Integral Advantage

Revisiting Emerging Markets and Societies

Ronnie Lessem

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781134804184
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Economics
• Sous-sujet: Economic Theory

The BRICS countries are heralded for their double digit economic growth rates and while this has indeed been impressive, particularly in India and China, it is clear that significant social and environmental fault-lines have developed in these regions. Building on the integral heritage of Ronnie Lessem's previous work through Trans4m's Centre for Integral Development, here he makes the case for 'integral advantage', a philosophy inclusive of nature and culture, technology and economy, altogether accommodated by an integral polity. Moreover, and as will be illustrated in each of the cases of the five BRICS countries, each one is an integral entity in its own particular right, and needs to be viewed, and duly evolved, as such. In the final analysis, he argues, then, that around the world, the failure of a society to develop is not due to its economic limitations, in isolation, but to the failure of nature and culture, technology and economy, to co-evolve in unison, under the rubric of an integral polity, altogether aligned with that particular society. Drawing on the approach he has developed towards the release of a society's genius, in each case, he demonstrates how the pursuit of integral advantage may actually arise. Most specifically, he indicates how a balance between the spiritual and the material, on the one hand, and the natural and the social, on the other, needs to be achieved.

Part I
Orientation

Chapter 1
The Internet is Not the Answer: Fields, Factories and Workshops to Networked Economy

When you’re tramping through the jungle. Or up a mountain, or across a field, you’ve no idea how your progress might look form a bird’s eye view, or why it would be useful to see things differently.

Dayo Olopade (1), The Bright Continent: Making Change in Modern Africa

1.1 Introduction

Comparative to Integral Advantage

The Illusion of Economic Progress

In this book we shall be turning conventional economic wisdom on its head, specifically in relation to emerging markets, that is the BRICS countries. To that extent, we shall be arguing, that both Smith (capitalism) and Marx (communism) got it wrong. Neither the division of labour (Smith) nor economic determinism (Marx) offers a viable way forward. In fact the whole idea of ‘progress’, for s, is a misnoma, and we have as much, if not more, to learn from the past than we can learn from the present and future. Hence the title of this chapter: why the Internet is not the answer.

Need for Integral Advantage

Moreover, we go on to argue, firstly and paradoxically, that we have as much to learn from an emerging Russia straddling ‘east–west’ than from the established Anglo-Saxon, capitalist ‘west-north’, so to speak. Moreover, to the extent that we can learn from America, it is South America, specifically Brazil in the ‘southwest’, rather than North America, that leads the emerging twenty-first century way. Secondly, perhaps even more surprisingly, we reckon we have as much to learn from an African ‘north–south’, than from a European ‘north-west’, the latter aligned with Marxism or socialism hitherto.

That said, our overall contention is not that one society is any better than another, but that all societies – in their nature and their culture, in their technology and their economy – have something potentially unique to contribute (which is why our opening quote from Nigerian-American journalist Dayo Olopade is significant), as an integral whole.

As such, we totally reject the classical economic notion of ‘comparative advantage’, because it focuses exclusively on economic advantage, in isolation of nature, culture and society, and what we term an all round ‘polity’ (2) that serves to align each of such altogether. It is that individual and societal all-roundedness to which we will allude, as integral advantage, bearing in mind that, on the one hand, the west needs the east, the north needs the south, and they need each other, altogether; and on the other hand, each and every society needs to build on its own local grounds, albeit that thereafter, in order to evolve, the local and the global need to interact. That is what we mean by integral advantage.

What's Wrong with 'Emerging' Markets

Nothing New Under the Sun

Ironically as such, while our major focus in this work is on the emerging markets and societies, specifically the BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – most especially as we shall see on Russia and South Africa – we reject the conventional ‘growth map’ underlying ‘emerging markets’ as a partial truth at best. For the very notion of ‘emergence’, as we shall see later in Chapter 2, implies that something fundamentally new needs to come into being, new life so to speak. This new life is born out of a meeting between different worlds, rather than through competition between one and another. Compare such with what the originator of the notion of BRICs, Jim O’Neill (3), who was a senior executive of Goldman Sachs at the time of writing, had to say in 2011:

Tens of millions of people from the BRICs and beyond are being taken out of poverty by the growth of their economies. While it is easy to focus on the fact that China has created so many billionaires, it should not be forgotten that in the past 15 years or so, 300 million or more Chinese have been lifted out of poverty. In India the lives of many tens of millions have similarly improved, and perhaps 300 million or more will join them in the next decade or two. Vast swathes of mankind are having their chance to enjoy the fruits of wealth creation. That is the big story.

Little is Truly Emerging

Well it may be a ‘big’ story, and it is ‘new’, but only in a merely quantitative sense. There is nothing qualitatively new in there being many more Chinese billionaires or Indians ‘lifted out of poverty’, economically so to speak. In fact later on, in Chapters 12 and 13, we shall also hear about the downsides of economic ‘development’, in India and China. Meanwhile what is emerging, in the final analysis, is a further encroachment of ‘western-northern’ capitalism on the ‘south-east’ (India) and ‘north-east’ (China), albeit with some BRIC variations on such an underlying capitalist theme. Moreover, the theme is a singularly economic, not an integral – natural and cultural, societal as well as economic – one. In other words, little substantively and qualitatively new then is emerging from O’Neill’s Growth Map. That’s what, for us, is ‘wrong’ with such an allegation of emerging BRICS economies, in isolation of their societies.

