Re: <nettime> electro- vs petro-state

[Brian Holmes via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

>
> On 9/4/25 11:04, André Rebentisch via nettime-l wrote:
> > It is further important to look at the professional background of
> > policy developers in different countries, aka engineers vs. lawyers.
>
> That's the topic of a a new book by Dan Wang. BREAKNECK: China’s Quest
> to Engineer the Future.
>
> The main idea is this:
>
> > China is an engineering state, which treats construction projects
> > and technological primacy as the solution to all of its problems,
> > whereas the United States is a lawyerly society, obsessed with
> > protecting wealth by making rules rather than producing material
> > goods.
>

This main idea is spot on. The predominance of the lawyerly, regulatory
aspect of the American polity is discussed all the time here, it's far from
just a European thing. Indeed the main political conflicts in the US are
now framed as those who fabricate vs those who regulate. These conflicts
largely stem from the competition with China, which finally scared both the
capitalist classes and the state into the idea that they had better start
producing again. The environment - and crucially, CO2 levels - are among
the victims of this panicked attempt to reboot production.

All this reduces to the classic "financial vs industrial capital" scenario.
A crucial part of that story is that financialization leads to the loss of
knowhow ("process knowledge" as Felix says). This is bad for a capitalist
democracy, because the working class learns nothing, develops no new
skills, lives in low-tax cities that can't provide good education, etc.
Indeed, under automated robo-capitalism, the working class is just there to
consume - and vote.

The reason Trump and Milliei can be on the same page ideologically, even
while their countries are economically light-years apart, is that the
current Euro-American world system does not allow the development of
manufacturing on the periphery. The larger countries with the big
corporations will always use their monopoly positions to set prices that
destroy the viability of national industries. To be sure, an exception was
made for China, because it seemed to offer the perfect place to exploit a
huge working class with low social-state demands. But China's rise to
developed-country status has made it even more difficult for all countries
outside Asia to develop their manufacturing sectors. So you end up with
huge amounts of unemployed people who collect subsidies and vote. These
people are understandably frustrated, like so much of the US working
classes are. In the case of Argentina - which is an
almost-developed economy - they saw an opportunity in hitching their
frustrations to those of the US fascists.

That is the grave danger of this moment. Throughout the developed countries
there are sectors of workers, small entrepreneurs and major corporate
bosses who see greater opportunity in strongman policies seeking to
preserve national advantages. And throughout the less-developed world there
are people who enjoy privileged economic ties to the developed countries
and will also support the fascist reaction.

The takeaway is that a financialized world system is a recipe for major
conflicts both domestic and international. And we still live in such a
world system.

At the same time as they lash out with tariffs in the attempt to heal the
self-inflicted wound of de-industrialization, Trump and his inner circle
are developing cryptocurrency as the new frontier of finance. The Treasury
Secretary, Scott Bessent, professes to believe that the demand for
short-term Treasury bills to back up the value of stablecoins will make up
for the huge tax cuts they just enacted! Here you have a recipe for the
mother, father, sister and brother of all financial crises. Just develop a
global crypto economy on a speculative basis, and then when it crashes,
there will be a run on the global bank to cash in all those short-term
Treasury bills... Imagine the amount of disappointed and frustrated people
that could create. And it's very easy to imagine, because 2008 already
created such massive pain and anger, using outdated last-gen financial
technologies.

All of this, my friends, is setting us up for a mighty clash. A world war,
or some new scenario of multiple proxy wars, which may have already begun.

I always wondered why it was impossible to stop the Nazis. The answer is
the above paragraphs. You end up in a situation where a majority of
frustrated and desperate people believe a pack of lies whose efficacy
rapidly collapses in the real world, until the breakdown can only be
covered up with violence. During the collapsing part of the story (we are
in it right now) there is no longer any public space for knowledge,
analysis, foresight. All that is driven out by enraged passion in the face
of a complex reality that is, for most people, simply incomprehensible. So
intellectuals are increasingly powerless, no one around them has the time
or the discipline to focus on such things. We all go on feverishly
interpreting the situation in isolation, while society as a whole moves
inexorably toward conflict.

Conclusion: Sure, it would be great if China could establish a more
equitable world system, powered by sunlight and wind. But for that to
happen peacefully, we in the West, and especially the US, would have to get
out of the way. We would have to quit seeking monopoly positions, quit
extracting stuff from other people's territories and returning it as
finished products, and quit rigging the monetary system so that we (or
rather, our elites) come out on top during the inevitable crises. We would
have to mind our own gardens for a change. Which is almost unimaginable for
the governing classes, and even for most of the populations at this point...

sorrowfully, Brian
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