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Visualizzazione post con etichetta General political culture in English. Mostra tutti i post
Visualizzazione post con etichetta General political culture in English. Mostra tutti i post

lunedì 8 maggio 2017

France-Macron: "Flexibility and axis with Berlin"

The new President of the Republic will be proclaimed on Thursday 11 May 2017.
The settlement ceremony will take place at the latest on Sunday, May 14, the end of the term of office of François Hollande.
Macron has a short political history in the center-left, Macron is 39 years old, he is a charismatic speaker, he plays the piano and he graduated from the Nationwide School of Administration, completing his studies in 2004.
The first analysis of the vote shows that Marine Le Pen has gone better among people between the ages of 25 and 49, while the percentages of Macron are definitely better among the younger and the oldest. 
Macron was then chosen by those with a higher level of education and those with higher incomes. Macron was finally voted by the man who worked as a manager or retired, while Marine Le Pen was well-off among the workers.
During the electoral campaign Macron was called “center-left liberal”, “centrist” and “moderate”. Bloomberg wrote in September, “blends appreciation with market reforms with social community appeals.”
He thinks that sovereignty is not national but European, and that closing borders to protect France from the risks of globalization (as proposed by Marine Le Pen) is unjustified for the French economic development.

From 2006 to 2015 he was enrolled in the Socialist Party.
During his commissions the new President of the French republic says things that no other French candidate says, for example "We are Europe. We are Bruxelles. We need Europe.” Macron is defined as a “liberal progressist” in the economy, but left on social issues: he speaks of the freedom to practice each one of his religion in a secular state and says that no one is to give to those “who promote exclusion, hatred or closure in ourselves.”

Macron addresses the “progressive camp” of electors and electricians who do not identify monolithically either with the right or with the left parties.
Anyway he is in favor for the addresses ecologists, liberals, centrists, social democrats, but especially those who do not feel they have a “Precise political affiliation”.
He worked at Rothschild's Rothschild and Cie Banque, and for this reason Marine Le Pen accused him of being an expression of a “global elite” wanting to control France.
He then proposed to “relaunch the entrepreneurial spirit” of the country by facilitating the decision to take risks during his working careers and defending “a universal right to professional mobility”.

Last November, Macron published a book entitled Révolution, in which the political program underlying his candidacy for the presidential candidates had to be contained.
In fact, the book mainly refers to Macron's political line without getting into the details of the reforms he would like to propose and support.
Macron speaks of simplification, decentralization, protection and liberation.
He is in favor of lowering labor costs through tax breaks for businesses, wanting to “reduce the gap between gross and net remuneration” by eliminating some contributions paid by employees and self-employed and wants simplification of the public structure.
When he was minister, Macron had been defined by several French newspapers as “the most liberal of the governing team” and his first bill on liberalization had promptly discussed a lot of.

Macron then resigned as Minister on August 30, 2016. After resignation he founded a center party called En Marche! Anyway to justify his candidacy outside the traditional parties, he highlighted the “hope” he meant to represent, especially among young people: “My goal is not to gather the right or left but gather the French.”
Macron has officially been nominated in mid-November, criticizing in his speech what he calls the “blocks” which, in his opinion, paralyze France and he says: “The system has stopped protecting those who had to protect. Politics now lives for itself and is more concerned with its own survival than the interests of the country."

Macron says globalization has favored the wealthiest of the developed countries and the middle classes in developing countries. The middle classes in the developed countries, however, have weakened, and above all, they need to perk up.
Macron says: “The middle classes were socially, politically and ideologically built on the concept of progress and the conviction that their children would have lived better of their parents. This is no longer true.”
Macron finally proposed a differentiated retirement depending on job coaches and speaks a lot about education.
Macron is in favor of greater autonomy of universities and schools and in the field of security promised 10.000 jobs for policemen and gendarmes.
He says that France cannot be enough for itself and that united Europe is crucial both in the fight against terrorism and in dealing with migratory flows.


Voilà! Vive le peuple, vive l’Europe!

mercoledì 22 luglio 2015

"Out in the streets we call them terrorists"

Oggi vi riporto una foto che ho scattato in una piccola stradina di via Polese al centro di Bologna, in una strada secondaria per cui era facile mettersi lì a scarabocchiare i muri. 
La frase che in questo Murales viene riportato è: "Out in the streets we call them terrorists" è una sorta di lo slogan dell'artista di strada, Si firma con il "nome": Red.

Sinceramente l'artista ha dimostrato una certa bravura nel riportare perfettamente i volti dei quattro leader politici di fama internazionale, da sinistra verso destra nella foto: Barack Obama, Francois Hollande, Angela Merkel e Vladimir Putin.

Che cosa mai avrebbe spinto "Red" ad andare oltre l'arte di pitturare qualcosa?
Forse c'è stata una certa forza mediatica con al centro il tema caldo della Grecia e il governo Tsipras che spinge qualcuno a dimostrare che l'Europa non è così tanto unita?
E che forse neanche l'asse occidentale dell'America con quella Russa ha la meglio?
E poi i colori, perché ha spinto "Red" a interpretarli in quella maniera?
Il bavaglio racchiude in sè un forte simbolismo, soprattutto quegli sguardi noti.
E' una provocazione o dietro c'è qualcos'altro?

Io mi sono fermato pensandoci un poco! Ho scattato una foto perché ho trovato interessante i soggetti e il modo in cui è stato interpretato più che altro al livello artistico, e sottolineo e non giustifico il fatto che l'artista abbia commesso un reato. Anzi.
Oltre a questo, se pur in un momento difficile, riesco a capire la capacità dell'artista di interpretare una certa forma di politica. Ma non la condivido.

Ahimè è così tanto difficile disegnare questo quadro direi mondiale, parlo della politica Europea ed internazionale, che forse "Red" è riuscito a mala pena a sfiorare lo schema.

martedì 25 febbraio 2014

"Italia Diplomazia più costosa al mondo."


Sono cifre a cui si stenta a credere, tanto sono scandalose: le remunerazioni degli ambasciatori italiani sono pari a due volte e mezzo quelle degli ambasciatori tedeschi. Quello a Parigi, per fare un esempio, prende 20.995 euro netti al mese, contro gli 8.449 del suo collega tedesco. Un privilegio assurdo in un Paese in crisi economica come l'Italia. È quanto emerge da una ricerca di Roberto Perotti, 53 anni, docente di economia politica alla Bocconi, pubblicata dal sito lavoce.info. È probabile che questa volta, alla denuncia di un ricercatore, facciano seguito delle decisioni politiche. Perotti è infatti uno dei collaboratori più fidati di Matteo Renzi, e da mesi sta coordinando un gruppo di ricerca sulla spesa pubblica su incarico del segretario Pd. L'obiettivo, stando ad alcune dichiarazioni dello stesso Renzi, è di estendere i tagli già previsti per la politica anche alla casta dei diplomatici, che gode di retribuzioni e privilegi record a livello mondiale, pur non brillando per efficienza né per autorevolezza.

