Contradictions and tensions in the economy, trade and global politics

FUHEM ecosocial

PAPERS magazine

FUHEM Ecosocial published a new issue of the journal PAPERS, entitled "Towards a new era?", To identify turning points in the economic and political globalization in recent times.

On August 18 Steve Bannon was dismissed as chief of staff of Trump Management. He had come to the White House after passing through Cambridge Analytica, company aupó Donald Trump for president of the United States, thanks to the automated personalized advertising to a scale never before known. A machine capable of causing major changes in public opinion, as researchers Berit Anderson and Brett Horvarth to explain  "The rise of the propaganda machine guns artificial intelligence" , included in the  SPECIAL  last number of  papers. 

Introduction to number raises the arrival of a  new era full of contradictions  in which we move from the hand of an economic globalization unprecedented whose clearest manifestation are the ecological and environmental changes that humanity is causing and altering the ability of the earth to sustain human life as we know it . 

The  digital economy  is one of those great transformations that occur within the current production model. So says economist  Ignacio Muro : "It's a way to produce that contaminates all activities but turns in the service sectors for consumption (20% of global GDP), laws and values of great impact for life people". Because this model of consumption is responsible for creating new spaces of inequality and exclusion in increasingly numerous layers of population. 

Another element is at this turning point is the  international trade . The continued growth of international transactions from free trade agreements after World War II, is facing two scenarios: "towards outside the rules and potentially negative for citizenship radical liberalization and the environment or towards a scale protectionist unprecedented in the last 50 years , "said  Luis Fernando Lobejón  on" international trade and trade policy . " 

Brexit and Donald Trump 

It is soberanismo a real alternative to this new era of neoliberal globalization? Albert RecioProfessor of Applied Economics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona analyzes its possibilities: "Capitalism is a global system. But its history has been articulated through national processes that have generated international hierarchy manifested in the influence that each state has in international institutions, in their ability to make autonomous decisions. " Examples such as the lack of real power of popular sovereignty in cases like the Greek crisis; the power of the United States to take international decisions unilaterally without regard to the international community or the Brexit show the differences of a soberanismo at different speeds that exemplifies the ongoing conflict between democracy and authoritarianism of this new globalization. 

Some initiatives and proposals that promote local governance are proposed by researchers  Daniele Archibugi and Marco Cellini  in the analysis "levers to achieve global democracy." Since the claim of the commitment of international organizations towards democracy, to build on the work of NGOs to establish links between civil societies to reduce the growing instability in the international community avoiding the use of taxation. "Recent history has shown that democracy is not a product that can be easily exported and imposed from above , " the authors write . 

The magazine is complete with its usual sections: 

The  TEST  "Sustenance and sustainability: to live under one roof with well glued to the ground feet , " signed by the director of the magazine,  Santiago Alvarez Cantalapiedra , which analyzes the possible paths that can guarantee an acceptable level of welfare for all without compromising the natural foundations that sustain life on the planet. 

Section  PANORAMA  includes three items. The agreement signed by  Xavier Bohigas  shows how nuclear energy is not without CO2 emissions. Followed by a focus on economic democracy and mechanisms of collective capital formation, article  Mario del Rosal . Finally,  Ricardo Gayol and Antonio Vicente , reconstruct the cycle change which resulted in the death of Antonio Vicente Mosquete, president of the ONCE and how from that moment, the organization took a more typical path of a commercial enterprise than a service institution. 

Meanwhile, in  PERISCOPIO ,  Ana Cecilia Salazar , a researcher at the University of Cuenca (Ecuador), discusses the conflict between the Shuar indigenous people and extractive interests of transnational corporations that exploit the mineral resources of the Ecuadorian region. 

Finally, the issue offers two interviews: one of  Lucía Vicent  and  José Bellver  , the Ecosocial team FUHEM with  Randall Wray  , about his book  Monetary Theory Moderna: Manual macroeconomics on sovereign monetary systems  , and second, of  Salvador López Arnal  with  César Rendueles  about his book  Unprocessed. A claim of historical materialism .