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During the initial research for After Capitalism, it was striking how many of the concepts had a local approach and scale as part of their recommendations. More than a dozen years later, it’s no longer surprising. Localization, the shift to local, distributed, and decentralized, is a top ten global trend. It comes up in almost every project we work on, regardless of the domain. For After Capitalism, three reasons for “the future is local” comes to the forefront:
- A strong belief that local is the right organizing principle for governance.
I posted on Robin Hahnel’s Participatory Economy that provides us with a wonderful and useful handbook that “demonstrates concretely how to reconcile comprehensive democratic planning with worker and consumer autonomy.” I also recommend the work of Eric Meier and the folks at Indep (International Network for Democratic Economic Planning). They are building a global network with the goal of advancing an After Capitalism economic system based on democratic economic planning.
In addition to local governance, we can add in the social benefit of the preference for things local, local crafts, local brands, farmer’s markets. On top of that, keeping money in the community rather than seeing it accumulate in some distant corporate headquarters is an “easy” sell. Put these three together and we have a solid case for local being one of our top ten shifts.
A cautionary note is to be careful not to see local is the solution to everything and is automatically better in every case. We see this romanticization in folk politics characteristic of the ineffective left driver. It cannot be ignored that the world is increasingly globally interconnected and there are indeed global-scale issues that need to be addressed at the global scale. It’s not as simple as every local community for itself. There does need to be global coordination.
2. The global supply chain no longer makes sense.
The logic of capitalism is to increase efficiency and profits. As it spread globally, it brought global supply chains with it. It was very much an exploitative journey, finding new territories to “civilize,” but also to exploit. The benefits were always flowing chiefly to the capitalists. Once a particular territory or country had been sufficiently “civilized” that is, its costs of labor went up, it was on to the next place to civilize and find cheap labor. As we’ve seen, capitalism is running out of places to provide cheap labor, as that cheap labor needs to be in a context that capitalism can take advantage of.
So, one begins to see the end of globalization as a source of new value to find and exploit. And thus, the value of the accompanying global supply chains begins to make less sense. It was, and still is in many cases, cheaper to make things in China and ship from there. As China continues to develop economically, that labor will not be so cheap and goods coming from their will eventually no longer make economic sense. Africa is looked at as next, but if I were Africa, I might not be so eager to make this bargain.
3. Environmental management is better done by those with local knowledge and a direct stake,
Because the system has not accounted for “external” environmental costs, shipping things around globally looked more efficient than it really was. With the advent of automation and new manufacturing technology of additive manufacturing, the case for making things locally makes more economic sense along with the obvious environmental benefits.
This one is tricky in that there is a strong caveat that there must be global coordination among these networked activities. A big challenge, or trap to avoid, is getting parochial about local interests at the expense of the larger commons.
Three reasons why it is fair to say that the future is local. – Andy Hines
Andy,
First, thank you for doing this work and sharing it. My question: Have you written about why you chose “After Capitalism” as the frame of the work. Why this framing of the central issue rather than some other? I hope you have done this work and that you can direct me to it. Seems to me this is a vitally important question. As always, respectfully, Ruben
I tell the story in the book. Short version is in a class back in 2012, a student asked “what comes after capitalism.” It became a theme and we did our 2012 Spring Gathering on “After Capitalism” and that launched me on the path. I like it’s simplicity and directness.
well, that is one viewpoint about globalization…
perhaps in the 1600’s, 1700’s, and 1800’s that was the intent (though i doubt it), but that is not an explanation for contemporary ‘globalization’.
‘globalization’ today was created by the US at bretton woods. when the US began patrolling all oceans and seas (hence 7 fleets) securing global trade routes for all nations, it had several effects:
1.) it allowed nations to neglect their navies – saving billions
2.) it allowed people, companies, and even nations to uber-specialize (african nation gdp’s thrived on the mining of one or a few ores – and almost nothing else, germany built machines almost exclusively for china, china used the machines to build crap for americans…
3.) these two conditions allowed the development of super-freighters, that docked at super ports, designed to move train car loads of goods, onto trains designed to move 1,000 containers at once to centralized distribution centers
4.) these conditions enabled the cheapest global production ever (subsidized by the US)
but, when the ussr fell, russia began to decline. it has now declined to the point that the US no longer needs nato to keep russia from dominating europe (creating a threat to the US on the atlantic ocean). the US needed a strong europe as buffer between the US and the atlantic ocean. now the emphasis is shifting to building a strong pacific alliance (japan, s korea, taiwan, australia, etc.) to keep a buffer between the US and the pacific ocean.
the US was involved in the middle east because europeans needed middle east petroleum to rebuild their nations, and they couldn’t secure it on their own. well, now the eu is getting closer to being on their own every day… so, the US now has little interest in the middle east (except for israel because we need somebody to balance a rising turkey).
globalization was not about civilizing nations or about exploitation. that sounds a bit like a marxist explanation…
so, contemporary globalization was about the US keeping the ussr at bay. the ussr is done. and now russia is no longer a threat to overtake europe – so russia is done.
now, US trade relationships will change to reflect china being a threat to our western flank. in the process, the US will develop new trade relationships. and one can expect major manufacturing to return to the western hemisphere (think northern mexico). not to civilize mexico. not to exploit mexico. but to take advantage of the reduced transportation/delivery expense because of vicinty, and because mexico has a well educated workforce (that is cheaper than asia) – mexico will gain more than it will be exploited.
summary – contemporary globalization was a byproduct of the US managing geopolitical risks. that risk has passed. there is a new risk. the US will reduce its presence in europe and the middle east. there will be new commercial relationships. not to civilize. not to exploit. to manage geopolitical risk.