The fresh U.S. trade war with China is already underway. Meanwhile, the European Union is slaved to the recommendations of the Americans, even erstwhile they do not agree with Europe's own economical interests.
The thought is that exports from China should be limited: either due to unfair competition (the Chinese state subsidises even the production of electrical cars), or in protest against political repression and human rights violations (Uyghurs and Tibetans, and let us besides add force to the list on Taiwan). The main means for this intent are to be direct restrictions on circumstantial goods or Restricted duties import, up to 100 percent.
Free trade is simply a civilization?
W China can evoke a very traumatic memory. In the early 19th century, erstwhile China banned imports of opium from British India, it was attacked by all Western powers and Japan, because, as declared, the state limiting free trade itself withdraws from the ellipse of civilization. They must be restored to the civilized world, even with armed violence.
The war destroyed China socially and economically. In just a fewer decades, the country lost more than half of its capacity. present the "developed" West imposes duties on China. And that's the repressed American movement trying to defend its backward industry.
With Chinese import everything was fine, As long as the factories there only folded parts designed in the developed West (as Foxconn did for Apple). Today, however, erstwhile the Chinese manufacture itself becomes creative and innovative, frequently surpassing its western counterparts, The West remembered what he had disliked in the past.
Debit dollar
Even more crucial is the threat to the US dollar as a universal means of payment. This process has already been described in item by Janis Warufakis more than a decade ago: we are approaching the end of the global economical system. Trump's misconception is nevertheless based on a correct reflection that the existing strategy of the global economy and finances has ceased to operate.
Another economical cycle is coming to an end, which began in the early 1970s. Last century. According to Warufakis, then the “global Minotaur” was born, a monstrous engine driving the global economy from the early 1980s to 2008.
The breakthrough of the 1960s and 1970s was not only a period of oil crisis and stagflation. Nixon's decision to suspension of the gold-to-dollar parity was a sign of a much more extremist transformation of the basic functioning of the capitalist system. In the late 1960s, the American economy could no longer proceed recycling its surpluses in Europe and Asia. These surpluses have become deficits. In 1971, the American government responded to this bravado strategical move: alternatively of reducing the deepening deficits, it decided to do the opposite: to increase the deficit.
Who was to pay for this? The remainder of the world, of course! How? Through a permanent capital transfer – which constantly drove over 2 large oceans, financing America's deficits. These deficits, writes Warufakis, they began to operate “like a immense vacuum cleaner, absorbing another people's surplus goods and capital. While this arrangement embodies an unimaginable imbalance on a planetary scale [...] caused something that resembled a global balance. An global strategy of rapidly accelerating, asymmetrical financial and commercial flows has been created, but it seems unchangeable and stable. [...] The main surplus economies of the planet (e.g. Germany, Japan and later China) powered by these deficits led a continuous production that America absorbed. More than 70% of the profits achieved by these countries worldwide then returned to the US in the form of capital flows to Wall Street. What did the financiers do about it? They traded the proceeds of capital to direct investment, shares, fresh financial instruments, old and fresh forms of loans, etc.’.
The increasing negative trade balance of the United States shows that they are the unproductive predator. Over the past fewer decades, they have had to suck in 1 billion dollars all day of gross from another countries to finance their own consumption. So they are the United States' universal, keynesian consumer who drives the global economy. (So much for today's antikeynesian ideology.)
As a sacrifice to the deity
These movements of capital, resembling the tithe paid to ancient Rome (or sacrifices made by Greeks to mythical Minotaur), are based on a complex economical mechanism.
Everyone – from the oil arabian countries through Western Europe to Japan, and now even China – “trust” that the US is simply a safe, unchangeable centre – and there they invest their surplus funds. And since this trust is primarily ideological and military, not economic, the United States must someway justify its powerful position. So they request a permanent state of war – that's why they had to invent "War on Terror“—and cast themselves as a global defender of all “normal” states (in opposition to the robber states).
The full earth's globe operates according to the order known from the ancient Sparta, divided into 3 classes. The division into the First, Second and 3rd planet is one more time seen: first of all, the US as a military-political-ideological power, lower Europe and any areas of Asia and Latin America as an industrial-production region (German and Japan are the most crucial exporters of the world, plus evidently rising power of China today), and at the very bottom the undeveloped rest, today's helicopters, left behind.
