The Changes in the Global Mode of Regulation vis-a-vis the Global Mode of Accumulation

The G20 summit seems to be a good occasion to inquire if an emergence of a global mode of regulation can be expected as its consequence. Obviously a theoretical question, it cannot be handled adequately within the framework of global ethnography that limits itself to tracing connections on a global scale. Axioms, theorems and lemmas belong to a different course of developing a narrative on events, actions and positions than these side-notes on the hyper-text of the global and local information resources can hope to offer. Nevertheless, the intensity of my daily browsing sessions may warrant their meandering summary even if as an inductive method of producing an easy-to-follow blog posting as a result.

I can't relinquish myself from a thought that rapid accumulation of capabilities by a single given country can release tensions that in reaching in scale from local to global may have effects both on the mode of accumulation and on the mode of regulation undertaken by a variety of actors in this regard. Ostensibly, G20 has been such a crisis management summit that in being so structured may be doubted in its ability to provide solutions that will provide an adequate response to what the media discourse calls a global crisis. Notably I cannot recall any media coverage that would let me to decide on whether it is a crisis of accumulation or of regulation. Governmental measures can be read both ways. However, I am not sure that there are no in-built contradictions in measures that derive from the imperatives of accumulation and regulation at once.

In this regard, monetary policies on a global scale clearly belong to a structure of contradictions between the processes of accumulation and regulation and of their related dynamics. In other words, it remains unclear whether an actor can de-emphasise accumulation in one area while re-emphasising regulation in another. Should other actors assume the same strategy it could have a counter-productive effect. Relatedly, different strategies by all or some of these other actors may create rurbulent changes in the respective dynamics that may in their turn lead to the alteration of the structure of overarching contradictions. To be sure, the de jure state of affairs will always lag behind or be out of sync with the de facto state of affairs, for which there are numerous historical examples. However, the attractor point of global or local development is positioned at the point of identity hetween the de facto and the de jure.

The historical Wall Street district of Manhattan makes an impression of boutique cluster of churches, thoroughfares, and tall structures. One can, nevertheless, make a representative tour d'horizont of the area in one to two hours, give or take stop-overs at Starbucks coffeeshops and Barnes and Noble's bookstores. The bronze bull statue finishes the picture. They say touching the statue in some well-worn places brings good luck. On the map of Manhattan, drawn rather close to scale, the area occupies a space around the southern tip of Manhattan. The site of the World Trade Center does not overlap the symbolic geography of Wall Street. One would need to exit at a different subway station. By a contrast, the Pudong district of Shanghai, the Chinese equivalent of Wall Street, is expected to be the size of the city of Chicago tout court.

Leaving for a moment the differences in the institutional scales of the modes and systems of regulation, the corresponding possibilities that attend to the space of regulation that will overlap with Pudong may very well have a characteristic of different modes of both regulation and accumulation. Whatever shape the global equations of dynamics and contradictions of the correspondingly emergent global modes of regulation and accumulaton will take they may have to be recalculated in view of the equilibrium point that will be de facto reflective of them. De jure equilibria will hardly have any influence on the course of events.