Ingar Solty: Global Crisis, 'Green Capitalism', and Left Strategy. 2nd North-Atlantic Left Dialogue

7/27/2019 Ingar Solty: Global Crisis, 'Green Capitalism', and Left Strategy. 2nd North-Atlantic Left Dialogue

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2. NorthAtlantic Left DialogueDecember 11122009 New York


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Questions

NorthAtlantic Left Dialogue is an attempt to develop a continuousworking relationship between left and socialist intellectuals and academics in Europe (starting with Germans and Italians) and North America (USA/Canada) for the purpose of discussing the distinctive challenges to the political, social and cultural left working and struggling inthe highly developed northern capitalist countries. One of the resultswe hope to achieve is to establish reform demands which are feasibleand appropriate for countries at a comparable stage of development.There are already some intellectual/academic connections between usby way of journals like the Socialist Register and Transform or con

ferences like the Left Forum, Rethinking Marxism or Historical Materialism. The debates occurring in these journals and conferences motivated us to propose what would begin as an annual workshop, whosevenue alternates between Europe and the U.S. We would aim at expanding this cooperation as part of the renewal of the global left in the 21stcentury. This year's seminar on left strategy for the capitalist core countries of Europe, the US and Canada will focus on where the current crisis is heading, what kind of state projects will and/or should be developed in response, the question of "green" capitalism and what this allmeans for the transformational left in terms of strategy. We asked participants briefly to address in written form, to be circulated to the other

participants before the seminar, these threequestions:

1)Whereisthecrisisheading?

2)Is"greencapitalism"asolutionorpartoftheproblem?

3) What is the most important concreteproblem to which left strategy

shoulddeveloparesponsein2010?

Due to the crisis and the increased openness on the part of the populations in Germany and the US to hear criticisms of capitalism, how canthe American and European lefts say what theyre for, and proposeforms of political practice, in ways that people can hear now? At thesame time it is important to develop parallel or common political projects. In the US context and of course given the lack of a left politicalparty what could be put forward?

Ingar Solty, Rick Wolff, Eric Canepa, Rainer Rilling,Mark Hagen, Mario Candeias, Jan Rehmann, Billabb, Margit Mayer. Berlin/Florence/New York 2009


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Answers

Stanley AronowitzJeremy BrecherMario CandeiasEric CanepaFrank DeppeBarbara EpsteinRainer FischbachStephen GillMark HagenDavid Harvey

Christina Kaindl[Michael Krtke]Peter MarcuseMargit MayerHarold Meyerson[Mimmo Porcaro]Jan RehmannRainer RillingAdolph ReedCatharina SchmalstiegThomas Seibert

Neil SmithIngar SoltyBill TabbVictor WallisFrieder Otto WolfRick Wolff

Translation: Eric CanepaEd: Eric Canepa / Rainer Rilling


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Stanley Aronowitz

1. The crisis will be resolved by global capital in the only waysavailable to them

a. renew the production of fictitious capital by extendingconsumer credit and building the debt to new highs

b. reduce the value of constant capital by closing plantsc. mergers and acquisitions will concentrate capital to an

unprecedented level, eliminating as much competition aspossible both within national economies and on a globallevel

d. revert to state capitalism to an unprecedented degree,especially in finance, but also in key production sectors.In the US, of course, the state will not manage the economic cycle, only remain a guaranteor of the largest capitals. Of course, this scenario presupposes that the workers movements in most countries remain too weak orideologically tied to the remnants of social democracy toact independently of the political system. If this assumption is proven wrong, a whole new solution might befound, but at the present, since the question of what wemean by socialism retains its ties to statism, it isunlikely that radical transformation is in the offing in the

near future.

2. In the United States and Europe the Left shoulda. call an industrial program of production of fundamental

necessities(food, clothing, shelter, green industriesthrough worker owned and operated coops and demandthat bailout funds be awarded to these coops

b. a guaranteed incomes policy at or close to living wagesc. shorter hoursd. a moratorium on plant closingse. short term unlimited extension of unemployment com

pensationf. a strong emphasis on direct action to achieve these goalsg. a real campaign to convince Americans that there can be

no social reform under the warfare state, at least undercurrent conditions. A $1 trillion arms budgetand the endless wars America has been fighting for more than a century are key barriers to change. And what is at stake inthe struggle against imperialism is nothing less than freedom


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h. we need to revitalize the concept of radical democracyand insist that without economic democracy, there can beno democracy at such.

In relation to the nature of the crisis, the Left needs to liberate itself from its history of economism. We are experiencing a social,cultural as well as economic crisis. The psychological dimensionse.g. in the US of the concept of the ownership society,advanced by the Bush administration and its predecessors,needs to be confronted. Housing, a vital public resource is almostcompletely privatized; education has been delivered to the capital investors to a large extent; health care is oriented to individual needs rather than the collectivity. And of course the deleterious consequences of living underwater (beyond our means)should be in the mix. It may be argued that these ideological factors are intimately linked to the decades of relative economicboom, but to assume them without integration into the analysiscondemns the Left. I would go further to claim that the US boomitself was artificial in that it depended almost entirely on warproduction, huge federal and consumer debt, and financial fictions. Sweezy and Baran argued more than forty years ago for astagnation thesis. That it could be hidden for decades is a political and cultural question, not purely an economic question. Inshort, the Left must be for the transformation of everyday life,against what Lefebvre termed the bureaucratic society of con

trolled consumption to which one would add, the relentless suburbanization of social space, the expulsion of the working classfrom cities, the severe contraction of collective knowledge.

In the United States, we need to found a new political formationto rethink socialist concepts, disseminate our ideas and programs, and make selective interventions to put them into practice. That said, our electoral prospects remain nonexistent eceptat the local level, although we need to reach out to radicalizedpeople who embraced Obama and, whether in the Democraticparty or not, are in the the process of losing confidence in his

center/right policies.


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Jeremy Brecher

Let me give very brief responses to your three questions:

1) The economic crisis will surely not resolve itself in a sustained capitalist expansion; it will bounce along between periods of weak recoveryand new crises; whether at some point this will lead to a full 1930s styleDepression is uncertain. However, the economic crisis is rapidly intermeshing with the global climate crisis, food crisis, water crisis, and energy crisis. The resulting political and social crisis cannot be reduced to

its economic elements, but needs to be seen as a crisis of global humansociety and especially of an obsolete and dysfunctional world politicalsystem.

2) While "green capitalism" could mean various things, I will interpret itto mean the various efforts to address the climate and other ecologicalcrises by such means as capandtrade systems, marketization of rightsto pollute, efforts to address environmental problems through subsidiesto private capital, etc. These efforts are probably doomed as a strategyfor reversing our thrust toward environmental selfdestruction. Onlymuch more direct political and social mobilization and planning have

even a small chance to succeed. Within a determined project of puttingthe global economy on a sustainable path, some of these approachesmight be able to make a minor contribution, since every conceivablemeans and resource will need to be applied in order for such a projectto succeed.

3. While the shortterm importance of problems obviously varies withshortterm political considerations, I think that a program of massiveeconomic and social reconstruction to counter climate change, with theaccompanying job creation, led by social movements and political organizations and implemented by governments and civil society, is thecritical need of our time especially when we take into account its interaction with food, water, economic, and other global crises.


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Mario Candeias

1) The current developments indicate incurable contradictions(Gramsci) in the structure of society, which lead to contradictions andblockages within the ruling bloc in power. Because of the interactionand entanglement of different severe crises this appears to be a structural or organic crisis (see Candeias 2009). Whereas overaccumulationcannot be reduced substantially, and new areas of investment areopened up insufficiently, the crisis of social reproduction deepens in away as to endanger the foundations of capitalist accumulation itself(lack of infrastructure, qualifications, cohesion, and prospects for profit,

etc.). A new financial bubble is already in the making, globally (especially in respect to China). The ruling power bloc is managing the crisis,preserving their own power positions. But it can no longer counter theerupting signs of crises and their complex entanglement with productive solutions that could take up the interests of the subaltern and thusrestore the active consensus to the neoliberal project. The reserves of astill dominant neoliberalism as the organising ideology in the transitionto a transnational mode of production based on information technologyare exhausted neither a new accumulation stimulus nor a new consensus in society can be expected from it. Its institutions will continueto have effects (similarly to the end of Fordism), their position is now

only ruling, still dominant, but not leading(Gramsci) anymore. Inside the power bloc strong restorative forces that wish to use the stateto reinstall the previous order, and want to plunder its finances, areintertwined with reformist initiatives that clearly go beyond the statusquo ante. Various new projects are in the making, but none of the respective bloc is consolidated. This leads to inconsistent policies withoutclear direction, strategy and above all without a future oriented project what in fact leads to an affection towards authoritarian solutions.

