these were very new developments one of the things provoked by it an upsurge of militant labor movements no surprise they were reacting to the hard times working classes are facing one after the other all over the world even in China and India because of the sudden transformation of agrarian people into industrial working classes that always shakes people's lives that always creates tension and in the west The Disappearing jobs The Disappearing middle class The Disappearing standards of living The Disappearing opportunities for children capitalism in the west was under strain let me assure you that the rising militancy of the labor movement here in this country led by service workers among the lowest paid should be no surprise the fact that the France as a whole country is shut down by the demand of its working classes not to have the problems of your French capitalism taken out on them by taking away the pensions they've already paid for or the Germans who last a month shut down the transportation system in their country as a protest against the inflations attacking the working class and I'll come back to that we had a shift from globalized neoliberal expansion to its opposite retraction countries fighting against one another the United States shutting down hobbling interactions with China economic nationalism replaced neoliberal globalization Europe is caught between trying to figure out what to do should it still stay with the United States doing a lot of its Dirty Work politically as in Ukraine or is the future of Europe better with the news centers that issue is being fought out in Europe even if the media in this country pretend otherwise and then there's the isolation of the United States this is important to understand and brings us as a transition to another of the four factors besides the shift from neoliberal globalization to economic nationalism we're also seeing the end of a century in which we were told and many of us believed that the great struggle was between the state as an owner operator of Enterprises and the private sector as the owner Opera operator of the Enterprises that produce goods and services we were told this was the struggle between capitalism and socialism and we've learned that that was a terrible mistake capitalism has a private form and a state form just like slavery did just like feudalism did let me drive the point home during slaveries around the world were there private slavers Masters who were private individuals running a business with slaves yes were there governments who had and operated slave Enterprises yes nobody thinks that it wasn't slavery because the state was doing it alongside the private sector same and feudalism we had State feudal State Lords with serfs and private Lords with serfs and guess what there's a pattern here you start off typically with only the private but the private gets itself into trouble and calls in the state and so you get State slavery alongside private same thing you get State feudalism alongside private and guess what when private capitalism gets into trouble it calls in the state that's why Mr Trump had to wave wage uh tariff Wars and trade Wars and Mr Biden is doing basically the same you call in the state and the state then becomes a bigger and bigger Factor we're seeing the end of the big story of private versus state because in fact all the societies are combinations mixtures of those the United States has a bigger and bigger role for the state the Republicans complain about it the Democrats push it but they all accept it and they all understand it has to be done even if they give speeches to the contrary on the 4th of July the greatest example of the hybrid the combination of private and state capitalist Enterprises is the People's Republic of China by capitalist I mean the relationship between the employer and the employee that's the issue socialism wants to change that relationship make it more Collective make it more democratic make it more a relation of equals not a relation of hierarchical dominant subordinate that's not what capitalism allows neither in its private form nor in its state form what China has showed is that you can get a more rapid rate of growth with the hybrid understanding its peculiarities then you can if it's all state like Russia Soviet Russia or all private more like the United States and the United Kingdom so they've become the model and the United States denounces China as it becomes more of a hybrid itself if you can't beat them you end up joining them I think that's an important thing for us to understand that in the New World Order we have economic nationalism and a hybrid of state and private employer employee capitalism whatever names they give themselves whatever their ultimate goals may be these are the realities that we face and that means we also have to face the reality that an immense Global working class is emerging shrinking and suffering in the west explosively growing in the East and in the global South and that's going to change everything as the capitalists in the west hunker down worrying about how long they can survive the emerging power of the capitalism of the East the nationalism gripping them and the state private hybrid that is their way of coping with the time ahead we've come to the end of the first half in the second half of this program I'm going to be talking about the two other key factors the decline of the American Empire and the big question what comes next [Music] before we move on I want to remind everyone economic update is produced by democracy at work a small donor-funded non-profit media organization celebrating 10 years of producing critical system analysis and visions of a more Equitable and Democratic world through a variety of media for example my book understanding socialism which reveals the orphan hidden histories of socialism while tackling the taboos associated with it and presents democracy in the workplace as a way to move forward without the destruction and tragedy of capitalism it's available in multiple formats you can get your copy by going to our website democracy at work dot info there you can also sign up for our mailing list for a weekly Roundup of recent work we produce messages from show hosts and more please stay with us we will be right back [Music] welcome back friends to the second half of today's economic update we're talking about the emergence of a new world economy a new order in the world economy and in the first half we spoke about the end of neoliberal globalization and the turn to economic nationalism and we also spoke about the end of the stale old debate between private and state as if that were the issue now that we have a world composed of hybrids of mixtures of state and private that are all capitalist in the sense of that same old relationship between employer and employee the next two out of these four defining qualities of the new world economy has to do with the American Empire and here the issue has to be faced squarely although I understand and appreciate that that is difficult the reality is that the American Empire has peaked and is now declining the data for this are overwhelming as is the urgent tendency to deny it among people who find it frightening which I understand I'm going to give you some of the signs to make sure we all understand it I'll start with a small one and it'll get larger as we go the tiny Central American country of Honduras recently decided to end its diplomatic relationships with the island of Taiwan and recognize as China the mainland there are about a hundred and seventy eighty