CORPORATE PHILANTHROPY: CAN IT SURVIVE THE COMING ‘TECHNOTRONIC’ CAPITALISM?

CORPORATE PHILANTHROPY: CAN IT SURVIVE THE COMING ‘TECHNOTRONIC’ CAPITALISM?
Erle Frayne D. Argonza

‘Late’ capitalism, this current phase that replaced the ‘monopoly’ capitalism of the pre-war era, is now DEAD. As elucidated by Jurgen Habermas, thinker of the Frankfurt school, capitalism was able to move to its present state but only with massive state planning/intervention. State intervention had since the early 70s been relaxed, via globalization, but this only created monstrous predatory finance that hastened the collapse of the system.

As already elaborated in previous articles, the system is now DEAD. In the late 1990s yet, we Fellows of the Independent Review (a circle of economists and experts in Manila) were of the opinion that the system will be dead in couples of years. The ‘virtual economy’ based on magical statistics, speculation, fictitiously valued investments, and conspicuous consumption, can never be sustained, and is bound to crash and die. It was just a matter of time, as we all noted in 2000 (the last time I met the Fellows), before the bubble will burst somewhere (we forecast it will the USA) and the global economy will come crashing down…And it did, beginning last 2007 yet. That descent to the marshes of death is still going on today.

As I also declared in some previous articles, capitalism can still survive, though no longer the ‘late’ capitalism of state planning-to-globalization era. It will be a capitalism in an era of state terror heretofore unparalleled: ‘technotronic’ capitalism in the aegis of global police-state. Nation-states are enemies of the global oligarchy which will re-engineer the world by destroying nations (aftermath of atrocious World War III and global synarchy) and replacing them with city-states and region-states.

If corporate social responsibility or CSR will survive the times, it must be re-tooled at this juncture when the tumultuous changes are gathering winds. Failure to do so, many CSR pursuits will disappear in time, while only those CSR platforms of the most powerful and wealthy oligarchs can survive. All the CSR formats of today can last in relevance maybe till 2040 at the most, after which my forecast is their relevance will have reached its end.

By the year 2050, when populations will have leveled down to a census target of 2 Billion warm bodies, a figure that will be more manageable to the global elites, every member of society will be chipped and provided for. By that time, there will be no further need for ideological movements as Pied Pipers of the new system. Everyone else will be programmed by the system, from cradle to grave the chipped Manchurian Candidate or MC will be provided for. Poverty will end by then, the Millenium Development Goal of the UN will be finally met (the UN will be transformed into the tyrannical global state headed by a global Bonaparte, armed with its own police/military forces), and then will end the ‘sustainable development’ or ‘social development’ pursuits of ‘late’ capitalism.

The chipped Manchurian Candidate or MC will be half-human half-machine hybrid, and will be well provided for as mentioned. Population will be totally controlled, weak and senior members of the population will be ‘oven-baked’ or eliminated, natality will be controlled following China’s pattern of today, criminality will be almost nil, and no one will ever be poor again. Hybrid-human behavior can be easily modified using those advanced cybernetic prototype programs past 2050, and so nobody can fool around with the system.

Tell me, fellows, in a situation such as that coming context of advanced cybernetics or ‘technotronics’ (machine-controlled humans), what need will there be for CSR? Maybe CSR will go back to Victorian Era philanthropy practices, whereby wealthy sponsors will fund the theaters and chipped performers whose performances will be perfected all the more by cybernetics. The staff of the CSR formats of that era, if indeed applicable, will be chipped as well, like those outfits that will be funded because they will perform before the oligarchic-intellectual crowd by then.

When that next capitalist system comes, there will be no more activists or revolutionaries save for those who will proclaim Hallelujah forever to the radically altered, new system. Libertarian activists will be the species of yesteryears, the CSR proto-activism of today will be consigned to history, and anybody who will go against the system will be easily eliminated by sentinel robots of the most advanced prototypes.

Let me end with the challenge: CSR better retool now and reshape its image if it desires to exceed its institutional career. Now is the time.

[Philippines, 28 August 2008]
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CORPORATE PHILANTHROPY: CAN IT SURVIVE THE COMING ‘TECHNOTRONIC’ CAPITALISM?