A constellation of interregnum will evolve from the various tendenciesand projects which are developing in parallel and as a result of theblockage, de and recomposition of the old power bloc. Meanwhile thecrisis can persist for a long period, perhaps even a decade of erraticfluctuations and unrest, before a hegemonic direction develops out ofthe competition between the different projects to dissolve the crisis.Therefore, postneoliberalism does not characterise a new period ofcapitalist development. Instead, it is a transition period or interregnumin which numerous search processes occur and the future organisationof society is in debate. A new term must be coined as soon as a hegemonic project becomes apparent. In my opinion, at the moment there isonly one potentially hegemonic project which can provide the required

resources, accumulation dynamics and potential for consensus: the


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Green New Deal, a period of green capitalism. But thats not an automatism: neoliberalism is dissolving but still too strong; the Green NewDeal as such is too contradictory. Currently, we are still in a relativelyopen historical situation where no hegemonic direction has yet been

taken. This opens up spaces for left interventions, and a revolutionaryRealpolitik(Luxemburg), steps towards socialist transformation.

2) The general reorientation of investment towards energy efficiencyand reduction of CO2emissions shall be the necessary technological andaccumulation base to create millions of jobs and for constructing a newconsensus in society a Green New Deal that is already being stronglyadvocated as an answer to the financial and economic crisis, as well asthe crises of reproduction, employment and the ecological crisis andthereby to relegitimize the free market economy (see details inCandeias/Kuhn 2008). This project was proposed as a solution to a triple crisis, a combination of creditdriven financial crisis, acceleratedclimate change and increasing energy prizes in view of peak oil by theGreen New Deal Group, among others, which is an alliance of journalists, party and NGO functionaries. These ideas for instance are driven bythe Stern Report on climate change 2006, the analyses of the IPCC andtransnational research groups as well as the popular activities of NobelPrize winner Al Gore. Support comes from the European Green Parties the German Greens decided at their party convention in November2008 to call for a Green New Deal to overcome the financial crisis (for acritique of the concept, see Candeias 2007), and also from large NGOs

such as the WWF or Friends of the Earth, transnational networks of ecological scientists and the UN as well as Obama, who has appointedknown advocates of ecological change to central government positions.This is backed by capital groups such as internet and IT corporations,pharmaceutical, genetic engineering and biotechnology corporations,the renewable energy sector (including the green branches of thelarge energy corporations), large insurance companies, car manufacturers such as Toyota and Renault, nanotechnology and chemical corporations such as BASF (who are developing new, light and energyefficientmaterials), even oil corporations such as BP (who have renamed themselves to Beyond Petrol) as well as venturecapital funds or the small

but growing sector of ethical investment houses (including large pension funds).

A green New Deal is to be more than an ecologicallyconscious, shortterm program to contain the crisis. Moreover, it could mean a state initiated and massively state subsidised transformation to an ecologicalmode of production, that opens new areas for accumulation of capital:as the further commodification of natural resources in biodiversity orgenetic engineering; technologies to improve efficiency in productionand energy utilities; new investment and market outlets in emission

trading or in ecological consumption (organic food, ecological construc


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tion, green cars, etc.). The market for investment in low emission energies and green technologies promises to grow to several trillion dollars.Nature and the environment are turned into a commodity, thereby restricting the possibilities for solving the ecological crisis. Technical and

marketbased solutions are privileged. Consequently, green capitalismcannot be the solution to the ecological crisis, instead, it is a procedureto restore expanded capitalist accumulation and hegemony by involvingprogressive oppositional groups and interests of the subaltern. Changing the whole structure of production, the practice and culture of consumerism, the economy of the car society, the structure of our cities,our societal relations to nature, without impacting on the capitalistmode of production as such, just reproduces its inherent contradictions(e.g. the dangers of a green financial bubble, according to SusanGeorge).

In view of the challenges of the tasks ahead, rapidly overcoming theworld economic crisis and the even greater task of reducing greenhouseemissions of industrial states by 80 per cent or more before 2050,which means catapulting the entire economy from the fossil fuel basedage of more than 150 years to a solar future within three decades, thiswill not be possible without great disruptions and crises. This timepressure leads to decisionmaking problems between a thorough conversion which means destruction of old sectors and capital, the risk ofeconomic crises, or a conversion which is too slow with aggravated environmental and socioeconomical crisis effects. Furthermore, the val

orization of nature and ecological measures leads to a restriction ofpossible solutions to the crisis by concentrating on further marketization, more growth, and increased resource consumption and simultaneously to the neglect of nonprofit areas. But unfortunately this doesnot mean that a green capitalism will not be a powerful project to come.

3) Public confidence in markets and governments has clearly suffered,neoliberalism has been discredited and its dogmas are crumbling. Thisopens discursive opportunities for left alternatives in the sense of arevolutionary Realpolitik. However, these opportunities have hardlybeen used to date. Considering the intertwined crises processes, as well

as the numerous initiatives pursued by those in charge to deal with thecrisis, we cannot proceed with the old demands. The demand for moremoney or simple nationalization will not succeed unless it is givengreater content, for example by a demand for linking bailouts and economic stimulus packages to ecological conversion, extended participation, expansion of public services, a ban on dismissals, etc. The connection between the multiple crises must be emphasised, the connectionbetween ecologic and economic crises, between all these crises and thecapitalist mode of production and our way of life. The ruling bloc always tries to separate these correlations, to deny social conflicts and

changes, to isolate problems and social groups. In addition to this, the


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left must find a new strategic position with regard to the changed situation. This requires farreaching proposals and imagination togetherwith practical initial projects that can be initiated from a minority position. Otherwise, the demands of the left are taken over by the ruling

elite, as often seen before. An intervention in public debate must drawon concepts and perspectives.

There are several possible initial projects (Candeias 2009): One could bea process of conversion of growthoriented capitalist economies towardsa reproductive economy that limits the consumption of commoditiesand develops the richness of mutual relations. Lets concentrate on theneeds of the people, on a solidarity care economy, a reorientation towards public health, public education and research, social services, foodsovereignty, caring of our environment. This would be a contribution toa real ecological mode of production/mode of living because workingwith people and preserving nature do not cause much ecological harm);and also a contribution to solve the crises of work and social reproduction (these areas are already the only one with continuous employmentincreases); a care revolution would be a contribution to an emancipativerecomposition of gender relations (as relations of production), to a practice of buen vivir. The orientation towards the domestic market, regionalisation and a partial trend to deglobalisation will contribute toreduce the fixation on exports and equalize trade and current accountbalances. The expansion of the public, with its decommodificationtends to roll back the market, privatisation, and further valorisation.

When reproductive activities are put into the centre of activity wewould be able to abandon the fetishism of growth what simultaneously challenges the capitalist mode of production as such. This ultimately poses the question, who actually decides on how to use the resources in society and what work is socially necessary? Its a matter ofradical democratisation of the state as well as the economy at everylevel of social decision making. Its a matter of a new definition and anew distribution of socially necessary work not through further expansion of wage labour, but through development of collective and cooperative forms of work, oriented towards efficiently serving individualand social development, towards mutual relations, disposable time

not on the production of surplus value. These are questions that peopleraise in everyday life without getting answers with a kind of commonperspective that respects differences.