È bene essere chiari su un punto: la voglia dichiarata di tagliare stipendi e pensioni già in essere, voglia che da qualche tempo caratterizza i consiglieri di Renzi (in primis il finanziere Davide Serra e il deputato Yoram Gutgeld), non ci è mai piaciuta. Ma gli altissimi stipendi dei dipendenti della Farnesina, sommati a una serie di privilegi senza eguali al mondo, sono indifendibili.

La ricerca del professor Perotti spiega che gli ambasciatori italiani godono di una retribuzione elevata poiché quando vanno all'estero prendono di fatto due stipendi: l'Ise (indennità di servizio all'estero) e lo «stipendio metropolitano», che è quello che avrebbero preso restando in Italia. Così l'ambasciatore a Parigi, sommando l'Ise di 15.610 euro allo stipendio metropolitano di 5.385 si porta a casa ogni mese 20.995 euro netti, pari a 2,48 volte la remunerazione netta del suo collega tedesco (8.449 euro netti). Dettaglio da non trascurare: anche l'ambasciatore tedesco può sommare due stipendi (quello nazionale più l'indennità per l'estero), ma tra il suo netto in busta paga e quello del collega italiano c'è un abisso. Se pensate che la busta paga dell'ambasciatore italiano a Parigi sia un caso limite, vi sbagliate. Quello che sta a Tokyo batte tutti, con 27.028 euro netti al mese, seguito dagli ambasciatori a Mosca (26.998 euro), a Washington (24.606), all'Onu di New York (23.667). La media degli altri è di 20mila euro netti al mese, o poco più. Il più povero, si fa per dire, è l'ambasciatore a Città del Messico, che si deve accontentare di 18.797 euro netti al mese.


Quanto ai privilegi, la ricerca di Perotti precisa che gli ambasciatori sia tedeschi che italiani «hanno diritto all'abitazione», per cui non devono pagare l'affitto. A questo provvede lo Stato, che, nel caso italiano, non è mai stato neppure sfiorato dall'idea di una spending review. A Ginevra, precisa Perotti, il rappresentante italiano alle Nazioni unite risiede in una villa con 12 bagni che costa 22mila euro di affitto al mese. Poi ci sono le spese di rappresentanza, che costituiscono un'indennità a parte. Il professor Perotti non le ha incluse nella sua tabella perché sono variabili e soggette a rendicontazione. Si va da 4mila euro mensili a Pretoria fino a 22mila euro a Tokyo: si tratta di spese per la benzina, l'auto di servizio, il leasing, viaggi di rappresentanza, domestici, ricevimenti.

Non è finita. Perotti ricorda che gli ambasciatori percepiscono anche un'indennità di sistemazione quando prendono servizio all'estero (è pari a una volta e mezzo l'Ise mensile), mentre quando tornano in Italia prendono l'indennità di richiamo dal servizio (anche questa pari a una volta e mezzo l'Ise mensile). A queste si somma un contributo per le spese di trasporto delle «masserizie», pari al 50 per cento dell'Ise se la sede diplomatica in cui si prende servizio dista meno di 1.500 km da Roma; al 75% dell'Ise se è tra 1.500 e 3.500 km; e al 100% oltre i 3.500 km. Al rientro dal servizio, il contributo per il trasporto delle masserizie è garantito per il medesimo importo. Forse per non infierire, Perotti non ha aggiunto altri dati, che tuttavia sono disponibili su internet e sono utili per completare il quadro. L'Italia ha più sedi diplomatiche e consolari all'estero (325) di gradi Paesi come gli Stati Uniti (271), la Russia (309), il Regno Unito (261) e la Germania (230). Una commissione parlamentare, già in passato, ha calcolato che riducendo il numero delle sedi si potrebbero risparmiare almeno 5 milioni di euro l'anno. Poca cosa rispetto al costo complessivo della Farnesina, che è pari a 1,7 miliardi l'anno, equivale allo 0,1% del pil, ed è formato per l'83,3% dalle spese per il personale.

Una spesa che rappresenta una scandalosa anomalia sotto ogni punto di vista. La forbice degli stipendi va dai 300mila euro netti l'anno (in media) degli ambasciatori, fino ai 6mila euro netti al mese per gli autisti. In totale, la Farnesina conta 906 diplomatici (di cui 522 all'estero e 387 in sede), 41 dirigenti, e 3.457 addetti alle aree funzionali. Un esercito di 4.752 dipendenti di ruolo, di cui 2.853 all'estero e 1.989 a Roma. A questi si sommano altri 2.400 dipendenti assunti a contratto, di cui 800 con contratto italiano, e gli altri con contratti locali dei Paesi in cui si trovano le sedi diplomatiche, con forti disparità retributive. Dunque, una doppia anomalia, in quanto più della metà di tutto il personale in servizio all'estero è mandato dall'Italia (il 60%), con costi assai elevati, mentre il restante personale viene assunto sul posto, con contratti meno costosi. Gli altri Paesi, di regola, fanno esattamente l'opposto, e inviano in missione non più del 20% del personale nazionale.

Infine, una chicca trovata sul web. L'ambasciatore italiano a Berlino guadagna 20mila euro netti al mese, ed ha 58 dipendenti. La cancelliera Angela Merkel prende meno della metà: 9.072,43 euro netti al mese, e governa un Paese con più di 80 milioni di abitanti. Ogni commento è superfluo.


 di Tino Oldani  Vai direttamente all'articolo.


giovedì 3 maggio 2012

"Sono incazzato nero e tutto questo non lo accetterò più!"



Non serve dirvi che le cose vanno male, tutti quanti sanno che vanno male. Abbiamo una crisi. Molti non hanno un lavoro, e chi ce l'ha vive con la paura di perderlo. Il potere d'acquisto del dollaro è zero. Le banche stanno fallendo, i negozianti hanno il fucile nascosto sotto il banco, i teppisti scorrazzano per le strade e non c'è nessuno che sappia cosa fare e non se ne vede la fine. Sappiamo che l'aria ormai è irrespirabile e che il nostro cibo è immangiabile. Stiamo seduti a guardare la TV mentre il nostro telecronista locale ci dice che oggi ci sono stati 15 omicidi e 63 reati di violenza come se tutto questo fosse normale, sappiamo che le cose vanno male, più che male. È la follia, è come se tutto dovunque fosse impazzito così che noi non usciamo più. Ce ne stiamo in casa e lentamente il mondo in cui viviamo diventa più piccolo e diciamo soltanto: "Almeno lasciateci tranquilli nei nostri salotti per piacere! Lasciatemi il mio tostapane, la mia TV, la mia vecchia bicicletta e io non dirò niente ma... ma lasciatemi tranquillo!" Beh, io non vi lascerò tranquilli. Io voglio che voi vi incazziate. Non voglio che protestiate, non voglio che vi ribelliate, non voglio che scriviate al vostro senatore, perché non saprei cosa dirvi di scrivere: io non so cosa fare per combattere la crisi e l'inflazione e i russi e la violenza per le strade. Io so soltanto che prima dovete incazzarvi. Dovete dire: "Sono un essere umano, porca puttana! La mia vita ha un valore!" Quindi io voglio che ora voi vi alziate. Voglio che tutti voi vi alziate dalle vostre sedie. Voglio che vi alziate proprio adesso, che andiate alla finestra e l'apriate e vi affacciate tutti ed urliate: "Sono incazzato nero e tutto questo non lo accetterò più!". Voglio che vi alziate in questo istante. Alzatevi, andate alla finestra, apritela, mettete fuori la testa e urlate: "Sono incazzato nero e tutto questo non lo accetterò più!" Le cose devono cambiare, ma prima vi dovete incazzare. Dovete dire: "Sono incazzato nero e tutto questo non lo accetterò più!" Allora penseremo a cosa fare per combattere la crisi, l'inflazione e la crisi energetica, ma Cristo alzatevi dalle vostre sedie, andate alla finestra, mettete fuori la testa e ditelo, gridatelo: "Sono incazzato nero e tutto questo non lo accetterò più!" 
Dal film Quinto Potere, film statunitense del 1976 diretto da Sidney Lumet.

