Date:          Tue, 21 Jun 1994 14:52:33 +0100 (BST)
Subject:       planetary system



Alan, i just don't get the analogy between the MIC and an integrating 
planetary economic system: the former might be a totalization but 
there is no reason for the latter to be (D&G's starting point in AOe 
is that wholes do not have to be totalizations). As for stock-market 
fluctuations: do fluctuations in eco-systems make them equally non-
existent as real wholes? You seem to be suggesting that only 
seamlessly homeostatic predictable systems are 'really integrated'; 
back to neoclassical dreaming. It is precisely because fluid 
denationalized capital is best positioned to take advantage of 
instability, imperfect information, complex risk profiles, etc. that 
it inexorably absorbs more parochial set-ups into its axiomatic. Snap-
shots of particular peasant micro-economies surely cannot count as a 
counterweight to the immense tidal forces that have been unleashed 
by the collapse of import-substitution siege economy development 
models over the past 15 years or so. China, India, Latin America, 
even Africa are all sliding down the same slope of attraction - this 
can't be a coincidence, or a misleading surface phenomenon, it's 
infrastructural. (The flip side, of course, is the crash of the Euro-
Japanese model, who ever talks about a 'third way' anymore?) 
    The integrity of the planetary economy results from the 
singularity of an abstract machine - that of a 'working economy' = 
capitalism - that everyone is driven to try and implement. Either a 
succesful innovation/sifting machinery is in place, dissipating 
entropy to sophisticate its production processes irreversibly, or 
horrible things happen in the global market place (UK late '70s, 
Africa through the 80s, Japan now). The kind of ontologizing 
pluralism that suggests each locale might have specific best 
practices makes no sense to me, unless it cashes out into some notion 
of racial essense or equivalently vicious garbage. There are only 
particularist conservatisms, markets, and schizorevolution. 
Developmental pluralism is an ideology of the populist 'right' (Khmer 
Rouge, Sendero, BJP, assorted eurofascists, Zhirinovsky, Perot).    
     I'll still hunt down the books you suggest, if only to get onto 
a more focused rant.


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