The Ministry for the Future

38

Today we’re here to discuss potential alternatives to the global neoliberal order, which seems to be in such imminent danger of collapse. Are there any already existing alternatives we can look to?

China. Obviously.

But China seems very deeply implicated in the global economy.

They have a command economy that overrules the free market to bolster Chinese interests.

That’s so interesting! What could we call such a mysterious new amalgam?

Socialism.

Oh my. How very transgressive of you, not to say nostalgic. But I seem to recall that China is always careful to add the phrase “with Chinese characteristics” whenever they use the word socialism, and it seems to many that those Chinese characteristics make for a completely new thing.

Yes but no.

You don’t agree?

No. It’s socialism with Chinese characteristics.

These characteristics including a huge dollop of capitalism, it seems.

Yes.

So might we learn things from them?

No.

How come?

Because we don’t like them.

Isn’t that rather prejudiced of us?

They don’t like us either.

So, no hope of change from that quarter. What about the poor? The four billion poorest people alive have less wealth than the richest ten people on the planet, so they’re not very powerful, but no one can deny that there are a lot of them. Might they force change from below?

There are guns in their faces.

What about the so-called precariat, then? Those middle billions just scraping by, what Americans still call the middle class, speaking of nostalgia? Could they rise up and change things by way of some kind of mass action?

Guns in their faces too.

And yet we do sometimes see demonstrations, sometimes quite large ones.

Demonstrations are parties. People party and then go home. Nothing changes.

Well, but what about coordinated mass action? That sounds like more than partying to me. The so-called fiscal strike that we hear so much about, leading to a financial crash and the subsequent nationalization of the banks, for instance. National governments would then be back in control, coordinating a complete takeover of global finance. They could rewrite the WTO rules, and create some kind of quantitative easing, giving new fiat money to Green New Deal–type causes.

We call that legislation.

So again we come back to legislatures! These are usually thought to be features of representative democracies. To the extent that such democracies still exist, if they ever did, their legislatures would have to be voted in by voting majorities, by definition. Fifty-one percent at the least, or more if possible, in all the major countries where such systems obtain. They would all have to join the plan.

Yes.

So this seems quite practical! What keeps us from doing that?

People are stupid. Also the rich will fight it.

Again this presumption that the rich have more power than the poor!

Yes.

But might it also be the case that there would be some kind of systemic resistance to change also, in that all these laws that need to change are intertwined, and therefore can’t be easily disentangled?

Yes.

You could even say that money itself would resist this change. Indeed it seems to be the case that there’s simply a kind of inherent, inbuilt resistance to change!

Constipation is a bitch. Sometimes you just have to sit on the box and push harder.

Well put! I guess you could call that the story of our decade. Or the entire century for that matter.

Why stop there?

Such a trenchant image for history, I must say.

Tremendous relief when all that shit is out of you.

No doubt! Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Perhaps it’s time to pull down our pants and have a seat. I invite everyone listening to join us, next week this same time.

It might take longer.