art-e-conomy _ reader - marko stamenkovic

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upon consent nor even capable of achieving it. This meta-power is neither illegal nor
legitimate; it is translegal, but it changes the rules of the national and international
systems.
The analogy between the military rationale of power and the economic rationale
of power is evident: investment capital is the equivalent of firepower – with the big
difference that the threat of not firing enlarges the power. Product development
subsidized by the state is the equivalent of weapon innovation. Taxes can be defense
strategies protecting national markets against global invaders. Offense is the best
defense, and that means research and development, force-fed with government
support and the taxpayers’ money. And, of course, ideological war has been replaced
by the discourse of globalization.
The power of not investing capital exists everywhere. Globalization is not a choice.
It is nobody’s rule. No one is in charge, no one started it, no one can stop it. It is a
kind of organized irresponsibility. You keep looking for someone who is responsible,
to whom you can complain. But there is nobody at the other end of the line, no email
address. The more the globalization discourse dominates all areas of life, the
more powerful capital strategies become. But this still does not mean that managers
are ruling the world. It is important to stress that the meta-power of withdrawing
investments does not depend on managerial princes who actively pursue a political
agenda. Rather, they happen to do “politics” as a side effect. Their involvement is
neither political nor nonpolitical. It is a kind of global sub-politics.
Two unseen consequences of this sub/political meta/power are remarkable. Until
now, the rules of the game in world politics have been bloody and imperialistic. The new
global meta-power is in its essence pacifist (though maybe not in its consequences).
The power of global capitalism derives from potential non-conquest. Of course,
global capital has to be localized somewhere and so it is imperialistic at the same
time. But this is a kind of imperialism whose subjects, even if they don’t like it at all,
vitally depend upon it.
The second little-noticed consequence is that “cosmopolitan corporations” and
maybe even a “cosmopolitan capitalism” are in the making. Global corporations are
using and developing the productivity of diversity. The mixing of races, ethnic groups,
and nationalities – at home and abroad – is becoming their central resource for
creativity and at the same time their dominant employment policy. The antidote to
stagnation is hybridization. Mélange is the norm, at least inside these corporations.
It is exactly the meta-power of capital that sets companies free to diversify their
workforces – often against national laws and agencies. Global corporations are
transnational societies in miniature.
Talking about the possibility of the coming of a pacifist and cosmopolitan
capitalism may sound worse than illusionary. Of course, old-fashioned territorial
struggles continue in many parts of the world and may even gain new importance in
their near future – as the plans of the Bush administration to build a new national
missile defense system suggest. But in the central arenas of economic globalization,
where transnational corporations and nation-states both compete and collaborate,
war has become almost unthinkable; both military power and diplomacy have lost
their longstanding importance. Of course, not all states are equally inclined or able