The author recently wrote an article documenting the rise of surveillance in modern society, and how this coincided with the rise of the internet and the widespread use of CCTV. When the Edward Snowden revelations were revealed to the world two years ago, the extent to which the USA (and its Anglophone partners, especially the UK) were gathering masses of information across the globe was astounding. In the article mentioned above I alluded to the "public" rationale for this level of surveillance (The War On Terror etc.), but also to the - more likely - "private" reason: they do it because they can.
This is not to say that these people in government are "evil". It is more down to the simple human nature of those with their hands on the levers of power. The capability exists to know almost everything there is to know about people; therefore, not to use it would seem almost like a abrogation of government's instinct to do what it can to control events.
The modern nation-state is a creation of law. It took centuries for autocratic societies to be transformed into nation-states where those in power were held in check by an objective set of laws. Britain was one of the first nations to achieve this basic principle. The USA took this principle to (for the 18th century) its logical conclusion, by creating a state based "on laws, not men". Since then, other nations have improved this concept further. It is no surprise that the nations with the most stringent application of rule of law are also the most stable and the least corrupt. Therefore, any government that follows these principles consistently (i.e. is not a corrupt dictatorship) is bound by the law of the land in its actions. But where does surveillance fit into this?
"Spycraft" has been a feature of governments for centuries, and more sophisticated - and intrusive - techniques were developed as the technology became available. Fast forward to the end of the Second World War. The USA and the British Empire had won the war, but now faced the threat of Soviet Russia. Thanks to a quirk of geography, many of the world's telecommunications cross the Atlantic between the USA and the UK. This meant they also had the capability to intercept a large volume of the world's telecommunications. Faced with the threat of Soviet Russia, the USA and it's English-speaking partners (The UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) created the "Five Eyes": a secret surveillance network. While those within the "Five Eyes" network worked together, all other countries' communications were effectively declared "fair game" - which included other NATO allies. All this was kept secret from the outside world, until it was cracked open by Edward Snowden.
As the adage goes "information is power". While these governments are bound by their own laws. we also have seen those laws easily modified in times of crisis and war. Freedom (of expression and privacy) and the rule of law is not permanent or set in stone once it has been created. These things can be rolled back. The 9/11 attacks and the War On Terror saw the US government and its Anglophone allies grant sweeping powers of surveillance over their own citizens, as well as others all across the globe. The "rule of law" that was meant to be there to check the excesses of government, was being bent to the breaking point. It would take a great deal of legal trickery to demonstrate that what the US government was doing did not break its own constitution. In the UK, where the "rule of law" was a more flexible construct given the lack of a written constitution, the government were able to do even more.
While terrorism was the official justification to their respective parliaments, in reality the surveillance covered everything from hoovering up the browsing habits of Europeans, to bugging the phones of European leaders. Again, for what possible purpose could this serve to the "War On Terror"?
The meaning of Neo-Imperialism
In reality, these techniques and the widespread use of spycraft on allies and enemies alike showed that the Anglophone spy agencies were really using the technology in whatever way they could, within the (hazy) constraints of the law. Governments are as fallible and as hard-wired to over-reach as the rest of us; the same can be said for companies. Like any ordinary person, given the chance the government will do whatever it thinks it can get away with.
This is the meaning of what we call "Neo-Imperialism". In the 21st century, the world is a place of a number of different centres of power, with alliances here and there, each vying for control. In such a setting, where things seem so uncertain, "information" truly is key. The irony is that the two most significant geo-political events of the last five years - the Arab Spring and its aftermath, (with the subsequent Civil War in Syria and the rise of ISIS) and the crisis in Ukraine and Russia's schism with the West - happened without the west (and the "Anglophone alliance) having a clue about what was about to happen.
An intervention in Libya is called a "failure of Neo-Imperialism", while a non-intervention in Syria and the rise of ISIS is likewise called a "failure of Neo-Imperialism". Neo-Imperialism is about using the modern instruments at the disposal of the world's most powerful governments to try and control events.
We talk about "soft power" and "hard power". The USA uses both. Under George W. Bush, "hard power" was the instrument of preference, supported by "soft power". Under Barack Obama, the emphasis seems to be reversed. The UK was recently shown to be at the top of the world table in its successful use of "soft power". Given its lack of a serious military budget, it is no surprise that the UK uses more indirect methods to get what it wants. It charms and cajoles; it submits and threatens where necessary.
The British Empire may well be a thing of the past, but Britain is still an "empire" in all but name, at least in terms of the way carries out its world affairs, as well as many of its affairs at home. While we are in the 21st century, many nations are still run in a pseudo-feudalistic way. Neo-Imperialism is really just a variation on the world politics of the late 19th and early 20th century, but with modern technology allowing for other techniques to be used for the same ends.
The first half of the 20th century saw the rise of totalitarian states in Russia and Germany. Today, the idea of such a nightmare returning seems thankfully remote. However, while few would see the use of surveillance as "authoritarianism" in the classic sense, the insidious nature of this power is what makes it so easy to ignore. Comparatively few people are truly concerned; they are not aware of it happening, as they would have been in the times of the Nazis or the Soviet Union.
Again, this demonstrates the changed nature of the state: whereas before the state wanted you to know that you were being watched, these days it is done (or was, until Edward Snowden) without public awareness.
As said before, it is easy to understand why governments do it; with the technological capability there, the temptation is too strong to resist, so excuses are created for its use. This technology may seem benign to many but, as with rule of law, these things are prone to change. Governments are masters of "threat management". With the rise of the symbiosis between government and business, accountability and oversight can quickly become lost.
This is the neo-liberal orthodoxy that has ruled the roost in the Anglosphere for the last thirty-five years.
Showing posts with label Neo-Imperialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Neo-Imperialism. Show all posts
Saturday, July 18, 2015
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Globalisation, neo-liberalism and Fascism
Last year I wrote an article describing the links between neo-liberalism and the creed of Fascism. More recently, I wrote about the ideological links between Fascism and Political Islam.
What is Fascism? Apart from its ideological beliefs, it is, primarily, an economic system. Its economic aim is to consolidate economic and political power into the hands of an unaccountable elite of private interests, who use the government as an instrument for their aims. This also involves the erosion of employee rights, and the destruction of union power. This is then enforced through a total control over the use of force and psychological control over any opponents, by the use of state authority (e.g. police and the manipulation of the law) when necessary, or by covert surveillance and political marginalisation.
I explained last month about how authoritarianism has morphed over time. Before the Second World War, those on the political left decried authoritarians as Fascists, while those on the right decried the authoritarianism of Communism. But what is more telling is the definition that the left and right give for Fascism. When the right decry Fascism, they talk about total state control of the economy and the population; when the left decry Fascism, they talk about a corrupt elite taking control of the state and the population.