Releasing a Society's Genius

Pursuing an Integral Rhythm

What, for us then, is qualitatively new, and thereby truly emergent, can only be found if we go beyond economics per se, and, if you like, the comparative economic advantage of each BRICS nation. In effect we need to uncover the integral advantage within each. In other words, we need to reveal the emerging nature, culture, society and economy of each ‘polity’ as a whole, that is, for us, the source of its overall integrity. So we argue that the fate of Greece or Slovenia (4) in Europe today, or indeed Libya or Iraq within the Middle East, is determined, by and large, by the extent to which each can be enabled to pursue what we term its integral rhythm (5), locally and naturally grounding, locally–globally and culturally emerging, newly globally and socially/scientifically navigating, and thereafter globally-locally economically effecting: altogether then serving to release its genius. That is no easy task, and currently there is no field of study, or agency in society, to integrally promote such. Hence the need for a book such as this, and a developmental agency to follow, one which we have hitherto termed, as above, an integral university, to make a start.

The Part Dominates the Whole

What we mean by all that will be elaborated, much more extensively, in Chapter 2 and more especially in Chapter 3. But here is a brief synopsis. For us the pursuit of integral advantage is not dependent on relative factor costs, and thereby economic specialization that follows (see below), but on the overall uniqueness, and authenticity, of each society, in itself and in relation to the wider world. Most, if not all, societies are inhibited, both internally and externally, from realizing such. Instead, one society tends to dominate over another, and prevent itself, or the other, from realizing itself as a whole. Alternatively, one part of a particular society is dominant over others, whereby development, as a whole, is inhibited. As a result you might have poverty, autocracy, environmental decay, or another such malfunction, as such, a part dominates the whole, both internally and/or externally. In short, the society, altogether, is disintegrating, to some degree or another.

Moreover, because all too often ‘western-northern’ concepts and institutions – set apart from, but dominating over the world as a whole – like free markets or liberal democracy have become so all pervasive, a particular society, be it Egypt or Ireland, is inhibited from emerging. Integral development, centred in middle-up-down-across guise, needs to arise initially and locally from the ground up: naturally and communally as such, and subsequently develop, culturally and spiritually and locally–globally so to speak, outgrowing its prior parochial self. So, on the one hand, once supposedly released from their despotic shackles, Libya or Iraq disintegrate, because each is not enabled to emerge in such integral guise. Greece and Spain, on the other hand, implode, as each has done of late, because austerity may bite, and such austerity does nothing to help each country uncover and release their overall, societally-based integral advantage. Indeed, there is no integral agency – certainly neither, for example, IMF nor EU – to promote such.

Integral BRICS

East, West, North and South

What we shall be doing in this book then, is to point to such an emerging integral BRICS advantage, in relation to each of the five economies and societies, generally – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – and in relation to two of these, Russia and South Africa, more specifically. Why, then, do these two countries assume pride of place in our integral context?

Figure 1.1 Integral advantage

True to our integral realities, spanning east and west, north and south, we chose two countries whose reason for being spans, respectively, those geographical and psychological polarities, that is Russia spiritually and materially (east/west) and South Africa in terms of nature or wilderness and humankind (south/north). Moreover, because our concerns are integral, rather than merely economic, these two countries are, for us, of major existential concern: South Africa, not only the place of humankind’s origins, but also renowned for its ‘long walk to freedom’ between the 1960s and 1990s, leading to the fall of ‘apartheid’, and Russia, because it was, for a long time, the major counter-force, socio-politically, to the all pervasive capitalist ‘west’, and today, geographically, straddles ‘east–west’.

Alongside these Russian and South African two then, and positioned integrally, Brazil ‘south-west’, India ‘south-east’, China ‘north-east’ and the conventional BRICS wisdom as formulated by the US/UK in the ‘west-north’, will be as shown in Figure 1.1 above.

Google Laden Future to Guild Laden Past

We now turn back to Russian geographer Peter Kropotkin to set a necessary backdrop to take us into the past, when compared and contrasted with the ‘age of the Internet’, which takes us into the future. Thereby, we are able to recognize that there is no such automatic thing as future ‘progress’. To that extent we can learn, for example, from the Russia of the past as from the US of the future. In fact, as the Brazilian polymath Roberto Mangabeira Unger (6), will ultimately reveal (Chapter 14), the seemingly bright prospects of, for example, a Google laden future, have in fact prevented us from learning from, and developing anew, the allegedly dim prospects from a Kropotkin laden, guild-edged past.

1.2 Fields, Factories and Workshops

From Division to Integration of Labour

The Economic Division of Labour

Peter Kropotkin (7), about whom we shall hear much more in Chapter 4, was born and bred in nineteenth-century Russia, before being forced to flee to France, to Switzerland and to Britain, thereafter returning to Russia after the 1917 revolution. In our view, as we shall see, Kropotkin is a key representative of the ‘east–west’ (spiritual-material) polarity that Russia potentially, if not actually, embodies today. From the outset he lamented the fact that we were taught, as per Ricardo’s theory of comparative (economic) advantage, for instance, that Hungary and Russia are predestined by nature to grow corn in order to feed the manufacturing industries, that Britain had to provide the world market with cottons, iron goods and coal; Belgium with woollen cloth; and so on.

Each region as such has to have its own exclusive economic speciality. Humanity though, for Kropotkin, perceives there is no advantage for the community in riveting a human being for all his life to a given spot, in a workshop nor a mine; no gain in depriving him of such work that would bring him into free intercourse with nature, make of him a conscious part of the grand whole, a partner in the highest enjoyment of art, of free work and creation.

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