Laissez-faire Politics Thread - Praxis? I didn't play Deus Ex, sorry.

[Kara]

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/first-person/2019/7/1/18744204/guns-gun-control-anarchism

The Teen Vogue socialism / labor writer is in Vox now. Bhaskar, you're on notice.

Don't really feel like dunking on the obvious anarchist stuff here (Rojava reperesent), but I do want to say that it's shockingly irresponsible to make the argument that she's making and offer at best a perfunctory digression into what tends to happen when you're vaguely threatening to the right wing and exercise your right to bear arms.

[VomKriege]

The Revolutions podcast is finally going on the Russian Revolution. We're still in the preliminaries.

https://www.revolutionspodcast.com/

[benjipwns]

Kim Kelly is a freelance writer and labor organizer whose writing on labor, politics, and culture has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the New Republic, Teen Vogue, the Pacific Standard, and many other publications.

move that up behind WaPo at least

[benjipwns]

Looks like the DemSoc who wants to turn Queens into an open-air brothel is going to win

https://twitt.er.com/NYWFP/status/1143713686764306433

Uh oh looks like she was a psyop

(Image removed from quote.)

we did it fam, ruling class destroyed
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/03/nyregion/katz-caban-recount-queens.html

The Democratic primary for district attorney in Queens, a race that drew nationwide attention, was thrown deep into uncertainty on Wednesday after a count of paper ballots flipped the primary-night result.

Tiffany Cabán, a 31-year-old public defender, saw her almost 1,100-vote lead evaporate, with Melinda Katz, the Queens borough president, edging out to a 20-vote lead.

[Kara]

lol, of course Brendan O'Neill's employer would post something like that.

[toku]

I mainly wish Amber was a little more hopeful? It might just be her tone but I think she's ready to watch the world burn.

[Kara]

I mainly wish Amber was a little more hopeful? It might just be her tone but I think she's ready to watch the world burn.

She was a long-time member of DSA (as in before 2016), you'd think that'd help given the radical rise since then. Also she's a host on a wildly successful podcast.

[curly]

fave dumb amber take? mine was that China's internet policy is good

[Kara]

But mom, I don't want to read a Spiked article.

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I'm actually kind of mad I even clicked through on the link to see what the article was about and gave them a page impression.

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My favorite Amber moment was when they had the authors of People's Republic of Wal-Mart on a premium episode and she said she's a socialism in one country kind of person even though one of their points was that supply chains and "successful" (my quotes, not theirs) central planning require global supply chains.

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I don't subscribe, that shit is on YouTube.

[close]

[Kara]

*adjusting some tchotchke on a TIE Advanced flight stick* the dad energy is strong with this one

[Mandark]

"Centrists use woke identity politics to undercut real material leftism" only makes sense if the 2016 Democratic presidential primary (as experienced through Twitter) is literally your only reference point in American politics.

The DLC was pushing Dem politicians to stand up to black leaders "special interest groups" at the same time it was supporting means testing, work requirements, etc. Look at Jesse Jackson's platform in 1988. Hell, the early favorite among centrist Dems this cycle is Joe fucking Biden, who also was the first to have a major attack along racial justice lines.

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I know this post is limited to electoral/party politics, but it's in the context of someone arguing for the radical socialist change of Bernie Sanders so I think I'm okay here.

[close]

[curly]

fave dumb amber take? mine was that China's internet policy is good

'online leftism is bad and you should all log off' - person who sustains herself from extremely online leftism


anyway, i think we should respond to her arguments with examples of why she's wrong rather than call her a nazbol. her insistence that anti-idpol left movements are the way to go in the imperial core don't seem to hold water from what i can see. the cpgb-ml dropped 'woke idpol leftism' and they're a joke to everyone now. historically, lots of people have come to leftism through struggles with other social issues; some obvious examples being the black panthers or ho chi minh. if focusing exclusively on the rural white peasant class is the most effective strat possible, why is the DSA poppin' and not Redneck Revolt? Why is she in the DSA longterm then, which is at face value a Bernie Sanders (social democracy) movement?

