Capital and Its Discontents

Description

Capitalism is stumbling, empire is faltering, and the planet is thawing. Yet many people are still grasping to understand these multiple crises and to find a way forward to a just future. Into the breach come the essential insights of Capital and Its Discontents, which cut through the gristle to get to the heart of the matter about the nature of capitalism and imperialism, capitalism’s vulnerabilities at this conjuncture—and what can we do to hasten its demise.

Through a series of incisive conversations with some of the most eminent thinkers and political economists on the Left—including David Harvey, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Mike Davis, Leo Panitch, Tariq Ali, and Noam Chomsky—Capital and Its Discontents illuminates the dynamic contradictions undergirding capitalism and the potential for its dethroning. The book challenges conventional wisdom on the Left about the nature of globalization, neoliberalism, and imperialism, as well as the agrarian question in the Global South. It probes deeply into the roots of the global economic meltdown, the role of debt and privatization in dampening social revolt, and considers capitalism’s dynamic ability to find ever new sources of accumulation—whether through imperial or ecological plunder or the commodification of previously unpaid female labor.

The Left luminaries in Capital and Its Discontents look at potential avenues out of the mess—as well as wrong turns and needless detours—drawing lessons from the history of post-colonial states in the Global South, struggles against imperialism past and present, the eternal pendulum swing of radicalism, the corrosive legacy of postmodernism, and the potentialities of the radical humanist tradition. At a moment when capitalism as a system is more reviled than ever, here is an indispensable toolbox of ideas for action by some of the most brilliant thinkers of our times.

Full list of Interviewees:

• Noam Chomsky is a laureate professor at the University of Arizona and professor emeritus in the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. His work is widely credited with having revolutionized the field of modern linguistics and Chomsky is one of the foremost critics of U.S. foreign policy. He has published numerous groundbreaking books, articles, and essays on global politics, history, and linguistics. His recent books include Who Rules the World? and Hopes and Prospects.


• Tariq Ali is a historian, novelist, and filmmaker, and the author of many books. He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and a contributor to the Guardian and the London Review of Books.


• Mike Davis is an urban theorist, historian, and political activist, author of many works including City of Quartz. He is an editor of the New Left Review and received a MacArthur Fellowship Award and the Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.


• Ellen Meiksins Wood, for many years professor of political science at York University, Toronto, is the author of a number of books, including The Origin of Capitalism and Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages.


• David Harvey is the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a pioneering radical geographer. He has written numerous books and is among the 20 most cited authors in the humanities.


• Leo Panitch teaches political economy at York University in Toronto and is coeditor of the Socialist Register. He is the author of numerous books, including In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives, published by PM Press.


• Doug Henwood is editor of Left Business Observer, author of After the New Economy and Wall Street: How It Works and for Whom, and a contributing editor to The Nation magazine.


• A South African native, Gillian Hart is professor of geography at UC Berkeley and the author of Disabling Globalization: Places of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa.


• John Bellamy Foster is the editor of the independent socialist magazine Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon in Eugene. He is the coauthor, among other works, of The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences.


• Ursula Huws is the editor of the international interdisciplinary journal Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation, and the author of The Making of a Cybertariat: Virtual Work in a Real World.


• David McNally is professor of political science at York University in Toronto and the author of many books, including Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance, published by PM Press.


• Jason W. Moore is a research fellow at the Department of Human Geography at Lund University, Sweden.


• Vivek Chibber is professor of sociology at New York University and the author of Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India.


• John Sanbonmatsu teaches philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. He is the author of The Postmodern Prince: Critical Theory, Left Strategy, and the Making? of a New Political Subject.


• Andrej Grubačić is a dissident from the Balkans. A radical historian and sociologist, he is the coauthor of Wobblies and Zapatistas and author of Don’t Mourn, Balkanize! (both from PM Press).