Erle Frayne Argonza

‘Late’ capitalism, this current phase that replaced the ‘monopoly’ capitalism of the pre-war era, is now DEAD. As elucidated by Jurgen Habermas, thinker of the Frankfurt school, capitalism was able to move to its present state but only with massive state planning/intervention. State intervention had since the early 70s been relaxed, via globalization, but this only created monstrous predatory finance that hastened the collapse of the system.

As already elaborated in previous articles, the system is now DEAD. In the late 1990s yet, we Fellows of the Independent Review (a circle of economists and experts in Manila) were of the opinion that the system will be dead in couples of years. The ‘virtual economy’ based on magical statistics, speculation, fictitiously valued investments, and conspicuous consumption, can never be sustained, and is bound to crash and die. It was just a matter of time, as we all noted in 2000 (the last time I met the Fellows), before the bubble will burst somewhere (we forecast it will the USA) and the global economy will come crashing down…And it did, beginning last 2007 yet. That descent to the marshes of death is still going on today.

As I also declared in some previous articles, capitalism can still survive, though no longer the ‘late’ capitalism of state planning-to-globalization era. It will be a capitalism in an era of state terror heretofore unparalleled: ‘technotronic’ capitalism in the aegis of global police-state. Nation-states are enemies of the global oligarchy which will re-engineer the world by destroying nations (aftermath of atrocious World War III and global synarchy) and replacing them with city-states and region-states.

If corporate social responsibility or CSR will survive the times, it must be re-tooled at this juncture when the tumultuous changes are gathering winds. Failure to do so, many CSR pursuits will disappear in time, while only those CSR platforms of the most powerful and wealthy oligarchs can survive. All the CSR formats of today can last in relevance maybe till 2040 at the most, after which my forecast is their relevance will have reached its end.

By the year 2050, when populations will have leveled down to a census target of 2 Billion warm bodies, a figure that will be more manageable to the global elites, every member of society will be chipped and provided for. By that time, there will be no further need for ideological movements as Pied Pipers of the new system. Everyone else will be programmed by the system, from cradle to grave the chipped Manchurian Candidate or MC will be provided for. Poverty will end by then, the Millenium Development Goal of the UN will be finally met (the UN will be transformed into the tyrannical global state headed by a global Bonaparte, armed with its own police/military forces), and then will end the ‘sustainable development’ or ‘social development’ pursuits of ‘late’ capitalism.

The chipped Manchurian Candidate or MC will be half-human half-machine hybrid, and will be well provided for as mentioned. Population will be totally controlled, weak and senior members of the population will be ‘oven-baked’ or eliminated, natality will be controlled following China’s pattern of today, criminality will be almost nil, and no one will ever be poor again. Hybrid-human behavior can be easily modified using those advanced cybernetic prototype programs past 2050, and so nobody can fool around with the system.

Tell me, fellows, in a situation such as that coming context of advanced cybernetics or ‘technotronics’ (machine-controlled humans), what need will there be for CSR? Maybe CSR will go back to Victorian Era philanthropy practices, whereby wealthy sponsors will fund the theaters and chipped performers whose performances will be perfected all the more by cybernetics. The staff of the CSR formats of that era, if indeed applicable, will be chipped as well, like those outfits that will be funded because they will perform before the oligarchic-intellectual crowd by then.

When that next capitalist system comes, there will be no more activists or revolutionaries save for those who will proclaim Hallelujah forever to the radically altered, new system. Libertarian activists will be the species of yesteryears, the CSR proto-activism of today will be consigned to history, and anybody who will go against the system will be easily eliminated by sentinel robots of the most advanced prototypes.

Let me end with the challenge: CSR better retool now and reshape its image if it desires to exceed its institutional career. Now is the time.

[28 August 2008,Quezon City, MetroManila]

CAPITALISM’S FUTURE CYBORG PEOPLE/WE ARE THE LAST HUMANS

Erle Frayne Argonza

Magandang hapon! Good afternoon from Manila!

As you read this piece, please take a cursory glance at yourself. For you are among the last humans of the non-chipped prototype. We non-chipped humans’ lifeline will soon end, as we are only co-terminus with ‘late’ capitalism.  