Yeah the main argument Amber and the 'anti-woke' left seem to make is that in order for the DSA to expand beyond their current base of white millennial gentrifiers they need to adopt the mores of the proles and tack right on social issues in order to appeal to the broad center of the working class, but I don't buy that the coalition they imagine is possible, especially in the US of all countries. You can't sidestep racial issues in a settler colonial society, and the people most open to some form of radical break towards egalitarianism are not coincidentally the ones from ethnic minorities.

"Centrists use woke identity politics to undercut real material leftism" only makes sense if the 2016 Democratic presidential primary (as experienced through Twitter) is literally your only reference point in American politics.

The DLC was pushing Dem politicians to stand up to black leaders "special interest groups" at the same time it was supporting means testing, work requirements, etc. Look at Jesse Jackson's platform in 1988. Hell, the early favorite among centrist Dems this cycle is Joe fucking Biden, who also was the first to have a major attack along racial justice lines.

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I know this post is limited to electoral/party politics, but it's in the context of someone arguing for the radical socialist change of Bernie Sanders so I think I'm okay here.

[close]

The left is as traumatized by the 2016 primary as the most fervent Clinton revanchist.

[Mandark]

A heuristic I've found useful is when someone says the left/liberals/Dems should make concessions and meet the people where they are on issue X, that person probably doesn't care about issue X or lowkey agrees with the right wing position on issue X.

Our own Optimus (pbuh) said the left needed to drop the PC bullshit because it turned off voters, then gradually revealed that he had Some Thoughts on Muslim immigration, racial IQ gaps, false rape accusations, etc.

[team filler]

opti 

[Mandark]

Him getting banned at the same time as Assimilate was like when Farrah Fawcett died on the same day as Michael Jackson.

[Kara]

If we look at societies that had successful proletarian revolutions they didn't exactly resolve all their racial and national contradictions after the fact...It's so obvious that I have to raise an eyebrow when that comes out of the mouth of someone who has voiced support for USSR/PRC before. The insistence on viewing these issues as purely a result of liberal society is an absurd claim.

Base and superstructure are rather fundamental Marxist concepts but for whatever reason they have dropped so far out of the discourse in the Anglophone world that anti-identity politics is an actual thing that exists in socialist spaces and jakefromstatefarm's recent posting about historiography was (to be uncharitable and mean-spirited) essentially waving a big book that says "culture is important too" so the academy (aKKKademy?) is clearly no better either.

Or to just give everyone the simpler version:

https://twitter.com/DanjoKaz00ie/status/1128375171276996609

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"These guys who slap barcodes on everything really seem like they would oppose classifying and categorizing people on the basis of gender or race." -not my joke

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[jakefromstatefarm]

Him getting banned at the same time as Assimilate was like when Farrah Fawcett died on the same day as Michael Jackson.

on this score, I think the crowd is just comprehensively right: the two of them were fueled by the same white (male) resentment, and this is what always held priority for them, tacit or not, no matter how or through what it got refracted

[shosta]

[Kara]

To just add to my earlier thoughts: I don't think it's prima facie ridiculous to claim social issues occupy a place in the debate (TM) that's out of sync with material conditions; however, the anti-identity politics crowd tends to not proffer nuanced arguments such as, "The boundaries of what's possible in the economic space have narrowed so acutely over the last 40 years that the only avenue left in which to perform class struggle is the cultural and personal. If we expand those boundaries we can see what happens with any extant excesses." Instead we are asked to jettison all struggles that are not obviously economic on the front end which, speaking as a member of the most oppressed class in society (small business owners), is just a ruse.

[curly]

(Image removed from quote.)

Using my detailed knowledge of the Brooklyn podcast community to parse the significance of this tweet and its later deletion.

