'Where Is the Uprising from the Left?' DER SPIEGEL Interview with Francis Fukuyama

[stockholmer]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,812208,00.html

Political scientist Francis Fukuyama was once the darling of American neo-conservatives. In a SPIEGEL interview, the author of "The End of History" explains why he now believes that the excesses of capitalism are a threat to democracy and asks why there is no "Tea Party on the left."

SPIEGEL: Professor Fukuyama, you are best known for your essay "The End of History," in which you declared that, after the demise of the Soviet Union, liberal democracy had emerged as the triumphant global model. Now, your latest research claims that the flaws of capitalism and globalization could endanger this democratic model. How do you explain this shift?


Fukuyama: Capitalism is the wrong word to use here, because there is not a viable alternative to capitalism. What we are really talking about is just economic growth and the development of modern economic societies. A combination of factors is beginning to challenge their progress in the United States. We have had a lot of technological change that substituted for low-skill labor and made many people in Western democracies lose their jobs.

SPIEGEL: Which is why countries such as the United States or Britain wanted to turn themselves into "service-oriented" economies.

Fukuyama: We have unthinkingly embraced a certain version of globalization that assumed we had to move very quickly into this post-industrial, post-manufacturing world. Doing so, we forgot that the whole reason real socialism never took off in the US was the fact that the modern economy seemed to produce middle-class societies in which the bulk of the population could enjoy a middle-class status. They worked in industries that were abolished in our countries and transferred to countries like China.

snip

[Selatius]

1. I think what happened is that the left was lobotomized from the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party's problem is that it has been complicit in the near total dismantling of American manufacturing. The Republican Party is even worse, the primary initiator of this trend, but it's clear the problem is one that was created on both sides of the aisle. I'm not saying that both are the same, but what I am saying is that the Democrats can't escape all the blame in this mess.

You're likely not going to find a Democrat in the White House, for instance, for the next several decades, who advocates a system of subsidies to domestic manufacturing companies coupled with fair trade regulations (e.g. comparative trade tariffs that increases the costs of an imported good to approach the cost or equal the cost of a domestically produced close substitute) that forces foreign and domestic manufacturers to compete on quality of product instead of the simple cost of labor.

You're more likely to find a Democrat who supports free trade over fair trade. There's more donations to be gained by supporting free trade over fair trade.

[xchrom]

2. +1 -- I'd say make this an OP -- but

It will be misunderstood here.

[stockholmer]

4. great post, I call the problem you cogently outline as the 'comparative advantage' vs 'absolute

advantage' free trade models. In the comparative advantage model (Germany is a great example), there is a public/private consensus to not hollow out the inherent industrial production base of the nation-state. Over 80% of all industrial and technological innovations that drive the engine of a firm's success occur during the 'scaling-up' production process. When the production factories and their supporting infrastructures are shipped out of the home country, you lose tremendous human capital in terms of innovation and also a culture of craftsmanship and knowledge.

The US, for the last 50 years has went to an absolute advantage model, where there is a never ending chase to find cheaper and cheaper labour cost, regardless of the effect that the resulting job migration has on the home populace. Not only has this had a devastating effect on the number of well-paying manufacturing jobs, but America has now lost an extraordinary amount of human capital in terms of highly-complex production knowledge and ethos. The school systems are also ill-suited to produce such a workforce, as now there are precious few jobs of this type to train for. To reverse this would take decades.

[Blue_Tires]

6. very true...

[malaise]

3. Fugg Fukuyama

Anyone stupid enough to write something called The End of History is a complete and total fool.

[hifiguy]

5. This is a very thoughtful and interesting piece.

While I don't agree with everything Fukuyama says, there is a lot of truth in his comments. Well worth reading.