venerdì 21 ottobre 2011

The rise of the Virtual State

TERRITORY BECOMES PASSE

Amid the supposed clamor of contending cultures and civilizations, a new reality is emerging. The nation-state is becoming a tighter, more vigorous unit capable of sustaining the pressures of worldwide competition. Developed states are putting aside military, political, and territorial ambitions as they struggle not for cultural dominance but for a greater share of world output. Countries are not uniting as civilizations and girding for conflict with one another. instead, they are downsizing--in function if not in geographic form. Today and for the foreseeable future, the only international civilization worthy of the name is the governing economic culture of the world market. Despite the view of some contemporary observers, the forces of globalization have successfully resisted partition into cultural camps.

Yet the world's attention continues to be mistakenly focused on military and political struggles for territory. In beleaguered Bosnia, Serbian leaders sought to create an independent province with an allegiance to Belgrade. A few years ago Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein aimed to corner the world oil market through military aggression against Kuwait and, in all probability, Saudi Arabia; oil, a product of land, represented the supreme embodiment of his ambitions. In Kashmir, India and Pakistan are wing for territorial dominance over a population that neither may be fully able to control. Similar rivalries beset Rwanda and Burundi and the factions in Liberia.

These examples, however, look to the past. Less developed countries, still producing goods that are derived from land, continue to covet territory. In economies where capital, labor, and information are mobile and have risen to predominance, no land fetish remains. Developed countries would rather plumb the world market than acquire territory. The virtual state--a state that has downsized its territorially based production capability--is the logical consequence of this emancipation from the land.

In recent years the rise of the economic analogue of the virtual state--the virtual corporation--has been widely discussed. Firms have discovered the advantages of locating their production facilities wherever it is most profitable. Increasingly, this is not in the same location as corporate headquarters. Parts of a corporation are dispersed globally according to their specialties. But the more important development is the political one, the rise of the virtual state, the political counterpart of the virtual corporation.

The ascent of the trading state preceded that of the virtual state. After World War II, led by Japan and Germany, the most advanced nations shifted their efforts from controlling territory to augmenting their share of world trade. In that period, goods were more mobile than capital or labor, and selling abroad became the name of the game. As capital has become increasingly mobile, advanced nations have come to recognize that exporting is no longer the only means to economic growth; one can instead produce goods overseas for the foreign market.

As more production by domestic industries takes place abroad and land becomes less valuable than technology, knowledge, and direct investment, the function of the state is being further redefined. The state no longer commands resources as it did in mercantilist yesteryear; it negotiates with foreign and domestic capital and labor to lure them into its own economic sphere and stimulate its growth. A nation's economic strategy is now at least as important as its military strategy; its ambassadors have become foreign trade and investment representatives. Major foreign trade and investment deals command executive attention as political and military issues did two decades ago. The frantic two weeks in December 1994 when the White House outmaneuvered the French to secure for Raytheon Company a deal worth over $1 billion for the management of rainforests and air traffic in Brazil exemplifies the new international crisis.

Timeworn methods of augmenting national power and wealth are no longer effective. Like the headquarters of a virtual corporation, the virtual state determines overall strategy and invests in its people rather than amassing expensive production capacity. It contracts out other functions to states that specialize in or need them. Imperial Great Britain may have been the model for the nineteenth century, but Hong Kong will be the model for the 21st.

The virtual state is a country whose economy is reliant on mobile factors of production. Of course it houses virtual corporations and presides over foreign direct investment by its enterprises. But more than this, it encourages, stimulates, and to a degree even coordinates such activities. In formulating economic strategy, the virtual state recognizes that its own production does not have to take place at home; equally, it may play host to the capital and labor of other nations. Unlike imperial Germany, czarist Russia, and the United States of the Gilded Age--which aimed at nineteenth-century omnicompetence--it does not seek to combine or excel in all economic functions, from mining and agriculture to production and distribution. The virtual state specializes in modern technical and research services and derives its income not just from high-value manufacturing, but from product design, marketing, and financing. The rationale for its economy is efficiency attained through productive downsizing. Size no longer determines economic potential. Virtual nations hold the competitive key to greater wealth in the 21st century. They will likely supersede the continent-sized and self-sufficient units that prevailed in the past. Productive specialization will dominate internationally just as the reduced instruction set, or "RISC," computer chip has outmoded its more versatile but slower predecessors.

THE TRADING STATE

In the past, states were obsessed with land. The international system with its intermittent wars was founded on the assumption that land was the major factor in both production and power. States could improve their position by building empires or invading other nations to seize territory. To acquire land was a boon: a conquered province contained peasants and grain supplies, and its inhabitants rendered tribute to the new sovereign. Before the age of nationalism, a captured principality willingly obeyed its new ruler. Hence the Hapsburg monarchy, Spain, France, and Russia could become major powers through territorial expansion in Europe between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

With the Industrial Revolution, however, capital and labor assumed new importance. Unlike land, they were mobile ingredients of productive strength. Great Britain innovated in discovering sophisticated uses for the new factors. Natural resources--especially coal, iron, and, later, oil--were still economically vital. Agricultural and mineral resources were critical to the development of the United States and other fledgling industrial nations like Australia, Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand in the nineteenth century. Not until late in the twentieth century did mobile factors of production become paramount.

By that time, land had declined in relative value and become harder for nations to hold. Colonial revolutions in the Third World since World War II have shown that nationalist mobilization of the population in developing societies impedes an imperialist or invader trying to extract resources. A nation may expend the effort to occupy new territory without gaining proportionate economic benefits.

In time, nationalist resistance and the shift in the basis of production should have an impact on the frequency of war. Land, which is fixed, can be physically captured, but labor, capital, and information are mobile and cannot be definitively seized; after an attack, these resources can slip away like quicksilver. Saddam Hussein ransacked the computers in downtown Kuwait City in August 1990 only to find that the cash in bank accounts had already been electronically transferred. Even though it had abandoned its territory, the Kuwaiti government could continue to spend billions of dollars to resist Hussein's conquest.

