Gordon Cook is very enthusiastic about James Galbraith’s deconstruction of the predator state under Bush and Cheney.

Here is a general presentation by the author himself.

Gordon Cook provides two selections of significant excerpts here and here, which we also reproduced under one heading in our wiki.

Here are some key citations:

1.

“Whereas in the new industrial states the organization existed principally to master advanced technologies and complex manufacturing processes, in the predator state the organization exists principally to master the state structure itself.”

2.

“The end of the Predator State will come only when the more reasonable, more progressive part of the business community and the insists on it and is willing to make common cause with unions, consumers, in environmental lists and other mobilize social group to bring the predators to heel. The question is what will it take? Will that “more reasonable” element ever be heard from? And will it be heard from, especially while it remains important enough to matter? Or will action be delayed and blocked until such time as meaningful reform has no effective constituency left?’

3.

“It is reasonably obvious event to tolerate the predator stake is a formula for eventual national economic failure. It will lead over time, to the crowding out of advanced, innovative and useful businesses within each industrial line by their reactionary and backward counterparts.”

Such a policy constellation, which would be reinforced if McCain wins, would seriously hamper the techno-social development.

Carlota Perez has an interesting view of how techno-social paradigms succeed one another, and what it would take to transform to a next phase.

Her book is called: Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital.

Here’s a good summary of her ideas from New Zealand:

“The model is one of historically recurring phases in the diffusion of technological revolutions, through to their assimilation by the economic and social system to maturity.

Perez suggests that what distinguishes a technological revolution from an individual technology system is its all-pervasive character, its capacity to go beyond the industries it creates and to provide generic technologies that modernise the whole economic structure.

Historically, these revolutions have lasted around 50 years. Each becomes a standard only after overcoming the resistance of the preceeding model.

Perez lists the technological revolutions as: the industrial revolution, highlighted by the invention of the mechanised cotton industry, wrought iron and machinery, with associated infrastructure such as canals, waterways, turnpike roads, and water power; the second was the age of steam and railways; the third, the age of steel, electricity and heavy engineering; the fourth, the age of oil, the automobile and mass production; and the latest, from 1971, the age of information and telecommunications.

Finance is the driver. Decisions to invest are taken by entrepreneurs, often backed by financial agents.

The agents of production capital and those of financial capital will act in unison to fund growth and innovation as long as they are successful and profitable, Perez says.

Society, she says, influences the path taken by the revolution. The concept stretches far beyond the economy to encompass societal and even cultural change.

Perez says a financial bubble usually characterises the final phase of change: “canal mania” in the 1790s, “railway mania” in the 1840s, the “roaring 1920s” and the bubble of the 1990s.

The installation period ends with a financial collapse, having done among other things replaced old industries, until there is a general acceptance of common-sense criteria for best practice in the new paradigm.

New policies generally tend to regulate financial practices and to contribute toward the expansion of markets through public demand and income redistribution, she says.

Industries and technology systems of a revolution don’t meekly disappear when they reach maturity. Perez says they remain stubbornly fighting for survival during the installation of the next, and only gradually modernise, adopting the new principle when they are forced to by the market superiority of the new paradigm.”

Access to 3 different video lectures and interviews via this page.