[jakefromstatefarm]

and jakefromstatefarm's recent posting about historiography was (to be uncharitable and mean-spirited) essentially waving a big book that says "culture is important too"

this motherfucker always playing me for a mark to get me to show my hand

If your beef is with the akkkademy, all well and good, all I’d say is that the cultural turn was a net positive because it swept aside a lot of garbage materialist accounts and actually contributed to a return to Marx of sorts (‘read Marx, not marxists’ is a thing). No numbers on this, but I’d hazard to guess most explanations in the social sciences are broadly physicalist, though obv not in orthodox Marxist terms. The ones that do let non-physical objects/process into the picture always do so while incorporating it with a physical account of institutions/networks/whatever. And that incorporation happens more or less well; these guys usually aren’t philosophically inclined, they’re data crunchers trying to fit data to narratives.

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if your beef is with me* then what follows is a care post I’ve had in me for a while re: idealism & materialism that most will respond with and the rest wont be convinced by.

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first, let me lay out what I do not claim:

• that mental activity is in some sense -ontologically, causally, explanitorally- prior to physical activity
• that a sufficient account of any kind or degree of social phenomena can be given exclusively in terms of mental activity
• that mental or discursive or rational activity is wholly unbound from conditions that immediately precede and circumscribe it

What I do hold is that, nonetheless, these commitments don’t undermine the desirability of an integrated mental/physical approach. One where they both have causal roles to play at the macro + micro level.^^ The most obvious point I can think at which this clashes with Marx is wrt normativity. He’s notoriously ambiguous on this point but, if you’ll allow me to do a little violence, an at least common reading is one which sees him as setting out a descriptive science that unmasks received, common-sense norms like ‘rights’ or ‘justice’ as discursive tools that legitimate disproportionate distributions of wealth/power. The only real true moral north is freedom, and the liberatory goal is to reach a point where politics isn’t possible anymore. Now, I don’t think this is even close to the most plausible reading of the man himself, but something like it definitely animates most baby marxists (along with a bunch of other shit, don’t get me started) -and this is part of why I think the shearing away of Marxist approaches since the 70s^ was mostly a good thing. The ability/language that allows us to acknowledge when unjust** material conditions are being covered over by norms/mores/values/whatever is a good thing, and one for which we’re largely indebted to Marx. The view that norms/mores/values always or even just mostly do that is fucking crazy and incoherent.

For what it’s worth, ‘culture’ is probably my least favorite word and one that I’d actually eliminate entirely on account of its slipperiness.

^^ I’ve always thought of marx’s base-superstructure as analogous to supervenience in the phil of mind, and if that’s the case, then it’ll run into the same problems supervenience does.
^totally willing to admit there was some Kuhnian loss here, too
**again, because of immanent critique, i can’t even use this term to describe what I’m trying to get at

[close]

*i know it isn’t, but far be it from me to miss an opportunity

[close]

[shosta]

more like explanatORALLY

 

[shosta]

I got around to reading the interview and at first I thought it was fine. I am not a fan of Amber but I did like the take-downs of board-room feminism and polyamory.

And then halfway I read "There’s this idea that we live in a white supremacist country when we fundamentally don’t" from Khachiyan.

"Racial discourse was created after hyper-exploitation.’ But ever since, argues Frost, ‘When we tried to not be racist, we ended up using the same framework’, which today also lives on in identitarian form. ‘All “race” is, is that some people don’t sunburn. That’s the entirety of racial difference.’ "


maybe the reason the anti-feminism did not bother me but the dismissal of racism chafed me significantly is because I am a non-white man. I will reflect on this

[benjipwns]

Donald Trump fudged, obfuscated or flat out just changed his position from as little as a year prior and still sat outside the Republican mainstream overall on "identity politics" issues. But on the things that turned out to matter most with the base and eventually his electorate, namely immigration and trade, he was actually more in line with them than the Party Elite.

The answer in electoral politics is never to dismiss an issue and then explain to the person how the REAL answer is what you've been saying all along. It's to agree with the person 100% and then explain to the person how your plan actually does all that. If that means that sometimes you gotta promise trans women that they can have abortions on national TV, so be it.

As Mandark noted, there's some kind of REAL lesson here about spending decades attacking "interest groups" as not counting, only the overall morass, especially when your party is constructed of a coalition of interest groups where the cleavages don't neatly fit like the infamous three-legged stool.