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Eric Canepa

Dueto

the

crisis

and

the

increased

openness

on

the

part

of

the

popula

-

tionsinGermanyandtheUStocriticismsofcapitalism,howcanthe

AmericanandEuropeanleftssaywhattheyrefor,andproposeformsof

politicalpractice,inwaysthatpeoplecanhearnow?IntheUScontext

andofcoursegiventhelackofaleftpoliticalparty- whatcouldbeput

forward?

Some cultural-historical barriers impeding the US Leftfrom connecting

withitspopulation

Regarding the last question of how to speak to the US population in alanguage they can understand. We need squarely to face a culturalcharacteristic of the US left that impedes it from connecting with themajority of its people. Its deep historical roots, the confrontation ofwhich is strongly taboo in the US left, include: A settler civilization inwhich the we is surrounded by the subaltern other and the latter isadopted as the subject of left politics. The descendents of the Englishsettlers saw an African subproletariat and slave stratum, and whenthey looked at labor struggles in the Chicago of the 1880s, they sawGermans and Irishmen. Championing the cause of people other thanyourself can be perfectly noble and necessary, witness the abolitionists,

but it impedes understanding the subjectivity of the thinking subject aspart of the we in a way that goes beyond solidarity; it impedes thinking in terms of class. The specifically Puritan settler outlook championssimplicity, the rural, and tends to a cult of poverty. This makes it difficult for much of the US left to the left of the Democratic Party to addressthe core working class. This political outlook focuses on:

The other INSTEAD OF a broadly understoodworking class we

The subproletariat INSTEAD OF the stably employed ornonimpoverished

freelancers and shortterm contract workersThe poor as such INSTEAD OF workers who benefit from

historical gains.1

1 See Daniel Ankerloo, The Dualities of the Swedish Welfare Model,

Transform3: The received neo-Marxist critiques of the welfare state can

broadly be divided into three different perspectives:

a. The welfare-state bribe: i.e. the idea that the welfare state fulfils the

function of legitimising capitalism and hence buys the working class into

the system (correlated to the idea of Fordist production regimes and ideas

of mass consumption).b. The fiscal crisis of the state [ ]


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Thus there is a diffuse cult of poverty, a fondness for it and for the cultures of oppression, in the US left.. Consequently, it is not at all a giventhat all people on the left are ready to give these cultures up and seethem disappear and aufgehoben into a commonwealth in which there is

neither poor nor elite, because the poor have, in essence, displaced andbecome the elite. In other words, its not at all clear that the object is towin, because this entails killing off the cultures of oppression.In Europe, as some tell us, there may well be fears on the left that a resurgence of left workingclassist anticapitalism could smother the singleissue social movements gay, antiracist, immigrant rights, etc. anda broad, nonworkerist conception of emancipation. If this is so, thenwe in the US left need to be told about it more explicitly.

I believe that fear on the part of some Europeans of the sectoral emancipatory movements being crushed under the weight of a big workeristmovement may prevent them from grasping how dominant sectoral (incontrast to workingclass) emancipatory politics is in the U.S. and therole that academia plays in it. With a very weak political and trade union left in the U.S., academes subalternstudies (diversity) marketfuses with the countrys Puritan settler heritage in a particularly noxious way and is able to cast a very big shadow over the left as a whole,whether or not the latter is aware of this (see Adolph Reed, ClassNotes:OnPosingasPoliticsandOtherObservationsontheAmericanScene, Introduction).

(My sense is that due to the individualization and differentiation of society in the core capitalist countries and elsewhere since the 1960sthere is no danger, within the left, of a backslide to workerist reductionism (Joe Worker), no danger of losing the sectoral emancipatory interests expressed by the post60s social movements. At any rate, there

c. The marginal welfare critique: i.e. the New Left trend of criticising the

welfare state as repression of the margins of society (e.g. on the basis of

gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation) or at the level of the margins of the

system (criminal policies, drug policies etc.). This is often the consequence

of the belief in a. above, i.e. that the broad majority benefits from the

welfare state and hence accepts capitalism (Variants of the humanist,alienation critiques, so popular in the 1960s and 70s, are a subgroup here.)

I argue that for all their partial merits, all of these perspectives provide a weak

basis for a contemporary Marxist critique of the Swedish welfare state: As

regards a. (what I call Hyena Marxism) the history of the labour movement

points in the other direction: the more welfare reforms the working class has

achieved the more radical and anti-capitalist we have become. [ ] As regards

c., this form of critique of the welfare state has relegated both the critique as

well as the Marxist left to the margin of society at best; at worst it leads to a

specific form of Salvation Army leftism, which transforms the social critique

of capitalism into a view of society in which the well off feel empathy for

the poor and unfortunate rather than a working-class based solidarity.


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is so little class reductionism and so much singleissue, culturalist andidentitarian emancipatory movement politics in the US that it is hardfor US socialists to fear losing the latter to an overbearing workerism.Weve had much more multiculturalism than classism in this country,

in general and in the past decades.)

A common theoretical denominator tying together this US problematicto a larger one facing any left in the core capitalist countries, and onewhich particularly interests the R.L. Fdn., is how to operate an Aufhebung of 60s sensibility and cultural demands the demand for a moreflexible work life, for diversity and multiculturalism, the dislike of centralization and the championing of the small and local, an antistate outlook, a distaste for big unified political and tradeunion entities equatedwith bureaucracy so as to envision what a modern left could be, onethat goes beyond the current historic wave of left movements (see Porcaros contribution, see Soltys article on Die LINKE in Socialism andDemocracy). To make progress on the left, US leftists have to understand how these cultural demands, how this kind of rebellion ambivalent and not at all to be condemned as completely negative have fedneoliberalism (were productively inscribed into it), made it culturallyresilient, appearing emancipatory and democratic. The crisis of neoliberalism begins to make it more generally possible to see the limitationsof those demands. US leftists have to understand this, and they have tounderstand the impact of the Puritan heritage, the colonial settler state,and of the lack of a precapitalist past, on the left itself. And everyone

has to consider to what extent an American left sensibility is being exported to the lefts of other countries.

One illustration of the consequencesfor the Italian left a tendency to

productivelyinscribe60sculturaldemandsintotheAnglo-Saxonizationof

theItalianCGIL

Many of the demands of the 60s left demands problematized here forinstance participatory democracy in most cases have a progressiveeffect, especially when there is no traditional mass socialist left and labor movement to lose. However, where there are largescale militant

classoriented unions and large socialist political organizations, it ispossible that even participatory democracy can be used in destructive, disintegrative processes. A case in point is Italy. Leaving aside thecomplicated partypolitical situation there, the case of the largest Italianunion, the CGIL, shows the process most clearly. (There is no space hereto discuss the specifics of the personal and powerpolitical motivationsapparently underlying the current divisive and secessionist thrustscoming to a head in the CGILs current congress. These also play an important part.)


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The Italian left suffers from nuovismo (a fetishization of the new) tied toan inferiority complex visvis the northern lefts, which can rationalizethrowing overboard all sorts of organizations and traditions highlyprized by the lefts of other countries. And there is also the trasformismo

of leaders, which has its own peculiar flavor in Italy. And behind theItalian lefts selfconcept of modernization lies the peculiar dynamic andmomentum of the modernization of Italian society itself. But lets concentrate on the features weve dealt with above, and which are part ofthe Americanization of the left to the left of social democracy.

The CGIL is the largest union in Europe. It is not a trade union, but aunion of the class. The existence of CGIL trades organization, or categories is thought of as a pluralistic articulation of the union. This is theconfederal principle. The union as a whole contracts for the class as awhole, regardless of whether individuals are members or not or theunion is in a particular company. (Until recently this contracting occurred in concert with the Catholic and liberal unions, the CISL andUIL.) Traditionally, the CGIL even contracts the social state. It establishes a national contract which cannot be undercut by separate company or trade level bargaining. Indeed, an axiom of Italian jurisprudence is the inequality between worker and capitalist, and therefore anindividual worker is not allowed to strike separate deals himself. On alarger scale this is the thinking behind the national contract a necessary powerful counterweight to the much more powerful class power ofcapital. Workers gains and many aspects of the social state itself have

been won as a result of the contracting the CGIL does based directly onthe productivity of labor! This explains why the CGIL is against the introduction of a legislated minimum wage (in Italy, not in Germany) because it undermines the kind of contracting power that the workingclass has historically built up.

