Localisation and the middle class

The desire for localisation is growing rapidly and it is being sold as a means of generating local income and helping the environment; but let us be clear, localisation is not a directive to protect the environment it is a push to protect the middle class who, over time, have done more than their share of exploiting and damaging the environment and who have never been content with mere income, but have sought to generate wealth, much of which has come from colonisation and international trade.

Capitalism is in decline and this is putting the middle classes into crisis, and it is being blamed on globalisation. In a similar manner, globalisation is also blamed for destroying the environment because the big multinational corporations are extracting the minerals necessary for consumer production and more. This is true, but who invests in these corporations? The middle classes (and the rich of course, but the middle class have always aspired to be like the rich).

Globalisation was the natural progression of post war middle class national capitalism and the perceived way out of a depression. As Western governments discovered in the post war period, the Keynesian mechanisms will not stave off a severe world crisis if they are applied only from a national/local perspective that focuses on self-interest. This remains a truism. Localisation will only exacerbate already existing global tensions and conflicts.

As it happened internationalism was meant to protect the middle classes but now the multinationals are out of control the middle classes are screaming “help” again, but why should we, the workers feel sorry for them?

The debate

The localisation debate goes something like this:

Manufacturing used to account for a high percentage of our gross domestic product (GDP) we can add to this agriculture and technology. Once we had protective barriers to keep this system self-contained and effective, communities were small, everyone knew each other, there was not much crime, people offered a helping hand; everything was hunky-dory. According to the localisation lobby we need to go back to this system. Do we? It was hunky-dory as long as you were assimilated into the status quo - the middle class - and as long as you had some accumulated wealth that you could exchange for meeting your needs, gaining friends and influencing people.

Global trade

Since globalisation there has been a lowering of trade barriers; businesses together with jobs have gone overseas to developing countries because there are fewer restrictions and cheaper production costs. The products are then sold back to the West for higher profits. This has resulted in the developing nations becoming richer and the Western nations becoming poorer. But it is not just the economic compromise that upsets the Western middle class temper, it is the fact that having been the supremacists they now have to cower to their one time subordinates; or should I say slaves.

The middle class conservatives in Western nations, although they say they are not racist, hold a deep resentment towards the liberation of the Third World’s populations because it has hit their national pride as well as their hip pockets.

Business as usual

Barack Obama is committed to helping the middle class because in the sentiments of Adam Smith: it is the middle class that generates The Wealth of Nations. The help is coming in the form of renewed industrialisation, more rape and pillage of the environment.

Britain too is giving a hand-up to the middle class having acknowledged that middle class power is being lost to global corporatism. The British are having their coal mining boom and prosecuting those who protest against it. This also is not doing much to help the environment, not to mention civil and human rights.

Kevin Rudd aims to prop up the faltering economy with a massive mining boom right around the nation. He is pandering to the middle class.

It must seem strange to a lot of people that some of the transitioning groups, who say they care about the environment and who posit localisation as a means of solving the environmental problems, also support the international mining boom. Strange also that they can make the undesirable desirable; game theory.

Capitalism and decline

As capitalism falls into a deeper decline the physical volume of world trade will decline also and localisation and/or nationalism will bring about tensions and conflict as it has done in the past. Nothing will stave off the inevitable fall or the interim boom and bust cycles as this is an integral component in the internal logic of modern capitalism; the existence of which, we can attribute to the middle classes.

The myths

There is a perpetual myth that without the middle classes the economies of the world will collapse. The middle class argue that globalisation is bad because it results in cheaper products, poorer wages and fewer jobs and this has a trickle down effect, but the working class have always had lower wages, they have always been exploited because this is inherent in the middle class revolution and the nature of middle class capitalism.

The middle class have always been opposed to any kind of help or welfare and we are now seeing its devolution running alongside the notion of “resilience”, the current localisation buzzword. But “resilience” is not environmental change it is making do with what will take place and adapting to it, including the destruction of the environment and a new poverty class.

The middle class suggest that supporting globalisation is supporting a path to international feudalism. Well, who owned the 18th century satanic mills, the early mining rights and the deplorable industrial conditions that people laboured in before the advent of unions? Who owned the laws where men and women were deported for stealing a loaf of bread? Who owned the manufacturing and production factories were children, the elderly and the sick eked out a living on assembly lines? Who owned the land for agriculture after the previous feudal epoch and tightened their hold by closing off what was left of the commons? The middle classes were the propertied class and any crisis is their doing. Is it going to be any different?

I do not dispute the fact that the multinationals are greedy and dominant and do what they can to cut corners on human rights and expected standards. I do not dispute that many aspects of globalisation need to be changed, but let’s change them for the better not to suit middle class interests.