Wikipedia's summary of Jackson's platform in 1984 (it was slightly tweaked for 1988):

creating a Works Progress Administration-style program to rebuild America's infrastructure and provide jobs to all Americans,
reprioritizing the War on Drugs to focus less on mandatory minimum sentences for drug users (which he views as racially biased) and more on harsher punishments for money-laundering bankers and others who are part of the "supply" end of "supply and demand"
reversing Reaganomics-inspired tax cuts for the richest ten percent of Americans and using the money to finance social welfare programs
cutting the budget of the Department of Defense by as much as fifteen percent over the course of his administration
declaring Apartheid-era South Africa to be a rogue nation
instituting an immediate nuclear freeze and beginning disarmament negotiations with the Soviet Union
giving reparations to descendants of black slaves
supporting family farmers by reviving many of FDR's New Deal-era farm programs
creating a single-payer system of universal health care
ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment
increasing federal funding for lower-level public education and providing free community college to all
applying stricter enforcement of the Voting Rights Act and
supporting the formation of a Palestinian state.

Jackson 1984 campaign brochure: http://www.4president.org/brochures/1984/jessejackson1984brochure.htm

[shosta]

supporting family farmers by reviving many of FDR's New Deal-era farm programs

what is this, did Jackson want to cut production, too?

[benjipwns]

speaking of Clinton's and Democratic primaries

in 1996, much like Bernard in 2012 musing that someone should challenge Obama, there was a push to challenge Clinton from the left, initially they tried to get Jesse:
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Anyone+left%3F+The+search+for+a+Clinton+challenger+in+1996.-a016914424

If Jackson should opt out, attention would likely turn to Ralph Nader. The consumer advocate remains one of the most identifiable and respected figures in American public affairs, and he has been among the most vocal critics of Clinton, particularly on issues such as NAFTA and GATT.

"Basically Clinton follows the power of the global corporations, who are his masters," Nader said last fall during the GATT debate.

Nader has said he believes Clinton is "certain" to face some sort of progressive challenge--most likely in the November election--and adds that he would probably support such a challenge. But when asked if he would be the candidate, Nader says no

...

"It's like the movie Field of Dreams," says Elsis. "If we want Jerry Brown to be President, we can do it."

Progressives around the country mention other potential candidates as well--including Representative Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist who is the only independent member of the House, and Representative Ron Dellums, California Democrat.

There have also been suggestions that a "left personality," such as writer Barbara Ehrenreich, might be a strong candidate--much as Buchanan has parlayed his position as a columnist and television pundit into two Presidential runs. Ehrenreich, a respected author and columnist, and one of the original members of Democratic Socialists of America, could have a ready-made base of support.

Some progressive activists around the country say they are less concerned about who the candidate is than they are about the prospect that any challenge to Clinton might pull the President to the left.

Warren Beatty tried to talk to Jesse's people about helping him to run in 2000 against Gore and Bradley, this was after Bulworth came out

[VomKriege]

The ideological struggle over HK in that thread is too real.

[toku]

https://twitter.com/Alysonesque/status/1147532099101974529

i only watch old anime so

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/RappGabriel/status/1147254695058010112

[team filler]

[Kara]

https://twitter.com/RappGabriel/status/1147254695058010112

If you ever want to get depressed (and read something the "fuck yeah, science!" crowd will always keep on the down-low, if they even know about it) you (pejorative) should try Googling Ron Paul Ignaz Semmelweis sometime.

[team filler]

[benjipwns]

oh no, the labels... he knows

[Kara]

Sketch source but

https://twitter.com/ConflictsW/status/1147817251262869504

[shosta]

Bolsonaro defends child labor in Brazil.

https://riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/rio-politics/in-his-latest-provocation-bolsonaro-defends-child-labor-in-brazil/

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – (AFP) Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, no stranger to controversy, sparked a new brouhaha this week by repeatedly defending the practice of child labor.

“I’ve been working since I was eight years old… and today I am what I am,” the president said during his weekly live forum on Facebook.
Bolsonaro added the words, "Work ennobles."

“Look, when a child of eight or nine years old works somewhere, many people denounce it as ‘forced labor’ or ‘child labor,'” he added. “But if that child smokes coca paste, nobody says anything.”

