Vitrina spartă

Ce a dus la prăbuşirea comunismului? Păi, dacă e să fim oneşti, atractivitatea occidentului n-a stat în "democraţie", "drepturi şi libertăţi", ci în "statul social", în "statul bunăstării". El a fost vitrina care a luat ochii proştilor din Est.  Acum vedem că vitrina aia era doar temporară, că adevărata vitrină abia acum ni se dezvăluie: şomaj de masă, flexibilizarea muncii, privatizări în masă, polarizare şi inechităţi economice crescânde, excludere socială, xenofobie, rasism, limitarea drepturilor şi libertăţilor cetăţeneşti, democraţie de faţadă, şi lista ororilor e lungă.

Ambele sisteme au fost, şi cel învingător este, opresive pentru cetăţeni. Cel "comunist" a practicat o opresiune brutală, în faza de consolidare, ca apoi să treacă la o opresiune mai rafinată. Cel "capitalist" devine acum tot mai brutal în opresiunea lui, pentru că se simte călare pe situaţie. Dacă vitrina "capitalistă" a catalizat rezistenţa împotriva opresiunii în Est, acum cine mai poate juca rol de catalizator împotriva opresiunii? 

Nu am văzut niciun intelectual public care să ia poziţie împotriva modificărilor Codului Muncii, spre pildă, care este un mare pas înapoi în timp, către originile capitalismului. Societatea civilă este, de fapt, o formă de parazitare a sistemului politic, o prelungire a lui adesea, care în loc să fie o contraputere, este, se visează un substitut al puterii. 

Lucrurile nu au cum sfârşi bine. Există o credinţă aproape religioasă în capacitatea sistemului de a se auto-regla, de a se auto-regenera. Nimic mai fals, în opinia mea. Sistemul este din ce în ce mai dezechilibrat, zguduit fiind de crize cu repetiţie, la intervale tot mai scurte, care nu-i mai lasă timp de respiro. Ruptura, când va veni, va fi extrem de dramatică şi de plină de consecinţe. Şi observ o nepermisă lene intelectuală în imaginarea unor alternative plauzibile la actualul sistem. Din păcate...


UPDATE: Am găsit la prietenul Beranger pe blog asta: " First, a distinction: I think the term "western governments" is too generic. I think what you mean by this term is "anglo-american" governments" (ie, UK, US, Australia etc). The trajectories of some other western governments (Germany is the prime example) are quite different from these.
In my opinion, the most obvious difference between the Anglo-Americans and Germans is, the first willingly dumped its industry, while the other kept it. And I think more than anything else this was a Psychological decision. US-UK part of this story is partially touched in some of your documentaries, especially the "Mayfair Set".

I went as a Ph.D. candidate in engineering to US in 1993. For me, the guy from a third world country, US was the country of firsts: Airplane, transistor, plastics, travel to moon, PCs, microprocessors, you name it. But I immediately became aware that Americans are no longer excited by technology anymore. Approximately %70 of M. Sc and Ph. D. students in engineering were foreigners, especially Chinese and Indians, but also Turks like me. Most older engineering professors were Americans, but they were increasingly replaced by younger foreigners. It seemed US was no longer sufficient to itself in terms of engineering talent.

Then I've learned that US had a current account deficit. This really blew me of. How could such an advanced country have a deficit in international trade?

Then I have noticed that the upstate NY town I was living in was like an industrial graveyard. Apparently, it was very active until 1970's but then it suddenly collapsed. There was a lot of deserted factories around with broken glass and locked doors. This incident was so recent that most townspeople can point to the factory buildings in which they once worked. But when pressed to give reasons for the change, they only gave very superficial, single sentence reasons.

Then I noticed that this was a set pattern for the whole north-east US. Mainly the steel industry, but also a lot of other industries, folded in early 80's.

I have tried to find books about the causes of this massive social event. What I managed to find was pitiful. At that time there was the Titanic craze, and bookshelves were groaning under Titanic books. In contrast, there was virtually nothing about the sinking of US industry. Apparently the whole thing went down unmourned, and much less noticed than Titanic. No author find it interesting enough to collect thousands of small narratives and fuse it into a coherent, unified story which analysed the reasons. I still find this disinterest as the most interesting part of the story.

When industry is gone, a way of thinking, a culture and a whole psychology goes together with it. If you want to understand what I'm talking about, just look at the pages of an issue of scientific american magazine from 19th century. There you will see the pride of the yankee inventor. What is gone is this. And no conspiracy theory there, they killed it themselves, consciously or unconsciously. At one point they thought it so worthless that they dumped it to china. I regard this as the most stupid incident of their history.

Culprit? I strongly feel some of it is related to 60's counterculture. But the collapse of US industry is as mysterious as its birth. At least, for me. What is certain is that US passed a point of "revaluation of all values" in early 70's and they decided they didnt want their industrial heritage anymore. And with typical american single-mindedness, they jettisoned their industry in one generation, which took their ancestors centuries to create. Without giving it a second thought.

One may say that still all new things still come from US. . For example, a whole new world of virtual reality (3d computer games, animated movies etc) just came into existence ex nihilo in 1980-90's. But I believe most of this is the inertia of a huge and once a very fast ship, whose engines are not working anymore. This inertia is still immense and very respectable. But it is inertia.

Why %58 of the new wealth went to top %1? Because in the new economic system the bottom %99 is not needed anymore. But this, like all economic results, is a consequence. American society of today is a non-producing society. No production, no wages to the bottom %99. If you dont count turning meatballs in McDonalds, that is.

I think the Germans and the Japanese at the end of WW2 were in much better shape. Yes, they also had no production, but they had the culture of production. Hence they very quickly created a very sophisticated industry within 10 years. Unfortunately what americans willingly forgot is exactly this culture.

I guess American ruling elites are quickly waking up to this fact. The invasion of Iraq and the struggle to control oil areas are partly a result of this wake up."


Poate ne punem şi noi problema asta. Că şi Românica a ajuns un deşert industrial şi a uitat să mai producă...