While those on the right decry Fascism when it means the private sector loses control of the economy and influence over the state, those of the left decry Fascism when democratic accountability is lost in the running of the state and the economy.
The reality is that it is the left's definition of Fascism that is much closer to the truth; the right's historical "fear of Fascism" was simply anger at losing their position of primacy.
From Fascism to Neo-liberalism
After the Second World War, economic Fascism in the developed world learned to adapt. While the USA defeated Fascism in Europe, it emerged as the world's military and economic superpower, challenged only by the Soviet Union.
The end of the Second World War saw the USA draw up the rules for the world to follow. With the other Allies financially crippled and dependent on American loans, there was no other option. The main financial institutions that run the world's economy are all children of this post-war economic settlement drawn up by the USA: these include the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO's predecessor, the GATT.
The main purpose of these changes was to free up the world market to reduce tariffs between states, making international trade much easier, and to help the economies of the Third World through the use of loans to restructure their economies better.
These aims are euphemisms for the destruction of the "old order": where Imperial and wannabe-Imperial powers (such as the British Empire, in the first case, and Nazi Germany, in the second) were rendered obsolete by a neo-liberal system that allowed the first stage of the process towards what is now called Globalisation. In other words, nation-states would become vehicles of world prosperity; which would massively benefit big business. The old system of protective tariffs that was favoured by the old Imperial Powers was over; as would be the old idea of Colonialism.
The breaking of tariffs most benefitted companies that were eager to expand their operations abroad, so it was no surprise that big business was pro-American in its stance on free trade. The same was true with big business' attitude to old-style Colonialism; much better for big business that Africa (for example) was a mish-mash of unconnected and squabbling countries rather than belong to just a few Imperial Powers, as it made it easier for multi-national companies to deal with them. And when this occurred, it meant that post-Colonial Africa (and elsewhere) became a living laboratory for this new form of economic Fascism; when entire nation-states were dependant on the whim of a multi-national CEO, or the IMF.
Colonialism by a number of nation-states became replaced by multi-national economic Fascism.
So while there was a "post-war consensus" in much of the developed world that ostensibly caused a temporary reduction in the amount of control big business had over industries and state services, the first steps towards Globalisation as we understand it today were started after the Second World War in the post-Colonial world
The ideological basis for this "neo-liberal" system received a boost with the tract "The Virtue Of Selfishness" by Ayn Rand, and her philosophy called Objectivism. She, and the "Chicago School" economist Milton Friedman, were largely responsible for the creation of Monetarism, which was a huge advocate of free markets, low taxation and the erosion of state intervention. This also included a scepticism towards employee rights and unions, which they both believed were responsible for the ills in the economy. More generally, they were passionate advocates of individualism and against all forms of "collectivism" (such as socialised medicine).
They were both contemporaries who reached the height of their fame in the post-war era in the USA, but their ideas became more commonplace by the sixties and seventies, especially in the Anglosphere. Both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were fans of Rand and Monetarism, as were big business. So when these two came to power, "neo-liberalism" was free to be put into practice as never before.
A Neo-liberal world
The past thirty years has seen an unprecedented leap in the gap between rich and poor across the world. This is a direct consequence of the economics of Neo-liberalism. While the average person in the developed world may feel "rich" due to advances in technology, the reality is that across the developed world people are poorer in real terms that they were thirty years ago.
Having an iPhone doesn't make you "rich"; being able to use Facebook doesn't mean you are "free". These concepts are all absolutes that can be measured to compared to what existed previously. The fact that you have an iPhone, and can use Facebook, but have a job that is an internship and cannot afford to buy your own house, tells you that you are poor in absolute terms. If you cannot save money each month, it means you are poor. If you barely have enough money to pay bills, it means you are poor.
Consumerism and advances in technology help feed the illusion that this "neo-liberal" model brings prosperity to everyone, when the opposite is true: Neo-liberalism concentrates power and influence into the hands of fewer and fewer people, none of whom are accountable to the public. I wrote in my article "Neo-liberalism is the new Fascism" that the financial crisis was a direct result of this economic system: a system where the rules are written by those who have the most to gain from it. Politicians around the world have bought into this system either because they have a personal interest in it, or are too intimidated by the alternative (the withdrawal of multi-national's investment) that they go along with it. In other words, the political establishment is tied to whim of this private sector elite.
In this way, "Neo-liberalism" is the extension of the idea of economic Fascism because it transfers effective government power to a private sector elite who are unaccountable to the public. Privatisation of former state services is a key method of neutering the role of the government in the economy, and transferring it to the private sector; meanwhile, the private sector act as economic vampires on the government, by ensuring that while all profits of privatised industries go to the private sector, any losses are picked up by the government. In the UK, PFI is ran using this model, as are the railways and other privatised industries: it is the economics of Fascism down to a tee.
This ensures that the government becomes more and more loaded with private sector debt, and then encourages the government that the only way to lessen the debt is to either privatise either more services, reduce state spending on the population, or increase taxes on the poor, thus continuing the vicious circle of corruption. It is the perfect formula to binding a government to Fascism.
The growth of China as a world power and economy grew precisely when, thirty years ago, the leadership decided to buy into the "neo-liberal" model: foreign investment poured in, and the country grew rich. But again, China is successful because it has found a way for "neo-liberalism" to work for them. It is a one-party neo-liberal state, ideal for the purpose.
In the West, "neo-liberalism" has become the only accepted form of economic system; all others are open to ridicule, and dismissed by the political establishment. Neo-liberalism, as a refined form of Fascism, also learned to adapt to a world where freedom of expression cannot be so easily silenced. Therefore, freedom of expression is accepted (at least publicly), but is only indulged for the sake of maintaining democratic legitimacy. You are free to say what you like, as long as those thoughts and words are not put into actions (such as protest). When they are, people find the tools of state power will rapidly fall against them. Any kind of change that the government makes against its own interests, it may accept a small concession simply for the sake of its public image and longer-term survival.
Yet even this "indulgence" of free speech is relative, as people are finding out. The "War On Terror" was used as way to criminalise words that could be interpreted as inciting hatred or violence; in some parts of the world, government criticism can be called illegal by citing any number of obscure laws. In Turkey, as a result of the crackdown after the Gezi park protests, people can be arrested for simply standing still.
Political Islam is simply another branch of the same Fascist tendency, as I wrote earlier this month. The AKP in Turkey is more pro-Capitalist than its secular rivals; again, buying into the "neo-liberal" model for its own purposes, while many of the governing party's leading lights have favourable links to Turkey's "new rich".
These days, it appears that Globalisation has brought the world together as never before. But it's also true that Globalisation has allowed the world to be parcelled-off into spheres of influence, in ways that even former Imperial Powers couldn't quite manage.