A heritage obviously to be defended.

Whatever criticism can be leveled at certain deficits of the CGIL, a lot ofwhat is called bureaucratic is actually an enormously democratic deliberative process in which workers in circles, companies and up to the

municipal, provincial and regional and then national levels really discuss and vote on the issues. This is why a congress can take 7 months.This mandate democracy is impervious to media manipulation. Yetthere is a move now, on the part of leftists associated with the FIOM(Metal Workers), with its breakaway tendency, to oppose this supposedly bureaucratic procedure by asking for the introduction of primariesin union elections which would obviously make mediacarried personalism and leaderism flourish, fomenting competition between regions and trades and enormously undercutting the rich democraticprocess already in place, all in the name of opposing bigness, bureauc

racy and introducing more creative, open forms of democracy.


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Similarly, the local and the differentiated has been invoked in opposingcentralization and oppressively unified organization, in the call formore weight given to individual trades and funds managed by the sepa

rate trades for the care of the elderly (something which has until nowbeen thought of as universal provided by the social state and this wasfought for by the CGIL).

The final example of a modern social movement demand functioning toundercut an old and very large structure of the left and the workingclass is the use of participatory democracy mentioned above: it is being used in connection with the demand for worker participation incompanies administrative councils, like codetermination in Germany.This is controversial in the left (see Crozat in latest Transform) becauseit can be linked to bringing the workers creativity and sense of responsibility into the workplace. However, when one already has in place anaggressive, adversarial union that traditionally acts in the interest of theclass as a whole, it would clearly have a retrograde effect: workerswould identify with and defend the interests of their company againstthose of other companies.

* * * * *

Within an international left, perhaps some kind of new internationale,we need to get used to coordinating between lefts and national contexts

that are very different a demand that may be progressive in one country can represent a turn backward in another. In some countries, it isnecessary to fight from a very low level for some minimal gains; inother countries considerable achievements (privileges if you want tocall them that) won by labor movements in the past have to be defended. A left involved with Latin American janitors in the US has todefend the gains of the Swedish working class, and vice versa. Similarly,there are southern European cultures based on a more adversarial classstruggle outlook quite devoid of corporatist social processes (see JanLelann, The Scandinavian Model and the Labour Market, Transform 3)which have their strengths and weaknesses from the point of view of a

left emancipatory project, and northern European societies in which theachieved social contracts and corporatist features are part of a culturewhich, at a certain point, cannot accept the neoliberal jungle and elbowsociety, cannot accept wildwest capitalism, in a way that Berlusconianized Italians can. Italy is very, very different from Northern andCentral Europe. A left modernization of the Italian left and of the CGIL in the sense of some of the challenges we are proposing for the Germanleft could entail a loss of workingclass strength won by previous generations. Maybe this is an unresolvable dilemma. Maybe there has to bea loss of many of those peculiarly Italian features to achieve a necessary


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modernization. It is more probable, however, that we need to nurturetheir specific strengths and work for a modernization of other aspects.


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Alex Demirovic

Whereis

the

present

crisis

heading?

What

will

be

its

main

foreseeable

results?

Due to the character of the capitalist economy, there is little certain thatcan be said about the trajectory of the crisis, because its further development depends on how the various social classes act in the crisis. Butthe financial crisis has a deep reach and, in addition, aggravates the crisis tendencies of the real economy. In the middle term, growth will remain at a low level. The crisis is not a crisis of the neoliberal strategy ofthe financialmarket industrial faction or of this faction itself. In the cri

sis the latter could strengthen its position of power. What took placewas concentration of capital and a continuation of entrepreneurialstrategies: speculation in the area of currencies, raw materials (including food), in the valorization of the enterprise (shareholder value). Financialmarket enterprises are realizing high profits even in the crisis,based, on the one hand, on cheap refinancing by central banks and, onthe other hand, on the basis of state borrowing, of capitalizing state andenterprise loans as well as the issuing of credits on the basis of higherinterest rates. This strengthens the tendency to subordinate or completely destroy the productive enterprises of the financialmarket industry. (In Germany in some regions up to 30 % of enterprises are

threatened, many of them market leaders, for example in metalworkingand machine construction.) Thus a further deindustrialization and destruction of the productive apparatus can, on the one hand, take place(associated with unemployment, deterioration of knowledge, loss oftechnical competence and innovation as well as with an increase of thedifficulties of training skilled workers) and, on the other hand, thetendency to overaccumulation continues, which is currently leadingonce again to speculation and destruction of capital.

The crisis therefore is contributing to the further tendency of weakening industrial capital and to a strengthening of new groups of capitalowners who are valorizing their capital by means of transnationallyoperating financial and industrial enterprises. It is therefore not only aquestion of banks or insurance companies transnational groups ofindustrial and commercial capital can also be a part of this. Second, thecrisis has led to a consolidation of financial capitals valorizationmechanisms: a series of instruments were developed in the crisis, withwhich to bring under control the dynamic which could threaten the valorization, profits and, in the end, the power, of the financialmarketcapitalist faction itself. Third, a deepening of transnational policy tookplace in the crisis, since the instruments for handling the crisis were

developed in close agreement within the framework of the G20 and cir


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culated among the countries. Among these are the diverse conjuncturalmeasures, such as the carscrappage scheme or the promotion of construction activity as well as mechanisms with which banks can controlthemselves: higher equity, securitization accountability and the

breakup of enterprises, regulated insolvency and changed incentivesystems for managers.

Governments are supporting the banks and also on a smaller scale enterprises within the real economy. The support mechanisms weretied to conditions only to a small degree. Nationalization occurred inonly a few cases. Many of the banks are paying back received credits inorder to free themselves of state control. Nevertheless governmentshave financially burdened the state to a considerable degree. Accordingly, the fiscal crisis of the state is becoming more acute: lower revenue on the one hand, higher national debts and simultaneously higherexpenditures, on the other. This would suggest tax raises. However,since the financialmarket protagonists have not been weakened, thereis a continuity of a policy favoring tax cuts. In the end, indirect taxes areincreasing. Still more state expenditures are being reduced and privatized, so that the middle and lower classes are being burdened withhigher private expenses. An additional consequence is that there is afurther weakening of the alliance of the bourgeois camp with the middle classes which were for a long period able to find in the state apparatus a stable employer who could guarantee stable employment, secureincome and workers rights. Thus the tendency to social polarization is

continuing.

Is green capitalism (GreenNew Deal) a solutionorpartof theprob-

lem?

Green capitalism is both. If it is possible to valorize capital in the areasof renewable energy, environmentally friendly transportation or technologies which conserve resources, corporations will absolutely choosethis path. This dynamic has been familiar to us for about 30 years now(solar energy, organic agriculture); still, up to now it remains very fragile. It mostly involves small enterprises which can only exist on the ba

sis of public subsidies and which are repeatedly abandoned by governments. Such developments can be seen in a positive light if they are consistent with certain sustainability criteria. It makes no sense to speculate on an environmental crisis, in such a way that further deteriorationcan favor a socialist transformation. On the other hand, it is also not amatter of first securing the survival of human beings so that one canlater think about socialism. Rather, such an emancipatory transformation should emerge and result from concrete ameliorations. However, itis very probable that they will remain inadequate and will reduce thethreat to the survival of many human beings only to a very limited de

gree. This is because market mechanisms will leave many questions


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unresolved; and state regulation largely can intervene only in a negativesense through interdiction or monetarily through the promotion of individual projects. Interdictions can be meaningful when it is a matter ofintervention in the area of genetic research, the destruction of agricul

tural lands or the overfishing of the oceans; state support can likewisebe meaningful if it is a matter of the support for technological innovations or business models which serve ecological sustainability. A positive development in Marxs understanding of it, namely that the earthbelongs to no single generation and everyone should contribute to itsimprovement the capitalist mode of production is incapable of satisfying these requirements. To this extent, there is need of a theory andpractice of transformation which leads from the logic of amelioration tofundamental transformations in the relation of society and nature. Up tonow the left has not fulfilled the need for such a type of transformativepraxis which unites reform and revolution.