“Work brings dignity to men and to women, no matter their age,” he said.

On Saturday, he republished a 2017 AFP video showing Frank Giaccio, the 11-year-old owner of a lawn mowing business and admirer of US President Donald Trump, trimming the White House lawn. Bolsonaro added the words, “Work ennobles.”

According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), some 2.5 million children and adolescents aged five to 17 work in Brazil.

[shosta]

Do people ever talk about Kerala anymore? I feel like it's a well kept secret in socialist circles.

[shosta]

But India did try to go that path, didn't it? Nehru instituted some central planning, India was officially a socialist state, friendly with Soviets, etc.

I do worry a little bit that Kerala is too reliant on remittances. Still, what they achieve in human development in comparison to the rest of India is nothing short of a miracle.

[Kara]

I would also ask how many countries in the periphery or semi-periphery aren't reliant on remittances, but I also wield that criticism like a cudgel to dismiss the "horizontal" economy of SFRY so I'm probably inconsistent in my analysis.

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Being dependent on remittances in a multipolar world.

  Being dependent on remittances in a unipolar neoliberal world.

[close]

[Kara]

https://twitter.com/getfiscal/status/1137158666166185990

[Kara]

The Polish expat community in California is relatively young (in the sense that they all immigrated between World War II to 1989 as opposed to Austrian Galicia being Austrian Galicia) and sooo many of them are STEM types who were educated in Polska Ludowa and came here to complain about how awful it was even though it equipped them to rapidly rise to the top of the settler labor aristocracy while their children are for the most part failsons and daughters (myself included).

[BisMarckie]

As someone who fled from there with his family and left everything behind, let's just say I disagree strongly with your whitewashing of the Polish totalitarian state...

[Kara]

Mine fled it too, well Kresy Wschodnie to be more precise.

[BisMarckie]

Mine fled it too, well Kresy Wschodnie to be more precise.

My dad, who is an ethnic pole, refused to step foot on Polish soil for over 20 years.Funnily enough my mom who is ethnically German, which was one of the main reasons they couldn't endure living in Poland anymore, convinced him to go back to see his family again. Now they go there every year.

[Flannel Boy]

These days, I don't think many Poles are pining for the Polish People's Republic:

Mine fled it too, well Kresy Wschodnie to be more precise.

That is where all four of my grandparents were from. My maternal grandfather lived just outside of Lwow (Lviv). He lost everything (his estate, mill, family artefacts) and a mob of Ukrainians killed his sister. Fun times.

[benjipwns]

didn't know we had so many CDPR employees on here

[Kara]

My dad, who is an ethnic pole, refused to step foot on Polish soil for over 20 years.Funnily enough my mom who is ethnically German, which was one of the main reasons they couldn't endure living in Poland anymore, convinced him to go back to see his family again. Now they go there every year.

My great uncle was killed at Katyn so no one wisely went back until 1989 or so. My grandfather got too ill to travel shortly after my sibling was born so aside from some visits from his ex-wife (who'd stayed there) he only went back 2 or 3 times in his life. When he died we imported dirt to bury him in though. :godłocry:

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It's kind of surreal to learn about your family from memorials instead of from your family.

[close]

That is where all four of my grandparents were from. My maternal grandfather lived just outside of Lwow (Lviv). He lost everything (his estate, mill, family artefacts) and a mob of Ukrainians killed his sister. Fun times.

Mine was from the Łodz area but fled east for obvious reasons in 1939. Fun times would be an accurate way to sum up life in the Old World, yeah.

[VomKriege]

didn't know we had so many CDPR employees on here

 

[shosta]

I would also ask how many countries in the periphery or semi-periphery aren't reliant on remittances, but I also wield that criticism like a cudgel to dismiss the "horizontal" economy of SFRY so I'm probably inconsistent in my analysis.

