Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 16:40:48 +1000
From: Rob Schaap <rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Query & Comment on East Asia


G'day Thaxists,

I see *Business Week* is calling Mahathir's intervention in the stockmarket
a 'colossal blunder'.  I wonder if the indigenous bourgiosie, a creature of
Mahathir's own making and, for that matter, Mahathir's apparent raison
d'etre, would agree?  A spot of amateur speculation, if I may ...

He could, I suppose, have elected to let proceedings go unhindered - right
down the path so recently trodden by Thailand's bemused government.  In
other words, one might argue that Malaysia was due a nasty 'correction'
(stocks and property appreciating well ahead of industry and demand
projections and foreign debt climbing without concomitant domestic capital
investment) and would one day become victim of a Soros-style clean-up
anyway (the pound couldn't handle such a force back in '92, so the ringgit
was always a candidate for passing predators).  That being the case,
Mahathir might have decided to make the best of a bad lot and gone for the
uncritical nationalist vote once more.  'PM Takes On Foreign Speculators To
Protect Local Business' - that sort of thing.

He must, after all, keep the muslem-theocratic activists from claiming a
monopoly on nationalist sentiment.

The clever bugger must have known his corporatist nation-building policies
were gonna hit crises like this - the ultimate power was always gonna be on
Wall Street.  He's just collected some short-term local plaudits, and will
now spend the medium term offering yet more concessions to those he said
'should be shot'.

He'll do it too.  The ultimate price will be paid after he's dead, I guess.
But he won't be blamed.  Commentators will be able to say only that he was
caught between a hard place and a harder place, and that he did the right
thing.

You might be able to build a Cyberjaya, but democratic nation-building is
just pie-in-the-sky foolishness.  So bend over and let Wall Street in,
occasionally spout something nationalist from the other end, and build your
Cyberjaya.

Politics is the art of the possible for the likes of Mahathir, and the
possible, it seems, is the art of politics.  While the two remain
synonomous, the much vaunted 'Pacific century' will remain a volatile and
disappointing continuation of dependency, uneven development, and mounting
tensions between compradors and hinterlands.

Talking of which, the spectre of APEC is promising and scary.  Once it's
solidly established (sans USA?), a concerted resurrection of the old
nationalisation gambit would be objectively possible and politically
popular, wouldn't it?

The stakes might entail a global belligerence based on *1984*-style
continental 'trade-blocs', but why worry?  Might we not be heading in that
direction anyway?  In which case, wouldn't the likes of Mahathir recommend
(a) extracting the transient political plaudits on offer by (b)
ostentatiously pulling some disconnected levers cosmetically marked 'Manual
Override' whilst (c) hoping the iceberg looms only after you're gone?

I guess I'm wondering if 'globalisation' is a little limited.  Should we be
focussing on 'regionalisation' first?  As Doug hinted some time back,
should we be looking at the Kautsky/Lenin debate on imperialism before we
address these questions?

That lot was all over the place - but I gotta go now, so I'll bravely hit
'send' and see what happens.

Cheers,
Rob.


************************************************************************

Rob Schaap, Lecturer in Communication, University of Canberra, Australia.

Phone:  02-6201 2194  (BH)
Fax:    02-6201 5119

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'It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have
lightened the day's toil of any human being.'    (John Stuart Mill)

"The separation of public works from the state, and their migration
into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates
the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in
the form of capital."                                    (Karl Marx)

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