Christopher Mattison: During an interview that you gave with Madina Tlostanova in 2009, you posed the question (as a response) “Why save it at all?”—in regards to the economic system and the looming financial crisis. You continued by stating that it wasn’t the institutions that required saving, but rather our planet and the entwined human network. Or rather, that the primary concern should be with individuals rather than with institutions. Now, three years later, a great deal of effort has been spent on propping up these institutions, which leaves us where in terms of the individuals tied to the institutions?
Walter Mignolo: Certainly the debate over the relationships between the State and the Market has been revamped by the financial crisis. President Obama was accused of “going socialist” because of his demand to reinforce the State instead of leaving it to “invisible hands,” as corporate politics demands. It is difficult to control, through State regulation and other means of public policy, a civilizational attitude in which success is encouraged, and success has a great deal to do with increasing wealth. When increasing wealth is in play—of people, corporations or nation-states—good morals and good public policy have little effect in the long run. Where are we now? Well, the economic system has to continue working on behalf of those who benefit from it. My point then and now is that capitalism—the economic pillar of Western civilization (now globally expanded)—is an economic system based on the belief that development and growth lead to happiness while many people, myself included, have stated that development and growth is leading us towards death. This is why I believe Western Civilization built a cosmology in which the cart is in front of the horse, and this configuration simply does not work.
We began this conversation in April of 2011 and are now into the first quarter of 2012. We have witnessed revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and the repercussions in Syria and Libya. We have watched the uprising of the “indignados” in Spain and, more unexpectedly, in Israel. And a few years before Tunisia and Egypt, similar manifestations took place in Bolivia and Ecuador, knocking out two successive presidents of those countries. And then the north of London erupted into another volcano on the global scene. Obviously the economic and political institutions (the State) are not working. After the US’s downgrade from AAA to AA+ status in relation to foreign debt and the EU’s struggles to control the collapse of the Union from the periphery (Greece, Italy, Spain), it has become obvious that things are not working. Not to mention the problems that have continued to plague us for the past 60 years: increased poverty and a growing food crisis, along with global warming and the “war on terrorism,” which consistently has benefited contractors and the arms industry.
The Economist (which was founded at the beginning of the nineteenth century to forward the liberal conception of the economy) recently (February, 2012) featured a debate on State Corporate Capitalism as being the consequence of a crisis that has been with us since the end of 2007, and which continues to devastate the European Union. What is State Corporate Capitalism? It is a State that has its eyes and hands in the market, which distinguishes it from the classical separation of the business of the State and the business of the Market. This classical model—based on the “invisible hand” of a liberal economy and the “weak state” that President Ronald Reagan promoted at the beginning of the neo-liberal era—has turned out to be a disaster. In this debate, China, Malaysia and Singapore are presented as examples of strong States that have delivered in terms of economic growth. In each of these States there is neither liberalism (“the invisible hand” with a regulating State, which Obama proposed at the beginning of his mandate) nor neo-liberalism (a weak State and a free market) guiding the politics of the State. A common expression in the West to refer to this economic development in Asia is “Neo-liberalism the Asian way.” Apart from being Western-Centric this is simply absurd: how can China or Singapore be described as neo-liberal, even in an Asian way, if neo-liberalism strives to dispense with the State and these economies are based on strong State regulation?
Christopher Mattison: If neo-liberalism is a flawed description of the economic and societal movements in these Asian countries—due in part to its monolithic construct—where do we currently find ourselves?
Walter Mignolo: READ MORE