Global capitalism has sparked a new, common tendency to oligarchy, disguised in a mask to celebrate "the diversity of cultures". Equality and universalism as real principles of policy making are disappearing faster and faster.
Minotaur in agony
In 2008, this neospartan planet arrangement began to fall apart. For Barack Obama's presidency, president Paul Bernanke of the United States national Reserve breathed a fresh life into him for a moment. Unscrupulously, utilizing the fact that the US dollar is simply a global currency, it financed imports through massive overprints of money, calling it "quantitative loosening".
Trump decided to approach the problem differently: ignoring the wobbly balance of the global system, he focused on aspects that from the point of view of the Americans may look unfair – specified as the problem of occupation dismantling due to a gigantic increase in imports. In fact, however, what Trump branded as “injustice” is part of a strategy that benefited Americans.
The United States practically robbed the planet by importing goods and paying for them with a debt and a freshly printed dollar. This thieving game of course does not stop: Trump, in his first tenure, not only reduced taxes to the wealthy, but besides quietly supported many demands of democrats to improve the situation for the poor. This means that the deficit will yet explode. If you ask Trump, he will most likely repeat Ronald Reagan's old answer: “Our deficit is large adequate to take care of himself.”
Holding symbols
Anarchy coincides with liberalism in a strategy born on Minotaur's corpse. For example, a circumstantial phenomenon non-replaceable tokens (NFTs). Their possession becomes a purely virtual phenomenon – we pay for the experience of possession, although in practice we have nothing.
The absurdity of this phenomenon is revealed in a unusual event broadcast on January 8, 2022 by the Business Insider. Participants of reality shows that saysThat she made $200,000 selling her own intestinal gases locked in jars, changes the sales mode. Now she will trade jars in NFT form:
"At the hospital, the doctor warned her that excessive gas donation is simply a burden for the body. So she went on to sale gas as NFT. The jar now costs 0.05 ethereum. Matto hopes that his different fart art will find a niche for itself in the NFT world. [...] A 43-year-old financier who was going to spend $1,000 on 2 jars explains that they give him a sense of “closeness” with Matto. “I have many fetishes, and 1 of them is the odor of a woman”, he says.
However, while 1 can realize – nevertheless bizarre – the motivation to buy a bottle with a odor as a "small fragment of reality", which is simply a evidence to the existence of another man, this "small fragment of reality" disappears erstwhile we buy it as a NFT, due to the fact that the physical object then disappears. How did this happen – not only to items put up for sale, but above all to the operation of the financial system?
An untasteful anecdote shows how the curiosity planet we live in, in which the deficiency and excess, the fresh poorness and the fresh fortune, are 2 sides of the same medal. due to the fact that money (especially cash) doesn't truly substance anymore. No 1 another than Steve Bannon declared in 1 of the podcasts that “money is for jerks”.
We are immersed in virtual money; many people virtually don't know what to do with it (as the Matto client case shows). But prosperity, like a home of cards, can fall at any moment (and he almost collapsed as a consequence of the crash in 2008). This paradox was first described by Hegel erstwhile he pointed out that there is never adequate money in a capitalist society due to the fact that there are besides many of them, and this imbalance is structural, 1 cannot bear it (taking the mediocre and giving the rich).
In particular, the concept of “trilliondollar coinIt’s okay. ” The thought is that the U.S. government could truly knock out a platinum coin with a denomination of 1 trillion dollars and usage it to pay off any of the national debt. This strategy was first proposed in 2011 as a possible alternate to an increase in the alleged debt ceiling. Although the thought had known supporters, it was rejected in 2013. Wouldn't it be the purest form of the symbol: a tiny part of reality (a tiny coin) would do nothing but lie locked up in a state bank, yet it would have a strong impact on the full financial and so economical situation of the state?
But where is anarchy? Catherine Malabou thinks cryptocurrency for specified an aspect of changes in capitalism as evidence of the beginning of an “anarchist return”: how to describe another phenomena specified as currency decentralisation, the end of the state monopoly on money issuance, the disappearance of bank intermediation and the decentralisation of exchange and transactions? [Žižek means alternatively anarchocapitalism, not anarchism – ed.]