‘Late’ capitalism will crash down into total destruction. As already advanced in some previous articles, ‘late’ capitalism or ‘the system’ is now DEAD. No more can this system be revived, it is beyond repair. What you see, feel, smell, sense right now as ‘the system’ is merely a semblance of a once thriving and growing system of post-war interventionist capitalism, whose international trade conduct was partly regulated by fixed exchange rate and a gold standard. The reality you see today is only illusory, ‘virtual reality’ of a once mighty and envious system. To repeat, IT IS DEAD!

This terminal phase of capitalism will be marked by aggressive attempts to revive it. During these aggressive attempts (aggressive = World War III, synarchy, destruction of nations) the prototype of the future human is being experimented on in laboratories of the North. That prototype will be constructed, based on the principles of Phase 3 Cybernetics. To familiarize yourself with cybernetic’s phases, note this briefer:

Phase I: Perfecting and packaging systems theory in simplified form, made the computer possible.

Phase II: Integration theory made possible the integration of the computer to the machine, producing (a) automation and (b) artificial intelligence or AI. Simultaneous with nano-technology.

Phase III: The machine-human organism divide will be broken, thus enabling the creation of the ‘cyborg’ or cybernetic organism. This is integration of mathematics, systems theory, bioinformatics, biotechnology, infotech, sociobiomedicine,  psychology, and bio-physics.

Phase IV: Further advancements in cybernetic principles will enable the infusion of intelligence into machines. Cyber-sentinels (machine cops, armies) for Earth and space mission purposes will arise. These prototypes can fly space ships across vast spaces, and conduct R&D in heavenly bodies of choice destination.

Let me stop at that point. Cybernetics can still go a long way, up to that point where computers as huge as a 3-million square mile country can be created. That’s as big as Canada, or China, or the USA of today. Bigger and bigger machines (robots) will be created which, incidentally, will be more unstable…But let me stop here.   

In its future revived form, capitalism will take off as the new-generation ‘technotronic’ capitalism. Prior to the full galvanization of the new system, a transition period will be experienced. During that period, which could last for a quarter of a century, the micro-chipping of humans will have been perfected. That microchipping or simply chipping of humans will enable the production of the hybrid human variety.

That hybrid variety is in fact being experimented today. The Verizon Corp, a gigantic company based in the USA, has been given the franchise to research, develop, and install (using known biomedical operations, whether surgery or mere intravenous means) prototypes called the VeriChip. Couples of rationalizations were advanced in order to justify the VeriChip mandate. Among the supposed advantages are that of (a) getting easily tracked so that cuts down the possibility of retrieval if one gets lost along the way home or travel to work, and (b) tracking or monitoring one’s health and wellness condition.

As early as the last quarter of the 20^th century, the divide between sanity and madness, between ‘good’ reasons and demonic reasons, were already shattered. Rational economics gave way to mad economics, and so on. Likewise was shattered the divide between the visible benefits of chipping humans and the invisible benefits to the ‘new world order’ of controlling humans. Do take note of these developments, as we’re moving in future contexts where rationality and madness’ synthesis will be perfected even more. Integration theory works wondrously for the oligarchic system, remember.

Those chips that will be implanted in you, in case you are among those who volunteered, can indeed be for your personal benefits. But never make the presumption that the chips won’t be used to at least build an intelligence dossier on you. The information mega-databases are already existing today in the USA and EU, so right at this juncture it is facile to keep track of people at least. How those chips will be convertible for purposes of mutating you into a Manchurian Candidate or MC is the current R&D problem of the scientists involved in them.

In a post-War (World War III) scenario, when nations will have been abolished save for some few exceptions, more ‘final solution’ to the demographic dilemma (of ‘overpopulation’) will be executed, thus bringing down population to probably as low as 2 Billion people by 2050. Remember that World War III will take as long as 30 years, it could be a new 30 Years War, so if this coming war will begin in 2009, then expect it to end around 2039.

Now, what is important for that figure of 2 Billion world population, which the global oligarchy has already projected, is that it is a more manageable, controllable population. Chipping all 2 billion people remnants of the old population will be very easy by then. Part of the conditions for reconstruction, reparations, and succeeding prosperous life for the individual would be to chip him/her.  

