Page 148 - Culture Society and Economy

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‘LOCALIZATION’ EXPLORED

attitude’ – depicted in so many of the works of Thomas Mann – is the only
possible one – that is the Weberian message. Globalization is simply the
iron cage of our times. Foucault went further and Koselleck the furthest. 24
This whole optimistic liberal civil society line of thinking is an elaborate
modernist power play. Weber was not too pessimistic: he was not pes-
simistic enough! We must plunge into the nihilism of discourse analysis
and Begriffsgeschichte, setting both globalization and localization aside.
Pace Weber, Marx claimed to offer a way out the dead end. We shall try
to address this issue very briefly.

Political Issues (Briefly)

Since localization proposals first of all raise economic issues, this chapter
focused on those. However, as alluded to above, there are clearly major
political problems with the IFG proposals as well. Here I am not referring
to the challenges that winning political support for such a program would
entail, nor to the politics of the actual transformation process – daunting
as both would be. I make the more generous assumption that these polit-
ical challenges have been successfully seen off and the question before
us now is the one of the system of political governance of a world of local
economies. It is important to reiterate here that the ideal of the IFG group
(at least the Anglo section) is clearly that of liberal democracy of the type
familiar in the Western parliamentary system.
If so, there is a problem. This is because it should be clear by now that
a local community society will require extensive intervention from the
‘community state’ in the affairs of the ‘community economy’. Some body
has to regulate the size of firms. Some other body has to deal with the
regulation of inputs, and outputs – ensuring that they are confined to the
local community. Indeed, relations with the ‘outside world’ will need
constant and vigilant regulation, in order to make short work of any ten-
dency to over-involvement in ‘long-distance trade’. Some body has to reg-
ulate prices – to control them in the name of community equity and
harmony. Some body has to regulate labor market practices to ensure that
there is no exploitation and that local labor has the first choice of jobs.
We have not even come to the environmental regulations yet and the pro-
vision of public services. It is clear that these too will occasion the for-
mation of a significant number of local committees. In the Soviet case, it
used to be said that the attempt to centrally plan the entire economy gen-
erated about 4 billion ‘indicators’ to be optimized by electronic computer
routines! One does not anticipate such a load for a local community

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