Today, for the wealthiest industrial countries such as Germany, the United States, and Japan, investment in land no longer pays the same dividends. Since mid-century, commodity prices have fallen nearly 40 percent relative to prices of manufactured goods.[1] The returns from the manufacturing trade greatly exceed those from agricultural exports. As a result, the terms of trade for many developing nations have been deteriorating, and in recent years the rise in prices of international services has outpaced that for manufactured products. Land prices have been steeply discounted.

Amid this decline, the 1970s and 1980s brought a new political prototype: the trading state. Rather than territorial expansion, the trading state held trade to be its fundamental purpose. This shift in national strategy was driven by the declining value of fixed productive assets. Smaller states--those for which, initially at any rate, a military-territorial strategy was not feasible--also adopted trade-oriented strategies. Along with small European and East Asian states, Japan and West Germany moved strongly in a trading direction after World War II.

Countries tend to imitate those that are most powerful. Many states followed in the wake of Great Britain in the nineteenth century; in recent decades, numerous states seeking to improve their lot in the world have emulated Japan. Under Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s, even the Soviet Union sought to move away from its emphasis on military spending and territorial expansion.

In recent years, however, a further stimulus has hastened this change. Faced with enhanced international competition in the late 1980s and early 1990s, corporations have opted for pervasive downsizing. They have trimmed the ratio of production workers to output, saving on costs. In some cases productivity increases resulted from pruning of the work force; in others output increased. These improvements have been highly effective; according to economist Stephen Roach in a 1994 paper published by the investment banking firm Morgan Stanley, they have nearly closed the widely noted productivity gap between services and manufacturing. The gap that remains is most likely due to measurement problems. The most efficient corporations are those that can maintain or increase output with a steady or declining amount of labor. Such corporations grew on a worldwide basis.

Meanwhile, corporations in Silicon Valley recognized that cost-cutting, productivity, and competitiveness could be enhanced still further by using the production lines of another company. The typical American plant at the time, such as Ford Motor Company's Willow Run factory in Michigan, was fully integrated, with headquarters, design offices, production workers, and factories located on substantial tracts of land. This comprehensive structure was expensive to maintain and operate, hence a firm that could employ someone else's production line could cut costs dramatically. Land and machines did not have to be bought, labor did not have to be hired, medical benefits did not have to be provided. These advantages could result from what are called economies of scope, with a firm turning out different products on the same production line or quality circle.

Or they might be the result of small, specialized firms' ability to perform exacting operations, such as the surface mounting of miniaturized components directly on circuit boards without the need for soldering or conventional wiring. In either case, the original equipment manufacturer would contract out its production to other firms. SCI Systems, Solectron, Merix, Flextronics, Smartflex, and Sanmina turn out products for Digital Equipment, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM. In addition, AT&T, Apple, IBM, Motorola, MCI, and Corning meet part of their production needs through other suppliers. TelePad, a company that makes pen-based computers, was launched with no manufacturing capability at all. Compaq's latest midrange computer is to be produced on another company's production line.

Thus was born the virtual corporation, an entity with research, development, design, marketing, financing, legal, and other headquarters functions, but few or no manufacturing facilities: a company with a head but no body. It represents the ultimate achievement of corporate downsizing, and the model is spreading rapidly from firm to firm. It is not surprising that the virtual corporation should catch on. "Concept" or "head" corporations can design new products for a range of different production facilities. Strategic alliances between firms, which increase specialization, are also very profitable. According to the October 2, 1995, Financial Times, firms that actively pursue strategic alliances are 50 percent more profitable than those that do not.

TOWARD THE VIRTUAL STATE

In a setting where the economic functions of the trading state have displaced the territorial functions of the expansionist nation, the newly pruned corporation has led to the emerging phenomenon of the virtual state. Downsizing has become an index of corporate efficiency and productivity gains. Now the national economy is also being downsized. Among the most efficient economies are those that possess limited production capacity. The archetype is Hong Kong, whose production facilities are now largely situated in southern China. This arrangement may change after 1997 with Hong Kong's reversion to the mainland, but it may not. It is just as probable that Hong Kong will continue to govern parts of the mainland economically as it is that Beijing will dictate to Hong Kong politically. The one country-two systems formula will likely prevail. In this context, it is important to remember that Britain governed Hong Kong politically and legally for 150 years, but it did not dictate its economics. Nor did this arrangement prevent Hong Kong Chinese from extending economic and quasi-political controls to areas outside their country.

The model of the virtual state suggests that political as well as economic strategy push toward a downsizing and relocation of production capabilities. The trend can be observed in Singapore as well. The successors of Lee Kuan Yew keep the country on a tight political rein but still depend economically on the inflow of foreign factors of production. Singapore's investment in China, Malaysia, and elsewhere is within others' jurisdictions. The virtual state is in this sense a negotiating entity. It depends as much or more on economic access abroad as it does on economic control at home. Despite its past reliance on domestic production, Korea no longer manufactures everything at home, and Japanese production (given the high yen) is now increasingly lodged abroad. In Europe, Switzerland is the leading virtual nation; as much as 98 percent of Nestle's production capacity, for instance, is located abroad. Holland now produces most of its goods outside its borders. England is also moving in tandem with the worldwide trend; according to the Belgian economic historian Paul Bairoch in 1994, Britain's foreign direct investment abroad was almost as large as America's. A remarkable 20 percent of the production of U.S. corporations now takes place outside the United States.

A reflection of how far these tendencies have gone is the growing portion of GDP consisting of high-value-added services, such as concept, design, consulting, and financial services. Services already constitute 70 percent of American GDP. Of the total, 63 percent are in the high-value category. Of course manufacturing matters, but it matters much less than it once did. As a proportion of foreign direct investment, service exports have grown strikingly in most highly industrialized economies. According to a 1994 World Bank report, Liberalizing International Transactions in Services, "The reorientation of [foreign direct investment] towards the services sector has occurred in almost all developed market economies, the principal exporters of services capital: in the most important among them, the share of the services sector is around 40 percent of the stock of outward FDI, and that share is rising."

Manufacturing, for these nations, will continue to decline in importance. If services productivity increases as much as it has in recent years, it will greatly strengthen U.S. competitiveness abroad. But it can no longer be assumed that services face no international competition. Efficient high-value services will be as important to a nation as the manufacturing of automobiles and electrical equipment once were.[2] Since 1959, services prices have increased more than three times as rapidly as industrial prices. This means that many nations will be able to prosper without major manufacturing capabilities.

Australia is an interesting example. Still reliant on the production of sheep and raw materials (both related to land), Australia has little or no industrial sector. Its largest export to the United States is meat for hamburgers. On the other hand, its service industries of media, finance, and telecommunications--represented most notably by the media magnate Rupert Murdoch are the envy of the world. Canada represents a similar amalgam of raw materials and powerful service industries in newspapers, broadcast media, and telecommunications.