Thus shall be born the population of MCs, who will be quasi-autonomous individuals. The MC can still think for himself/herself, though many facets of the MC’s behavior will be modified. And, behavior modification will be enabled chiefly precisely because of the chips inside one’s body, thus making trainings and/or capacity building less costly. Life span will also increase, as the chips will have the effect of monitoring ailments quickly, and intervention will be easier than today. Primary health care will be done right on the computer and will be quick, instead of the tedious and protracted processes that we clinically undergo today.

However that hybrid prototype, which we will label HYBRID for simplification, will only be the transitory prototype as the ‘final prototype’ will be perfected in the labs. That final prototype, the CYBORG (1^st generation), will be a radically different variety altogether from the hybrids whom they will replace. Being one whose personality, chromosomal structure, and capability grids will be fully programmed via advanced computer prototypes and advanced biomedical-sociobehavioral expertise and intervention methods, the CYBORG will be one of longer life span (past 100 years), longer productivity (at least 75 years of productive utility), higher intelligence (mental, emotional, related intelligences all programmed), higher knowledge-absorptive capacity (mental files will be erasable, new knowledge can be uploaded to the brain via computers), and better health (lessening or eliminating health care costs) than the HYBRID.

So, fellows on Earth, let’s better face it, WE ARE ALL PHASE-OUT PROTOTYPES. Let’s better accept that now. Yes, capitalism can survive as already explained before, but look at where capitalism is going. In the era of full ‘technotronic’ capitalism, you will be a total chattel of the system. I don’t mean YOU today who will die in some decades ahead without the chip, I mean the YOU as the people after the war reconstruction.

For those pro-capitalist folks of the world, please don’t grieve for the death of ‘late’ capitalism. Yes, capitalism in its present form is now DEAD, but a new form will rise and replace it, thus rendering capitalism like unto a phoenix. As an ending, are you ready to be chipped today? VeriChip is waiting for thee.

[23 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]

GLOBAL TOTALITARIAN POLICE-STATE & TECHNOTRONIC SOCIETY: EXTENDING CAPITALIST LIFE

Erle Frayne Argonza

Let me go back to the question of what lies ahead of us—when ‘late’ capitalism dies and yet capitalism will be extended.  I am not discounting the possibility that capitalism’s life span will be extended, but this will no longer be ‘late’ capital, just to remind everyone.

You better fasten your seat belts, as the stormy days ahead will come for sure, and as this heraldry from me will sound as stormy already as those times ahead. Stormy heraldry, because (a) you will not come to like it and that (b) its impact will be so nauseating and revolting that you’d rather sedate yourself most quickly with wine, liquor, pot or anything that can reduce that revulsion. I forgot, for the fundamentalists, you’d pray for hours to allay your fears.

By the time ‘late’ capital arrived up to the current juncture, or roughly the whole of the post-Great Depression era, the following developments have come about:

·        State intervention/planning was infused into the system. Post-war former colonies proceeded on their industrial development tracks along this dirigist market model. The USA and Europe were saved from collapsing, emerging markets appeared.

 

·        Market reforms were later introduced, bringing back free market and free trade principles. Centrally planned economies China and Vietnam infused market reforms to construct a ‘social market’ model, while former socialist states folded up in Eastern Europe and 3^rd world states.

 

·        The era of ‘mad economics’ resulted from the system integration efforts of ‘instrumental reason’. The dividing line between the rational and the mad in decision-making and system maintenance was effectively deconstructed and erased. In esoteric-mystical argot, this era is the period of the Demonic Mind, the era of Anti-Christ.

 

·        ‘Virtual economy’ based on predatory financial practices of creating values from out of money flows (rather than from concrete production) was exemplified by ‘bubble economies’. Bubble bursts were followed by destructive, catastrophic crises and shrinkages of affected economies.

 

·        Nation-states’ economies came to be integrated into a single economy, via globalization. A planetary economy was already institutionalized, yet no planetary state exists to regulate conduct of commerce and business at a global level. The contradiction between the norms of the planetary economy and the interests of the nation-state has led in no small measure to the fragmentation of nation-states and  emergence of mini-states. Globalization has been undermining the nation-state in general.

 

·        All of such developments will hyper-converge in the months ahead in a general system crisis characterized by hyper-inflation, great depression, and total system collapse. As the economist Lyndon LaRouche correctly perceived, that collapse phase is now taking place at a rapid rate.

