uber: i know friedman's writing--but thanks for the recommendation.
most "antiglobalization" movements are not so much opposed to the fact of the reorganization of capitalism as they are concerned about the implosion of existing feedback loops that had connected citizens to the legal mechanisms that shaped socio-economic activity within capitalism since the outset--the nation-state. the general argument is that economic policy-making is being shifted to transnational institutions that operate at a considerable remove from the nation-state, and which are not responsible to anyone for the consequences of these policies. so the problem comes stems from the attempt to make the institutional framework within which globalizing capitalism is taking shape into an extra-political space.
the underlying argument is that one of the main achievements within capitalism over its earlier phases (up to about 1970) was that organized citizens were able to force changes into the nature and role of the state, shifting it away from being the simple legal arm operating in the interest of holders of capital into a legal mechanism at the center of conflicts between capital and, in the main, working-class people (obviously other social movements were able to focus their activities across their own projects as well--but the channels that enabled them to do so were largely implemented through old-school class conflict).
so the state had been transformed through pressure brought to bear on it from outside into a type of feedback loop, into a space for pressure to be brought, into an instrument for the limitation of the prerogatives of capital, and into a mechanism whereby the social consequences of social and economic policies could be addressed.
the other main argument is that these feedback loops were central to the coherence of the system as a whole--not only did this pressure bring about a somewhat less barbaric type of capitalism, but it also provided the state (and capital) with a type of friction that was necessary for anything approaching rational policy formation and implementation. (this claim is parallel to those of hayek's concernign price history and its function in the utopia of "free markets"--the history of which was mostly a function of his fantasy life)
they also were a result of a great expansion in the purview of political action for citizens--who had to organize to be able to access anything like political power.
the transfer of socio-economic power to transnational institutions threatens to wipe out all these loops. this same transfer changes the existing states from functional to obstacle.
one of the most well-organized of these groups is attac:
http://www.attac.org/indexfla.htm
if you read through some of the papers collected on this site (i did a small amount of translation for attac when they operated through a translator pool with more frequency)---the political situation is outlined pretty clearly--i do not think that the tobin tax is the magic bullet that attac seems (or seemed) to think it is (the tobin tax is geared toward putting breaks on transnational currency speculation by taxing it at 5%)--but in the main i think they have worked out an interesting framework for understanding this aspect of globalizing capitalism.
this is the context within which i think it best to understand bushworld.
the right is caught in a bind.
they have no choice but to cheerlead globalization. their prior economic and social committments leave the right in america no latittude on this.
but they also know that, if this process unfolds along the lines set out already, the nation-state will become increasingly obsolete.
their ideology will collapse well before the nation-state does: the writing is on the wall.
the right opposed clinton, from this viewpoint, not because he was such an advocate of globalization, but because he was too much a proponent of multilateral agreements and not enough a nationalist. the residents of bushworld have tried to implement another logic, which is geared around preserving the ideology of nation, not because it is coherent, but because it is central to the political survival of conservative politics in anything like its present form. because without the nation, what do conservatives have to talk about?
nothing at all.....
but if you think about it, bushworld is not at odds with the larger trends in globalizing capitalism noted above: they simply would rather carry out the depoliticization of capitalism wrapped around the ideology of nation. so you have the conservative "philosophy" of the state, whcih sees it as little more than an element that introduces irrationality into the center of otherwise pure and totally functional market relations. that this view is totally false empirically and disastrous as policy is of no consequence--that it fundamentally falsifies the role and meanings the state had come to acquire through 150 of social conflict is also of no consequence---the arguments the right uses to rationalize shrinking the state are obvious, are well-known, and are entirely disengenuous--what they are about is an attempt to remove the core of the state---the military apparatus----from a space of political contestation. on the basis of a militarized state, the right understands it is easier to sell an ideolgy of nationalism. on the basis of a militarized state, the purview of politics is reduced to a kind of vanishing point. add to this a campaign designed to emphasize the individual and make all attempts at self-organization of citizens suspect (unless they originate in far-right protestant evangelical churches, it seems, which are fine because their structure enables them to be tightly controlled).
conservative ideology is about self-disempowerment in the name of the Rugged Individual. but that is simply a set of signifers that are floated: what they conservative ideology is mostly about is the preservation of conservative ideology itself. consequences be damned. to implement this last view, the most tactic is to eliminate feedback loops that would force them (or holders of capital) to look at them, not to mention address them.
so the right has nothing to say about the long or even medium term consequences of globalizing capitalism on american workers.
the really sorry thing is that the democrats dont either.
what seems to matter is the maintenance of the illusion of stability--so the right works to restrict the adaptive functions of the educational system in the states in the name of "tradition" or "basic skills"--because they have no way of addressing class disparities except to blame the victims for it, what these policies mean in real time can be safely ignored. so you have the right fighting to maintain an educational system that reproduces a labor force for an economy that, increasingly, no longer exists---it functions across a different geography.
the consequences of this will be the systematic trashing of thousands and thousands of lives.
how to deal with that?
dont look at it.
how do you manage that?
eliminate the mechanisms through which the problems could be forced onto the state and combine it with an ideology of reassurance that never, ever, refers to anything structural (either vague bromides or isolated anecdotes only) anbd then, maybe, if they are honest (they rarely are), you get the justification out of schumpeter--the "creative destruction" of capitalism--which is something you might be able to talk about in the abstract from a position at the ny times or some such--removed from what the term refers to, reduced to a kind of tsk tsk tsk..
i may have had a bit too much coffee this morning.......