Like in George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-four", there are a number of spheres of influence that effectively carve up the world, which are in turn effectively controlled by unaccountable elites. Annually, many of these figures meet at the "Bilderberg conference", which has been going on since 1954 (two-thirds of whom are from business, and one-third from government). While those who attend publicly state that what occurs is not consequential, what is discussed remains strictly confidential. So you can draw your own conclusions: to discuss long-term strategy? That remains the most likely answer.
And if the "Bilderberg Group" represents the elite of "neo-liberalism", how does its unaccountable nature make it any different from how Fascism operates?
What is Fascism? Apart from its ideological beliefs, it is, primarily, an economic system. Its economic aim is to consolidate economic and political power into the hands of an unaccountable elite of private interests, who use the government as an instrument for their aims. This also involves the erosion of employee rights, and the destruction of union power. This is then enforced through a total control over the use of force and psychological control over any opponents, by the use of state authority (e.g. police and the manipulation of the law) when necessary, or by covert surveillance and political marginalisation.
I explained last month about how authoritarianism has morphed over time. Before the Second World War, those on the political left decried authoritarians as Fascists, while those on the right decried the authoritarianism of Communism. But what is more telling is the definition that the left and right give for Fascism. When the right decry Fascism, they talk about total state control of the economy and the population; when the left decry Fascism, they talk about a corrupt elite taking control of the state and the population.
While those on the right decry Fascism when it means the private sector loses control of the economy and influence over the state, those of the left decry Fascism when democratic accountability is lost in the running of the state and the economy.
The reality is that it is the left's definition of Fascism that is much closer to the truth; the right's historical "fear of Fascism" was simply anger at losing their position of primacy.
From Fascism to Neo-liberalism
After the Second World War, economic Fascism in the developed world learned to adapt. While the USA defeated Fascism in Europe, it emerged as the world's military and economic superpower, challenged only by the Soviet Union.
The end of the Second World War saw the USA draw up the rules for the world to follow. With the other Allies financially crippled and dependent on American loans, there was no other option. The main financial institutions that run the world's economy are all children of this post-war economic settlement drawn up by the USA: these include the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO's predecessor, the GATT.
The main purpose of these changes was to free up the world market to reduce tariffs between states, making international trade much easier, and to help the economies of the Third World through the use of loans to restructure their economies better.
These aims are euphemisms for the destruction of the "old order": where Imperial and wannabe-Imperial powers (such as the British Empire, in the first case, and Nazi Germany, in the second) were rendered obsolete by a neo-liberal system that allowed the first stage of the process towards what is now called Globalisation. In other words, nation-states would become vehicles of world prosperity; which would massively benefit big business. The old system of protective tariffs that was favoured by the old Imperial Powers was over; as would be the old idea of Colonialism.
The breaking of tariffs most benefitted companies that were eager to expand their operations abroad, so it was no surprise that big business was pro-American in its stance on free trade. The same was true with big business' attitude to old-style Colonialism; much better for big business that Africa (for example) was a mish-mash of unconnected and squabbling countries rather than belong to just a few Imperial Powers, as it made it easier for multi-national companies to deal with them. And when this occurred, it meant that post-Colonial Africa (and elsewhere) became a living laboratory for this new form of economic Fascism; when entire nation-states were dependant on the whim of a multi-national CEO, or the IMF.
Colonialism by a number of nation-states became replaced by multi-national economic Fascism.
So while there was a "post-war consensus" in much of the developed world that ostensibly caused a temporary reduction in the amount of control big business had over industries and state services, the first steps towards Globalisation as we understand it today were started after the Second World War in the post-Colonial world
The ideological basis for this "neo-liberal" system received a boost with the tract "The Virtue Of Selfishness" by Ayn Rand, and her philosophy called Objectivism. She, and the "Chicago School" economist Milton Friedman, were largely responsible for the creation of Monetarism, which was a huge advocate of free markets, low taxation and the erosion of state intervention. This also included a scepticism towards employee rights and unions, which they both believed were responsible for the ills in the economy. More generally, they were passionate advocates of individualism and against all forms of "collectivism" (such as socialised medicine).
They were both contemporaries who reached the height of their fame in the post-war era in the USA, but their ideas became more commonplace by the sixties and seventies, especially in the Anglosphere. Both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were fans of Rand and Monetarism, as were big business. So when these two came to power, "neo-liberalism" was free to be put into practice as never before.
A Neo-liberal world
The past thirty years has seen an unprecedented leap in the gap between rich and poor across the world. This is a direct consequence of the economics of Neo-liberalism. While the average person in the developed world may feel "rich" due to advances in technology, the reality is that across the developed world people are poorer in real terms that they were thirty years ago.
Having an iPhone doesn't make you "rich"; being able to use Facebook doesn't mean you are "free". These concepts are all absolutes that can be measured to compared to what existed previously. The fact that you have an iPhone, and can use Facebook, but have a job that is an internship and cannot afford to buy your own house, tells you that you are poor in absolute terms. If you cannot save money each month, it means you are poor. If you barely have enough money to pay bills, it means you are poor.
Consumerism and advances in technology help feed the illusion that this "neo-liberal" model brings prosperity to everyone, when the opposite is true: Neo-liberalism concentrates power and influence into the hands of fewer and fewer people, none of whom are accountable to the public. I wrote in my article "Neo-liberalism is the new Fascism" that the financial crisis was a direct result of this economic system: a system where the rules are written by those who have the most to gain from it. Politicians around the world have bought into this system either because they have a personal interest in it, or are too intimidated by the alternative (the withdrawal of multi-national's investment) that they go along with it. In other words, the political establishment is tied to whim of this private sector elite.
In this way, "Neo-liberalism" is the extension of the idea of economic Fascism because it transfers effective government power to a private sector elite who are unaccountable to the public. Privatisation of former state services is a key method of neutering the role of the government in the economy, and transferring it to the private sector; meanwhile, the private sector act as economic vampires on the government, by ensuring that while all profits of privatised industries go to the private sector, any losses are picked up by the government. In the UK, PFI is ran using this model, as are the railways and other privatised industries: it is the economics of Fascism down to a tee.
This ensures that the government becomes more and more loaded with private sector debt, and then encourages the government that the only way to lessen the debt is to either privatise either more services, reduce state spending on the population, or increase taxes on the poor, thus continuing the vicious circle of corruption. It is the perfect formula to binding a government to Fascism.
The growth of China as a world power and economy grew precisely when, thirty years ago, the leadership decided to buy into the "neo-liberal" model: foreign investment poured in, and the country grew rich. But again, China is successful because it has found a way for "neo-liberalism" to work for them. It is a one-party neo-liberal state, ideal for the purpose.