What is the most important concrete problem to which left strategy


There are obvious dramatic questions of life and survival in capitalistsocieties hunger, unemployment, exploitation and slavery, destructionof the environment, wars, racist dispossession and genocide, lack oftraining and education, sexist violence. These are burning questions. Inmany cases our knowledge is great. However, this knowledge oftendoes not reach the public. Knowledge is fragmented or compartmental

ized when it does reach the public. Rendered noncommittal and unengaged, in the best of cases it is an expression of opinion within the pluralistic balance model of public opinion formation. This remains without any consequences for mobilization and does not change our everyday life. It therefore requires on the part of left intellectuals a strongereffort to project the contextof the questions and problems and to workon projects of integral theories. The danger is that with globalizationand the economic crisis a new form of economism and primitive Marxism will spread within the left and will lose sight of the broad societalcontext, specifically the bourgeois social formation as a whole. Beyondthis, the left has to take seriously the art of strategy and begin to think

about it in a more ambitious way.

In the face of the formation of transnational enterprises and transnational forms of governance as new forms of the exercise of politicaldominance, we should publicly advocate the project of a transnationalnew internationale. This should make possible the communication between, and exchange of, movements, tradeunions, parties, intellectuals,concepts, theories and theses, which aim at emancipatory transformation and represent this goal, on the basis of many different orientations,strengthening and accelerating the process. This includes, if not over


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coming the divisions between the emancipatory discourses of generations and genders, critically working through them.

We especially need a revival of the discussion around the control and

steering of investments as the decisive means by which the bourgeoisclass exercises its dictatorship and the political economy of capital predominates. For this reason the question of the democratization of therelations of production needs to be posed. This is tied to a decisive critique of liberalism in all its varieties, which ultimately wants to restrictpolitical action and decisionmaking to the state and limit the publicsphere. In this respect, there are incipient tentative initiatives in Germany for alliances between tradeunions, parts of the left and socialmovements, which aim, beyond immediate specific problems, at structural transformations in the economy (forms of common property, regional funds, legally constituted employees participation). These initiatives, however, are still weak. They need the complementary competence of critical economists and jurists, and the development of a broadrepertoire of democratization instruments.


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Frank Deppe

1) According to our (German) government and the economists of theCouncil of Experts on Economic Policy the economic crisis is over.After a breakdown of economic growth at the end of 2008 ( 6 %) fromthe third quarter of 2009 on (+ 0.7) they now expect a slow growth ofthe economy in 2010 (+ 1.6 %). Unemployment will rise by 300,000,reaching more than 4 million unemployed.

Of course, the big crisis is not over there is still an open and controversial debate on its possible outcomes. Just as the end of the economiccrisis is declared, experts fear a second wave which means a spread to

the industrial and service sector of the economy, which will be intensified by the rise of unemployment on the one side, and the fact that after mobilizing huge sums of money to prevent the collapse of the financial sector and to revitalize economic growth the government isdeclaring its main job now to be handling the reduction of debt (whichmeans: strict austerity policy, reduction of public expenditure, especially in infrastructure, social services, pensions and incomes).

Moderate growth in 2010 will in any case not be able to solve the problems of growth, employment and public spending. A longer period ofeconomic stagnation or moderate growth (the Japanese case from the

90s) will generate new challenges (especially in respect to the structureof German industry and its pattern of growth which is dominated byexport orientation in the sectors of investment goods, modern technology and automobiles). We do not yet know what impact this contradictory constellation and also rising unemployment and a quite dramaticexperience of workers struggling at company level against drops inproduction of up to 50 % (especially in the exportoriented industriesin southern Germany) will (in the coming months) have on protestmovements and trade union politics.

After the general elections of September 2009, Germany has a new federal government, a coalition between the Christian Democrats and theLiberal Party (which won 15 %, a gain of 5 % in respect to 2005), thelatter representing middle class and financial capital interests andpushing for an intensification of neoliberal policies (privatization, flexibilization of labor markets, a further weakening of tradeunion power).With chancellor Angela Merkel, the Christian Democrats (who lost 1.4%, but are still the strongest party with 33.8 %) are trying to defendelements of the welfare state, tradeunion rights, environmental policies (though the capitalfaction within the party has been strength


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ened by the formation of the new coalition)2. The big loser in these elections is the Social Democratic Party (23.0 %, an 11.2 % loss) 3. DieLINKE, with 11.9 % (a gain of 3.9%), and the Green Party, with 10.7 %(a gain of 2.6 %) are among the winners, yet, on the whole, the new

(blackyellow) government and its program represents a shift to theright4.

The direction in which the crisis is heading will be influenced by thefollowing factors:

Restructuring of the capitalist mode of production: a) a wave of concentration in the banking sector; the survivors are claiming stateassistance for the weaker sections and a return to business asusual; the power structure of financial capitalism has beenstrengthened; b) defense and improvement of the conditions of theexport industries (more and more oriented towards East Asia andChina); an intensification of beggarmyneighbor policies (alsowithin the European Union); c) restructuring at enterprise level:breakdown of production and sales will be compensated by activating about 20 30 % of productivity reserves which must be negotiated between management, workers councils and the union (reduction in employment, wages, further rationalization of productionand organization). Factories especially in the prosperous industrial regions of southern Germany are defined as survival communities, which aggravates the socialpartnership and trade

union paralysis. The president of the Metal Workers Union has already declared that the upcoming round of wage contracting willnot be complicated by excessive union claims for higher wages; protection of employment should be at the top of the agenda.

This variant of crisis solution (catharsis) will be supported by thepolicy of the new government. It will succeed on condition that a)there is no unrest from below, nor massive resistance on the partof the working class movement (unions) as well as from socialmovements and b) there will be no shift to the left in the upcomingelections (starting in NordrheinWestfalen, in the spring of 2010)

2 In Nordrhein-Westfalen, the old Ruhr industrial district, the biggest state

within the Federation, there will be elections within 6 months. Its Christian-

Democratic Prime Minister, who calls himself the workers president, intends

to win, but knows he could never do so with a purely neoliberal program. So,

decisions of the federal government in the direction of more privatization (la-

bour market, health services, public transport, etc.) will be postponed until

after these elections.3 Compared to the 1998 elections when Schrder and Fischer won a majority,

Social Democracy lost more than 10 million votes ( 20.1 million in 1998; 9.9

million in 2009).4

Already in the European Elections (summer 2009) this shift towards the rightwas seen all over Europe (with a few exceptions).


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including a strengthening of Die LINKE. Under these conditions thetendency towards authoritarian capitalism or disciplinary neoliberalism (Stephen Gill) intensifying the tendency towards postdemocracy (Colin Crouch) will predominate.

At the moment, unrest from below and public protest is still quiteweak, although there were impressive demonstrations in the firsthalf of 2009 (March 28 and May 16) under the slogan: We wontpay for your crisis!. There were meetings in November 2009 to discuss new demonstrations in the spring of 2010; the initiative forthese activities is being taken by an alliance of leftwing tradeunionists, socialmovement activists and Die LINKE members.