Remittances account for 31% of Kerala's GDP, and only three countries have a higher dependence on remittances. I am not saying this is a bad strategy - let Kerala specialize in exporting skilled workers if that works for them. I'm only pointing out that such a unique economic condition can genuinely distort any attempt to evaluate any model of governance. For instance, one might reasonably wonder whether they are hampering the formation of local industries despite having a more educated workforce than literally every other state. Not my position, just JAQing off.

[Crash Dummy]

cheers!
https://twitter.com/katrinagulliver/status/1148934064990236672

[VomKriege]

cheers!
https://twitter.com/katrinagulliver/status/1148934064990236672

He assumed it was about this because written by Tolstoï... Who died in 1910 ?

 

[Kara]

Maybe he mixed him up with Alexei Tolstoi.

[shosta]

Teamsters just blessed a (Southern, Central) California grocery worker strike against Ralphs and Albertsons, meaning the shelves will be empty and they can't just hire temp workers.

 

[Great Rumbler]

https://twitter.com/Trillburne/status/1149018789411008517

This is what causes people to think Tolstoy wrote about the Communist Revolution.

[shosta]

Fuck Sailor Socialism. Cancelled.

[Kara]

toku / jake / anyone else who enjoys hate-parsing deus vult shit: the citations needed guys did a look at our favorite topic

https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-82-western-civilization-and-white-supremacy-the-right-wing-co-option-of-antiquity


save western civilization

Listened to the first 20 minutes... some really rancid audio clips. (Because I'm not a Kulturkampfer I've never actually listened to the Ur-Dragon Wank Dad for more than bite sized chunks.)

[shosta]

a century old analysis of nation-state imperialism by a guy who's 5' 5"
modern analyses of international finance capitalism, inverted yield curve monetary policy, and neoliberalism

The movement of capital from the metropolis to the third world, especially to East, South, and Southeast Asia to relocate plants there and take advantage of their lower wages for meeting global demand, has led to a desegmentation of the world economy, subjecting metropolitan wages to the restraining effect exercised by the third world’s labor reserves. Not surprisingly, as Joseph Stiglitz has pointed out, the real-wage rate of an average male U.S. worker in 2011 was no higher—indeed, it was marginally lower—than it had been in 1968.5

At the same time, such relocation of activities, despite causing impressive growth rates of gross domestic product (GDP) in many third world countries, does not lead to the exhaustion of the third world’s labor reserves. This is because of another feature of contemporary globalization: the unleashing of a process of primitive accumulation of capital against petty producers, including peasant agriculturists in the third world, who had earlier been protected, to an extent, from the encroachment of big capital (both domestic and foreign) by the postcolonial dirigiste regimes in these countries. Under neoliberalism, such protection is withdrawn, causing an income squeeze on these producers and often their outright dispossession from their land, which is then used by big capital for its various so-called development projects [ ]. The increase in employment, even in countries with impressive GDP growth rates in the third world, falls way short of the natural growth of the workforce, let alone absorbing the additional job seekers coming from the ranks of displaced petty producers. The labor reserves therefore never get used up. Indeed, on the contrary, they are augmented further, because real wages continue to remain tied to a subsistence level, even as metropolitan wages too are restrained. The vector of real wages in the world economy as a whole therefore remains restrained.

[Global finance's] opposing larger taxes on capitalists is understandable, but why is it so opposed to a larger fiscal deficit? Even within a capitalist economy, there are no sound economic theoretical reasons that should preclude a fiscal deficit under all circumstances. The root of the opposition therefore lies in deeper social considerations: if the capitalist economic system becomes dependent on the state to promote employment directly, then this fact undermines the social legitimacy of capitalism. The need for the state to boost the animal spirits of the capitalists disappears and a perspective on the system that is epistemically exterior to it is provided to the people, making it possible for them to ask: If the state can do the job of providing employment, then why do we need the capitalists at all? It is an instinctive appreciation of this potential danger that underlies the opposition of capital, especially of finance, to any direct effort by the state to generate employment.

This ever-present opposition becomes decisive within a regime of globalization. As long as finance capital remains national—that is, nation-based—and the state is a nation-state, the latter can override this opposition under certain circumstances, such as in the post-Second World War period when capitalism was facing an existential crisis. But when finance capital is globalized, meaning, when it is free to move across country borders while the state remains a nation-state, its opposition to fiscal deficits becomes decisive. If the state does run large fiscal deficits against its wishes, then it would simply leave that country en masse, causing a financial crisis.