In the West, "neo-liberalism" has become the only accepted form of economic system; all others are open to ridicule, and dismissed by the political establishment. Neo-liberalism, as a refined form of Fascism, also learned to adapt to a world where freedom of expression cannot be so easily silenced. Therefore, freedom of expression is accepted (at least publicly), but is only indulged for the sake of maintaining democratic legitimacy. You are free to say what you like, as long as those thoughts and words are not put into actions (such as protest). When they are, people find the tools of state power will rapidly fall against them. Any kind of change that the government makes against its own interests, it may accept a small concession simply for the sake of its public image and longer-term survival.
Yet even this "indulgence" of free speech is relative, as people are finding out. The "War On Terror" was used as way to criminalise words that could be interpreted as inciting hatred or violence; in some parts of the world, government criticism can be called illegal by citing any number of obscure laws. In Turkey, as a result of the crackdown after the Gezi park protests, people can be arrested for simply standing still.
Political Islam is simply another branch of the same Fascist tendency, as I wrote earlier this month. The AKP in Turkey is more pro-Capitalist than its secular rivals; again, buying into the "neo-liberal" model for its own purposes, while many of the governing party's leading lights have favourable links to Turkey's "new rich".
These days, it appears that Globalisation has brought the world together as never before. But it's also true that Globalisation has allowed the world to be parcelled-off into spheres of influence, in ways that even former Imperial Powers couldn't quite manage.
Like in George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-four", there are a number of spheres of influence that effectively carve up the world, which are in turn effectively controlled by unaccountable elites. Annually, many of these figures meet at the "Bilderberg conference", which has been going on since 1954 (two-thirds of whom are from business, and one-third from government). While those who attend publicly state that what occurs is not consequential, what is discussed remains strictly confidential. So you can draw your own conclusions: to discuss long-term strategy? That remains the most likely answer.
And if the "Bilderberg Group" represents the elite of "neo-liberalism", how does its unaccountable nature make it any different from how Fascism operates?
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
The Future Of Britain
Realistically, what is Britain's future as a nation-state and power in the world in the coming decades?
In truth, it is not that hard to make some educated guesses based on what is happening in Britain now, where the direction of global politics is going, and what the predicted trends will be.
As I've said in my earlier post here, Britain in 2012 is a nation-state in stagnation, and socio-economic dysfunction in many of the regions outside of the South-Eastern England. The stagnation is due to the financial crisis, while the dysfunction is a combination of longstanding structural failings in long-term strategic thinking by government and the private sector, exacerbated since 2008.
The British economy since the decline of the manufacturing sector thirty years ago (accelerated by Monetarist/Thatcherite economic policy) has been increasingly dependent on the financial sector as the main driving force behind economic growth. This strategy, backed by the financial sector and followed trustingly by the government ever since, was meant to ensure a stable future for Britain in the 21st century. It has produced the opposite.
Looking at it objectively, this is obvious: it is reckless and naive to rest the hopes of nearly sixty million people on the success of the banking sector. But this is what has happened to British economic policy in the last thirty years.
Britain likes to compare itself economically to Germany, as a comparable economic power. But this is unfair: Germany does indeed have a strong economy, one that these days effectively keeps the Eurozone working and itself from feeling the effects of the economic crisis. But Germany's economy is based on two prongs - its financial sector, yes, but also its vigorous, efficient and dynamic manufacturing sector, that provides a healthy flow of exports.
The British government, under the supervision of the shortsighted financial barons, allowed its manufacturing sector to atrophy and wither. Furthermore, unlike Germany, the British government's attitude to unions has been aggressive, with catastrophic results on union membership and wage stability.
It is often forgotten in Britain that Germany's unions have a seat on the corporate board. This is not seen as an aggressive move on the part of the unions; it is seen as a co-operative approach between employee rights and employer rights. It means that companies make decisions together with their employees, rather than resembling a war-zone. The difference between Britain's workplace and the German workplace could not be greater.
The arrogance of the banking sector and right-wing economists explains how this happened. This combination of arrogance and what I call "post-Imperial complacency", is why Britain:
In truth, it is not that hard to make some educated guesses based on what is happening in Britain now, where the direction of global politics is going, and what the predicted trends will be.
As I've said in my earlier post here, Britain in 2012 is a nation-state in stagnation, and socio-economic dysfunction in many of the regions outside of the South-Eastern England. The stagnation is due to the financial crisis, while the dysfunction is a combination of longstanding structural failings in long-term strategic thinking by government and the private sector, exacerbated since 2008.
The British economy since the decline of the manufacturing sector thirty years ago (accelerated by Monetarist/Thatcherite economic policy) has been increasingly dependent on the financial sector as the main driving force behind economic growth. This strategy, backed by the financial sector and followed trustingly by the government ever since, was meant to ensure a stable future for Britain in the 21st century. It has produced the opposite.
Looking at it objectively, this is obvious: it is reckless and naive to rest the hopes of nearly sixty million people on the success of the banking sector. But this is what has happened to British economic policy in the last thirty years.
Britain likes to compare itself economically to Germany, as a comparable economic power. But this is unfair: Germany does indeed have a strong economy, one that these days effectively keeps the Eurozone working and itself from feeling the effects of the economic crisis. But Germany's economy is based on two prongs - its financial sector, yes, but also its vigorous, efficient and dynamic manufacturing sector, that provides a healthy flow of exports.
The British government, under the supervision of the shortsighted financial barons, allowed its manufacturing sector to atrophy and wither. Furthermore, unlike Germany, the British government's attitude to unions has been aggressive, with catastrophic results on union membership and wage stability.
It is often forgotten in Britain that Germany's unions have a seat on the corporate board. This is not seen as an aggressive move on the part of the unions; it is seen as a co-operative approach between employee rights and employer rights. It means that companies make decisions together with their employees, rather than resembling a war-zone. The difference between Britain's workplace and the German workplace could not be greater.
The arrogance of the banking sector and right-wing economists explains how this happened. This combination of arrogance and what I call "post-Imperial complacency", is why Britain:
- imports the majority of its foodstuffs (because it is cheaper for the huge private behemoths like "Tesco" etc.), forcing the home agricultural sector into penury.
- has an ever-growing "North-South" divide (because the private sector sees Britain outside of the London metropolitan area as an economic inconvenience, forcing an ever-growing "brain drain" from the regions)
- has a dysfunctional housing market from lack of private and public sector planning and motivation. The "North-South" divide means that while house prices in the depressed regions stagnate and some areas become depopulated, the London area becomes massively overcrowded, with an ever-increasing cost of living. It makes Britain an increasingly economically-polarised nation: the regions trapped in a cycle of lower and lower incomes and economic prospects; the capital trapped in a cycle of higher and higher costs. Over time, it means that the two parts of the country may become impossible to reconcile economically, with those in the regions unable to relocate, while those in London unwilling to move to the economically stagnant regions.
