Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 4: The toxic cradle of productionbe called up or dispensed with at a moments notice; and, in the ‘peripheral zone’, a vastpool of informal workers and unemployed people made surplus to the requirementsof networked capital.Fifth, the age of globally networked capital is integrally bound up with the neoliberalpolicies associated with the names of Thatcher and Reagan and given globalforce through the ‘Washington consensus’. A critical aspect of this revolution fromabove was the financialisation of capital – that is, an increasing reliance on financialdealing rather than production to secure profits, accompanied by a shift of power fromproduction to finance capital. This turn to finance was a response to the crisis of the1970s. At bottom, this was a crisis of ‘over accumulation’. The finance houses foundthemselves with more money than they could invest safely and at a rate of profit whichsatisfied their shareholders.This crisis was first passed onto Third World countries as low interest loans made in the70s were turned into high interest loans in the 80s. It has since manifested in a seriesof spectacular financial crises in the South, virtually collapsing a number of nationaleconomies and engulfing most of eastern Asia in 1997. Each of these crises yieldedhigh returns to global capital which could appropriate assets at fire sale prices. This wasjust one aspect of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ through which, during this wholeperiod from the 80s to now, capital has managed a spectacular transfer of wealth frompoor to rich globally and within most countries South and North. But the crisis couldnot be contained in the South for ever and has now returned to its proper home andcollapsed the bubble blown up by global finance capital. Finance is, of course, also aservice sector and it is financialisation, rather than reduced materials intensity, thathas ‘dematerialised’ economies. In South Africa, the finance sector now accounts for20% of GDP but, as Ben Fine [2008] argues, this was not a contribution of ‘valueadded’ to the economy but rather the finance sector’s appropriation of value from theeconomy.The crisis was also passed onto workers and the environment as indicated in thefirst and third points above. Beyond e-waste, however, WBCSD is very much partof the neo-liberal moment, promoting ‘flexible business solutions’ in opposition tomandatory regulation and precisely to deflate pressure for such regulation. Murrayprovides a seductive account of initiatives by this or that corporate. Many of the samecorporations, however, operate by other standards in other parts of the world. And,as lead corporations in global production networks, their demands on subordinateWasting the Nation - groundWork - 85 -