Re: <nettime> Some reflections on global mapping

[Brian Holmes <brian.holmes@wanadoo.fr>]

Keith Hart wrote:

> The most important and difficult task for all of us is to understand
> how we belong to others in society (big Emile again). The aim of
> ideology is to make it even more difficult.

This is amazingly true. Big Emile had some insight.

> Clearly deregulation allowed looting on a massive scale and something
> will have to be done to regulate the looters. How or where? 

Keith, it would be brilliant to hear any detailed prognosis you have.
You have some access to international institutions so you may have
some clues on these things. For most of us, all we can see now is the
incompetence, greed and panic of the various states and state-functions.
We can suspect in our dark nightmares a slippage toward more war,
whereas realism tells us they will all agree to shore things up one more
time and make the poorest individuals, everywhere, shoulder the burden
of mistakes made at the top of the food chain. No one can see a
politician or statesman or steward of the economy with an idea other
than that capitalism as it is exactly right now is the very best of all
possible systems. But I am hoping you have some notion of what might
come down the pipe - the types of programs in particular.

> Against fascism and war, a revival of redistributive
> politics at appropriate levels of world society would be one strategy.

The famous "global Keynesianism" that's been talked about for decades.
Could it be done? How? By whom? Are there any plans afoot?

> Promoting the voluntary reciprocity of decentralized groups another.

Anywhere this is really happening? To any degree? (sincere questions, I
am ignorant)

> But we need both. All the economic possibilities are already there to
> be built on. Embracing the idea of capitalism as a totality only makes
> it harder to see that. Our challenge is to make new institutional
> combinations with a new emphasis.
> 
> That raises the question of the relationship between politics and
> intellectual life, but not for this post.

Looking forward to the next!

Now I am in the plane to Seoul, to see a post-Cold War military base
with my own eyes...

ciao, Brian


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