- has a mountain of debt, some government-incurred due to bailing-out the banks, some due to government overspending, and the rest due to personal debt brought about through irresponsibility.
- has a fast-growing population, much of it from the families and direct descendants of immigrants. But due to lack of government strategy and planning, there are fewer and fewer places in schools for them, resulting in overcrowding or family relocation simply to find a suitable school.
- Has a generation (or two) of graduates who are to have a mill-stone of debt around their necks for much of their adult life, but without any suitable employment. In other words, Britain is becoming a nation-state of the highly-educated under-employed.
- Has an increasingly dysfunctional employment market, as a result of the combination of points 1,2 and 6, as well as the over-dependence on the financial and (fluctuating) service sector. The number of long-term unemployed is reaching levels not seen for decades, and looks like a "new normal" is emerging of a permanently-unemployable underclass. Furthermore, the proportion of part-time and temporary jobs is increasing, so it appears that Britain will have an increasing portion of the population without stable career prospects.
These issues are all a direct result, in one way or another, of the government's economic strategy of the last thirty years. When you put all your eggs in one basket, as the UK government has done with the financial sector, the result is always predictable. It's simply a matter of time.
So that is the domestic state of affairs in Britain. From that we can make some educated guesses about what will happen to Britain's role in the world.
Britain's future in Europe is the most pressing foreign policy issue these days, and looks likely to dominate until the matter is decided one way or another in a referendum. The weak and directionless leadership of David Cameron, exploited by UKIP's Nigel Farage, is adding to the sense of drift and swift decline of Britain's reputation in Europe. It appears all-but-certain there will be a referendum on the Europe question in the next few years, either before the next election or shortly after. But any UK government is deluding themselves if they think they would be able to "re-negotiate" Britain's terms in the EU. For one thing, it would represent a dangerous precedent to what is a highly-centralised organisation. The EU leadership could not risk the contagion of other nations also wanting to "re-negotiate", leading to a chaotic and unruly clutch of European squabbles.
No, any referendum would be either "in or out"; "out" most likely meaning some kind of "free trade association" similar to that which Norway has with the EU. Judging how things stand, that vote is most likely to be "out", leaving Britain semi-detached from the centralised EU bureaucracy by the end of the decade.
That decided, it would leave Britain more reliant on its non-EU economic partners. In the next five years, we are likely to see the influence of three powers becoming more obviously apparent: China, Brazil, and Turkey.
China is obvious. It's influence in Africa, South America and Europe is bound to increase further, and as the Chinese middle class gradually increases, we can expect to see the effect of the stronger yuan (renminbi). Brazil is becoming an increasing rival to China in Sub-Saharan Africa, taking advantage of Brazil's more benign influence in Africa compared to China's more naked neo-Imperialism. This rivalry is likely to be the next "scramble for Africa", soon to appear in the news. Much of South America looks to be already in the pocket of China, but the Far East is where most experts in geopolitics think any future Chinese conflict may occur. While Japan is not likely to lose its status as the most advanced economy in the world for a fair while yet, a conflict between these two cannot be ruled out, though it may not occur until China itself feels either threatened (by Japanese paranoia towards China) or over-confident (about asserting its claims to disputed naval territories). This all depends on the balance between hawks and doves in the Chinese leadership, and by impression is that, for the time being, the Chinese are happy to be the world's mercantile power, if not its military one.
Having already mentioned Brazil's growing influence in Africa, this will put Europe (and Britain) in a dilemma. Who to support? Brazil is obviously closer to Europe culturally, as well as sharing an apparently benign interest in expanding its trade links to Africa. But the sheer size of China's influence on Europe as well as in Africa, may result in some difficult choices in the coming decade for Europe and Britain. The USA also may face some awkward choices in the coming decade regarding China and Japan.
I mention Turkey because of the Middle East. It already looks like Turkey has had an early advantage in gaining access to the Egyptian economy, due to the "good neighbour" policy of its Islamist government. As well as already gaining an increasing share of trade in the Balkans, Turkey looks likely to do the best out of the legacy of the "Arab Spring". In Egypt, Turkey has already gained friendship with a market of equal population size to itself. Then there is also Syria, which looks likely to become a strong economic partner to Turkey when the civil war finally is resolved one way or another. Turkey already has a strong economic hold on Iraqi Kurdistan. Furthermore, other EU countries may look to Turkey as a more convenient and agreeable trading partner than China for some of its imports. So Turkey's future economic prosperity looks to be secured in the region for the long-term, with its policy of "New Ottomanism".
Where does this leave "post-Imperial" Britain, set to be semi-detached from Europe, and with a dysfunctional economy? Looking at the situation with realism, and looking again at the common links that the USA and the UK share with their shared view of globalisation, it would not surprise me if Britain, in a new period of post-EU uncertainty, turned to its greater Anglophone cousin across the water by the end of the decade, for the warm embrace of combined "Anglophone Neo-Imperialism".
As I'm sure some would be bound to say at that time, "there's more that unites us than divides us".
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
"Neo-liberalism" is the new fascism
I wrote a couple of weeks ago here about the link between the UK government's economic policy, and the economic policy of fascism. More broadly, I have also talked about the link between capitalism and psychopathy. There is a link that threads together each of these ideas - neo-liberalism/ capitalism, fascism and psychopathy - that I think needs more intellectual clarification.
To reiterate what I've said previously, when I talk about "fascism", I'm not talking about the commonly-accepted, narrow and misleading, concept of "fascism": racist, prejudiced and authoritarian. Although these are parts of fascism, the more important part is the economic model of fascism, as this is what actually keeps the system running.
I said in my previous article about "economic fascism" (that type which seems to operate, for example, in the UK) you have a system where the government supports the interests of "big business" at the expense of everyone else, especially the "left wing" interests, such as the unions and employee rights in general. Given this lifeboat by the government, this system encourages inefficiency, irresponsibility and corruption in those corporations themselves, which are necessarily economically supported by the government when the need arises. In other words, you have a system where profit is private, and debt is public - the corporations take the profits, and the government (the taxpayer) absorbs corporate losses.
This system reinforces a corporate oligarchy that is economically supported by the government; the taxpayers/electorate can do little about this if the major parties in the country all support this system. Corporate sponsorship of those parties also encourages political patronage, as do the necessary "connections" (another form of corruption) that political parties need from corporations in order to gain financial support.