As a result of these trends, the world may increasingly become divided into "head" and "body" nations, or nations representing some combination of those two functions. While Australia and Canada stress the headquarters or head functions, China will be the 21st-century model of a body nation. Although China does not innately or immediately know what to produce for the world market, it has found success in joint ventures with foreign corporations. China will be an attractive place to produce manufactured goods, but only because sophisticated enterprises from other countries design, market, and finance the products China makes. At present China cannot chart its own industrial future.

Neither can Russia. Focusing on the products of land, the Russians are still prisoners of territorial fetishism. Their commercial laws do not yet permit the delicate and sophisticated arrangements that ensure that "body" manufacturers deliver quality goods for their foreign "head." Russia's transportation network is also primitive. These, however, are temporary obstacles. In time Russia, with China and India, will serve as an important locus of the world's production plant.

THE VESTIGES OF SERFDOM

THE WORLD IS embarked on a progressive emancipation from land as a determinant of production and power. For the Third World, the past unchangeable strictures of comparative advantage can be overcome through the acquisition of a highly trained labor force. Africa and Latin America may not have to rely on the exporting of raw materials or agricultural products; through education, they can capitalize on an educated labor force, as India has in Bangalore and Ireland in Dublin. Investing in human capital can substitute for trying to foresee the vagaries of the commodities markets and avoid the constant threat of overproduction. Meanwhile, land continues to decline in value. Recent studies of 180 countries show that as population density rises, per capita GDP falls. In a new study, economist Deepak Lal notes that investment as well as growth is inversely related to land holdings.[3]

These findings are a dramatic reversal of past theories of power in international politics. In the 1930s the standard international relations textbook would have ranked the great powers in terms of key natural resources: oil, iron ore, coal, bauxite, copper, tungsten, and manganese. Analysts presumed that the state with the largest stock of raw materials and goods derived from land would prevail. CIA estimates during the Cold War were based on such conclusions. It turns out, however, that the most prosperous countries often have a negligible endowment of natural resources. For instance, Japan has shut down its coal industry and has no iron ore, bauxite, or oil. Except for most of its rice, it imports much of its food. Japan is richly endowed with human capital, however, and that makes all the difference.

The implications for the United States are equally striking. As capital, labor, and knowledge become more important than land in charting economic success, America can influence and possibly even reshape its pattern of comparative advantage. The "new trade theory," articulated clearly by the economist Paul Krugman, focuses on path dependence, the so-called QWERTY effect of past choices. The QWERTY keyboard was not the arrangement of letter-coded keys that produced the fastest typing, except perhaps for left-handers. But, as the VHS videotape format became the standard for video recording even though other formats were technically better, the QWERTY keyboard became the standard for the typewriter (and computer) industry, and everyone else had to adapt to it. Nations that invested from the start in production facilities for the 16-kilobyte computer memory chip also had great advantages down the line in 4- and 16-megabyte chips. Intervention at an early point in the chain of development can influence results later on, which suggests that the United States and other nations can and should deliberately alter their pattern of comparative advantage and choose their economic activity.

American college and graduate education, for example, has supported the decisive U.S. role in the international services industry in research and development, consulting, design, packaging, financing, and the marketing of new products. Mergers and acquisitions are American subspecialties that draw on the skills of financial analysts and attorneys. The American failure, rather, has been in the first 12 years of education. Unlike that of Germany and Japan (or even Taiwan, Korea, and Singapore), American elementary and secondary education falls well below the world standard.

Economics teaches that products should be valued according to their economic importance. For a long period, education was undervalued, socially and economically speaking, despite productivity studies by Edward Denison and others that showed its long-term importance to U.S. growth and innovation. Recent studies have underscored this importance. According to the World Bank, 64 percent of the world's wealth consists of human capital. But the social and economic valuation of kindergarten through 12th-grade education has still not appreciably increased. Educators, psychologists, and school boards debate how education should be structured, but Americans do not invest more money in it. Corporations have sought to upgrade the standards of teaching and learning in their regions, but localities and states have lagged behind, as has the federal government. Elementary and high school teachers should be rewarded as patient creators of high-value capital in the United States and elsewhere. In Switzerland, elementary school teachers are paid around $70,000 per year, about the salary of a starting lawyer at a New York firm. In international economic competition, human capital has turned out to be at least as important as other varieties of capital. In spite of their reduced functions, states liberated from the confines of their geography have been able, with appropriate education, to transform their industrial and economic futures.

THE REDUCED DANGER OF CONFLICT

As nations turn to the cultivation of human capital, what will a world of virtual states be like? Production for one company or country can now take place in many parts of the world. In the process of down-sizing, corporations and nation-states will have to get used to reliance on others. Virtual corporations need other corporations' production facilities. Virtual nations need other states' production capabilities. As a result, economic relations between states will come to resemble nerves connecting heads in one place to bodies somewhere else. Naturally, producer nations will be working quickly to become the brains behind emerging industries elsewhere. But in time, few nations will have within their borders all the components of a technically advanced economic existence.

To sever the connections between states would undermine the organic unit. States joined in this way are therefore less likely to engage in conflict. In the past, international norms underlying the balance of power, the Concert of Europe, or even rule by the British Raj helped specify appropriate courses of action for parties in dispute. The international economy also rested partially on normative agreement. Free trade, open domestic economies, and, more recently, freedom of movement for capital were normative notions. In addition to specifying conditions for borrowing, the International Monetary Fund is a norm-setting agency that inculcates market economics in nations not fully ready to accept their international obligations.

Like national commercial strategies, these norms have been largely abstracted from the practices of successful nations. In the nineteenth century many countries emulated Great Britain and its precepts. In the British pantheon of virtues, free trade was a norm that could be extended to other nations without self-defeat. Success for one nation did not undermine the prospects for others. But the acquisition of empire did cause congestion for other nations on the paths to industrialization and growth. Once imperial Britain had taken the lion's share, there was little left for others. The inability of all nations to live up to the norms Britain established fomented conflict between them.

In a similar vein, Japan's current trading strategy could be emulated by many other countries. Its pacific principles and dependence on world markets and raw materials supplies have engendered greater economic cooperation among other countries. At the same time, Japan's insistence on maintaining a quasi-closed domestic economy and a foreign trade surplus cannot be successfully imitated by everyone; if some achieve the desired result, others necessarily will not. In this respect, Japan's recent practices and norms stand athwart progress and emulation by other nations.

President Clinton rightly argues that the newly capitalist developmental states, such as Korea and Taiwan, have simply modeled themselves on restrictionist Japan. If this precedent were extended to China, the results would endanger the long-term stability of the world economic and financial system. Accordingly, new norms calling for greater openness in trade, finance, and the movement of factors of production will be necessary to stabilize the international system. Appropriate norms reinforce economic incentives to reduce conflict between differentiated international units.