The crisis exploded in the real estate mortgages sector (subprimecrisis) and spread immediately to the (global) financial and banking sector (2008). From 2008 the decline in economic growth and(especially) the reduction of exports (connected with elements ofstructural overaccumulation in the worldwide automobile industry) hit the whole of the economy and required massive state intervention (saving the financial sector, stimulating economic growthand the labor market) which led to the open crisis of state finance.So far (compared to the World Economic Crisis following 1929) thegovernment (at least in some Western European countries) has keptincrease of unemployment within limits. The German Welfare State(and the presence of Social Democracy in the former government of

Angela Merkel) at least provided partial solutions (state financedparttime work instead of unemployment, massive state subsidiesfor buying new cars which produced a temporary boom in theautomobile industry) which obviously weakened the social consequences of the crisis. The majority of workers fear loss of jobs andsocial decline, and they hope to get through the crisis by adhering tothe dominant logic of adaptation and sacrifice. By now, however,these countermeasures are no longer working; unemployment willrise the government will practice austerity policies. This meansthe crisis is now penetrating society in the form of social decline, increasing unemployment and poverty, moral decay on the whole,

social disintegration. The special quality (specific historical character) of the crisis (in respect to its domestic consequences, the international order being of course another important factor), however,consists in the fact that it is hitting social structures which have already been disintegrated by neoliberal policies in recent decades.Even more than in the past, individuals will have to struggle tosurvive the collective organization of social protest, the trade unionand political Left, have never been as weak as they are at present.The question of whether there will be more social unrest from below, which opens up the possibility for politicization and organiza

tion of social protest, will be strongly determined by the impact of


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these aspects of the social crisis. This question is not only related toEuropean countries but primarily to the United States of America social and political unrest breaking through the paralysis of subalternity starting in one country (in the core of the Empire) would

certainly encourage progressive movements and organizations inother parts of the world. If the Left remains weak and in paralysisthis perspective may also open the way for radical rightwing populist solutions.

Among the middle classes of many European countries there is aquite strong new right tendency; liberal parties (or new politicalformations e.g. in the Netherlands) articulate this tendency withinthe political system. It is reinforced by social and economic change neoliberalism and the crisis have strengthened the social reproduction of the precarious employment sector, making it into a largesegment of the middle classes. So, being afraid of social decline (asBarbara Ehrenreich showed many years ago) provides strong motivation not for rebellion, but for defending relative privileges and sosubordinating oneself to the existing structures of power and domination (looking upward). On the other hand, neoliberal ideologyand politics address middle class people (lawyers, doctors, academics, engineers, etc.) as an elite, the core stratum for competitivenessin society. Thus, they support policies of tax reduction, which meanspolarization of incomes; on a more radical level they attack the welfare state and more recently turn to a racist criticism of immigra

tion and the multicultural society project. The underclass themultitude of the useless and unproductive (or even illegal) consumers of social subsidies, together with left wing intellectuals andthe unions is their principal enemy. The majority of medical doctors, for instance, who in Germany in recent years have been veryactive contesting government policies in the health sector (withdemonstrations in Berlin and other places), voted for the LiberalParty which centered its electoral campaign on tax reduction andexpanded privatization within the health system. At the same time,some prominent intellectuals (Sloterdijk, Bohrer et al.) initiated adebate on the need to abolish public welfare policies.

2) Isgreencapitalismasolutionorpartoftheproblem?I am sure I willfully agree with arguments of other papers (for instance by Frieder OttoWolf and Mario Candeias).

3) Whatisthemostimportantconcreteproblemtowhichleftstrategyshoulddeveloparesponsein2010?Die LINKE has grown stronger. Itmust strengthen its organization, prepare a debate on the party program and improve its intellectual attractiveness (in this area, the RosaLuxemburg Foundation plays an important role); create organizational

and intellectual capacities for the education of younger generations


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within the party. At the same time, it must stabilize and strengthen theparty and develop a method of debating inner contradictions with mutual respect and with respect for majority decisions; conventionalpower plays within the party will inevitably lead to its defeat.

As a result of the general elections and in regard to the dynamics of thecrisis the main political tasks of Die LINKE will be to build coalitions intwo directions and at two levels: 1) at the parliamentary level: organizeopposition against the policy of the new government, create conditionsfor new majorities (including Die LINKE, for instance in Saarland, thehomeland of Oskar Lafontaine with 21 % voting for Die LINKE); 2.) outside parliament: link parliamentary opposition to social movementsand the unions; the mosaic left (HansJrgen Urban) as a strategicdevice in the period of constructing the counterhegemonic bloc.


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Barbara Epstein

Whereis

the

crisis

heading?

The bank bailout appears to have prevented

a downward spiral into a fullscale depression. Many of us expected thatthe crisis would lead Obama and those around him to conclude that significant regulation of the financial sector was necessary in order toavoid a repeat of the crisis. This has not happened. Nor has there beenany significant movement towards the expansion of social services or ofthe welfare network. Unless some unexpected shift takes place capitalism will emerge out of this crisis meaner than ever, and in my totallynonexpert opinion as vulnerable to crisis as ever. We all know theresults of this in the US: escalating unemployment, foreclosures, with

drawal of social services from the expanding numbers of people whoneed them.

California has often presented a cartoon version of US capitalism inwhich both ups and downs are exaggerated. The housing bubble wasespecially pronounced in California, its collapse, and the consequencesof its collapse, particularly dramatic. Meanwhile the Republican Partyhas united around intransigent opposition to any increase in taxes orstate spending to sustain public institutions. The "twothirds rule,"passed decades ago, requires a twothirds majority in the State Legislature for the approval of state budgets and for any new taxes. The Re

publican Party has just over a third in both houses of the State Legislature and thus is able to stand in the way of any efforts to ameliorate thecrisis. Political gridlock, in combination with recession, is leading to thedestruction of the public sector in California in the context of a particularly high unemployment rate and widespread foreclosures. In California results of intertwined economic crisis and political gridlock havebeen particularly dramatic, but the pattern applies to the US as a whole.

What is the most important concrete problem to which left analysis

shoulddeveloparesponsein2010?In regard to the US, I think we cantspeak of one most important problem. I think that there are three related problems to which we have to develop a response: the war in Afghanistan and the pattern of an endless succession of wars; climatechange and related environmental crisis; the disappearance of the private sector. The relations among these problems are clear: the wars aredriven by the pursuit of control over oil and other resources, as well asthe pursuit of more general global economic/political ascendancy. Environmental crisis is closely related to dependence on oil and petrochemicals. The crippling of the public sector is inherent in neoliberalism as a strategy for the maintenance of US hegemony, and as theideology governing political discourse and policy.


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For most of the population of the US (and I assume Canada and WesternEurope) the above means that everything is getting worse simultaneously. Jobs are increasingly scarce, and, for many, jobs as well as homesare increasingly hard to hold onto. Health care and education are in

creasingly expensive and, for many, of decreasing quality. Spending onwars depletes public resources at a time when need for public servicesand for welfare programs is expanding. Fears of economic and environmental collapse are rational and make it difficult to look to the future with any confidence.

This raises the question: why is there so little protest? Not so long ago,many of us thought that either depression or war would break throughthe political apathy of the American people. With Bush in office we gotboth, but the apathy continued. Some of us thought: perhaps whatstands in the way is a Republican administration, impervious to protest;with a Democrat in office, especially one elected on a platform ofchange, the left, or at least popular protest, will revive. Protests takeplace here and there, but nothing catches fire and spreads. The right isoutorganizing the left. The right holds out the promise of a return toprosperity, national security, and a more stable life, based on familiar,traditional values. In fact of course the neoliberal economic and politicalorder that the right promotes undermines the prosperity and securityof the vast majority of Americans not to speak of others and alsoundermines social cohesion, hardly what most people would think of asa traditional value. But however contradictory the promises of the right,

the appeal of these promises tells us something about widely felt needsto which the left has not found a way to respond persuasively.

I think that the left needs to put forward a conception of a better societywith the potential for appeal beyond the usual constituencies of the left,and especially to young people. We need to argue, persuasively, that asociety and world order based on cooperation are better for humanbeings, other creatures, and the planet, than a society and world orderbased on competition and profit. This means an approach to environmental problems that is feasible and that is compatible with a socialist,or cooperative, social order, rather than with capitalism, and that is also

clearly feasible, an approach to security that rejects war while addressing reasonable fears of attack, and a plan revitalizing the public spherethat addresses the sources of widespread suspicion of government, including the growth of bureaucracy and the spread of surveillance. Wehave to imagine a society that a majority of Americans can look towardhopefully, including some of those who are at times inclined to supportthe right, and base it on a set of principles that can be endorsed by religious people as well as the secular left. And, I think, we have to worktoward a broad coalition of progressive organizations (and, given theweakness of organizations, individuals). Socialists, and socialist ideas,

should play an important role in this coalition, but it must also include a


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wide array of progressives, organizations and individuals, that supportthe same immediate agenda without necessarily endorsing socialism.


