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capitalism is making nation-states obsolete.
this relies on the total disempowerment of those who do not hold capital. (and of most who do---small shareholders have no effective power either.)
which is itself a function of the dismantling of political constraints that had forced capital to consider at any level the relationship of its actions to social consequences.
the results of this disregard for social consequences turn up in all kinds of areas---phil is i think correct in pointing to education as emblematic--but i would go a bit further and say that not only are there problems for funding, but also for the functionality of education as what marx called an instrument of social reproduction (reproduction of the labor pool)--how can schools replicate a given class system if the elements of that system keep changing?
the drive for private schools seems at once an attempt to dismantle one of the few remaining trade unions and to make the problems of coherence disappear by privatizing them--which is a typical right response to the process outlined here--make it go away, pretend it is not happening, shut your eyes, recite prayers to capital, wait for things to shake out.
the logic of the macdo call-center move is typical--simultaneously the centralization of a particular function and its separation from the main production (well, in this case distribution) unit--and then a politics of location that is dependent on 1. the general political climate (which sets norms that define what a firm can and cannot get away with) 2. infrastructure 3. lowest possible wage levels. i assume that the present configuration of the call-center/resto relation is transitional, and that once the system gets debugged and increases in scale, you will probably see it become as mobile as other call-center type operations.
it is interesting to think about the reasons why people just accept this kind of process. maybe they think it "progress"? maybe they identify with the interests of capital because the main index of economic activity they see every night on television is the dow jones industrial average? the stock market is the new astrology, but behind that is the illusion that the interests of the population and the interests of capital are identical.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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