A geographer can serve to describe mountains, rivers and villages near or far away. It can also do a good service if it explains well located the important phenomena that are taking place in the world. Competitiveness or competitiveness, for example. This is what the French geographer, Gilles Ardinat, has done with his PhD thesis Géographie de la compétitivité, summarized in the journal Le Monde Diplomatique of October: Quand l’Europe impose are creed. And I'm sharing it, in mythe.

“During these years,” says Ardinat- our rulers have promoted the incorporation of the theories developed in the trade schools of the EE.UU. : cost control (‘cost competitiveness’), comparison and classification of countries as competing companies (benchmarking), country marketing (it is necessary to know how to ‘sell’ the territory), search for financing (capital raising)... As the use of these tools is expanding, competitiveness has become the measure of each country’s success in globalization.”

The first problem is that what is an idea of microeconomics, the competitiveness of products and companies, the use of policy and of countries is not, in the opinion of some, scientific. Economist Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate, said: “Competitiveness in the field of national economies is a negligible word. This obsession with competitiveness is false and dangerous.”

Companies multiply profits and jobs by achieving better results than competitors. Although it can be thought that the complex being that is a country can hardly be surrounded by the characteristics of companies, Ardinat has denounced that the idea has prevailed in the new phase of commodification of the world: “It is assumed that the territories are in purchasing and selling conditions, and that companies can choose where to locate concurrently. Everything (contagion rights, debt securities, raw materials...) in a world that can be played on the stock market, investment compasses use competitiveness: it measures the results of each territory.”

This is how the famous rankings emerge. The CAV is in the X position in the competitiveness championship, Germany is in the lead, France is losing competitiveness... These lists are complemented by other indexes already published: wealth, survival, schooling rates, public debt note, imposed by large insurance companies to each country, etc. The siculusalts of what Krugman calls “competitive rankings industry.”

Most of these classifications draw the map of the world similarly. A competitive centre, consisting of North America, Europe and the Asian extreme, is dominated by a few Arab oil monarchies. Within this group, Germany, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries, the United States, Japan and Singapore form the hyper-competitive core. Around a rich and competitive world, the list of countries from an extensive periphery is growing until the periphery gradually becomes a marginalized and poor world.

Real name: ‘social dumping’

But what do we use these classifications for if they do not serve to make forecasts? Most countries considered to be competitive have low growth rates, high budget deficits, company relocations in foreign transactions, industrial flight. The most curious thing is that the growth of the world economy is mainly due to the peripheral countries.

Five years ago, Ireland, Iceland and Dubai were still considered models of competitiveness. Following the outbreak of the crisis 2007-2008, it is said that all three were over-speculated, lacking financial regulation, over-indebted. It's better understood if you're told that to complete the rankings, you're interrogated to senior positions in the big companies.

Competition is, however, the wonderful wizard of most of the world's rulers. The globalisation of the rich West means the abandonment of low added-value industries and the differentiation in highly skilled technologies, enterprises and jobs. So we'll get services that don't look at the price. In return, the backward countries will emerge from poverty brought by our old industries, those obsolete activities that must compete at low prices. We all win with globalization -- if it were true.

Germany shows Ardini the opposite: “It has gained competitiveness by freezing wages and implementing ‘social’ VAT, i.e. by increasing household consumption rates to reduce corporate contributions.” On the other hand, countries like China are pioneering computing and other innovative fields, which also undermine the paradigm.

On the pretext of improving competitiveness, Europe has imposed an increase in VAT, a fall in wages and a reduction in public budgets. Ardinat wants to get back to the concept of dumping that was once heard the most: to manipulate costs in order to get better prices than the enemy. China does dumping of many kinds: social with impressive working conditions, environmental, fiscal... You see that you want to do the same with the austerity policies that apply to Greece and to others, but dumping is so-called competitiveness.

In the name of the battle for competitiveness, politicians allow masters to reduce the cost of work. As for the relocation of companies, this battle is lost, they will always find cheaper labour places. In Europe, on the other hand, the labour market does manage to fatten the profits of capital. In this sense, it is not a territory or a nation that has been the winner, but a small minority.

Another collateral damage to this battle is becoming increasingly clear when it is observed that the pressure on the lives of many citizens has weakened the demand for consumer products. Next to the goats, the revenue that states get with VAT.

And what do the political leaders say? “Competitiveness – Ardinat has concluded – has been imposed by companies and international markets. And since the selected authorities cannot control them and adapt to their requests, both cannot. After all, to aim for competitiveness is to disguise the loss of power and sovereignty of national states, thus destroying the possibility of protecting citizenship through political activity.”