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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

"All that is solid melts into air?" « Previous | |Next »
October 20, 2006

Lars Magnusson about the costs and benefits of globalization in Axess. He says that globalization implies hardship:

globalisation, like all other structural changes, can result in major hardships at least in the short term. Some people will win and others lose. Creating a legitimacy for this kind of development is not simple--it is hardly a daring observation to claim that the nervous bunch of politicians today are rather poor at things like this. We cannot disregard the fact that many people feel rootless and, in the spirit of Marx, want to cry out: "All that is solid melts into air!" When, at the same time, there is a lack of sustainable political vision for the future, this creates anxiety and sometimes even powerlessness. This generation's anxiety which, for example, is expressed in mistrust of politicians, high levels of reporting in sick, and the flight of the elites from publicity is without doubt part of this complex problems. And if increased inequality is part of globalisation, one may naturally ask the question whether it is worth the price.

However, he adds either exaggerating these hardships or making light of the greater international competition renders it impossible to act and think rationally. Then, 200 years ago, economic internationalisation led to industrialisation, democracy and in the long run the welfare state.

He asks: ' What is coming next?' His answer: This is something that we to a large extent can decide for ourselves. Kinda leaves us short doesn't it, especially when democracy and the welfare state are on the ropes.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:26 PM |