This is the essence of the "Anglo-Saxon model" that has existed on both sides of the Atlantic since the early '80s, and has spread to the rest of the Western World on the whole. This is the system that is also at work, with some modifications, in the Eurozone, effectively a German economic protectorate. This system is also at work in a more extreme form in Russia (which is ran as a form of modern feudal state); China, being effectively a capitalist one-party state, has its own version of this system. But the basic point is that the majority of the major economies in the world are now ran according to some version of the "neo-liberal" model.
And the "neo-liberal model" is designed to benefit the corporations most of all. I wrote previously about the links between capitalism and psychopathy: another trait that we see in psychopathy is "parasitic lifestyle" - callously living off the charity of others, and milking it for all you can. As we see from "economic fascism", corporations (and banks) do the exact same thing with governments - telling governments to do what they can to maximise corporations' profits, not interfering when they're making a profit, but getting governments to take the fall when corporations make a loss. This is the definition of parasitic behaviour. And this type of corporate parasitic behaviour - economic vampirism - could only flourish under economic fascism, known these days as "neo-liberalism".
So we see that the psychology of neo-liberalism and economic fascism are equivalent to that of psychopathy on an international scale. Another characteristic of psychopathy that I mentioned is that when psychopaths attain power, the result is chaos. This is also true of corporations in general, and through their preferred ideology of "neo-liberalism". Because corporations know nothing of morality (seen as a negative in business), or loyalty and "patriotism", globalisation has resulted in corporations becoming more powerful than countries, and toying with some countries as predators toy with their prey.
"Globalisation" is seen as a great positive for the world as a whole. And yet, while it is true that there are benefits, the biggest winners of all are the corporations that had been lobbying "neo-liberalism". Because globalisation is a result of the successful campaign began by the corporations' neo-liberal project thirty years ago, inspired by the ideology of Ayn Rand and the Objectivists. Monetarism then became the new pet phrase used by Anglophone countries to explain how Objectivism and "neo-liberalism" could be implemented in the real world economy.
Ayn Rand herself was an economic and philosophical theorist who, in essence, devised the basis for the system that exists today. I also wrote an article reviewing the similarities between the philosophy that Rand created (Objectivism) and the characteristics of psychopathy here: the similarities were so unnerving as to suggest that Rand herself may well have been a psychopath, at least at an intellectual level. Her "psychopathic ideology" was then used as the basis for the "Anglo-Saxon model" (also called neo-liberalism) that we know today.
Which brings me full circle back to globalisation. Neo-liberalism was the impetus for globalisation, where corporations and banks saw the world as without borders, unchecked by national frontiers or morality. They saw the world as their stage, and governments as their pawns.
Their "big con" worked in several ways. Corporations and banks used neo-liberalism as a way to urge national governments to implement financial and employment "reforms" that benefited corporate interests to maximise profits, while also getting governments to sell-off national industries as private monopolies that would be economically insured by the government. At the same time, corporate interests encouraged governments to break down barriers between each other to allow corporations to more easily out-source and relocate their operations, thus maximising their profits even further. At the same time, corporations would always use the threat that any other alternative to what the corporations/ banks wanted would result in national economic collapse: in other words, a glorified protection racket. This was showing that corporate interests were not only two-faced and bereft of loyalty or morality, but also supreme conmen and racketeers.
Globalisation was therefore the superseding of national governments by trans-national corporations and banks, for the purpose of profit. This was economic fascism, but on a global scale not seen before, controlled by the corporate elite.
I touched earlier on the point that when psychopaths attain power, the result is chaos. So when the world is ran by a corporate oligarchy that follows a psychopathic economic ideology, the result is chaos on a economically-global scale.
You might think that chaos is the last thing that corporations and banks would want, but if you look historically at the world economy over the past hundred years, you see that "chaos" is built in to part of the economic cycle that these corporate interests have developed, refined even more in the last thirty years since they have advanced their neo-liberal model across the developed world.
The economic model that corporations have promoted in the past thirty years resulted in the Financial Crisis of 2008. But what we saw was that it was governments who went into debt because of the crisis, not corporations: because the banks and corporate interests forced them to absorb the private debts - while at the same time the financial sector insisted that the governments were the one who had to pay off the debts quickly, rather than the private sector.
It was the Financial Crisis of 2008, thirty years in the making, that had given the banks and corporations the opportunity to close the deal with the national governments around the world: the deal that closed the collar around the "slave" neck of government, solidifying the economic redundancy and moral bankruptcy of national government as a meaningful institution, and guaranteed in cast iron terms the untouchable nature of corporate interests in a globalised world.
The chaos of the financial crisis has barely affected corporate interests and the financial sector in real terms; only caused superficial scratches which they can shrug off, for their position is immeasurably stronger now than five years ago. It is the institution of government that has been decisively dragged to its knees; with national governments accepting debts and years of "austerity" for the honour of continued lip service to the amoral corporations. So "chaos" is a relative term.
It is "chaos" for those subservient to the psychopathic interests in control (the corporate oligarchy following their "neo-liberal" ideology): for national governments are the manipulated willing servants to this psychopathic ideology, while they then serve their masters' amoral bidding on to the government's wider population. As Stalin ruled the USSR through years of terror for the sake of his psychopathic "ideology", so the new fascism of "neo-liberalism" perfects the art of terror on a world scale in its most subtle guise - terror masquerading as freedom. While this "neo-liberal" model is entrenched around the world's developed countries, they are told that this is the ideology of true freedom: the freedom to choose your pleasure, to consume as you please. But this "freedom" is a simple smokescreen, for the choices the population make are all owned by the corporate oligarchy.
The real "terror" and "chaos" comes from the lack of real "rights" - you have the right to consume, but only if you have money, and how much money you receive is decided by the corporate oligarchy. For in a true "neo-liberal" society, things like employment rights, welfare rights and social rights are inconveniences to the pursuit of profit ; in a "neo-liberal" society, there are no innate "human rights", except for those that are convenient to the private sector's pursuit of profit. Everyone's life becomes a commodity. No-one has any rights - only the right to die. This is the fascist economic utopia: where government is just a cash cow for the corporate oligarchy, whose Social Darwinism turns everyone and everything in the world into a mere commodity; employees fighting each other for the right to work, while also terrorised into slavish obedience to the private sector.
There is plenty of real evidence to support this point about the degradation of employment rights, by looking no further than the UK Conservative government's policy towards welfare and labour: job insecurity (a euphemism for "employment chaos", or the psychological terrorism of the workforce) has become an almost accepted fact of life for employees in recent years. The changes that the Conservative government have brought about in their approach to welfare and employment rights only intensify this: unemployed being forced to work for free for the private sector, or even prisoners being brought in to work for the private sector, all help to make it easier for companies to sack paid employees and replace them with the unemployed or low-paid prisoners.
