Global Slump

David Mcnally

Description

Global Slump analyzes the global financial meltdown as the first systemic crisis of the neoliberal stage of capitalism. It argues that—far from having ended—the crisis has ushered in a whole period of worldwide economic and political turbulence. In developing an account of the crisis as rooted in fundamental features of capitalism, Global Slump challenges the view that its source lies in financial deregulation.

The book locates the recent meltdown in the intense economic restructuring that marked the recessions of the mid-1970s and early 1980s. Through this lens, it highlights the emergence of new patterns of world inequality and new centers of accumulation, particularly in East Asia, and the profound economic instabilities these produced. Global Slump offers an original account of the “financialization” of the world economy during this period, and explores the intricate connections between international financial markets and new forms of debt and dispossession, particularly in the Global South.

Analyzing the massive intervention of the world’s central banks to stave off another Great Depression, Global Slump shows that, while averting a complete meltdown, this intervention also laid the basis for recurring crises for poor and working class people: job loss, increased poverty and inequality, and deep cuts to social programs. The book takes a global view of these processes, exposing the damage inflicted on countries in the Global South, as well as the intensification of racism and attacks on migrant workers. At the same time, Global Slump also traces new patterns of social and political resistance—from housing activism and education struggles, to mass strikes and protests in Martinique, Guadeloupe, France and Puerto Rico—as indicators of the potential for building anti-capitalist opposition to the damage that neoliberal capitalism is inflicting on the lives of millions.

Sujets

• Marxism
• Neoliberalism
• Market socialism
• Racism
• Capitalism
• Migration

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 09 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781604860658
• Langue: English

Extrait

Copyright
Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance David McNally © PM Press 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-60486-332-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2010927764
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 IB0 and 748 Broadway Avenue, Winnipeg, MB R3G 0X3 www.fernwoodpublishing.ca
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication McNally, David Global slump : the economics and politics of crisis and resistance / David McNally. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN: 978-1-55266-396-7
1. Global Financial Crisis, 2008–2009. 2. International finance. 3. Capitalism. I. Title.
HG3881.M39 2010 332'.042 C2010-904888-1
Published in the EU by The Merlin Press Ltd. 6 Crane Street Chambers, Crane Street, Pontypool NP4 6ND, Wales www.merlinpress.co.uk ISBN: 978-085036-678-5
For the incredible “Fergallys”—
Liam, Sam, Adam, and Sue