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Rainer Fischbach

Ad(1):

The

further

unfolding

of

the

current

crisis

Any assessment of the further course of events has to consider the irreducible uncertainty regarding some central factors not only influencingthese, but also being influenced by them through various feedbackloops.1. Unemployment in Europe and particularly in Germany did not in

crease and consumption was not reduced proportionally to the lossof (exportoriented) output, due to automatic stabilizers (shorthours, clearing of overtime accounts, unemployment benefits). On

the one hand, this marks a start contrast to the US experience, buton the other hand, raises the question of whether the respective effects will last long enough to ride out an extended downturn. Thepolicy of the newly elected German government adds to the gravityof this question: while promising debtfinanced tax cuts yieldingonly minor macroeconomic effects to its welloff electorate, it seemsto be betting on the stimulus packages introduced elsewhereparticularly in China and the USto generate new orders for Germanys exportoriented industry.

2. Bank balance sheets still carry lots of risky assets. Even still goodcredits extended to the industrial, commercial realestate, and pri

vateequity sectors may turn sour in a prolonged crisis when company failures abound. The Dubai case looks like the handwriting onthe wall. The credit portfolios are probably worth much less thanaccounting figures suggest. All the more so as many governments,like that of Germany, missed the opportunity to force banks to improve their equity position or even nationalize them at the peak ofthe financial crash. The resulting credit shortage and tightened conditions could limit economic performance even if the demand forindustrial goods picks up again. But as long as demand remains atcurrent levels, industry may not even ask for such credits. Industrialinvestment may fall short of societys needs anyway.

3. Abundant money supply by central banks not channeled into industrial credits tends to feed a new wave of speculative, highly leveraged financial investments. Carry trades, converting cheap dollars,provided by the Federal Reserve, into higher yielding eastern European, Asian or Latin American currencies already abound. The private equity industry, while still sitting on massive precrisis investments facing devaluation, is up again and flooded with money. Itsnot the cheap central bank money that is at the core of the problem,but rather the enormous financial wealth thats looking for profitbut lacking investment opportunities in the real economy. Cheap

money only provides the leverage needed to generate from arbi


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trage trades the high returns on equity expected by financial investors. As financial wealth is always someone elses debt the alreadyhigh level of indebtedness will rise even more. Central banks are facing a regulatory dilemma, as any interest rate suitable for the real

economy in a depression, will, absent deep regulatory constraintson the financial industry, always be too low for not inflating the nextbubble. And cheap money alone will not push the real economy outof depression as long as aggregate demand remains low and expectations dull.

4. Central to the crisis management of western governments was theconversion of private into public debt. The longterm working ofthis solution is dependent on the continued willingness of financialwealth owners around the world and, especially in the case of theUS, of state banks/funds in countries running high balance of payment surpluses, to hold large and expanding volumes of treasurybonds or comparable securities. So the very solution to the financialcrisis adds to the imbalances that fuelled it and leaves open the basic issue that there is much more financial wealth around looking formore surplus value than the real economy can generate as long asthe wealths owners are hesitant to invest it there.

Given these uncertainties, theres a small possibility that the worldeconomy will take off againmost probably led by emerging economies with China in front, calling for a shift of powerbut a much biggerchance that the depressionnotwithstanding minor recoveries hardlysurpassing precrisis levelswill last longer. Given the situation of pub

lic households heavily stressed by bank bailouts and subsidies to declining industries, the call for cutbacks in labor compensation and socialspending will sound irresistible.

Ad(2):TheGreenNewDeal

The term New Deal is associated with the widespread perception thatthe historical New Dealthe policy of public investments pursued bythe Roosevelt administrationhad brought the US economy out of thedepression following the financial crash of 1929. Besides the omissionof the strong regulatory component that was part of Roosevelts policy,

this perception falls short of a true account of the 1930s depression andthe way it was overcome, and particularly of the fact that it was not therather insufficient public investment programs of the 1930s, whichdidnt prevent the second dip in 1937, but, in the words of Paul Krugman, the stimulus package better known as WWII, that pushed the USeconomy out of the depression. In any case, an essential underlying factor of the recent crisis is the fact that the oilbased capitalist economieshave, since their first time in 1970s, come up once again against thewall as a consequence of greatly expanded demand for, and, also, speculation in, oil and other raw materials. This has farreaching consequen

ces:


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1. Any stable economic development in a livable world will require afundamental change in the humannaturephysiology for ecologicalandeconomic reasons.

2. This will, in scale and scope, call for something beyond the fancyenduser gadgets of low efficiency and rather marginal significancelike hybrid cars and smart electricity meters, which the public associates with the term GreenNewDeal: A project that would indeed bean equivalent of WWII in moral andeconomic terms.

3. The necessary modernization and expansion of infrastructure: public transportation, renewable energy sources, an efficient and resilient power grid, nextgeneration telecommunication networks etc.,the shift to fully serviceable and recyclable, durable products, thetransformation of settlement patterns and distribution networks forenergy efficiency and a better quality of life, the education and human care necessary to make for a livable world and the next generations ability to meet the challenges ahead, etc., will require investments on the order of trillions of Euros in the next decade alone inEurope, and even higher in North America and the rest of the world,along with comprehensive planning at the national and international level.

This would mean something that seems to be highly improbable in thecontext of financial capitalism: the return to the accumulation ratesachieved for the last time in the 1950s and 1960s, during the golden ageof Fordism. Financial capitalism as a system of power and appropriation, built in the 1970s and 1980s in order to restore capital profitabil

ity and capitalist class rule, implies underutilization of capacities, particularly human capacities: This is a logical consequence of high profitability figuring as the leading investment criterion and the disciplinaryapproach to social, and particularly labor, relations. While it may be notimpossible per se to have something like a green capitalism, it seemsmore likely that the imperatives of profitability and class rule will undermine the efforts called for by the goal of a livable world. The mostprobable effect to be expected from a green capitalism is a stock marketbubble comparable to the dot.combubble of the 1990s. The industrywhich will benefit from it will produce some microefficiencies, butmiss the macroefficiency so badly needed.

Ad(3):Challengestotheleft

The budget situation generated by bank bailouts, subsidies and tax cutsfor the welloff on the state side as well as the profit loss suffered by thecorporate side during the crisis will make the call for cutbacks in socialspending and labor compensation seem plausible in the microeconomic perspective favored by politics and the media. There is a disciplinary discourse emerging, centered on morality, austerity and theexclusion of any population considered unproductive or undisciplined.

Its proponents are trying to make believe that the crisis started with


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housing loans for the poor and because we all lived above our means.They talk of bankers greed and bonuses, but are really targeting laborcompensation and social spending. In Germany, figures like MeinhardMiegel, Thilo Sarrazin and Peter Sloterdijk are leading the way to a fun

damentally, and decidedly, inegalitarian society, held together, if not bycrude ideology, then by means of massive repression. This is, after thedeterioration it suffered in recent years, a further assault on the reproductive level of the masses with direct consequences for the life of millions and the level of care enjoyed by their children, the sick and theelderly. To repel this attack will be the decisive immediate challenge forthe left, which has to develop a clear conscience of reproduction assomething not given naturally, but defined politically. But this will onlymake apparent the more profound challenges posed by the crisis: coming up with a proper analysis of it, with concepts meeting the challengesposed by the quest for a livable world, and then spreading the insightsgenerated therein, if there are any. If the neoliberal mantra of selfreliance and responsibility, entrepreneurial freedom, private property,global commerce and market efficiency, that clouds the malfunctioningof financial capitalism, is to be overcome, the left will have to leave behind the phase of vague critique and start talking about public goodsand public enterprise, about investment, planning and redistribution ofwealth.


