Domestication of global capital
Aapo Riihimäki, University of Jyväskylä
It would be an understatement to say that the movement of capital has become liberated from its political restrictions. In effect, supranational capital has become the master, while national governments and parliaments act as its obedient servants. They express their obedience by the way of giving in the social policy an unquestioning priority to the growth of GNP.
The aim of the Marxian movement was to challenge the global hegemony of (the privately owned) capital. A new counterforce to capital is urgently needed. Best eligible to this role would be the (middle class) consumers. That’s why their emancipation is called for. To start off, they have to be made aware of two facts. First, continued growth of their material needs is the main precondition for the growth of the global economy. Secondly, ever more of these needs are unnecessary, dispensable, downright sick. Competitive living standard is a symptom of social disease.
Yet the society’s recovery worldwide is within sight. Self-critical consumers will be the new dynamic agent. As a grass roots network they can initiate new types of social relations and present themselves as noteworthy partners to business enterprises as well as to public authorities. Unlike the Marxists, they need not resort to violent measures in order to get a hearing: the national constitution already guarantees them the right to dispose of their property.
In the past thirty years I have treated this topic in five books (in Finnish). I am now prepared to present my argument to a wider and more sophisticated public. The titles of my books when listed should reveal their tenor:
Consumist manifesto (1976)
Anti-Capital (1991)
The end of secularization and the new man (1996)
Economy of liberation (2002)
Eros and economy (2006)