DEFUSING THE POPULATION BOMB

So long as the international system of nation-states lasts, there will be conflict among its members. States see events from different perspectives, and competition and struggle between them are endemic. The question is how far conflicts will proceed. Within a domestic system, conflicts between individuals need not escalate to the use of physical force. Law and settlement procedures usually reduce outbreaks of hostility. In international relations, however, no sovereign, regnant authority can discipline feuding states. International law sets a standard, but it is not always obeyed. The great powers constitute the executive committee of nation-states and can intervene from time to time to set things right. But, as Bosnia shows, they often do not, and they virtually never intervene in the absence of shared norms and ideologies.

In these circumstances, the economic substructure of international relations becomes exceedingly important. That structure can either impel or retard conflicts between nation-states. When land is the major factor of production, the temptation to strike another nation is great. When the key elements of production are less tangible, the situation changes. The taking of real estate does not result in the acquisition of knowledge, and aggressors cannot seize the needed capital. Workers may flee from an invader. Wars of aggression and wars of punishment are losing their impact and justification.

Eventually, however, contend critics such as Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, land will become important once again. Oil supplies will be depleted; the quantity of fertile land will decline; water will run dry. Population will rise relative to the supply of natural resources and food. This process, it is claimed, could return the world to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with clashes over territory once again the engine of conflict. The natural resources on which the world currently relies may one day run out, but, as before, there will be substitutes. One sometimes forgets that in the 1840s whale oil, which was the most common fuel for lighting, became unavailable. The harnessing of global energy and the production of food does not depend on particular bits of fluid, soil, or rock. The question, rather, is how to release the energy contained in abundant matter.

But suppose the productive value of land does rise. Whether that rise would augur a return to territorial competition would depend on whether the value of land rises relative to financial capital, human capital, and information. Given the rapid technological development of recent years, the primacy of the latter seems more likely. Few perturbing trends have altered the historical tendency toward the growing intangibility of value in social and economic terms. In the 21st century it seems scarcely possible that this process would suddenly reverse itself, and land would yield a better return than knowledge.

Diminishing their command of real estate and productive assets, nations are downsizing, in functional if not in geographic terms. Small nations have attained peak efficiency and competitiveness, and even large nations have begun to think small. If durable access to assets elsewhere can be assured, the need to physically possess them diminishes. Norms are potent reinforcements of such arrangements. Free movement of capital and goods, substantial international and domestic investment, and high levels of technical education have been the recipe for success in the industrial world of the late twentieth century. Those who depended on others did better than those who depended only on themselves. Can the result be different in the future? Virtual states, corporate alliances, and essential trading relationships augur peaceful times. They may not solve domestic problems, but the economic bonds that link virtual and other nations will help ease security concerns.

THE CIVIC CRISIS

Though peaceful in its international implications, the rise of the virtual state portends a crisis for democratic politics. Western democracies have traditionally believed that political reform, extension of suffrage, and economic restructuring could solve their problems. In the 21st century none of these measures can fully succeed. Domestic political change does not suffice because it has insufficient jurisdiction to deal with global problems. The people in a particular state cannot determine international outcomes by holding an election. Economic restructuring in one state does not necessarily affect others. And the political state is growing smaller, not larger.

If ethnic movements are victorious in Canada, Mexico, and elsewhere, they will divide the state into smaller entities. Even the powers of existing states are becoming circumscribed. In the United States, if Congress has its way, the federal government will lose authority. In response to such changes, the market fills the vacuum, gaining power.

As states downsize, malaise among working people is bound to spread. Employment may fluctuate and generally decline. President Clinton observed last year that the American public has fallen into a funk. The economy may temporarily be prosperous, but there is no guarantee that favorable conditions will last. The flow of international factors of production--technology, capital, and labor--will swamp the stock of economic power at home. The state will become just one of many players in the international marketplace and will have to negotiate directly with foreign factors of production to solve domestic economic problems. Countries must induce foreign capital to enter their domain. To keep such investment, national economic authorities will need to maintain low inflation, rising productivity, a strong currency, and a flexible and trained labor force. These demands will sometimes conflict with domestic interests that want more government spending, larger budget deficits, and more benefits. That conflict will result in continued domestic insecurity over jobs, welfare, and medical care. Unlike the remedies applied in the insulated and partly closed economies of the past, purely domestic policies can no longer solve these problems.

THE NECESSITY OF INTERNATIONALIZATION

The state can compensate for its deficient jurisdiction by seeking to influence economic factors abroad. The domestic state therefore must not only become a negotiating state but must also be internationalized. This is a lesson already learned in Europe, and well on the way to codification in East Asia. Among the world's major economies and polities, only the United States remains, despite its potent economic sector, essentially introverted politically and culturally. Compared with their counterparts in other nations, citizens born in the United States know fewer foreign languages, understand less about foreign cultures, and live abroad reluctantly, if at all. In recent years, many English industrial workers who could not find jobs migrated to Germany, learning the language to work there. They had few American imitators.

The virtual state is an agile entity operating in twin jurisdictions: abroad and at home. It is as prepared to mine gains overseas as in the domestic economy. But in large countries, internationalization operates differentially. Political and economic decision-makers have begun to recast their horizons, but middle managers and workers lag behind. They expect too much and give and learn too little. That is why the dawn of the virtual state must also be the sunrise of international education and training. The virtual state cannot satisfy all its citizens. The possibility of commanding economic power in the sense of effective state control has greatly declined. Displaced workers and businesspeople must be willing to look abroad for opportunities. In the United States, they can do this only if American education prepares the way.

Foreign Affairs, Jul/Aug96, Vol. 75 Issue 4, p45, 17p, 1bw.

1 See, for example, Enzo R. Grilli and Maw Cheng Yang, "Primary Commodity Prices, Manufactured Goods Prices, and the Terms of Trade of Developing Countries: What the Long Run Shows," The World Bank Economic Review, 1988, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 1-47.

2 See Jose Ripoll, "The Future of Trade in International Services," Center for International Relations Working Paper, UCLA, January 1996.

3 Daniel Garstka, "Land and Economic Prowess" (unpublished mimeograph), UCLA, 1995; Deepak Lal, "Factor Endowments, Culture and Politics: On Economic Performance in the Long Run" (unpublished mimeograph), UCLA, 1996.