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Stephen Gill

GlobalOrganic

Crisis

and

its

Implications

for

the

Lefts5

The paradoxical and pregnant nature of the current global politicalsituation involves far more than a crisis of capitalist accumulation: Thecrisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the newcannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptomsappear6

1)Whereisthecrisisheading?The current conjuncture involves a multiplicity of intersecting and interrelated crises, i.e. a global organic cri

sis that goes beyond the deep challenges to macroeconomic policy as aresult of the costs of gigantic bailouts of capital in the past 2 years.A swift review of the present conjuncture reveals that morbid symptoms are global: intensified exploitation of human beings and nature bycapital; fundamental issues of sustainability (partly reflected in the impasse over climate change); and intense global food and health criseslinked to corporate domination of world agriculture.7 Related to theabove is accelerated privatization of water, land, natural resources andpublic goods such as education and health systems: thus a global socialcrisis is exacerbated by these new enclosures and the expropriation ofthe social commons. In sum, this is much more than a crisis of capital

ist accumulation or a necessary selfcorrection aided by macroeconomic intervention and bailouts. It reflects the contradictions of market civilization an individualistic, consumerist, privatized, energyintensive and ecologically myopic, unequal and unjust pattern of lifestyle and culture which is currently dominant in world development.8

Where the crisis is heading will depend on the political struggles inresponse to the contradiction just alluded to: the intensified power anddisciplines of capital (reinforced by disciplinary neoliberalism and newconstitutionalism) versus the need for conditions of secure and indeedprogressive social reproduction and ecological sustainability. Thisglobal contradiction has important gender and racial dimensions. A majority of the worlds work, including caring work, is done by women and

5 My contribution to this years NALD should be read in conjunction with what I wrote

last year this has been circulated earlier by the organizers.

6 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1971, p 276.

7 The world food crisis involves global patterns of malnutrition 25% of the world is

obese or overweight; 25% is starving. See Robert Albritton, Let Them Eat Junk: How

Capitalism Creates Hunger and Obesity, 2009.

8 Pentagon strategic doctrine since the 1990s has been premised on full spectrum

dominance (ability to dominate all adversaries in all aspects of warfare and surveil-

lance) and sustaining the global disparities that favour dominant US interests -- in an

unequal world increasingly divided between the haves and have-nots.


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a majority of the worlds poor are women.9 Nevertheless, the forces ofdisciplinary neoliberalism have retained the upper hand in defining theresponses the lefts have been relatively weak.

In my view the principal challenge for the Lefts in the coming decade ismobilising forces and arguments to address the global organic crisisand in so doing to continue to foster new forms of political agency involving both men and women a new, diverse and creative postmodern Prince.10 Immediate challenges include specific policy responses to the costs of the gigantic bailouts, which neoliberal governments will ultimately seek to download on the backs of ordinary peoplein the form of wage cuts, reductions in social benefits and health expenditures, privatisation of education and other measures connected totheir exit strategies.

2.Greencapitalism?Emergency measures as just undertaken by the G8only occur when the capitalist market system is threatened, not to dealwith social needs or the sustainability of the biosphere. Various proposals for Green capitalism should be judged in terms of whether they address not only specific ecological challenges, but also the general crisisof social reproduction and livelihood which compounds the ecologicalproblem in short the global organic crisis. Indeed, much of the currentproblems of global starvation are linked to the shift to production awayfrom food grains to heavily subsidized biofuels over the past decade this has massively increased the world food prices so that the worlds

poor cannot afford to buy food.

Of course it is desirable that capital is constrained from completelyreckless exploitation of global resources and is forced to use energymore efficiently. However green capitalism seems entirely compatiblewith the prevailing forms of consumerist growth and commodified desire associated with market civilization, even though such consumptionmight be reconciled with lower levels of fossil fuel use, lower amountsof chemical fertilisers, and the introduction of more renewable sourcesof energy. It can also go with wider use of genetically modified seedsand new technologies of control over lifeforms, e.g. feedlots and hor

mones to feed meatbased diets.Further, green capitalism is characterized by the contradiction betweenprivate accumulation and enclosure of the social commons and socialneeds. Indeed the question of intellectual property rights is at the heartof the impasse between the global North and the global South in theclimate change negotiations. Private corporations want rents for theirtechnologies which poorer countries can ill afford to pay. Green capitalism will do very little therefore to address the intensification of eco9 According to the UN Population Fund, the single biggest cause of global health inequa-

lities as well as the principal cause of death for women is childbirth.

10 See Stephen Gill, Power and Resistance in the New World Order, 2008.


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nomic and social insecurity of a majority of people throughout theglobe. The left arguments should be based on the view that technologiesto ameliorate environmental problems should be global public goods not mechanisms of control by corporations, codified by intellectual

property rights in new constitutional organisations such as the WTO.

3) What is the most important concreteproblem to which left strategy


Tax struggle is the oldest form of class struggle (Karl Marx)

Here the key question is: Who pays for the bailouts, and what are thereal costs of the bailout strategies? The G8 strategy will attempt to restore the principal aspects of disciplinary neoliberalism and force adjustments on to the backs of working people in the form of lower wages,privatization of public services and health, etc., in short an assault onworkers, public goods and the social commons.

What will this mean? In North Atlantic countries about 70% of workersare in services, many in public services now threatened with furtherprivatization. However, many remain sympathetic to the argument thatG7 leaders can resolve the crisis and return to normalcy, indeed manyprotected workers are shielded from some of the worst effects of thecrisis (i.e. partly as a result of Keynesian automatic stabilizers inEurope) whereas insecurity is increasing for the vast majority of

workers worldwide, who are unprotected. 11

The question of normalcy is therefore a global question and its returnmeans exit strategies and the renewal of disciplinary neoliberalism in ways that will deepen the global organic crisis. Thus the lefts shouldargue that the world truly has a choice the economic emergencymeasures could have been targeted in ways that would have been lesscostly, more socially efficient, e.g. strengthening public goods for thesocial, health and educational commons, and for promoting democraticcontrol over the commanding heights of the economy so that they arealso made less risky and more stable. A first step would be to advocate

much more progressive and fair taxation (e.g. particularly for the top20% of wealthy people), crack down on tax evasion and offshore centres, and promote tax regimes and pricing strategies designed to channel production towards more socially and ecologically useful ends. Theglobal organic crisis also mandates strategies for global redistribution

11 The idea of an early return to such normalcy is delusional in light of the global fi-

nancial situation which is far worse than G20 leaders can admit publicly. Moreover, the

normal of the past few decades has meant not only a deep crisis of social reproduction

but also relentless environmental destruction, ever-increasing and obscene levels of

inequality and, not least, global economic stagnation.


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with a qualitative component (e.g. to provide the means to healthierglobal food and improvements in medical care).

In other words, Lefts need policies that promote a new common sense

in ways that not only fundamentally challenge the hegemonic capitalistconcepts, but that redefine the credibility of government in terms ofsustainable, equitable and just policies to meet social needs and enlargethe social commons also showing how this will provide greater security and freedom for the majority.


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Christina Kaindl

The liberalconservative German government has been quite successfulin managing the crisis, at least managing the discourse on the crisis. Thewindow of discussion on if and how capitalism is the right thing tomaintain has rather been closed again even more than in the US itseems. Fears that the crisis may automatically serve the left could beneutralized by what could be understood as a citation of fordistic politics: bringing the state back in (although mainly to financialize it),bringing the unions back to the table to negotiate social plans for shorthours work and bringing the core productive force of fordism, the autoindustry, back into the heart of the concern, stabilizing the production

by creating demands and the feeling, that the ordinary people aregaining something from the crisispolitics too with the cash for clunkers project.

Although ideologically weakened, neoliberalism has been politicallystrengthened in this crisis management. Green capitalism is thus leftto the Green Party that might find a way to propose it as a new model ofprosperity and neoliberalism and separate it from the social discussionwith what is still often linked in the concerned movements (and whatcould built

Documents

Ingar Solty: Global Crisis, 'Green Capitalism', and Left Strategy. 2nd North-Atlantic Left Dialogue