The Emperor
One more word on the emperor of the global economy, President Hu, who is pictured here at Paine Field in Everett:
When the heads of Boeing left Seattle for Chicago, the feeling expressed in the daily papers and financial journals was one of deep despair—the departure of the heads meant that the company as a whole had departed. Boeing was no longer a Seattle company but a Chicago one. The flaw of this thinking (or feeling of despair) was exposed by the President Hu’s visit to Boeing’s Everett factory. Hu did not go to Chicago to meet with the heads; he went to the actual site of production. And this was not done as an act of solidarity between the Communist Party of China and the unionized workers and engineers of Boeing, but because Boeing is a company that is in reality based in Seattle’s metropolitan area. The headquarters in Chicago must be regarded not as Boeing but in the way that the company’s smaller plants in the midwest and Japan are recognized—as moons circling the spatial and historical core production of commercial airplanes.
Since the very beginning of capitalism it has been capital’s dream of dreams to detach itself from production and to seem autonomous—money making money rather than labour (Hegel’s savage beast) making money. This is what the heads of Boeing wanted to achieve: complete autonomy from work, both physical and mental. But Hu’s stop in Seattle’s metropolitan area made it clear for all to see that Boeing is based nowhere else but here and that the departure of the heads has not resulted in capital eclipsing labour, but the other way around: labour eclipsing capital.
That's just complete bullshit, Charles. The global economy is not controlled by any single entity, but by a variety of national/ transnational powers in perilous alliance/ competition with each other. The Boeing musings? Strange that you miss the postmodern way in which the significance of Boeing to the local area has become more symbolic/ nostalgic, and a visit to a Boeing factory can be a tourist activity as much if not more than an homage to American labor.