The state therefore capitulates to the demands of globalized finance capital and eschews direct fiscal intervention for increasing demand. It resorts to monetary policy instead since that operates through wealth holders’ decisions, and hence does not undermine their social position. But, precisely for this reason, monetary policy is an ineffective instrument, as was evident in the United States in the aftermath of the 2007–09 crisis when even the pushing of interest rates down to zero scarcely revived activity.6

There has been some discussion on how global value chains would be affected by Trump’s protectionism. But the fact that global macroeconomics in the early twenty-first century will look altogether different compared to earlier has not been much discussed.

In light of the preceding discussion, one could say that if, instead of individual nation-states whose writ cannot possibly run against globalized finance capital, there was a global state or a set of major nation-states acting in unison to override the objections of globalized finance and provide a coordinated fiscal stimulus to the world economy, then perhaps there could be recovery. Such a coordinated fiscal stimulus was suggested by a group of German trade unionists, as well as by John Maynard Keynes during the Great Depression in the 1930s. While it was turned down then, in the present context it has not even been discussed.

The second implication of this dead end is that the era of export-led growth is by and large over for third world economies. The slowing down of world economic growth, together with protectionism in the United States against successful third world exporters, which could even spread to other metropolitan economies, suggests that the strategy of relying on the world market to generate domestic growth has run out of steam. Third world economies, including the ones that have been very successful at exporting, would now have to rely much more on their home market.

Such a transition will not be easy; it will require promoting domestic peasant agriculture, defending petty production, moving toward cooperative forms of production, and ensuring greater equality in income distribution, all of which need major structural shifts. For smaller economies, it would also require their coming together with other economies to provide a minimum size to the domestic market. In short, the dead end of neoliberalism also means the need for a shift away from the so-called neoliberal development strategy that has held sway until now.

The third implication is the imminent engulfing of a whole range of third world economies in serious balance-of-payments difficulties. This is because, while their exports will be sluggish in the new situation, this very fact will also discourage financial inflows into their economies, whose easy availability had enabled them to maintain current account deficits on their balance of payments earlier. In such a situation, within the existing neoliberal paradigm, they would be forced to adopt austerity measures that would impose income deflation on their people, make the conditions of their people significantly worse, lead to a further handing over of their national assets and resources to international capital, and prevent precisely any possible transition to an alternative strategy of home market-based growth.

In other words, we shall now have an intensification of the imperialist stranglehold over third world economies, especially those pushed into unsustainable balance-of-payments deficits in the new situation. By imperialism, here we do not mean the imperialism of this or that major power, but the imperialism of international finance capital, with which even domestic big bourgeoisies are integrated, directed against their own working people.

In short, the ideology of neoliberal capitalism was the promise of growth. But with neoliberal capitalism reaching a dead end, this promise disappears and so does this ideological prop. To sustain itself, neoliberal capitalism starts looking for some other ideological prop and finds fascism. [...]

Fascist groups of one kind or another exist in all modern societies. They move center stage and even into power only on certain occasions when they get the backing of big business. And these occasions arise when three conditions are satisfied: when there is an economic crisis so the system cannot simply go on as before; when the usual liberal establishment is manifestly incapable of resolving the crisis; and when the left is not strong enough to provide an alternative to the people in order to move out of the conjuncture.

This last point may appear odd at first, since many see the big bourgeoisie’s recourse to fascism as a counter to the growth of the left’s strength in the context of a capitalist crisis. But when the left poses a serious threat, the response of the big bourgeoisie typically is to attempt to split it by offering concessions. It uses fascism to prop itself up only when the left is weakened. Walter Benjamin’s remark that “behind every fascism there is a failed revolution” points in this direction.