Sujets

• CRISES
• Political economy
• Anti-capitalism
• Socialism
• Political science
• Ecology
• Empire
• Marx

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 07 mars 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781604865325
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Praise for Capital and Its Discontents
“Enveloped by a crisis that seems to have no end, heirs to ideas that seem unable to carry us through the present—the combination is disorienting. For that, it is right to scour the intellectual malcontents to gain from their recovery of ideas from the past and their sense of how to understand the present. Ideas are the soul of social activism. Without them action dissipates into futility; the ideas help us focus our energy toward building the kind of alternative world that our hopes encourage. Sasha Lilley’s Capital and Its Discontents is a superb introduction to some of the best traditions, given to us through some of the sharpest thinkers of the Global North.”
—Vijay Prashad, author of The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World .
“Few journalists can match Sasha Lilley’s knowledge of political economy, nor her keen instinct for the important questions. Read these interviews—with some of the left’s most clearheaded thinkers—for a far deeper understanding of contemporary capitalism and its problems, and, perhaps more surprisingly, a bracing and contagious optimism.”
—Liza Featherstone, author of Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart
“These conversations illuminate the current world situation in ways that are very useful for those hoping to orient themselves and find a way forward to effective individual and collective action. Highly recommended.”
—Kim Stanley Robinson, New York Times bestselling author of the Mars Trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt
“In this fine set of interviews, an A-list of radical thinkers demonstrate why their skills are indispensable to understanding today’s multiple economic and ecological crises.”
—Raj Patel, author of The Value of Nothing and Stuffed and Starved
“This finely tuned assemblage of radical voices, both familiar and fresh, will be an indispensible vade mecum for opponents of capital and empire in the new century. Lucid analysis, a penetrating but sympathetic interlocutor, and signposts pointing beyond the horizon of the neoliberal order—altogether a superb addition to PM’s Spectre series.”
—Iain Boal, coauthor of Retort’s Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War
“Sasha Lilley, one of KPFA’s all-time finest broadcasters, turns to print, producing a splendid volume of interviews on a wide range of economic and political subjects. In Capital and Its Discontents , Lilley glides past worn-out stereotypes and exhausted explanations to get right to the heart of today’s most pressing issues. She does this with a light touch but a sure hand and brings out the best from each contributor—economists, sociologists, political activists—producing a compelling collection.”
—Cal Winslow, coeditor of Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below During the Long 1970s
“Capital and Its Discontents presents the thought of many of the most astute analysts of contemporary political, economic and cultural developments in accessible interview form. Sasha Lilley’s wide-ranging and probing questions prompt her interviewees to address the intersecting crises of our time and to outline frameworks for understanding and responding to them. This collection of interviews introduces the reader to much of the best thinking about social issues on the U.S. left today.”
—Barbara Epstein, History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz
“At a time of economic crisis but great political opportunity, Capital and Its Discontents provides a much-needed roadmap for turning radical ideas into action. The hegemony of neoliberal ideology can be paralyzing at times, even on the left. The contributors to this book do a rousing job of reminding us that another world is possible—if we all pitch in and make it happen.” —Steve Early, author of Embedded with Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home
“Reading this wonderful book feels like having a face-to-face discussion with each author. These brilliant radical thinkers from many parts of the world generously and lucidly share their knowledge and insights on capitalism, empire, and resistance.”
—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, historian and author of Red Dirt and Outlaw Woman
“Sasha Lilley is the very best interviewer I have ever encountered. I don’t think that I have heard as good a set of questions as she poses in these stellar interviews, and the depth of the answers she elicits will help develop the confidence to get these ideas out even more widely. Taken together, these interviews allow the left to think collectively, and that’s the real starting point for building an effective alternative politics, the kind of vision one has for a different kind of society and intermediate steps to get there.”
—Leo Panitch, editor, The Socialist Register
“This is an extremely important book. It is the most detailed, comprehensive, and best study yet published on the most recent capitalist crisis and its discontents. Sasha Lilley sets each interview in its context, writing with style, scholarship, and wit about ideas and philosophies.”
—Andrej Grubaĉić, radical sociologist and social critic, coauthor of Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism, and Radical History
Editor: Sasha Lilley
Spectre is a series of indispensable works of, and about, radical political economy. Spectre lays bare the dark underbelly of politics and economics, publishing outstanding and contrarian perspectives on the maelstrom of capital—and emancipatory alternatives—in crisis. The companion Spectre Classics imprint unearths essential works of radical history, political economy, theory and practice, to illuminate the present with brilliant, yet unjustly neglected, ideas from the past.
Spectre
Greg Albo, Sam Gindin, and Leo Panitch, In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives
David McNally, Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance
Sasha Lilley, Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult
Spectre Classics
E. P. Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary

Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult Sasha Lilley © PM Press 2011 Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult Sasha Lilley All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-60486-334-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2010927769
Cover by John Yates/Stealworks Interior design by briandesign
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PM Press PO Box 23912 Oakland, CA 94623 www.pmpress.org
Printed in the USA on recycled paper.
Published in Canada by Fernwood Publishing 32 Oceanvista Lane, Black Point, Nova Scotia, B0J 1B0 and 748 Broadway Avenue, Winnipeg, MB R3G 0X3 www.fernwoodpublishing.ca
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Lilley, Sasha, 1970– Capital and its discontents: conversations with radical thinkers in a time of tumult / Sasha Lilley. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-55266-394-3
1. Capitalism. 2. Globalization—Economic aspects. 3. Imperialism. I. Title.
HB522.L54 2010 330.12’2 C2010-904887-3
Published in the EU by The Merlin Press Ltd . 6 Crane Street Chambers, Crane Street, Pontypool NP4 6ND, Wales www.merlinpress.co.uk ISBN: 978-085036-677-8
 
To my mother Kathleen Lilley
Contents Introduction PART I Empire, Neoliberalism, Crisis CHAPTER ONE Ellen Meiksins Wood: Empire in the Age of Capital CHAPTER TWO David Harvey: The Rise of Neoliberalism and the Riddle of Capital CHAPTER THREE Leo Panitch and Doug Henwood: Demystifying Globalization CHAPTER FOUR David McNally: The Global Economic Meltdown CHAPTER FIVE Sam Gindin, Greg Albo, and Leo Panitch: Capitalist Crisis and Radical Renewal PART II Commodification, Enclosure, and the Contradictions of Capitalism CHAPTER SIX John Bellamy Foster: The Ecological Dimensions of Marx’s Thought CHAPTER SEVEN Jason W Moore: The Socio-Ecological Crises of Capitalism CHAPTER EIGHT Gillian Hart: The Agrarian Question and Multiple Paths of Capitalist Development in East Asia and South Africa CHAPTER NINE Ursula Huws: Labor and Capital, Gender and Commodification PART III Alternatives? CHAPTER TEN Vivek Chibber: National Capitalism in the Third World CHAPTER ELEVEN Mike Davis: Isaac Deutscher and the Old Left CHAPTER TWELVE Tariq Ali: Anti-imperialism and the New Left, Revolt and Retrenchment CHAPTER THIRTEEN John Sanbonmatsu: Postmodernism and the Politics of Expression CHAPTER FOURTEEN Noam Chomsky: Anarchism, Council Communism, and Life After Capitalism CHAPTER FIFTEEN Andrej Grubacic: Libertarian Socialism for the Twenty-First Century Acknowledgments Contributors Notes Index
Introduction Sasha Lilley
THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS HAVE WITNESSED THE SPECTACULAR UNRAVELING OF capitalism—or so it has appeared. Venerated investment banks have vanished overnight, titans of industry have permanently shuttered their doors, and rich nations have lurched perilously close to default. The ideology of the free market, once seemingly unassailable, lies in tatters. While the death knell of capitalism may not yet be tolling, the crisis is undoubtedly of a different order of magnitude than anything seen in decades.
Crises can be openings: moments when the stanchions are kicked out from under the status quo, when the pieties of the recent past fall away, and a revitalized sense of collective power takes shape. But crises aren’t always—or only—opportunities for radicals, mechanically ushering legions of the downtrodden to the barricades. In times of crisis, the far right often harnes