The problem lies in extreme centralisation
Saturday, 28 March 2009
Ameer Hamza
GAPS between the poor and the rich will always be part of human societies everywhere, though the degrees of deprivation or wealth may differ from place to place. But never in the history of the world have there been such an overwhelming concentration of power and capital and knowledge in the hands of a few individuals and conglomerates. Some 5000 giant oligopolies control power at the global, regional and national levels and the world economy is at the mercy of their decisions. According to one estimate, this power-base controls more than a third of the world's productive assets and three fourths of all world trade, through monopolies, mergers and alliances.
Multinational and multisectoral mergers have been going on at a hectic pace since the last quarter of the past century. The level of concentration is unbelievable. One study some years ago revealed that just a handful of transnational companies controlled 90 per cent of the global trade in wheat, maize, coffee and pineapple; about 80 per cent of the tea trade; 70 per cent of the global banana and rice markets; and more than 60 per cent of the world trade in sugar.
There have been phenomenal mergers within seed, agrochemicals and pharmaceutical companies. By 2010-2020, the world may witness the commercialisation of nano-biotechnology, which would not only open up new dimensions in farming and food production but at the same time threaten the farmers' very livelihood. Nanotech theorists claim that by the middle of this decade, 'We will be building our food atom by atom in a household contraption not unlike today's kitchen microwave.'
The pharmaceutical industry, one of the fastest growing and most proftable sectors of the world economy, had, by the mid-1990s mopped up US$400 billion in mergers, ten of its leading firms controlling 35 per cent of the global market. This industry includes segments like health care, soaps, cosmetics and chemicals and have also been moving into 'managed care' companies and certain kind of clinical services designed to use their patented drugs and technologies. The focus is not only on manufacturing medicines for curing diseases but also on concocting drugs for people who don't need them at all. Driven by super technologies and superprofits, pharmaceutical companies have no qualms directing their attention to 'lifestyle drugs' ---- in other words, pills to alter moods, reduce stress, enhance performance, sleep or wakefulness.
Common biotechnology is linking human genomics with pharmaceuticals, with veterinary medicines, with agrochemicals, with seeds, with cosmetics, with household cleaning agents and what not ! This concentration of corporate power, in virtually all the new technologies, means much more than the monopolisation of the world's food, health and energy systems. It means the control of a new global society, which, Pat Roy Mooney of RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International), says, comes in three forms:
* First, informatics technologies enhanced by robotics, sensors, aeospace technlogies, and the miniarurisation of these technologies through nanotech, make it feasible to monitor and control dissent and to impose a police state.
* Second, biotechnology in conjunction with work in the neurosciences is making it feasible to control human behaviour. The so-called HPEs that can either increase or decrease human responses and brain functions ---- and the medical manipulation of employees --- could become a 'voluntary' prerequisite for employment --- and survival - in the new world that awaits us.
* Third, the coming merger of the 'micros' ---- microbiology and nanotechnology --- proposes an unprecedented and uncertain transformation in the agents of production. The future 'bionic' world will have hybrids of living and non-living materials woven together. Because the same biotechnologies now link crop production to human and animal health care, we are witnessing the merger of the Life Industry segments into a powerful oligopoly.For the same reasons,we may see the merger of the Life Industry with traditional manufacturing industries. The result will be a world wherein the systems of production and distribution can be dominated by a still more powerful oligopoly. In such a world, 'state' institutions --- perceived democratic institutions ---once again return to being servants of the oligopoly. Government exists to maintain the veneer of democracy while collecting taxes to maintain a rudimentary social safety net ( to prevent unacceptable levels of commercial disruption) and to enforce the wishes of the oligopoly via a police state .............. the world will see the rise of hybrid states ...................... states with the trappings of democracy in the service of military or corporate elites.
This scenario is not difficult to spot in today's world as governments (so-called ) and businesses (agents) in the South link up and play by the rules dictated by the mother companies. A little power trickles down, so to say, to maintain the agencies, but the accumulation of capital and clout remains in the hands of a limited number of large global oligopolies. And it is this kind of globalisation that has led to the current financial crisis all across the world.
Left-leaning economists, like the Egyptian Samir Amin, believe the injection of billions of dollars to rescue giant banks, stock markets and manufacturing industries may prop up the system in the short term but it cannot resolve the core problem created by the extreme centralisation of capital, profits and power. This has to be addressed radically, and nothing short of a course change can inject health into the global economy. For the current financial crisis is, in fact, the crisis of capitalism itself, not just 'the result of mistakes or irresponsibilities.'
Amin's recommendation to entities of both the north and the south, then, is to move out of the present monetary and financial system and start nationalising the oligopolies with the 'objective of socialisation.' There is no alternative to it, he says. Otherwise, 'the world will continue to be in a serious and continuous crisis of capitalism and imperialism, and not just of the financial markets ...................... (with) key countries of the South rubber-stamping the decisions of finance capital.' the annual value of US acquisition alone was well over US$ 1.7 trillion.