[...] what we have today is not nation-based finance capitals, but international finance capital into whose corpus the finance capitals drawn from particular countries are integrated. This globalized finance capital does not want the world to be partitioned into economic territories of rival powers; on the contrary, it wants the entire globe to be open to its own unrestricted movement. The muting of rivalry between major powers, therefore, is not because they prefer truce to war, or peaceful partitioning of the world to forcible repartitioning, but because the material conditions themselves have changed so that it is no longer a matter of such choices. The world has gone beyond both Lenin and Kautsky, as well as their debates.

Not only are we not going to have wars between major powers in this era of fascist upsurge (of course, as will be discussed, we shall have other wars), but, by the same token, this fascist upsurge will not burn out through any cataclysmic war. What we are likely to see is a lingering fascism of less murderous intensity, which, when in power, does not necessarily do away with all the forms of bourgeois democracy, does not necessarily physically annihilate the opposition, and may even allow itself to get voted out of power occasionally. But since its successor government, as long as it remains within the confines of the neoliberal strategy, will also be incapable of alleviating the crisis, the fascist elements are likely to return to power as well. And whether the fascist elements are in or out of power, they will remain a potent force working toward the fascification of the society and the polity, even while promoting corporate interests within a regime of globalization of finance, and hence permanently maintaining the “partnership between big business and fascist upstarts.”

[R]evived political activity will necessarily throw up challenges to neoliberal capitalism in particular countries. Imperialism, by which we mean the entire economic and political arrangement sustaining the hegemony of international finance capital, will deal with these challenges in at least four different ways.

The first is the so-called spontaneous method of capital flight. Any political formation that seeks to take the country out of the neoliberal regime will witness capital flight even before it has been elected to office, bringing the country to a financial crisis and thereby denting its electoral prospects. And if perchance it still gets elected, the outflow will only increase, even before it assumes office. The inevitable difficulties faced by the people may well make the government back down at that stage. The sheer difficulty of transition away from a neoliberal regime could be enough to bring even a government based on the support of workers and peasants to its knees, precisely to save them short-term distress or to avoid losing their support.

Even if capital controls are put in place, where there are current account deficits, financing such deficits would pose a problem, necessitating some trade controls. But this is where the second instrument of imperialism comes into play: the imposition of trade sanctions by the metropolitan states, which then cajole other countries to stop buying from the sanctioned country that is trying to break away from thralldom to globalized finance capital. Even if the latter would have otherwise succeeded in stabilizing its economy despite its attempt to break away, the imposition of sanctions becomes an additional blow.
[...]
And if all these measures fail, there is always the possibility of resorting to economic warfare (such as destroying Venezuela’s electricity supply), and eventually to military warfare. Venezuela today provides a classic example of what imperialist intervention in a third world country is going to look like in the era of decline of neoliberal capitalism, when revolts are going to characterize such countries more and more.

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https://monthlyreview.org/2019/07/01/neoliberal-capitalism-at-a-dead-end/

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Yes, Kara! MR is still relevant!

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[shosta]

also, today Jacobin posted an interview with Noam Chomsky
https://jacobinmag.com/2019/07/noam-chomsky-interview-climate-change-imperialism

 

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[benjipwns]

Also the understanding of 'judeo-christian' as a selective white nationalist ethnic bloc rather than an anti-islamic ideological bloc is new to me. I strongly associate white nationalism of any stripe with antisemitism, would be interested in seeing a more academic breakdown of this.

Israel.

And I don't mean that in a snarky way about Israeli policies or anything but the whole Western relationship with Israel during a time when Nazism's relationship with Jews was still a big no no even in extremist circles led to a sort of "Good Jew" exception that eventually made its way backwards to Jesus to help write a new canon of Western Civilization.

The now forgotten Dark Enlightenment wing of the wank dad was trying to figure out how much of this exception to roll back when they kinda got shoved out of the spotlight for the new "alt-right" intellectuals like Jordan Peterson, Sargon of England, etc.

[benjipwns]

I can't remember the name of it now, but there was an European literal neo-Nazi group (in I want to say Hungary) where the leadership went on to expel a huge chunk of members because they were being too openly anti-Semetic during their violent demonstrations.

Golden Dawn did something similar during their brief period flirting with becoming a legitimate political party.