countries in the world only a dozen of which still recognize Taiwan as a separate Sovereign entity a dozen of which the United States is one a dozen even Honduras think a minute what this suggests then there was the announcement a very few weeks ago made by a smiling Chinese foreign minister that a Reconciliation of sorts had been achieved between two traditional enemies in the Middle East Iran on the one hand and Saudi Arabia on the other countries virtually at War although by proxy often wrapped up in the Sunni versus Shiite struggles within Islam they were going to establish embassies in each other's capitals they were going to lay down the weapons of war and try to work together for a broader peace in the war Riven Middle East the United States was absent it has been trying to build peace in the Middle East at least that's what we've been told and couldn't do it the Chinese and emerging new power in the world did it the importance and the symbolism are only deniable if it's too hard to face what's going on and then there are the mistakes in the Ukraine war let me count several of them for you mistake number one that you can keep pushing the boundaries of NATO an alliance of the West traditionally opposed to the Soviet Union you can push them more and more up against and even into Russia well you can't you're going to have pushback it's not going to be what you thought it would be you made a mistake the second mistake was to imagine that this would be a war between Ukraine aided by the collective West and Russia alone let me remind you all Russia is a country whose GDP is about one and a half trillion dollars the United States and Western Europe Allied against Russia with Ukraine have a combined GDP of about 32 trillion dollars one and a half versus 32. mistake this is going to be easy Russia will be crushed uh-uh didn't happen isn't going to happen require way more involvement by the West than was ever understood now in the neighborhood of 100 to 150 billion dollars and Counting escalation after escalation without the promised result turns out Russia has very powerful friends helping Russia be a much more important folk these are too many mistakes that come out of a mentality that doesn't want to face that the world has changed the vast majority of countries in the world particularly those in the global South are not particularly moved by the West's complaints about Russia they're not taking sides in that conflict Beyond an obligatory vote and an obligatory statement that peace would be better than War the United States has been unable to Marshal anything like a global consensus around its position these are all signs of Empire decline if I had more time I'd go into other signs the challenges to the U.S dollar AS Global Currency the fact that Iran and Saudi Arabia will provide the energy needs of China in the indefinite future on an extraordinary scale Shifting the balance of fossil fuel power for sure the fourth and the final question about the New Economic order is different because it's not a fact about what's happening it's a question what happens next and these are the questions that are going to be the questions that we try to answer and how we try by we I mean the human race how we try to answer these questions will shape the future we live in number one will the declining American Empire be replaced by a rising Chinese Empire that's the question just like the question at the end of the Roman or Greek or Persian or ottoman or British Empire was what Empire comes next or another question will the question be that we create instead of another Empire that the human race grows up and says we don't need and we don't want sequential Empires what we need and want is a multinational multi-polar world we really need a world in which lots of different countries larger smaller individual grouped work out a livable arrangement for all on this planet with its limitations that's a big question the ecological movements are struggling from their end to answer it around nature and environment but the political forces the national forces the economic realities are just as important in changing and shaping the questions and the answers the economic growth of China in the last 40 years that other part of neoliberal globalization that wasn't just about Western capitalists making a lot of money in the East but what it would mean for the people of the east and by extension of the global South we are now realizing the enormous economic power of the Chinese and the Indians and indeed all of those countries we label bricks Brazil Russia India China and South Africa a powerful new poll in World development and the last question and the in the end the most important one that we will be answering and that will shape the future we see in the new world economy and that question is will the kinds of friction and change and difficulty of this phase of capitalist development this moving of its old centers and the creation of new centers will it have the effect of agitating mobilizing and educating a global working class I end with that because I think it's the most important thing to leave with you we have had 40 Years of a traumatic change in the global capitalist system that's what this program today has summarized or tried to but along the way we have really put the working classes of the world through the ringer in China we took hundreds of millions of rural people and put them into urban coastal cities transforming everything about their lives of course there's going to be trauma and upset and reconfiguring ways of living and being the working class of China is going through a transformation in decades that took Europeans centuries yeah that will agitate your working class but look also at the United States and Western Europe for the last 40 years the middle class wrecked the inequality made much worse tiny groups two four six percent of super wealthy people and a mass of people having a harder and harder time and then on top of it an economic crash in 2020 a global pandemic that was horrid in its effects and then in inflation and now Rising interest rates all of that crammed into a historical short period of time of course the French people are in the streets they're always among the first to go there and the German Workers and the women in Iran and fill in the blank there are many more and the militancy of the labor movement rediscovered in this country the question is will this working-class turmoil congeal into its own notion of where the future lies because if they do they will be able not only to reshape the world economy as it emerges but they might be able to finally realize their dream of an economic system that didn't position a tiny number of people at the top making all the decisions Gathering the wealth and shaping the world economy to their desire it might finally mean a world economy shaped in the desire of what most of the people living in it would prefer that too is on the horizon as a possibility thank you for your attention and as always I look forward to speaking with you again next week [Music] thank you

Channel: Democracy At Work

Views: 523,224

Keywords: Richard Wolff, democracy, work, labor, economy, economics, inequality, justice, capitalism, capital, socialism, wealth, income, wages, poverty, yt:cc=on, globalization, empire, China, neoliberal, neoliberalism, Western Europe, Asia, private capitalism, state capitalism, worker coops, worker cooperatives, cooperatives, democratic decision-making

Id: 2s6F97zYJ1Y

Length: 30min 20sec (1820 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 24 2023