For what is worth, IMHO Milanovic’s predictions are more solidly grounded than
Fukuyama’s ever were. If there is one thing that history teaches, it is that
regardless of political culture elites form and cling to their privileges until
they are overthrown. In this respect there is not significant difference
between the Roman Senate that caved to Caesar, the mandarins who ruled imperial
China, China’s current leadership, the “New Class” that Milovan Djilas saw
forming in the USSR and its satellites, and the technology-enhanced plutocracy
extending its control over ostensibly democratic societies including, most
notably, the United States of America.
To this observation we must add the key material conditions underlying China’s
current rise. China accounts for a quarter of the world’s population. Its
middle class is already bigger than the total population of the USA. As Apple
CEO Tim Cook has observed, China now graduates more production engineers each
year than the USA by an order of magnitude. The global hotspot for hardware
innovation is Shenzhen. China is now a world leader in supercomputing, and its
space program is first rate. Alibaba is bigger than Amazon.
Cheers,
John
Sent from my iPad
On Feb 2, 2020, at 5:35, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The lead article in the Jan/Feb 2020 issue of Foreign Affairs is “The Clash
of Capitalisms, the Real Fight for the Global Economy’s Future” by Branko
Milanovic who is “a Senior Scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-Economic
Inequality at the CUNY Graduate Center and Centennial Professor at the London
School of Economics.”
Milanovic’s title is a take-off from Samuel P. Huntington’s The Clash of
Civilizations, but Milanovic is in reality is dealing more with Fukuyama’s
theory. That is, Fukuyama saw Liberal Democracy as representing the end of
history. Milanovic uses the term Liberal Capitalism and Liberal meritocracy
for Fukuyama’s Liberal Democracy and introduces Political Capitalism as a
challenge to it – sort of.
Milanovic writes, “In the states of Western Europe and North America and a
number of other countries, such as India, Indonesia, and Japan, a liberal
meritocratic form of capitalism dominates: a system that concentrates the
vast majority of production in the private sector, ostensibly allows talent
to rise, and tries to guarantee opportunity for all through measures such as
free schooling and inheritance taxes. Alongside that system stands the
state-led, political model of capitalism, which is exemplified by China but
also surfaces in other parts of Asia (Myanmar, Singapore, Vietnam), in Europe
(Azerbaijan, Russia), and in Africa (Algeria, Ethiopia, Rwanda). This system
privileges high economic growth and limits individual political and civil
rights.”
If memory serves me, Fukuyama took Political Capitalism into consideration,
saw it as taking baby steps toward Liberal Democracy, and thought it would
get there eventually. Prior to that time it would be at a disadvantage, for
Liberal Democracy with its freedom for entrepreneurs to develop whatever they
liked will always defeat (economically) economies where entrepreneurs are
more subdued. China is doing better than expected (by Fukuyama?), but will
it maintain its success in the long run against freer forms of capitalism?
In his concluding section, entitled “Plutocratic Convergence?” Milanovic
suggests that Western capitalistic societies will not be able to move toward
“a more advanced stage” (which he doesn’t define) unless “inequality” is
reduced. Thus, Milanovic is interested in seasoning Capitalistic Meritocracy
with a bit of Socialism. To make what seems to be his point I would think he
would want to show how his seasoning will enable Liberal Capitalism to
out-compete Political Capitalism. Milanovic writes that taking the
unmodified present path, “The economic elite in the West will become more
insulated, wielding more untrammeled power over ostensibly democratic
societies, much in the same way that the political elite in China lords over
that country. The more economic and political power in Liberal capitalist
systems become fused together, the more liberal capitalism will become
plutocratic, taking on some features of political capitalism. . . .”
Hmmm.
Lawrence