4 Augusto Valeriani, "Twitter Factor" Edizioni Laterza, 2011;

5 Guerra e Mass Media , De Angelis, Enrico, Carocci 2007;

6 The CNN Effect. The Myth of news, foreign policy and intervention, Robinson, P., Routledge, 2002;

7 Media e guerra. Visioni Postmoderne , Hammond, P. a cura di Valeriani, A. Odoya 2008;

8 Campus, Donatella (2008), Comunicazione politica: Le nuove frontiere. Roma, Bari: Laterza.

~~~~~~~~

By Richard Rosecrance

RICHARD ROSECRANCE is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for International Relations at the University of California, Los Angeles.

lunedì 29 agosto 2011

Is Great Britain the lost ally of the United States?


During the Second World War, a future prime minister, Harold Macmillan, said America is “the new Roman empire and we Britons, like the Greeks of old, must teach them how to make it go.” How goes the tutoring of Rome by Athens?

We are in the fifth month of the Libyan intervention that Barack Obama’s administration said would involve“days, not weeks,” an undertaking about which Prime Minister David Cameron was much more enthusiastic than Obama, who rarely mentions it. The intervention resulted from Cameron’s and French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s sudden zest for waging humanitarian war.

Before its objective became regime change, the point was to prevent Moammar Gaddafi from inflicting a humanitarian disaster. Officials here speak of “a crime being committed within our reach.” But what is that reach?

After Gaddafi is deposed, as he probably will be, and after undetermined other nations have been deputed to police Libya’s postwar chaos, which surely there will be, moralists can answer this question: Did NATO’s operations — actually, those of a minority of NATO nations — really serve the humanitarian objective of economizing violence in Libya? And people here can then decide whether this was a sensible undertaking by a British government whose post-recession austerity budget, announced before the Libyan exercise in power projection, involves a mismatch between political ends and contracting military means.

“Britain,” said Cameron, “has punched above its weight in the world, and we should have no less ambition for our country in the decades to come.” He said this when announcing plans to slice military personnel by 10 percent and the army’s tanks and artillery by 40 percent, and the decommissioning of Britain’s only aircraft carrier capable of launching fixed-wing aircraft. Britain will have no carrier, an essential instrument of power projection, until 2020.

Britain remains a sceptered isle but not the seat of Mars. So, what weight will Britain punch above?

In a recent lecture here, Max Hastings, a distinguished journalist and historian experienced with and affectionate toward America, called upon British leaders to understand “how little attention we command among most Americans,” who are no longer Eurocentric and have declining regard for British armed forces, which have “shrunk very small.”

In 2002, during preparations for the invasion of Iraq, the then head of the British army, returning from a Washington visit, told Hastings, “Mass matters — and we don’t have it.” Hastings notes that the U.S. Marine Corps’ air wing is larger than the Royal Air Force. Americans know that “if the British army shrinks as scheduled after withdrawal from Afghanistan, we shall thereafter be able to deploy only a single brigade group of 7,000 to 8,000 men for sustained operations overseas.”

Which has implications for the “special relationship” — Hastings says this is now “a rather pathetic British conceit” — between Britain and America. “If,” he says, “we wish to play our traditional role abroad in pursuit of any perceived important Western foreign policy objective, to enjoy America’s confidence and share its secrets, we must own armed forces and intelligence assets capable of earning these things.”

NATO’s secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, recently warned that “at the current pace of cuts,” it is hard to see how in the future “Europe could maintain enough military capabilities to sustain” operations such as those under way in Libya.

Actually, Europe could not sustain them today; only U.S. munitions, intelligence, refueling and other assets keep the Libyan operations going.

Hastings says France is the only European nation with which Britain “can plan jointly for future war-fighting contingencies with a reasonable expectation of commitments being fulfilled”: “No responsible British government could today make an agreement whereby its European partners would become responsible for, say, airborne surveillance or unmanned drone combat capability in a future deployment, because the risk is far too great that on the day, and for whatever reasons, the others simply would not be there.”

Since the Cold War’s end, the combined gross domestic product of NATO’s European members has grown 55 percent, yet their defense spending has declined almost 20 percent. Twenty years ago, those nations provided 33 percent of the alliance’s defense spending; today, they provide 21 percent. This is why Robert Gates, before resigning as U.S. defense secretary, warned that unless Europe’s disarmament is reversed, future U.S. leaders “may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.” Born to counter the Soviet army on the plains of Northern Europe, NATO may be expiring in North Africa.

Tratto dal Washington Post

martedì 5 luglio 2011

Deep Language of George Lakoff - Noam Chomsky.

To the Editors:

If a nonlinguist reads nonspecialist articles about linguists such as the generally excellent piece by John Searle (NYR, June 29, 1972), he may get the impression that a linguist spends most of his time being concerned about rationalism (if he is a transformational grammarian) or behaviorism (if he is a structuralist). In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The rationalism-behaviorism issue enters rarely if at all into actual linguistic analyses, whether transformational or structural. The reason for this is that the behaviorist vs. rationalist dispute has no necessary connection with the structuralist vs. transformationalist dispute.

"do not think the elephant" George Lakoff.

In much of his writing, Noam Chomsky has conveyed the impression that structural linguistics was necessarily tied to behaviorism, while transformational grammar was necessarily rationalistic. This is false, though most popularizers of Chomsky’s views have let the matter pass without comment. Chomsky’s argument for rationalism, as Searle correctly observes, is based on the existence of linguistic universals (that is, features which are common to all human languages). Chomsky always cites examples of putative universals from transformational grammar, but the fact is that just about every other theory of grammar that has ever been seriously proposed has, either implicitly or explicitly, incorporated claims for extremely complex and sophisticated linguistic universals. This is true of structural linguistics, stratificational grammar, tagmemics, Montague grammar, generative semantics, etc.

In fact, contrary to what Chomsky suggests, the most extensive studies of complex linguistic universals have been carried out within the framework of structural linguistics. The classic works of the European structuralists Trubetzkoy and Jakobson in phonology and of Joseph Greenberg in American structuralist syntax have been the foundation for all of the more recent (and less extensive) studies of universals done in the tradition of transformational grammar. Chomsky’s claims in favor of rationalism over behaviorism do not rest upon his theory of transformational grammar being right and structuralism being wrong. One can make exactly the same argument using the structuralist universals instead, since the universals discovered in structural linguistics are more than complex enough for the purpose of the argument.

One should also be aware of the limitations of Chomsky’s arguments for the existence of an innate language acquisition mechanism in the human mind. As Searle points out, Chomsky has claimed that people possess innately not merely general learning mechanisms, but a specifically linguistic innate faculty. His argument is of this form: There are complex linguistic universals that everyone learns uniformly. There are at present no general learning theories that can account for this. It is hard to imagine what any such theories could be like. Therefore, it is plausible to assume that there can be no such theories. But the argument is fallacious: Nothing follows from a lack of imagination.

What Chomsky has shown is that either there is a specifically linguistic innate faculty or there is a general learning theory (not yet formulated) from which the acquisition of linguistic universals follows. The former may well turn out to be true, but in my opinion the latter would be a much more interesting conclusion. If I were a psychologist, I would be much more interested in seeing if there were connections between linguistic mechanisms and other cognitive mechanisms, than in simply making the assumption with the least possible interest, namely, that there are none.

