Claire Fontaine's List: global knowledge economy

• the theory takes the view that individual liberty and freedom are the high point of civilization and then goes on to argue that individual liberty and freedom can best be protected and achieved by an institutional structure, made up of strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade: a world in which individual initiative can flourish. 
• They saw their role as very political, not only against fascism and communism, but also against the power of the state, and particularly against the power of the social democratic state in Europe.

  • Milton Friedman, Freidrick Hayek
• The other issue which is not so obvious, but the data I think show it very clearly, is that the incomes and assets of the elite classes were severely stressed in the 1970s.  And therefore there was a sort of class revolt on the part of the elites, who suddenly found themselves in some considerable difficulty,

  • movement away from social safety net a la European welfare states as motivated by economic stress on elites
• What the bankers did was to discipline the city along ways which I think they didn't have a full theory for, but they discovered neoliberalism through their practice.  And after they had discovered it, they said, ah yes, this is the way in which we should go in general.  And of course this then became the way that Reagan went and then it became, if you like, the standard way the International Monetary Fund starts to disciple countries that run into debt around the world.

  • NYC financial crisis and response to it as experimental fashioning of new neoliberal agenda, in light of Friedman's neoliberalism having not worked out so well in Chile. As NYC goes, so goes Reagan, and so goes the IMF.
• We also see the formation in 1972 of something called the Business Roundtable, which was a very influential organization.  They were very concerned to try to roll back that legislation which had emerged during the 1960s and early 1970s that set up things like the Environmental Protection Agency, OSHA, consumer protection,
• But then the Republican Party needed a mass base and one of the things that then happened was that they turned to the Christian Right, and remember it was Jerry Falwell in 1978 who formed the Moral Majority, and there was a coalition that then emerged, a popular base amongst the evangelical Christians on the one hand and then tremendous corporate funding of the political process on the other hand, which made the Republican Party solidly behind the neoliberal agenda.

  • how the so-called moral majority, the evangelical Christians, etc, became aligned with the neoliberal agenda
• What Paul Volcker did in 1979 was to reverse that, to say, we're no longer interested in full employment; what we're interested in is control of inflation.  He brought inflation down quite savagely in about three or four years, but in the process he generated massive unemployment.  And massive unemployment of course was disempowering for workers and at the same time the deindustrialization that I mentioned accelerated.  So there was quite a massive loss of industrial jobs, manufacturing jobs, in the early 1980s.  And of course that means less union power. 
• But here's the interesting thing: it's unreasonable to think that actually the US imposed neoliberalization on Mexico.  What happened was that the US was putting noeliberalizing pressures on Mexico and an elite inside of Mexico seized the opportunity to say: yes, that's what we want.  So it was a coalition between the elite in Mexico and the US Treasury/IMF that put together the kind of neoliberalization package that came to Mexico in the late 1980s.
• That point turns on its head a lot of the assumptions the left tends to make about neoliberalism being imposed on countries by the United States.  One of the cases where this also was illustrated was Sweden, which had one of the most socialistic welfare states, and where ruling elites forced through neoliberal policies. 
• early 1980s.  Neoliberalism was not doing very well in its pure form, in terms of regenerating capital accumulation, but what it was doing very well was redistributing wealth towards the upper classes.
• So wherever neoliberalization moves, you see this tremendous concentration of wealth and power occurring in the top echelons.  It actually occurs in the very, very top echelons -- in the 0.01 percent.
• What is the relationship between neoliberalism and imperialism?
• But what this means is that, for instance, the US is an imperialist country, it has an imperialist agenda, and the way it has sought to gain its power is by a double strategy.  First you try to gain power by economic influence, by economic power, by economic institutions, so that the fact that the United States controls the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the fact that it can actually work through those institutions, that it can exercise immense economic influence and power, is one of the means by which US imperial strategies operat
• The other strategy, which has been longstanding in US imperial history, is to find a local strong person -- usually a man, a strong man -- who will do your bidding and you will support him and you will give him assets and give him military assistance.
• We've seen a bit of a shift in US policy with the rise of neoconservatism, which is epitomized by the architects of the invasion of Iraq.  These neoconservatives differ from neoliberals to the extent that they appeal to a need for order and morality, rather than individualism, freewheeling cultural expression, and the chaos that the market can bring.  So would it be fair to say that neoconservatives are in still favor of the market, have a great deal in common with neoliberals, but just want a greater degree of social control?
• So the US has a rather more limited position than many people like to think, right now, which is not to say that it's subservient to the rest of the world, but it's no longer as dominant as it once was.
• I wonder if you can explain your critique both of the legalistic framework of universal human rights and of non-profits as the agents of change.
• and the law is not exactly an unbiased institution.  It has certain kinds of ways of looking at private property and individuals and so on.  

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• Peace education assumes people are naturally inclined towards  living in peace and is about (a) teaching children and others how to be  peaceful, (b) teaching strategies to build a desire for peace (including a  respect for the role of conflict in daily life), (c) and how to build a  culture of peace, a culture of non-violence (resolve conflict constructively).

• Here we draw out some of the profound implications of globalization for   education and the work of educators. As part of this we also look at some of   the issues surrounding the increased presence of corporations and branding   in education.

• As soon as the Other becomes a wrongdoer or an infidel, dialogue becomes impossible.  
  
• And Manichean situations make dialogue impossible.
• What are the conditions for dialogue? 
   First of all, recognition of the Other as an interlocutor having rights equal to one’s own. Real dialogue is when you recognize the same dignity in the other. No dialogue is possible between a master and his slave. Dialogue assumes equality – which is a relatively new viewpoint in European culture! Western Europe dominated and exploited the world starting with the conquest of America; it practiced slave trading and slavery; it carried out the longest and harshest dominations in history. Yet in that same Europe, and perhaps as early as the conquest, deviant minds developed some of the key ideas that allow dialogue: it was Bartolomeo de Las Casas, Spanish priest, who said that the American indigenous people were humans like everyone else, and it was Montaigne who said we called other civilizations “barbarians”. It continued with Montesquieu who imagined a so-called Persian coming to examine France in the manner of an anthropologist brought up on human rights philosophy. In other words, Western Europe was simultaneously the home of domination and of ideas about emancipation. And it was by appropriating those ideas that colonized people were able to relatively obtain emancipation.
• How can we fight? 
   With words, intelligence and conscience. We know what principles we must respect: understanding others and recognizing their rights. There are periods, such as ours, in which very little dialogue is possible. I think we are entering a dark period. 
  

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• Education for the Knowledge Economy (EKE) refers to World Bank assistance aimed at helping developing countries equip themselves with the highly skilled and flexible human capital needed to compete effectively in today’s dynamic global markets.
• Formation of a strong human capital base
• Construction of an effective national innovation system (NIS)

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