The Blue Voice. Part 6 of 8 on The Ecomomist’s special report on state capitalism
‘Going abroad: The world in their hands’, one of The Economist’s special report articles on “state capitalism” focuses heavily on China and its increasing economic presence in the world. And it suggests that the use of “state capitalism” in this report is an attempt to establish some kind of economic framework in which the Good Side of neoliberal countries can be faced off against the Bad Side of “state capitalists”.
The Economist appears to lament that good guy neoliberals don’t have the massive control over the country and economy that the Chinese leadership does. But what we have here in the US and UK is crony capitalism where huge crimes go unprosecuted so long as the 1% commits them, which hardly seems an improvement.
Crony capitalism is the least of our worries, we have international corporate capitalism, doing its damnedest to compete with China’s state capitalism, at the same time as using it to its advantage. What is happening in China is that there is a small incremental rise in living conditions where as we, at the receiving end of corporate capitalism are seeing our standard of living going down the tubes. Greece is just the first to take a full frontal attack and it is merciless. There are other countries waiting in the wings to get the same type of treatment. Neither system works for the benefit of the majority of the people, both are elitist system, so why do we want either.