Observers from both the political left and the middle were afraid that unregulated neoliberalism would contribute to a reactionary revolution that would derail the whole project of globalism. The next logical step for establishment observers, including Ian Bremmer, is to diagnose the collapse of globalism and to imagine what the road back from loss could look like, considering the wind and the election of Donald Trump in 2016.
This is the subject of the book, Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism by Ian Bremmer. In his account, the collapse of globalism is not based on Rapkay and Trump but stems from a broader configuration of political and economic powers that are reshaping the policies of both developed and emerging countries.
The fundamental thesis of Bremmer’s book is that globalism has left more and more significant parts of the middle class behind in the developing world and has not fulfilled the demands of the rising working and middle classes for higher living conditions in the developed world either. The weaknesses of globalism have been channeled by conservative governments into various types of “us vs. them politics,” which are everywhere a decidedly counter-productive solution to the pressures of multicultural capitalism.
ANTI-GLOBALIZATION REBELLION
Bremmer in Us vs Them accepts the collapse of globalism but remains committed to its strategic paradigms. He believes that the anti-globalization rebellion is understandable and that we should not ridicule or denigrate the supporters of Rapkay or Trump or other nationalist movements around the world. These rebellions are reactions to unchecked migrant waves, militant threats, and work losses, all of which are likely to escalate as a result of the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotization.
SPECULATIONS OVER AI
Bremmer provides a short and devastating survey of the vulnerability of the developed world to work losses caused by AI. Countries with adverse population profiles (a high proportion of young people joining the labor market), simmering domestic tensions, and policymakers with little institutional ability to expand public spending in schooling and infrastructure would be overcome by the shock of AI-induced job losses. Countries currently in trouble, such as Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, Indonesia, and Venezuela, may face the dangers of increasingly more severe state breakdown and ultimate dissolution.
OF SOLUTION AND RESPITE
The proposals Bremmer proposes reforming education programs, improving workers’ retraining systems, restructuring taxation, playing with minimum income policies, and promoting public/private alliances have a common ring to them. Many of these ideas have been debated by skeptical critics of informational capitalism (see, for example, Reich, 2001) who argue that enlightened social policy (often in the context of a new social contract) must be an accommodation to economic conditions that cannot be modified.
Towards the end of the book, Us Vs Them, Bremmer applies another prerequisite to the prospect of re-negotiating social contracts between residents and governments. Any big revision will have to be embraced by the economic classes, the true beneficiaries of globalism.
From this point of view, as per Us vs Them , the collapse of globalism is only due to the failure of conservative or liberal globalists to hang on to power. The affluent class, which has become vastly richer under the reign of globalism, has had no economic losses. They were, in fact, the biggest beneficiaries of Trump’s tax overhaul. All this causes me to ask if the economic oligarchs will not have cast their hands on the wall-builders who are ready to fight against them and protect the current centers of capital.
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