All this helps to add to "job insecurity" - all part of ratcheting up the sense of chaos and terror within the workforce, making it easier for the private sector to control their employees (especially when they have little or no union representation). It allows the private sector to reduce their costs towards employees even further, while having the double benefit of reducing employees to slavish lambs desperate to keep their (low-paid) jobs, under the threat of being replaced by the unemployed if things get awkward for the employers. This is the kind of chaos created by an economic system best ran by psychopaths, and for psychopaths.
Because the governments continue to offer no alternative to their populations than this psychopathic "neo-liberal" model that is economically crippling them, the populations have no alternative than accept it, unless they wish to be branded "extremists" or "revolutionaries" for daring to think of an alternative to this global form of economic fascism.
Fascism, apart from the economic model, as outlined above in its present form, also includes an intolerance of other thinking, as "thinking" by definition is dangerous to maintaining the illusion that the populace is actually better-off under economic fascism. It suits the purpose then that most of the right-wing politicians in government around the world who support the neo-liberal model are either also linked to the corporations somehow, or are too ignorant and narrow-minded to consider any other idea.
To some, Conservatism as an ideology is not known for its intellectuals. The word "intellectual" is more likely to be followed by the prefix "left-wing" than "right-wing". Ayn Rand is perhaps the most famous 20th century right-wing "intellectual" that most know today, and as I mentioned earlier, her "ideology" is almost indistinguishable from clinical psychopathy. "Intellectualism" is something that right-wing commentators sneer at far more than their left-wing counterparts: the main reason because smart people scare those who benefit the most from the long-existing hierarchy. As they lack the intellectual capabilities to justify their beliefs, they resort to intolerance and more insidious measures as a shield. Put another way, it is more difficult to "intellectualise" a system based on simple hierarchical thinking and inequality; Ayn Rand's ability to rationalise and provide a moral system for social hierarchy and rampant inequality stands out from the rest of 20th century intelligentsia. Few others were able to provide such a feat of mental gymnastics as "The Virtue Of Selfishness". The philosophy that Rand set out is what "Neo-liberals" have been inspired by ever since, as it is the only one that comes close to providing a philosophical (if ultimately amoral) justification for inequality and exploitation.
People like Romney in the USA and Cameron in the UK are products of this system, born to believe this "ideology" because they are intellectually incapable of justifying it in any other way.
Like Hitler, they repeat the same mantras again and again ("There Is No Alternative!"), so that people will finally grow tired and acquiesce.
Fascism has now been taken to its almost logical conclusion as a economic model - the global subservience of government to the private sector, with the global population and its resources as their plaything. Fascism is the economic system that matches the most closely to the characteristics of clinical psychopathy.
As said before, psychopaths are predisposed to prosper in business and politics, so what better way to take their power to its logical conclusion than by using an economic system - economic fascism, now know as "neo-liberalism" - that allows them to put those psychopathic characteristics into practice on the world?
To reiterate what I've said previously, when I talk about "fascism", I'm not talking about the commonly-accepted, narrow and misleading, concept of "fascism": racist, prejudiced and authoritarian. Although these are parts of fascism, the more important part is the economic model of fascism, as this is what actually keeps the system running.
I said in my previous article about "economic fascism" (that type which seems to operate, for example, in the UK) you have a system where the government supports the interests of "big business" at the expense of everyone else, especially the "left wing" interests, such as the unions and employee rights in general. Given this lifeboat by the government, this system encourages inefficiency, irresponsibility and corruption in those corporations themselves, which are necessarily economically supported by the government when the need arises. In other words, you have a system where profit is private, and debt is public - the corporations take the profits, and the government (the taxpayer) absorbs corporate losses.
This system reinforces a corporate oligarchy that is economically supported by the government; the taxpayers/electorate can do little about this if the major parties in the country all support this system. Corporate sponsorship of those parties also encourages political patronage, as do the necessary "connections" (another form of corruption) that political parties need from corporations in order to gain financial support.
This is the essence of the "Anglo-Saxon model" that has existed on both sides of the Atlantic since the early '80s, and has spread to the rest of the Western World on the whole. This is the system that is also at work, with some modifications, in the Eurozone, effectively a German economic protectorate. This system is also at work in a more extreme form in Russia (which is ran as a form of modern feudal state); China, being effectively a capitalist one-party state, has its own version of this system. But the basic point is that the majority of the major economies in the world are now ran according to some version of the "neo-liberal" model.
And the "neo-liberal model" is designed to benefit the corporations most of all. I wrote previously about the links between capitalism and psychopathy: another trait that we see in psychopathy is "parasitic lifestyle" - callously living off the charity of others, and milking it for all you can. As we see from "economic fascism", corporations (and banks) do the exact same thing with governments - telling governments to do what they can to maximise corporations' profits, not interfering when they're making a profit, but getting governments to take the fall when corporations make a loss. This is the definition of parasitic behaviour. And this type of corporate parasitic behaviour - economic vampirism - could only flourish under economic fascism, known these days as "neo-liberalism".
So we see that the psychology of neo-liberalism and economic fascism are equivalent to that of psychopathy on an international scale. Another characteristic of psychopathy that I mentioned is that when psychopaths attain power, the result is chaos. This is also true of corporations in general, and through their preferred ideology of "neo-liberalism". Because corporations know nothing of morality (seen as a negative in business), or loyalty and "patriotism", globalisation has resulted in corporations becoming more powerful than countries, and toying with some countries as predators toy with their prey.
"Globalisation" is seen as a great positive for the world as a whole. And yet, while it is true that there are benefits, the biggest winners of all are the corporations that had been lobbying "neo-liberalism". Because globalisation is a result of the successful campaign began by the corporations' neo-liberal project thirty years ago, inspired by the ideology of Ayn Rand and the Objectivists. Monetarism then became the new pet phrase used by Anglophone countries to explain how Objectivism and "neo-liberalism" could be implemented in the real world economy.
Ayn Rand herself was an economic and philosophical theorist who, in essence, devised the basis for the system that exists today. I also wrote an article reviewing the similarities between the philosophy that Rand created (Objectivism) and the characteristics of psychopathy here: the similarities were so unnerving as to suggest that Rand herself may well have been a psychopath, at least at an intellectual level. Her "psychopathic ideology" was then used as the basis for the "Anglo-Saxon model" (also called neo-liberalism) that we know today.
Which brings me full circle back to globalisation. Neo-liberalism was the impetus for globalisation, where corporations and banks saw the world as without borders, unchecked by national frontiers or morality. They saw the world as their stage, and governments as their pawns.
Their "big con" worked in several ways. Corporations and banks used neo-liberalism as a way to urge national governments to implement financial and employment "reforms" that benefited corporate interests to maximise profits, while also getting governments to sell-off national industries as private monopolies that would be economically insured by the government. At the same time, corporate interests encouraged governments to break down barriers between each other to allow corporations to more easily out-source and relocate their operations, thus maximising their profits even further. At the same time, corporations would always use the threat that any other alternative to what the corporations/ banks wanted would result in national economic collapse: in other words, a glorified protection racket. This was showing that corporate interests were not only two-faced and bereft of loyalty or morality, but also supreme conmen and racketeers.
