in recent years.
On the occasion of his 10th anniversary seminar, I wrote the abstract of this speech, without thinking very hard, with an intention to think about civil society as reviewing the 20th century. However, I became unsure whether such civil societies in Asia will still exist in their original form in the 21st century. If they survive, they could be, in the worst case, full of unemployed people. Concerning such situations, I am afraid I cannot tell what 21st century would be like.
Nonetheless, it was fortunate that Dr. Iokibe mentioned the current economic crisis. Encouraged by his speech, I would like to look at this economic crisis, which I believe a superficial symptom, with longer span of time in mind.
Needless to say, the words such as turning point of the century or end of the century are used everywhere as if they are the words of the age. I would like to think about thoughts of an economic historian or thinker, Karl Polannyi for a clue to understand the current situation. He went through the end of the 19th century and thought very hard about the meaning of the turning point experienced a century ago. I would like to use his image or the question posed 100 years ago as a clue to understand the current situation. In the abstract of my speech, the words such as the turning point of the century, the second major turning point, tyranny of economy and tyranny of market are the words of Polannyi. His opinion is, in short that there were three opposed systems or movement almost at the same time in the beginning of the 20th century, more precisely 1930s and such systems or movements decided the destiny of the 20th century. Among them, on the right, there was fascism and on the left socialism. And in-between, there was the American standpoint, the New Deal as an eclectic policy, Then why had these three systems or movements appeared in 1930s? And why are these three ideologies generally considered to be completely different, or even opposed though they were developed, in a sense, under similar conditions and motivations.
I think it is because, in short, the liberal market economy established in 19th century made society very unstable since it created various domestic and international gaps though such liberal capitalism had rapidly increased productivity.
This liberal market economy was born and developed rapidly as a result of the industrial revolution and it eventually lead to an international regime as the gold standard system. Although the liberal marker economy based on the capitalism has a positive influence on society, 3 different forms of systems or movements appeared as a reaction of the political community to the destructive influence in the domestic and international scale, or as reaction to tyranny of market, according to Polannyi. In other words, 20th century was a period where these three movements balanced each other, or in some cases, two of them cooperated to fight against the other and made history. I think that is one way to see the 20th century. Though each of the three systems looks very different in terms of ideology, what is common among them is the fact that the nation is very strong. Strong national, or political power regulates the market, or economy. These systems are equivalent in that respect.
However, these systems experienced another change in the latter half of 20th century, that is, in 1970s and 1980s. The change was, to put it succinctly, the process that strong nations around the world made an exit. Polannyi did not say so, but I inferred it from what he said. In the first place, in so-called advanced nations that hold the New Deal system, movements called new conservatism or new liberalism were born and deregulation was actively promoted in 1980s. At the same time, the system called development dictatorship that had supported the "success" of the third world was brought to a standstill. In addition, the third wave of democratization in the third world rose in 1970s to 1980s.
These facts tend to be discussed separately, but I think they have something in common, since they are, in a sense, caused by the decline of the strong nations. This situation lead to the dramatic corruption of socialism and socialistic-planned economies. Considering these facts, I feel the economy or society that moved from market-oriented to nation-oriented in the beginning of the 20th century moved back to market-oriented in the latter half of the 20th century.
I think many factors influence such movements. It is not possible to mention all of these factors here, but there are, I think, two major factors from the viewpoint of the international politics and economics. First, as symbolized by the end of Vietnam War and the cold war, the shared understanding was created in the 1970s that such a thing as a world war was no longer possible. More importantly, the age of the border-less economy and software rather than hardware had arrived. It is generally said that such border-less and "soft" economy made the current situation, I mean.
nations could not support themselves because of such factors and had to made an exit from the scene. This was true all in the first (advanced), the second and he third world. I think this is a bit farfetched argument. But it is said to be the second major turning point though many people named it