 

·        Wars and hostilities are intensifying across the globe. Surrogate wars of world powers have also been rehearsed, such as the Georgia-Russia conflict. All of these conflicts will hyper-converge in a World War III or intercontinental war, the duration of which no one can forecast so easily.

 

So, going back to the issue, if the ‘virtual economy’ cannot be sustained and its collapse will bring the final death blow on ‘late’ capital, is it possible to extend capitalism’s life span? Yes, the possibility is very likely. But the context emerging from the resolution of the general global crisis will hardly resemble what you’ve ever seen before nor imagine.

First of all, the consolidation of the system and attempts to prolong it can never take place without draconian police state tactics. As Lenin correctly emphasized, the dividing line between liberalism and fascism is a superficial one. Neo-fascism will become the political modality in order to save capitalism and bring it to its next phase. State terror heretofore untold will unravel the old order of things and bring the ‘new world order’ into place, resulting to pogroms that will dwarf both Hitler’s ‘final solution’ and Stalin’s ‘purges’ combined.

The possibility of a global state will finally become granite rock, with the United Nations most likely the base for creating that global regulatory mechanism governed by a demonic ‘world rule of law’. This global state will have its own military and police forces, and will have no qualms in quelling dissent and enforcing global fiats in order to bring forth the ‘new world order’.

The global corporations of the moment, whose assets and revenues are already so huge that they dwarf those of nation-states’, will all the more become gigantic. The same corporations will then declare their respective turfs among region-states and city-states that will be created from the dismantled nations. Each mega-corporation will be endowed with its own private army, akin to the British East India Company or BEIC of old, of professional mercenaries beholden to no state but to the corporation, but which can be mandated by the global state to engage hostile forces in other regions and cities.

The era of New Feudalism will then ensue from the social and urban-ecological arrangements emerging. The era of ancient Florence, Venice, or city-states with their own respective armies and ruled by powerful commercial families, will come back though in more sophisticated vogue. The competing powerful & wealthy city-states will then give rise to new conflicts in the form of ‘wars of the cities’, much akin to the ancient Greek city-states’ conflicts. Before this century’s end, no more nations shall exist, but rather a world of cities and regions integrated largely through the mediative and regulative planetary state. Weaker cities and regions will become the vassals of powerful cities and corporate groups, at a time when technology will even be more revolutionary. The New Feudalism will be based on an integration of capital and information, contrasted to the Old Feudalism that was based on land.  

As soon as 3^rd phase cybernetics will conclude, and probably a 4^th phase will begin, which will all the more erase the barrier between human and machine, the envisioned Technotronic Society will become the manifest order. Cyborgs and machines will then become perfected and endowed with quasi-human intelligence, while those humans with weak minds will be totally controlled via perfected chips, mega-computers, and new cybernetic systems. Large numbers of subhuman ‘Manchurian candidates’ or MCs will become the docile slave labor of the day, well fed and provided for, but whose behavior will be totally programmed and re-programmable.

That technoronic society of the neo-feudal capitalist ‘new world order’, or simply Technotronic capitalism, was fitfully described and forecast in the film series Matrix and Terminator. As 3^rd phase cybernetics is advancing today in laboratory incubators of the North, cybernetics that will dismantle the barrier between human and machine, the possibility of an early arrival of that dreaded machine-controlled ‘new world order’ has become concrete. The question is no longer ‘will technotronics come’, but rather ‘when will it come’? Matrix and Terminator are no film fantasies but are rather scientific extrapolations based on existing and developing cybernetic principles.

So, fellows out there, would you count yourself among the fanatical supporters of ‘capitalist life-span extension’, or would you rather opt for a new economy & society other than the ‘new world order’ that has been engineered by the global oligarchy? Or, would you rather be silent about the matter, as the ‘silence of the lambs’ means the Keynesian “In the long run, all of us will be dead!” Caput!

Let me now end here. Suffice that I shared my notes about the possible extension of the favorite economy of the pro-capitalists or the most abhorred society by capitalism’s detractors. At least I didn’t fail to show you the possibilities, I being a sociologist and economist who learned from my thinker mentors the craft of social forecasting or ‘futurology’.

Till next writing! Adios! Adieu! Paalam! Farewell! 

[23 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila.]