Digital feudalists
Trump is liberal in the sense that he allows corporations to operate outside the control of the state – a peculiarly dangerous attitude in the face of the climate crisis. late We found out., that Environmental Data and Government Initiative, created by researchers a network to exchange and publicize technological knowledge, now seeks to safe technological data and investigation contained in government web domains against concerns that topics specified as climate change and green energy will be removed from servers after the swearing-in of the president-elect. This is simply a nightmare script in which the public simply loses access to real information, and so besides the ability to make rational decisions on ecology.
In short, Trump's liberalism de facto boils down to ensuring almost unfettered freedom new digital feudalists (as Warufakis defines them). The irony is that Trump himself – who officially opposes large corporations, claiming that globalists exploit an American worker – remains dependent on those fresh masters whose chief typical is Elon Musk.
For China, of course, this situation is unsustainable. The mediate State not only remains the world's largest maker (and it is the world's largest unrivalled producer, due to the fact that it comes from over 30 percent of the world's production), but besides becomes a fresh creative-technology superpower. The ongoing financial madness thus puts China in a unusual position: they are controlled by purely financial means. After all, they have the capacity to defy US financial control, especially a strong country, which limits the effects of marketplace mechanisms.
Therefore, the Chinese effort to break out of the dollar domain and make a fresh universal currency, specified as a virtual version of bitcoin, must be unconditionally supported. From the point of view of rational economical interests, this should not only be done by Europe, but besides by the American left: it was the Minotaur strategy that sustained the increasing inequality between the mediocre and the rich in the US.
Xi likes to talk only to capital
However, China must not be idealized. According to Zorana Baković, a prominent Slovenian writer dealing with China, "Chinese leader has long been as relaxed and talkative as at a gathering with presidents of the largest American companies".
For a long time, the only interlocutor respected by the Communist organization of China remains capital. And the only argument that the organization and Xi Jinping are willing to perceive to, and then may even make insignificant changes in any aspect of their policy, is related to Western investments. Will investors proceed to participate in marketplace idylls on Chinese dirt – will they find a better domain to get rich?
When June 16, 2023 Xi Jinping met with Bill Gates in Beijing, he called Gates "an old friend" and expressed hope that they would be able to establish a cooperation that both China and the United States would benefit from. Apparently, there is simply a direct line between the Chinese state government and America's fresh feuds.
Where are the countries of the global South standing in this game? China's conduct in Africa and South Asia yet represents only 1 more form of economical neocolonialism, coupled with clearly problematic political decisions. In Myanmar, China supports a brutal, military government and even allowed it to last despite large, public protests. In Zambia, Chinese companies purchased a copper mine, where the level of exploitation was specified that locals attacked a building housing Chinese managers, set fire to it and killed many. In the face of the war in Ukraine, the Chinese pretend to be neutral, de facto supporting Russia. These facts are just particles of a fresh global task – but what?
Women's rights are the best component of Western heritage
I'll start with the problem of not being a substitute: fighting for women's rights. The trap of treating women's rights (and LGBT+ people) as something independent of opposition to imperialism – and in the event of a forced choice to stand on the anti-Western side. That's how any of my leftist friends celebrated US exit from Afghanistan as a large triumph in the fight against imperialism – and added specified a insignificant reservation that unfortunately this large triumph would have any unfortunate consequences for Afghan women.
This "strategic" thinking, which puts the "main" issue first, is due to the omission of something important: from an ideological point of view, the rebellion against women's rights (gay, trans...) lies at the heart of the anti-euro-centric orientation of many groups from countries of the global South. From the position of conventional Community life, women's education is 1 of the devastating effects of Western modernisation – it "emancipates" a female from household ties and instructs her to join the ranks of inexpensive labour.
The fight against women's education is so a fresh form of what in Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels called "reactional (feudal) socialism"—the rejection of capitalist modernity in the name of conventional forms of community life.
For example, for Boko Haram, the emancipation of women is the best visible feature of the destructive impact of capitalist modernisation. Boko Haram (which can be interpreted as "Western education is unclean", especially women's education) can so view and represent himself as a force that fights the destructive influence of modernization, imposing hierarchical regulation of relations between the sexes.
This is simply a puzzle: why do Muslims, who undoubtedly suffered exploitation, domination and another humiliating aspects of colonialism, rise their hand to what (at least to us) is the best component of Western heritage: egalitarianism and individual freedom, containing a solid dose of irony and mockery for all authorities?
