Introduction
Chua’s essay on logistics is highly thought-provoking, critical, and timely. The article juxtaposes the new form of capitalism that finds its way through the hegemonic force of logistics and people’s desire to maintain freedom against the oppressive power of global resource owners. Chua starts the work with a relatively relaxed disposition by describing the compulsory position of logistics and supply chain management in contemporary people’s daily lives. The author wonders how people today cannot live without supplies from far locations. The blame settles on e-markets, such as Amazon, which uses technology to realize rare efficiency in providing people with an inexhaustible list of items online. The matter causes the death of many physical retail shops, with 2017 being the worst year on this matter.
Chua notes that about 8,600 physical retail stores terminated operations during the year (2017) due to the e-market, leading to massive unemployment (1444). Chua describes the essential components of logistics and various parties’ roles in creating the self-cannibalizing logistic fantasy. Logistics is a corporate fantasy established by capitalists to dominate the world and may not succeed due to system vulnerabilities, as argued by Chua.
Guest Lecture Summary
Chua begins the account by explaining how logistics matters in every human’s daily life. According to the scholar, it is significantly funny that nowadays, people, including those living in poor areas worldwide, depend on logistics for survival. The matter gives businesses and investors (capitalists) undue authority and control over the world, with the new system trying as hard as possible to realize what has been impossible for years. Chua’s attitude is that capitalism has been a botched system of life that fails due to irregularities. A major indiscretion about capitalism is the idea of giving a few people excessive wealth while making the majority dependent and impoverished. Efficiency and ease are the new charms that the logistic revolution utilizes to dupe and cage people into capitalism’s imprisonment (Chua 1445).
Accordingly, the scholar defines logistics as an omnipresent and predictable calculation and organization forms that shape people’s daily thinking (1444). The spirit started having a domineering power globally between the 1960s and 1970s (Chua 1445). Such is when people stopped depending on what they could produce for survival, turning their focus to the internet for timely supplies.
The logistical system has at least four correlating factors making its robust structure. The aspects’ primary role is to capture, organize, and control people’s daily lives through the establishment of supply chain management (Chua 1446). Logistics coordinate production, transportation, and consumption facets through the cybernetic system of data management to realize its hidden goal (Chua 1445). The four elements of logistics include transportation infrastructure, ecological systems, commercial and military items, and labor (Chua 1445). Transportation mainly involves the movement of items from the source to points-of-use through different means.
The feature uses internet-supported data to track, trace, and enfold large territory circles to make the process successful. Ecological systems include independent states in different parts of the world, their cultures, political systems, and technology. Societies in difficult climatic conditions find it hard to oppose capitalists’ temptation for efficient supplies for an improved life (Chua 1446). The military factor explains logistics’ origination and utilization in the supply world based on the terms utilized in the Napolic war.
The labor aspect unites the logistics fantasy with Marxism’s desire for freedom. Chua According to Chua, the present-day logistic revolution’s wish to make capitalism a real global force will remain but a wish due to the labor factor (1458). Humans worldwide know their rights and are ready to defend them, whether in trade unions or not (Chua 1458). The spread of organizations globally as resource owners seek to dominate the world, cut costs, and compete through price cuttings led to the mechanization issue that kills jobs, as per Chua (1457). The aspect’s outcome is the gradual return of massive suffering of the masses characteristic of capitalism. Accordingly, employees working in the logistics sector are bound to strike and fail the new plan, making the revolution a dream.
Thought about the Lecture
In my view, Chua’s account on the connection between logistics revolution and capitalism is honest. The world economic structure reveals a dangerous trend that may bring a new order in the future. Today, a majority of America’s wealth belongs to about one percent of the population, mainly persons owning multinationals (Brou et al. 622). The matter makes the lives of the majority in the U.S. unpredictable, with globalization allowing the wealthy lot to continue growing their wealth through global markets. Consequently, the time is almost when the world population will rise against the capitalist power. True to Chao’s words, the fresh capitalism spell is not independent of the many have-nots due to the system’s dependence on logistics labor (1458). All the world requires is to unite and say no to the emergent capitalist spirit.
Capitalism is never an ideal economic system for the world population. The fiscal structure believes in the existence of few resource owners and many job seekers for social order. According to the capitalist arrangement, people from the lower classes compete to join the top class, promoting economic development (Jaffee 194). Capitalism faces noteworthy opposition due to its outright assumption of the majority’s plights. America, the structure’s father, worked hard to spread it globally during the 1960s and 1970s. The nation used military power and force to compel European and Asian countries to adopt the new economic system but failed to realize the targeted results (Jaffee 196). Nonetheless, the question whether total mechanization is realizable to eradicate the logistic revolution’s vulnerabilities to labor still remains.
Conclusion
America’s desire to dominate the world through economic forces appears weak and overpowered. The nation introduced capitalism to the world in the second half of the twentieth century to replace communism. However, efforts to colonize the globe using capitalism halted due to labor-related challenges. The nation now intends to complete its mission through a logistics revolution, as Chua observes.
The scholar explains market efficiency and ease realized through the global supply chain as the principal means utilized by the fresh capitalism promoters. The blind move destabilizes markets by killing labor unions and forcing impoverished nations to open doors to multinationals, who then seize the opportunity to colonize the locals and the world. Unfortunately, the logistics revolution exhibits vulnerabilities that labor can use to make it a dream. Depending on the workforce engaged in transportation, warehouse, and other sectors makes the new capitalist influence feeble. That is because demonstrations by those working in the industry will bring the system down when the induced plights are no longer bearable.
Works Cited
Brou, Daniel, et al. “Corporate Governance and Wealth and Income Inequality.” Corporate Governance: An International Review, vol. 29, no. 6, 2021, pp. 612-629.
Jaffee, David. “The Current Crisis of US Neoliberal Capitalism and Prospects for a New “Social Structure of Accumulation”.” Review of Radical Political Economics, vol. 51, no. 2, 2019, pp. 193-210.