A Brief History of the Future: A Brave and Controversial Look at the Twenty-First Century by Jacques Attali Page A
Authors: Jacques Attali
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music, from jazz to rock, and thus announcing youth’s entry into the world of consumption, of desire, and of rebellion. Lesson for the future: the link between technology and sexuality underpins the whole dynamic of the mercantile order.
While the poorest of Americans rise in revolt in the ghettos, the middle class saves instead of consuming. Now the number of people whose profession consists of spurring consumers to spend increases — banking, insurance, advertising, marketing, the media. Between 1954 and 1973, bank loans to American households rise fivefold.
The rest of the world settles into the “middle.” While the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States increases 3 percent per year between 1959 and 1973, Great Britain, France, and Germany (bled white since the Second World War) struggle to make up for lost time, thanks in part to American aid. Japan’s GDP progresses from $300 per capita in 1956 to $12,000 in 1980. Outside Europe, the world seems wholly under the control of the United States or the Soviet Union. In 1954, for example, when Iranian prime minister Muhammad Mossadegh nationalizes his country’s oil industry, he is immediately overturned in a coup fomented by the CIA: an international consortium, made up of French, Dutch, British, and American companies, takes control of Persian oil production. In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev sends Soviet tanks into Budapest without any reaction from the West. Control is the order of the day.
And now, as in every previous case, the core exhausts itself in military costs abroad and policing costs in its own ghettos. After the Korean War and Vietnam, the U.S. confrontation with the Communist world demonstrates that the capitalist superpower is militarily fallible and financially fragile.
Throughout the West, service activities (whether private or public) cannot yet be automated, and therefore demand an increasing share in the surplus. In the absence of automation of the services provided by white-collar workers in industry, the productivity both of work and of capital stagnates — as military and social spending steadily rises. The profitability of capital declines. Financial circuits direct loans to traditional industries rather than to innovative businesses; toward foreign public lenders rather than private domestic lenders; toward big companies rather than small ones. The steel industry now invests only half of what would be needed for it to compete with Japan and Korea.
In 1973, the rise in raw-material prices, particularly oil, reduces still further the disposable income of wage-earners without raising either production levels or demand. Savings levels sink; debt soars. Inflation follows, reducing the value of the debts and easing the burden of indebtedness, which in its turn spurs and accelerates inflation. The rise in joblessness and the pauperization of part of the population then generate insecurity.
By 1980, the United States seems on the verge of decline; it loses its place as the leading automobile exporter; its share in the world market for machine tools falls from 25 percent in 1950 to 5 percent in 1980 — while that of Japan, a brand-new player, moves from zero to 22 percent. The external debt of the United States rises massively, outstripping its foreign holdings. To finance it, American leaders tolerate the increasing use of the dollar by foreign creditors. New York is no longer the only place where the world’s finances are organized. The City of London (where a German emigrant, Simon Warburg, launches the first loans in eurodollars and the first public offering) seems to haverecovered a rank it had considered lost forever. Japan becomes the leading creditor for the United States, where it makes spectacular purchases of “iconic” U.S. businesses and real estate. America seems on the verge of becoming nothing more than the breadbasket of a flourishing Japan, just like Poland and Flanders in the eighteenth century.
Many (myself included)
While the poorest of Americans rise in revolt in the ghettos, the middle class saves instead of consuming. Now the number of people whose profession consists of spurring consumers to spend increases — banking, insurance, advertising, marketing, the media. Between 1954 and 1973, bank loans to American households rise fivefold.
The rest of the world settles into the “middle.” While the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States increases 3 percent per year between 1959 and 1973, Great Britain, France, and Germany (bled white since the Second World War) struggle to make up for lost time, thanks in part to American aid. Japan’s GDP progresses from $300 per capita in 1956 to $12,000 in 1980. Outside Europe, the world seems wholly under the control of the United States or the Soviet Union. In 1954, for example, when Iranian prime minister Muhammad Mossadegh nationalizes his country’s oil industry, he is immediately overturned in a coup fomented by the CIA: an international consortium, made up of French, Dutch, British, and American companies, takes control of Persian oil production. In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev sends Soviet tanks into Budapest without any reaction from the West. Control is the order of the day.
And now, as in every previous case, the core exhausts itself in military costs abroad and policing costs in its own ghettos. After the Korean War and Vietnam, the U.S. confrontation with the Communist world demonstrates that the capitalist superpower is militarily fallible and financially fragile.
Throughout the West, service activities (whether private or public) cannot yet be automated, and therefore demand an increasing share in the surplus. In the absence of automation of the services provided by white-collar workers in industry, the productivity both of work and of capital stagnates — as military and social spending steadily rises. The profitability of capital declines. Financial circuits direct loans to traditional industries rather than to innovative businesses; toward foreign public lenders rather than private domestic lenders; toward big companies rather than small ones. The steel industry now invests only half of what would be needed for it to compete with Japan and Korea.
In 1973, the rise in raw-material prices, particularly oil, reduces still further the disposable income of wage-earners without raising either production levels or demand. Savings levels sink; debt soars. Inflation follows, reducing the value of the debts and easing the burden of indebtedness, which in its turn spurs and accelerates inflation. The rise in joblessness and the pauperization of part of the population then generate insecurity.
By 1980, the United States seems on the verge of decline; it loses its place as the leading automobile exporter; its share in the world market for machine tools falls from 25 percent in 1950 to 5 percent in 1980 — while that of Japan, a brand-new player, moves from zero to 22 percent. The external debt of the United States rises massively, outstripping its foreign holdings. To finance it, American leaders tolerate the increasing use of the dollar by foreign creditors. New York is no longer the only place where the world’s finances are organized. The City of London (where a German emigrant, Simon Warburg, launches the first loans in eurodollars and the first public offering) seems to haverecovered a rank it had considered lost forever. Japan becomes the leading creditor for the United States, where it makes spectacular purchases of “iconic” U.S. businesses and real estate. America seems on the verge of becoming nothing more than the breadbasket of a flourishing Japan, just like Poland and Flanders in the eighteenth century.
Many (myself included)
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