At the end of October 2024, the Taliban in Afghanistan adopted a fresh grotesque regulation to further silence women's voice – to which You can no longer talk publicly. “Even erstwhile an adult female prays and passes by another woman, it is forbidden to let a voice to be heard. [...] How could they be allowed to sing erstwhile they cannot even hear their voices erstwhile they pray, let alone in any another situation?" To say Mohammad Khalid Hanafi, Minister for Virtue Promotion and Crime Prevention. After the ban on public speaking, the ministry so prevented women from having the same conversation: a woman's voice was included in the aura (awrah) – an intimate sphere which should stay covered.
Similar trends happen worldwide, not only in Uganda and Indonesia, but even in the United States. The sex gap is increasingly seen as an crucial political factor, and a hierarchical relation between a man and a female is considered to be a fundamental component of the social order. so protests that broke out in Iran after Mahsa Amini died and mobilized the masses against the repressive regime, they were the most crucial sign of authentic feminism.
China, like China, abstained from any criticism of the Iranian government at this crucial minute in its history.
This evidently does not mean that in the West we should criticise countries like Iran from a safe liberal-democratic position. While it is crucial to fight against the oppression of women in 3rd planet countries, it is worth the criticism to embrace itself as well. Without disregarding possible sexual assaults on migrant women, it is worth mentioning the fact that, as he says, Global study on feminicide “The most dangerous place for a female is her home.” So let's start with our own home before we give ourselves up to fantasies about migrants roaming the streets in search of victims.
Suspicious for the Future
A global situation should be watched like a hologram. There is no longer 1 dominant concept of advancement (even economical improvement loses this role). We live in an age overlapping different visions of the future, universality.
So present we have the following possibilities: the remnants of Fukuyama's dreams about the end of history, the overt spiritual fundamentalism, and especially what I must call moderately authoritarian, soft fascism – marketplace capitalism combined with a strong state, mobilising national ideology to keep social cohesion – like India Modi or, as it appears, China.
Xi Jinping late sang "a long, uninterrupted past of Chinese civilization, extending to ancient times," stressing that it formed a large Chinese nation. He pointed out that "it is essential to comprehensively improve the protection and usage of cultural monuments and to preserve and proceed cultural heritage". This is in line with Wang Huning, the chief ideologist of the Communist organization of China, who describes himself as a neoconservative.
What does that mean? Wang believes that his task is to impose a new, common ethical content. This should not be underestimated as another pretext for the organization to take full control of social life. Rather, it is simply a clear effort at conservative modernization (which is 1 of the correct definitions of fascism).
In Nazi Germany, “the monetary-bank mechanics was forced to quit its central position in the conventional capitalist economy. The monetary and market-capital features of this economy have virtually disappeared long before the outbreak of armed action, and credit institutions have taken most of the power (Otto Nathan, The Banking strategy in the Nazi Military and War Economy, in: Nazi War Finance and Banking, NBER 1944). A well - known Nazi banker wrote in 1938: “Banks can no longer decide what services the full economy provides. Their possibilities depend on variable recommendations, depending on the overall economical situation." Does this description not fit the current functioning of banks in China?
This parallel evidently does not indicate that China present is simply a fascist state. On the another hand, it suggests that further debates on whether China is inactive a Communist country after Deng's reforms, whether it is inactive based on the principles of Marxism, or whether China is inactive a Communist country, miss the goal. The question truly is: what does the capitalist phrase of China mean for the communist and Marxist traditions? Does the Chinese way to Deng lead us to a fundamental reflection on the classical concepts of Marxism and the Communist Revolution? After Deng, Marxism itself is no longer the Marxism which they knew and for which successive generations fought.
This and another akin facts (including the increasing censorship of intellectual and artistic life) should alert us not to put besides much trust in China as the main anti-imperialist power. Today, we are alternatively watching the fight between the various factions of global capital, and it is not our work to take sides, but to usage them mercilessly and turn 1 against the other.
Therefore, US military aid to Ukraine should be supported – and China should be supported in the attack on the U.S. dollar's universal status. In that attitude, there are contradictions. The contradiction is indeed the case.
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In English she translated Aleksandra Paszkowska.