Globalisation was therefore the superseding of national governments by trans-national corporations and banks, for the purpose of profit. This was economic fascism, but on a global scale not seen before, controlled by the corporate elite.
I touched earlier on the point that when psychopaths attain power, the result is chaos. So when the world is ran by a corporate oligarchy that follows a psychopathic economic ideology, the result is chaos on a economically-global scale.
You might think that chaos is the last thing that corporations and banks would want, but if you look historically at the world economy over the past hundred years, you see that "chaos" is built in to part of the economic cycle that these corporate interests have developed, refined even more in the last thirty years since they have advanced their neo-liberal model across the developed world.
The economic model that corporations have promoted in the past thirty years resulted in the Financial Crisis of 2008. But what we saw was that it was governments who went into debt because of the crisis, not corporations: because the banks and corporate interests forced them to absorb the private debts - while at the same time the financial sector insisted that the governments were the one who had to pay off the debts quickly, rather than the private sector.
It was the Financial Crisis of 2008, thirty years in the making, that had given the banks and corporations the opportunity to close the deal with the national governments around the world: the deal that closed the collar around the "slave" neck of government, solidifying the economic redundancy and moral bankruptcy of national government as a meaningful institution, and guaranteed in cast iron terms the untouchable nature of corporate interests in a globalised world.
The chaos of the financial crisis has barely affected corporate interests and the financial sector in real terms; only caused superficial scratches which they can shrug off, for their position is immeasurably stronger now than five years ago. It is the institution of government that has been decisively dragged to its knees; with national governments accepting debts and years of "austerity" for the honour of continued lip service to the amoral corporations. So "chaos" is a relative term.
It is "chaos" for those subservient to the psychopathic interests in control (the corporate oligarchy following their "neo-liberal" ideology): for national governments are the manipulated willing servants to this psychopathic ideology, while they then serve their masters' amoral bidding on to the government's wider population. As Stalin ruled the USSR through years of terror for the sake of his psychopathic "ideology", so the new fascism of "neo-liberalism" perfects the art of terror on a world scale in its most subtle guise - terror masquerading as freedom. While this "neo-liberal" model is entrenched around the world's developed countries, they are told that this is the ideology of true freedom: the freedom to choose your pleasure, to consume as you please. But this "freedom" is a simple smokescreen, for the choices the population make are all owned by the corporate oligarchy.
The real "terror" and "chaos" comes from the lack of real "rights" - you have the right to consume, but only if you have money, and how much money you receive is decided by the corporate oligarchy. For in a true "neo-liberal" society, things like employment rights, welfare rights and social rights are inconveniences to the pursuit of profit ; in a "neo-liberal" society, there are no innate "human rights", except for those that are convenient to the private sector's pursuit of profit. Everyone's life becomes a commodity. No-one has any rights - only the right to die. This is the fascist economic utopia: where government is just a cash cow for the corporate oligarchy, whose Social Darwinism turns everyone and everything in the world into a mere commodity; employees fighting each other for the right to work, while also terrorised into slavish obedience to the private sector.
There is plenty of real evidence to support this point about the degradation of employment rights, by looking no further than the UK Conservative government's policy towards welfare and labour: job insecurity (a euphemism for "employment chaos", or the psychological terrorism of the workforce) has become an almost accepted fact of life for employees in recent years. The changes that the Conservative government have brought about in their approach to welfare and employment rights only intensify this: unemployed being forced to work for free for the private sector, or even prisoners being brought in to work for the private sector, all help to make it easier for companies to sack paid employees and replace them with the unemployed or low-paid prisoners.
All this helps to add to "job insecurity" - all part of ratcheting up the sense of chaos and terror within the workforce, making it easier for the private sector to control their employees (especially when they have little or no union representation). It allows the private sector to reduce their costs towards employees even further, while having the double benefit of reducing employees to slavish lambs desperate to keep their (low-paid) jobs, under the threat of being replaced by the unemployed if things get awkward for the employers. This is the kind of chaos created by an economic system best ran by psychopaths, and for psychopaths.
Because the governments continue to offer no alternative to their populations than this psychopathic "neo-liberal" model that is economically crippling them, the populations have no alternative than accept it, unless they wish to be branded "extremists" or "revolutionaries" for daring to think of an alternative to this global form of economic fascism.
Fascism, apart from the economic model, as outlined above in its present form, also includes an intolerance of other thinking, as "thinking" by definition is dangerous to maintaining the illusion that the populace is actually better-off under economic fascism. It suits the purpose then that most of the right-wing politicians in government around the world who support the neo-liberal model are either also linked to the corporations somehow, or are too ignorant and narrow-minded to consider any other idea.
To some, Conservatism as an ideology is not known for its intellectuals. The word "intellectual" is more likely to be followed by the prefix "left-wing" than "right-wing". Ayn Rand is perhaps the most famous 20th century right-wing "intellectual" that most know today, and as I mentioned earlier, her "ideology" is almost indistinguishable from clinical psychopathy. "Intellectualism" is something that right-wing commentators sneer at far more than their left-wing counterparts: the main reason because smart people scare those who benefit the most from the long-existing hierarchy. As they lack the intellectual capabilities to justify their beliefs, they resort to intolerance and more insidious measures as a shield. Put another way, it is more difficult to "intellectualise" a system based on simple hierarchical thinking and inequality; Ayn Rand's ability to rationalise and provide a moral system for social hierarchy and rampant inequality stands out from the rest of 20th century intelligentsia. Few others were able to provide such a feat of mental gymnastics as "The Virtue Of Selfishness". The philosophy that Rand set out is what "Neo-liberals" have been inspired by ever since, as it is the only one that comes close to providing a philosophical (if ultimately amoral) justification for inequality and exploitation.
People like Romney in the USA and Cameron in the UK are products of this system, born to believe this "ideology" because they are intellectually incapable of justifying it in any other way.
Like Hitler, they repeat the same mantras again and again ("There Is No Alternative!"), so that people will finally grow tired and acquiesce.
Fascism has now been taken to its almost logical conclusion as a economic model - the global subservience of government to the private sector, with the global population and its resources as their plaything. Fascism is the economic system that matches the most closely to the characteristics of clinical psychopathy.
As said before, psychopaths are predisposed to prosper in business and politics, so what better way to take their power to its logical conclusion than by using an economic system - economic fascism, now know as "neo-liberalism" - that allows them to put those psychopathic characteristics into practice on the world?
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