Saturday, April 09, 2016

The End of Nation States: Chapter 1. The further growth of the global capitalism is inevitable

The End of Nation States: Chapter 1. The further growth of the global capitalism is inevitable

The world in the last century was dominated by the economic and political conflict of national capitalism and international socialism. By means of the political historical analysis based on Hegelian dialectic, it can be explained that the synthesis of this conflict has created the synthesis called the global capitalism combining the capitalism of the former and the internationalism of the latter. Nevertheless, unlike Hegelian political philosophers believe, the characteristics of both the former and the latter were not chosen by means of their virtue: They are chosen and combined by means of their pragmatic interests of unstoppable desires of human individuals as Napoleon Bonaparte said "Men are more easily governed through their vices than their virtues."

The international socialism was the political attempt to unify not only the people of two different classes, bourgeoisie and proletariat, in inside a nation but also all people of the world with an altruistic philanthropy promoting an unconditional share of properties together with all the human individuals. However, this system neglected about the method motivating individuals' competence and productivity and the possibility that some wicked individual may hijack this political system for her/his own good. This political system overestimated individuals' capability to care others all the times and underestimated its weakness of the centralised planned economic system which was easy to be taken over and manipulated by those who are not philanthropic.

On the other hand, the expansion of capitalism based on the division of labour and maximising pleasures was unstoppable. Most of all the modern nation-states have used capitalism for accumulating their wealth which secures their military and political strength. Then, the growth of capitalism has now expanded enough to control, rather than be controlled by, nation-states. The market mechanism of capitalism allowed individuals to doing favours for the others in exchange for their own needs and wants. As this political system has provided individuals with the opportunity to gain their ultimate desires, it has encouraged individuals to be competent. Furthermore, it is difficult for some few political factions to take over capitalism because this political-economic system is decentralised and its market mechanism is complex. Therefore, this system is kept preserved and growing further.

The reason why altruism with philanthropy, such as socialism promotes, is difficult to be a dominant stimulus of individuals' action because of their psychological effect in their mind set. The painful memories tend to remain in individuals' mind far stronger and longer than the pleasant memories. Then, hatred of individuals toward other individuals tends to easily dominate in their mind, and they tend to become deeply suspicious about the others, and those who have a stronger hatred than the others tend to have stronger motivation than those who have less hatred. Therefore, although socialism was originally created for a virtuous aim, it has been violated since its centralised structure was hijacked competent haters oppressing the others.

Of course, individuals are virtuous and philanthropic enough to think of spending their time and energy for establishing the good world for all. But, the motivation power of being attracted to vices and short-term egoistic desires tend to be significantly stronger than trying to be virtuous all the time. In order to become altruistic enough to help others and keep being virtuous, individuals need to be materially and spiritually rich enough not to be worried about losing their personal fortune by spending sufficient amount of time and energies. Such individuals who can spare their energies, resources, and time to accomplish such virtuous actions like being altruism and philanthropy are minority.

Naturally, the first priority of living creatures including individual humans is to firstly fulfilling their primary desires. It takes a lot of resources to fulfil their desires until their marginal utility gained from their action fulfilling their primary desires. So, they start conflicting each others to take the resource pie from the other. Vices are usually motivated by the lack of fulfilling their ultimate needs and wants. By contrast meanwhile virtuous acts like being altruism and philanthropy demand enough resources split from individuals, and majority of individuals eventually need to sacrifice their desires to accomplish these virtuous actions. As individual humans' primary desire is innately endowed by nature, it is unstoppable so that vice tends to be a superior motive than virtue. In the primitive stage of civilisation, pillages and wars were used for this purpose. But, human-individuals gradually developed their peaceful, but yet controversial, political mechanism called the market economy which is also called capitalism.

The moral judgement often tends to be biased by the subjective assumption, and it is not sure whether the current moral justification is right or wrong. So, individuals test and evaluate their judgements all the time to select the feasible morality fitting in with what they need and want under the current circumstances. Even Thomas Aquinas, the remarkable priest as well as political-moral philosopher, admitted it.

In addition, a remarkable classical economist Alfred Marshall claimed that the spiritual well-being is more likely to be born after material well-being is satisfied. Capitalism perpetuates the inequality between those have and have not but increases the aggregate material well-beings so that it provides more opportunities for more individuals to feel materially fulfilled enough to start pursuing their spiritual well-being. So, Marshal claimed for capitalism should be preserved and politics should be led by these materially well-off individuals who have become successful in capitalism rather than poor majority mobs.

The expansion of capitalism is based on the division of labour where individuals share their advantageous characteristics by specialising their work in what they are better at than the others. As explained by Adam Smith, when one manufacturer can produce one hundred nails a day, ten persons of the same skill together can produce thousands nails a day. So, the bigger economies of scale multiply the overall productivity level. The currently notable development of information technology and the transportation has enabled capitalism to expand beyond national borders, and this opportunity has enabled the economies of scale to expand furthermore.

This has not been not initially planned by someone: This has spontaneously happened by letting capitalism grow further after easing the international trade since the end of the Cold War in the last century. The innate desires of individuals combined by the development of the information technology and transportation method has perpetuated capitalism enough to transform it from national to global (international). In another word, the pure desire for pleasures gained from the growing productivity level becomes superior to the love of nation or politics. This implies the twilight of nation-states, as well as all the modern political ideologies basing their national politics. The raison d'etre of these nation states is gradually declining.



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