05 May 2008

The superclass and its world

Listening to a talk by David Rothkopf about the subject of his book Superclass I'm struck by the degree to which the interests of those in the superclass not only differ from those of everyone else but are diverging. Who are the members of is the superclass? Leaders in international business, finance and the armaments industry, mainly: and that is another important point; nation states and their governments play a subordinate role to the interests of the world's largest corporations. Government and bigness do seem to go hand-in-hand, and a sustained period of heavy government involvement in industry does seem to lead to a high degree of 'industry concentration', in which a few very large corporations dominate. This is demonstrably true of agriculture, construction and the armaments ('defence') industries, but as government regulatory powers expand is becoming a reality in other sectors.

I think is worrisome for several reasons. First, we - that is ordinary people - are ending up with more bigness than we want. That's a problem in its own right. Second, the curse of bigness is that it doesn't respond readily and appropriately to urgent challenges. Likewise, it imposes a uniform way of doing things - a monoculture - which has all the vulnerability to shocks of its agricultural counterpart. The large scale of corporate and government activities has both heightened our vulnerability to shocks and reduced our capacity to respond to them. It's difficult to do much about this: in many ways we are so locked in to the ways of doing things that the corporatist-government complex has favoured. For instance, our urban lifestyle and our farming systems are now entirely dependent on low-cost fossil fuel; more so than they would have been had market forces been undistorted by the big players.

It is sad to reflect that the superclass has so organised society that in our chaotic, perilous world, the US Presidential campaign may well be won and lost over who promises to knock a few cents off the price of gasoline for the summer season.

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