Graban: End of Western Hegemony

I think we know where wealth comes from, and why does Zach deficiency the courage to admit defeat? The question of what 1 nations are rich for, and the another mediocre have plagued economical historians for at least 200 years.

Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, Charles Marks, John M. Keynes, and in modern times, Ronaldo Cameron, or especially popular in Poland British David S. Landes.

To a tiny extent, we find that the answer to the question of the causes of wealth has become more clear to us for at least a fewer years. any scientific, ideological and political environments, however, depend on masking this truth, i.e. distracting the public from the fact that any countries so far have succeeded, i.e. they have surpassed the West. Yes, these countries have accomplished their task with a surplus. We besides know why this happened.

Let us begin by appreciating any currents of left-wing or anti-globalistic reflections, though carried out besides with the blessing of Franciszek Christianity in the diagnosis of the character of modern but besides of historical inequality. Like Karl Marx, these environments stand in the position that the reason for polarization dividing the planet into rich centres and mediocre peripheries remains a strategy that based its historical triumphs on the military advantage and economical power built on colonial conquests. I do not want to discuss the stages of the European task for modernization, exploitation and colonial subordination of peripheral peoples The West or its disastrous consequences, for this problem is well described in literature. The intellectual component of this process is more interesting. Well, enlightened Europeans, and then mostly Americans put themselves in a privileged position. This was not always followed by interesting factors of power or economics. frequently on the contrary, inspiration was motivated by philanthropy, Christian inclination to altruism, and aid others. Either way, the Western man had in his hands the key to the “philosopher's Stone” – governing the planet and distributing income. Descartes – the creator of modern rationalism was the first to introduce a discrimination on the "center and periphery", which became an asumpt to the thesis of the "guilded incompleteness" of non-Western cultures as more traditional, based on superstitions and superstitions alternatively than knowing as enlightened Western people. From this, he concluded that the peripheries were in poorness and misery due to their own fault, and that the only chance for them could be to submit voluntarily to the civilization process of Western institutions.

Little has changed in this respect to modern times. The post-war policy of the United States and their aegis of organizations in the kind of the global Monetary Fund, the planet Trade Organisation or the planet Bank are a continuation of colonial logic, though implemented more in white gloves. Regardless of all differences and subsequent modifications, this policy has inherited from its predecessor the most crucial ideological assumptions that the gap between the First and 3rd planet is the consequence of backwardness, archaic economical structures and deficiency of ability to integrate into the mainstream of economical expansion and civilizational progress. This is where it comes from, promoted under the name of the Washington Consensus, but besides by the EU's ideology, rhetoric of structural adjustment programmes and belief in the pro-development effect of integrating the economies of the South into the global exchange network.

According to many alterglobalist economists, especially Nobel laureates, Josepha E. Stiglitz However, the effects of reforms carried out under the name of Washington are frequently in vain. The model of improvement based on a strong marketplace is exclusive as it imposes (or actually continues, according to neocolonial logic) unequal distribution of access to improvement paths. Another for the center, another for the periphery of the global system. Stiglitz sees this as a kind of hypocrisy of the Western elite, and possibly even an unwitting desire by them to keep the remainder of the planet in neocolonial submission. North takes care of its monopoly by offering the South an unequal exchange (high-tech products for natural materials and industrial products with lower added value), unsymmetrical liberalisation (the elimination of customs barriers and subsidies while maintaining them in the North), unfair distribution of innovation (monopolized by the large North corporations through intellectual property rights) and undemocratic globalisation (managed by G8, OECD, IMF or planet Bank power centres, and straight by armed interventions).

The diagnosis of anti-globalist environments, including the effects of the Washington Consensus, is of course correct. Right, but not consistent enough. It is amazing to avoid examples of Asian countries, or at least not to draw all the lessons from the analysis of these evenants. specified an in-depth analysis could supply an crucial contribution to reflection on the causes of poverty, as well as on the prescriptions for fast modernisation, especially as these were countries which, erstwhile breaking out of consensus, have experienced incredible economical success in fresh years, undermining the unwavering position of the West and, in particular, the United States. Apart from the mediate States, they will, of course, be Southeast Asian countries, as well as India, although the list is inactive increasing.

The anti-globalists even go to scare the Western society with the east model of the economy. 1 of the intellectuals of the anti-globalist left The celebrated Zizhek He coined the phrase "Asian plague" which is allegedly spreading throughout the world, including in Europe, giving support to various populist governments and groups that enjoy the Asian model of the economy. On the another hand, shelves of booksellers are bent under the weight of books threatening the Chinese plan of planet domination, just as they were threatened a 100 years ago by the judaic (“Protocols...”). The West shakes out of fear due to expanding the influence of the enemies against its values of empires and its economical forces, as if not noticing that until late he has not given up his efforts to reduce social disparity and to give a chance to poorer countries of a culture another than he. Are his intentions dishonest?

