World War III??? -- An Exchange

World War III??? – An Exchange

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 2005

In an earlier missive, I responded to a person who wondered about the basis of my thinking that we were engaged in an economic war, which I deemed World War III. A person has responded to that exchange with his sense of what I had said. This is my reply.


Correspondent:

State capitalism has been an alternative and relatively peaceful means to extracting more resources and rewards from the marketplace than one would get from corporate capitalism. China is not the first and won’t be the last to use it as a strategy, although there may be some in China, who would like their nation to be the last ones to use it to achieve their goals.

Relatively peaceful since being sentenced to prison, and then “ contracted” to work for no wages to create even cheaper products to export is not “peaceful” for the one who is imprisoned for committing freedom or being a stubborn person in an ethnic minority.

Japan has not fully recovered from it burst bubble, but still dreams of doing exactly the same as China, partly in self-defense against the Chinese, and in part because they see themselves as “chosen,” but that another story, eh?

My response:

Sometimes I wonder why I write, and then I wonder if I actually communicate, or register even a glimpse of insight into what I'm trying to say.

That occurred to me when I read your response. I don't disagree with much of what you say, except the implied peacefulness of capitalism in other political-economic systems.

But that was not what the person was asking, or what I was attempting to answer.

I was attempting to show that American capitalism and Chinese mercantilism are players in a very real sense in the present climate of World War III, which is an economic war with obvious political and social consequences.

The fact that this statement of mine was taken out of a long essay on basically another topic (re: When The Leadership Lost Its Tribe) by the reader caused me to want to respond in kind.

Mercantilism grew out of feudalism, which I didn't think necessary to explain, which is closed, draconian, and absolutely controlled by the government with a very visible hand. There is no invisible hand as described by Adam Smith in a free market economy. Moreover, capitalism grew out of the Protestant Reformation and still has, if remotely, its ethics and determinism. But that was not my point.

As Marx said, "He who controls the means of production controls society." Well, Chinese mercantilism is making a splendid case that that soon will be its lot, and not these United States in any real form.

Perhaps you know this, but I'll repeat it anyway. Most of the component parts that go into both civilian and military aircraft are made outside of the US by foreign countries. Boeing, MacDonald Douglas, and Lockeed couldn't operate without these connections.

Moreover, other countries make most of our weaponry. Germany, for example, makes our tanks and large guns. We would be almost like the South was when the Civil War started, high on morale and hubris, but short of "can do," were these sources to dry up.

Indeed, I don't think it is too much of a stretch to compare our information society sans real manufacturing capacity with The Vatican and its symbolic leadership in an increasingly belligerent world. Information control can only go so far, and even much of that is being maintained by India.

I am a reader and have read extensively on China, its history, its people, and the amazing feat of communism uniting the country under astronomical odds. Its national psyche of paranoia makes us look like the least suspicious people in the world, and we know that is not true.

Walmart wouldn't be in business were it not for most of the manufacturers of its staples making them in China. I know from my hometown of Clinton, Iowa and W.W.II, how a manufacturing town can be converted to a defense industry by a magnitude of ten compared to what it was before. I write about that in my book In the Shadow of the Courthouse.

One of the miracles of our societies, aside from our constitutional democratic republic, is that we as a people (with the exception of President Theodore Roosevelt, whom I have never been able to fathom being a great president, but certainly an imperialistic one) have been content to use our enormous economic clout in the world peacefully with little interest in expansionism, the present neocons excepted.

We seem content to destroy the cultural illusion of great cities of the world with a MacDonald's on every square without owning the real estate.

What I try to do with all my writing is to get people to think of the big issues without sounding off as either a crusader or an alarmist.

That is perhaps why Near Journey's End doesn't get publishers exited. It is not a seer seeing the end of the world, but an observer noting the patterns and trends over the centuries that have placed us in our present predicament and incredibly stupid situation.

My greatest asset has not been my fine mind. My greatest asset is that I have never belonged to the club, not had a hidden agenda, and not cared whether you invited me to high tea or not.

There was no point in my career in which I was for sale. I have had few colleagues in all my years that weren't.

From my earliest days as a bench chemist, my research director talked about a very talented man that constantly ran into fences because he failed to modify his personality. He talked to me for the better part of an hour without interruption. When he finally seemed to have run out of gas, I said, "Are we talking about me?"

His face reddened and a hardness came into his eyes. That was not the response that he expected. He dismissed me. Our relationship went downhill from that point on.

When he was in ill health and dying, and I called on him, we talked about old times as if we were great, great friends, him beaming about how he predicted that I would have a useful life. He had obviously forgotten, but had not.

When I write of professionals, and I write about them a lot, I hope my readers don't get the impression that I admire them at the expense of other workers. I don't. Actually, I identify much more closely with the workers, who have never had their advantages, and are not likely to be invited to the house much less high tea.

No, I am still a chemist. I observe. I report. I explain my findings, and leave it up to others to decide the relevance or not of these observations.

My Beautiful Betty, who knows that I am in many ways a klutz, claims I don't do anything by accident, nor anything because it is "in" or popular or "with it." I tell her that is probably why I dress like I did 50 years ago. She smiles and says nothing.

Years ago Business Week (1980s) had two telling featured issues.

One issue focused on American empty factories; the other issue was titled "Who's Excellent Now?"

Two years after the mega-best seller In Search of Excellence was published not one of the company's profiled was doing well. Yet, companies across the nation companies rushed to copy the success of the profiled companies.

This book produced a stellar career for Tom Peters who has said some true things but he, too, got caught up in his own celebrity, rhetoric and omniscience.

Drucker admits he doesn't understand culture, and consequently has decided it is not important; Peters writes about culture as if he understands it. It is clear he doesn't, and his career and writings support this observation.

My protean work was Work Without Managers (1990). In it, among other things, I pointed out the fallacy of the Peters premise, and many of the other things I have elaborated on since. I claimed in that book, for example, that the total quality management movement was a charade, and that it wouldn't save American enterprise, and it hasn't. I claimed, too, in that book that we were engaged in WWIII.

Fifteen years later, I sense I am still one hand clapping in the wilderness. Will I stop writing? No. It is what I do.