GAPS between the poor and the rich will always be part of human societies everywhere, though the degrees of deprivation or wealth may differ from place to place. But never in the history of the world have there been such an overwhelming concentration of power and capital and knowledge in the hands of a few individuals and conglomerates. Some 5000 giant oligopolies control power at the global, regional and national levels and the world economy is at the mercy of their decisions. According to one estimate, this power-base controls more than a third of the world's productive assets and three fourths of all world trade, through monopolies, mergers and alliances.
Multinational and multisectoral mergers have been going on at a hectic pace since the last quarter of the past century. The level of concentration is unbelievable. One study some years ago revealed that just a handful of transnational companies controlled 90 per cent of the global trade in wheat, maize, coffee and pineapple; about 80 per cent of the tea trade; 70 per cent of the global banana and rice markets; and more than 60 per cent of the world trade in sugar.
There have been phenomenal mergers within seed, agrochemicals and pharmaceutical companies. By 2010-2020, the world may witness the commercialisation of nano-biotechnology, which would not only open up new dimensions in farming and food production but at the same time threaten the farmers' very livelihood. Nanotech theorists claim that by the middle of this decade, 'We will be building our food atom by atom in a household contraption not unlike today's kitchen microwave.'
The pharmaceutical industry, one of the fastest growing and most proftable sectors of the world economy, had, by the mid-1990s mopped up US$400 billion in mergers, ten of its leading firms controlling 35 per cent of the global market. This industry includes segments like health care, soaps, cosmetics and chemicals and have also been moving into 'managed care' companies and certain kind of clinical services designed to use their patented drugs and technologies. The focus is not only on manufacturing medicines for curing diseases but also on concocting drugs for people who don't need them at all. Driven by super technologies and superprofits, pharmaceutical companies have no qualms directing their attention to 'lifestyle drugs' ---- in other words, pills to alter moods, reduce stress, enhance performance, sleep or wakefulness.
Common biotechnology is linking human genomics with pharmaceuticals, with veterinary medicines, with agrochemicals, with seeds, with cosmetics, with household cleaning agents and what not ! This concentration of corporate power, in virtually all the new technologies, means much more than the monopolisation of the world's food, health and energy systems. It means the control of a new global society, which, Pat Roy Mooney of RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International), says, comes in three forms:
* First, informatics technologies enhanced by robotics, sensors, aeospace technlogies, and the miniarurisation of these technologies through nanotech, make it feasible to monitor and control dissent and to impose a police state.
* Second, biotechnology in conjunction with work in the neurosciences is making it feasible to control human behaviour. The so-called HPEs that can either increase or decrease human responses and brain functions ---- and the medical manipulation of employees --- could become a 'voluntary' prerequisite for employment --- and survival - in the new world that awaits us.
* Third, the coming merger of the 'micros' ---- microbiology and nanotechnology --- proposes an unprecedented and uncertain transformation in the agents of production. The future 'bionic' world will have hybrids of living and non-living materials woven together. Because the same biotechnologies now link crop production to human and animal health care, we are witnessing the merger of the Life Industry segments into a powerful oligopoly.For the same reasons,we may see the merger of the Life Industry with traditional manufacturing industries. The result will be a world wherein the systems of production and distribution can be dominated by a still more powerful oligopoly. In such a world, 'state' institutions --- perceived democratic institutions ---once again return to being servants of the oligopoly. Government exists to maintain the veneer of democracy while collecting taxes to maintain a rudimentary social safety net ( to prevent unacceptable levels of commercial disruption) and to enforce the wishes of the oligopoly via a police state .............. the world will see the rise of hybrid states ...................... states with the trappings of democracy in the service of military or corporate elites.
This scenario is not difficult to spot in today's world as governments (so-called ) and businesses (agents) in the South link up and play by the rules dictated by the mother companies. A little power trickles down, so to say, to maintain the agencies, but the accumulation of capital and clout remains in the hands of a limited number of large global oligopolies. And it is this kind of globalisation that has led to the current financial crisis all across the world.
Left-leaning economists, like the Egyptian Samir Amin, believe the injection of billions of dollars to rescue giant banks, stock markets and manufacturing industries may prop up the system in the short term but it cannot resolve the core problem created by the extreme centralisation of capital, profits and power. This has to be addressed radically, and nothing short of a course change can inject health into the global economy. For the current financial crisis is, in fact, the crisis of capitalism itself, not just 'the result of mistakes or irresponsibilities.'
Amin's recommendation to entities of both the north and the south, then, is to move out of the present monetary and financial system and start nationalising the oligopolies with the 'objective of socialisation.' There is no alternative to it, he says. Otherwise, 'the world will continue to be in a serious and continuous crisis of capitalism and imperialism, and not just of the financial markets ...................... (with) key countries of the South rubber-stamping the decisions of finance capital.' the annual value of US acquisition alone was well over US$ 1.7 trillion.