As Searle notes, Chomsky has characterized structural linguistics as being fundamentally behavioristic and concerned solely with taxonomy. This is a misleading view of a broad, diverse, and interesting field, which happened not to be very good at dealing with the syntactical problems raised by Chomsky, and which showed little if any interest in formalized theories. Chomsky’s teacher, Zellig Harris, was an extreme case of a behavioristically oriented taxonomist.1 Bloomfield and Hockett, in their theorizing moods, also fit the mold, though one can argue that they did not always adhere to their theories in their linguistic analyses. Though these were prominent structural linguists, they were by no means typical of the wide range of European and American structuralists, either in their interests or in their commitment to behaviorism. Distinguished structuralists like Boas, Sapir, Jakobson, Pike, Weinreich, Bolinger and Greenberg never had much, if any, commitment to behaviorism. Their interests and their linguistic theories ranged far beyond mere taxonomy to such areas as linguistic universals, the relation between language and culture, dialectal variation, crosslinguistic interference, ritual language, poetics, and much much more. When transformational grammar eclipsed structural linguistics, it also eclipsed many of these concerns, much to the detriment of the field.

Chomsky’s account of so-called Cartesian linguistics is as inaccurate as his portrayal of structural linguistics. Searle has criticized Chomsky for inaccurately interpreting Descartes’s writings, but he ignores the devastating critiques of Chomsky’s treatment of the Port Royal grammarians and of Locke that have appeared in the linguistic literature. Chomsky claims in Cartesian Linguistics that Cartesian rationalism gave birth to a linguistic theory like transformational grammar in its essential respects. He bases his claims on the Grammaire Générale et Raisonée by Antoine Arnauld (a disciple of Descartes’s) and Claude Lancelot (a language teacher), published in 1660. The Grammaire Générale followed a series of other grammars by Lancelot, the most extensive being his Latin grammar.

Chomsky appears not to have read this Latin grammar (an English translation of which was in Widener Library) but Robin Lakoff studied it and published her findings in the review mentioned in footnote 1. She discovered that in the introduction Lancelot credited all of his interesting findings to Sanctius (Francisco Sanchez de las Brozas), a Spanish grammarian of the previous century, whose work antedated Descartes by half a century. Checking into Sanctius, she found that Lancelot was not being modest. He had indeed taken all of his interesting ideas from Sanctius. In short, what Chomsky called Cartesian linguistics had nothing whatever to do with Descartes, but came directly from an earlier Spanish tradition. Equally inconsistent with Chomsky’s claims is the fact that the theories of Sanctius and the Port Royal grammarians differ from the theory of transformational grammar in a crucial way. They do not acknowledge the existence of a syntactic deep structure in Chomsky’s sense, but assume throughout that syntax is based on meaning and thought. Chomsky has steadfastly opposed this position from his earliest works straight through to his most recent writings.

The important results of transformational linguistics are very different from what one is led to believe in most popular articles and introductory textbooks. Many of those who worked out the details of transformational grammar in the 1960s, both in Chomsky’s group at MIT and elsewhere, found that, if one ignored a great many problems that at first seemed peripheral, then transformational grammar could account for far more facts than any previous theory of grammar and gave much deeper insights into language. The transformational rules formulated in this period are presented in most elementary textbooks present as being essentially correct.

But the deeper results came later, in 1967 and after, when new facts were discovered and old facts that had previously been brushed aside were taken seriously. It was found that virtually no transformational rules that had been formulated could be made to handle the data; there is not a single rule of Chomsky’s syntax that can honestly be said to be well established. The difficulties form a pattern: Chomsky had drawn the syntax/semantics and performance/competence distinctions to try to preserve what Searle describes as his “peculiar and eccentric” view that it is possible to study the structure of language independently of its communicative function. In case after case, however, it has been found that rules of grammar have to take account of what Chomsky had arbitrarily ruled out of grammar as being semantics and performance.

The really deep results of transformational grammar are, in my opinion, the negative ones, the hosts of cases where transformational grammar fell apart for a deep reason: it tried to study the structure of language without taking into account the fact that language is used by human beings to communicate in a social context.

The detailed work that has been done in generative grammar tends to back up Searle’s philosophical judgment that the form of language cannot be studied independently of its function. But Searle is at best half-right when he claims that “the conflict [between transformational grammar and generative semantics] is being carried out entirely within the conceptual system that Chomsky created.” Generative semantics accepts such claims of Chomsky’s as that there exists nonsurface syntactic structure and that there are rules of grammar relating pairs of phrase-structure trees, just as it accepts the goal of accounting for the linguistic intuition of the native speaker in terms of formal rules and a general theory.

But those working in the area have found that many of the most basic assumptions of transformational grammar were inadequate and have rejected them, including the following of Chomsky’s fundamental assumptions: that syntax is independent of human thought and reasoning, that there exists a syntactic deep structure, that transformational rules are fundamentally adequate for the study of grammar, that syntactic categories are independent of the categories of human thought, that language use plays no role in grammar, that syntax is independent of the social and cultural assumptions of speakers, and many other central positions of Chomsky’s that many of us find inadequate, especially in the light of recent research.

Nor is Searle correct when he says, “Whoever wins, the old structuralism will be the loser.” No one in generative semantics is likely to adopt behaviorist taxonomy, but then that was only one of many trends in European and American structuralism. The concerns of generative semantics in the area of the communicative function of language overlap in many respects with nonbehaviorist and nontaxonomic structuralism. In addition, the conceptual framework of generative semantics derives much from outside of transformational grammar, for instance, model-theoretical semantics in the tradition of Tarksi and Carnap, and more recently Kripke, Montague, Scott and others, the concern for language use that one finds in the writings of Wittgenstein, Austin, Grice, and Searle, Zadeh’s work on inexact concepts, recent sociolinguistics as represented in the work of Labov, Hymes, Gumperz, Bickerton, Bailey, and others, and trends in the sociology small-group interactions as represented in the works of Goffman, Garfinkle, Sachs, and Schegloff. What we are trying to do is develop a linguistic theory that is rooted in the study of human thought and culture—the very antithesis of transformational grammar as narrowly construed by Chomsky.

George Lakoff

University of California

Berkeley, California

"We are neural beings," states Berkeley cognitive scientist George Lakoff. "Our brains take their input from the rest of our bodies. What our bodies are like and how they function in the world thus structures the very concepts we can use to think. We cannot think just anything - only what our embodied brains permit."

His new book Philosophy In The Flesh, coauthored by Mark Johnson, makes the following points: "The mind is inherently embodied. Thought is mostly unconscious. Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical."

Lakoff believes that new empirical evidence concerning these finding of cognitive science have taken us over the epistemological divide: we are in a new place and our philosophical assumptions are all up for grabs.

He and Johnson write: "When taken together and considered in detail, these three findings from the science of the mind are inconsistent with central parts of Western philosophy, and require a thorough rethinking of the most popular current approaches, namely, Anglo-American analytic philosophy and postmodernist philosophy."

According to Lakoff, metaphor appears to be a neural mechanism that allows us to adapt the neural systems used in sensory-motor activity to create forms of abstract reason. "If this is correct, as it seems to be," he says, "our sensory-motor systems thus limit the abstract reasoning that we can perform. Anything we can think or understand is shaped by, made possible by, and limited by our bodies, brains, and our embodied interactions in the world. This is what we have to theorize with."

He then raises the interesting question: "Is it adequate to understand the world scientifically?

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