Or possibly the liberal and socialist virtues were in their pants due to the fact that they let the genie out of the bottle, inadvertently waking up a sleeping bear, or alternatively a dragon. The same dragon, to which the British historian quoted at the beginning diagnosed not long ago will stay the last carriage connected to the European train. In addition to the US-China trade wars and common sanctions, the West has late been identified as threatening cyber attacks, and the European Union is adopting peculiar government aimed at Chinese shipowners suspected of economical espionage to prevent me from buying out western companies, seaports and airports.

These casandric prophecies about the spectra of the yellow race are present mainly written by Anglo-Saxon writers and analysts of the neoconservative stream, rubbing themselves in their arguments about geopolitics, military security, cyber attacks and economical espionage. I do not want to say, of course, that in all cases these concerns are unfounded, but it has always been so, that poorer countries in the first phase of improvement have triggered the imitation effect – it is adequate to survey the success communicative of Japan starting with Meiji's restaurant. It is so hard to defy the impression that it is possibly more of an offended pride of the West, and especially of the Anglo-Saxons, that individual stole from them the mystery of existence.

Interestingly, the left uses akin narratives, despite the fact that it has not been specified a long time ago that it has branded the abuse of intellectual property rights rhetoric, rightly noting that the government on its defender serves to cultivate the position quo. American corporations and their influential priests of a kind Bill Gates and George Soros was useful to keep a safe technological advantage and privileged position in value chains. Of course, the periphery belonged to aid (as scraps dropped from your table) and the technological priests liked to boast of it, assuming the pose of the planet of philanthropists, although they had to realize that bringing poorer countries into global markets brings them to the function of eternal sub-suppliers locked in a vicious wheel of underdevelopment, producers of components based on the input of natural materials and low-paid labour alternatively than intellect. Rich people like to manifest their charity, provided their position is intact. Turns out the caviar left too.

Why, then, is there specified a tense reaction from both the left, the anti-globalist and the neoconservative right? Isn't that the point of equalizing the differences between East and West, between North and South? Isn't it about technology to plant in a country another than the West and give it the chance to catch up with a speeding train? I think we already know the answer to that question. This nervousness is surely due to the fact that Asian countries, including India and the countries of Southeast Asia ( Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam) mention to another economic, political and ideological models than those promoted in the West.

If you look at the success of “capitalism with Asian qualities” (a deadline coined by legendary Singapore leader Lee Quan Yewa in the 1980s) it should be confirmed that it first confirms the thesis on the impact of culture on the economy. Let us make it clear that we are referring to culture in the sense of paternalistic and pro-family Confucianism, which teaches the ethos of work, authority, and discipline without western expansion and "letting the belt", and on the another hand, it attaches little importance to abstract and impersonal law and formal regulation (as a consequence of the Veberian Entzauberung der Welt), and more to more conventional relationships and trust – that is, organic bonds.

Finally, they mention to another political solutions showing affirmative effects of limiting democratic freedoms, and sometimes authoritarian forms of government. This, of course, does not like on the demoliberal right, but possibly even more on the left. As the typical of the second Żiżek laments in the book “From tragedy to farce": "It has so far seemed that capitalism has been inherently linked to democracy – from time to time, of course, it has been in open dictatorship, but after a decade or 2 democracy has returned again as a dominant force (let's remember the cases of South Korea and Chile). But now the link between democracy and capitalism has definitely been broken."

I am besides saying that paradoxically, the argument that the mediocre themselves are liable for their poorness is, in a sense, true, as is the reverse of this thesis, that only based on their own material and cultural resources, and, above all, on their own initiative, mediocre countries can climb the ladder of development. There is no request to wait for others, nor for them dictated from a position of stronger advice. Of course, it is good to have a Western historical experience, successes and failures of this experience at the back of the head, to exploit, for example, the advantages of individualistic philosophy, which determined western legislation, technologies or models of management, as for example, the father of Toyota's success was raised in Henry Ford's memoirs. However, erstwhile this cognition came to its advantage, but he did it in his own way, based on his native culture (family bonds, trust) and this made the nipponese car manufacture the most competitive in the planet constantly improving the quality of products (the doctrine of kaizen).

The civilizational transformations that have been taking place before our eyes in the collapse of the American monopoly in the economy and in the crisis of global aid instruments and the birth of the multipolar planet are the best confirmation of this diagnosis. On the 1 hand, there is simply a failure of safety and stableness in the global economy and the predictability of its supply chains. On the another hand, this situation gives individual countries and cultures hope to change the position quo on condition that they decently recognise the signs of time.

The strategy of the global capitalist economy was created by Europeans, the biggest profits from it by Americans. Today, it is successfully utilized by the east Cultural ellipse State, which defeats the West in ways designed in the West, but they do so in their own way.. And this is what the Western people, and especially the Americans, cannot stand, offended by the fact that individual stole their secret and holy fire—the key to planet rule.

Michael Graban

photo. Wikipedia (Guangzhou airport terminal)

Think Poland, No. 3-4 (14-21.01.2024)