Preface and Acknowledgements
As FATE WOULD HAVE IT , I WAS IN N EW Y ORK FOR THE ANNUAL L EFT Forum in mid-March 2008 when the Wall Street investment bank Bear Stearns melted down. “This is big,” I told my partner, as I pored through the financial newspapers trying to get a handle on the dimensions of what was happening. “This could be the start of a major crisis,” I speculated. In fact, while I was miles ahead of mainstream economists in my understanding—no great claim to fame, as we shall see—I still had only the haziest sense of just how profound an event was unfolding.
In many respects, this book represents my effort to clarify the nature of the Great Recession, where it came from, and how it is likely to unfold in the years ahead. It also represents my attempt to think through what all this means for movements of resistance, struggles for global justice, and anticapitalist politics. But this has been no solitary quest. At every step of the way, I have been engaged in action and discussion with radical activists and scholars about the issues that are covered here. Throughout, I have felt the urgency of making sense of events that are rapidly changing the world in which we live, events that are throwing up huge new challenges to social justice movements everywhere. This urgency is driven by the conviction that we need to map the character of the global slump as best we can in order to more adequately fashion our resistance to its devastating effects.
This book is my small contribution to that cause. Whatever its deficiencies, which are surely many, they would be even greater were it not for the feedback, inspiration, and encouragement I received from many quarters.
I would particularly like to acknowledge the great spirit of nonsectarian radical inquiry that ran through the day schools organized by the Popular Education and Action Project in Toronto in 2009, where parts of this analysis were first presented. Mad props to all the amazing activists from the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, No One is Illegal–Toronto, Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, Socialist Project, and Toronto New Socialists who made those gatherings such powerful episodes of popular self-education. I have likewise benefited greatly from the opportunity to present some of these ideas at a variety of conferences, workshops, and seminars full of outstandingly thoughtful people. Foremost here are sessions organized by: Historical Materialism (at conferences in London and Toronto); the Left Forum in New York; Socialism 2009 and 2010 in Chicago; the Centre for Global Political Economy and the Labour Studies program at Simon Fraser University; the Society for Socialist Studies 2009 meetings at Carleton University; the Vancouver Socialist Forum; the International Development Studies Program at Trent University; the Ontario Public Interest Research Group at both University of Toronto and York University; The Socialist Register at a stimulating weekend workshop in Toronto; and the Great Lakes Political Economy Conference at Carleton University. I wish also to thank the wonderful activists with No One is Illegal–Toronto, UNITE HERE, Socialist Project, and Toronto New Socialists, who invited me to present my thinking in these areas to a variety of workshops and panel discussions.
I owe particular thanks to the editors of Historical Materialism , far and away the best English-language journal of critical socialist thought, for their invitation to submit an article, “From Financial Crisis to World Slump: Accumulation, Financialisation, and the Global Slowdown,” based on my talk at their 2008 conference in London. That article, which appeared in 2009, provided me with an initial opportunity to develop some of my thinking about these issues at length. This book extends and develops ideas first broached in print there.
In the course of these occasions and in innumerable private conversations, I have received tremendous encouragement from Greg Albo, Alison Ayers, Himani Bannerji, Riccardo Bellofiore, Susan Buck-Morss, Johanna Brenner, Sebastian Budgen, David Camfield, James Cairns, Vivek Chibber, Aziz Choudry, Erin Chun, John Clarke, Professor D of the Dope Poets Society, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Todd Gordon, Adam Hanieh, Sarah Knopp, Michael Kuttner, Shahrzad Mojab, Colin Mooers, Fred Moseley, Amy Muldoon, Bertell Ollman, Leo Panitch, Charlie Post, Alfredo Saad-Filho, Alan Sears, Anwar Shaikh, Ahmed Shawki, Tony Smith, Hamid Sodeifi, Jesook Song, and Ellen Meiksins Wood. Many, many thanks to these incredible comrades and friends. I would also like to thank my father, who regularly reminded me that my hurried writing efforts would benefit from the occasional break for recreation.
My editor at PM Press, Sasha Lilley, first interviewed me about these issues for her marvelous series on KPFA Radio, “Capitalism and its Discontents.” She then persisted in urging me to write this all up at greater length for publication. I am very pleased to have heeded her advice. I am also deeply grateful to Sasha for her sharp, intelligent editorial suggestions, which have greatly improved this work. Completion of this book was somewhat delayed— and necessarily so—by involvement in the protests against the G20 in Toronto in late June 2010 and the important defense campaign launched after police state tactics resulted in more than a thousand arrests. I want to acknowledge the courage of the thousands of protestors and detainees who challenged the G20, often braving police violence, arbitrary arrest and inhumane detention. While expressing my solidarity with all the detained G20 protesters, I wish to acknowledge one in particular, Syed Hussan, an exceptional organizer with No One Is Illegal–Toronto, who was released on bail the day I started the Conclusion to this book. While living together was forced upon us by the courts, I hope friendship and comradeship have been some small compensation for the indignities of house arrest. In the same spirit, I want to pay tribute to the steadfast commitment of my co-speakers at the June 28, 2010, protest rally outside police headquarters in Toronto: Irina Ceric, Debra Cowen, Taylor Flook, Naomi Klein, Abeer Majeeb, Farrah Miranda, Ben Powless, Judy Rebick, and Dave Vasey. Long may you stand up against injustice and oppression.
I owe huge thanks to some terrific friends who read parts of this text on incredibly short notice and offered me their wisdom and insight: David Camfield, Alfredo Saad-Filho, Charlie Post, and Hamid Sodeifi. This book is much better for their help.
Once again, my biggest debt is owed to Sue Ferguson, my partner in love, politics, childrearing, and more. Since those early conversations in New York, as Bear Stearns was collapsing, Sue has been an integral part of this project. She read every chapter in draft, offering greatly discerning comments on each one. Equally important, she helped keep me sane, or so I would like to think, as I scrambled to meet my deadline. Our boys, Liam, Sam, and Adam, were constant affi rmations as to why I do this work. Their energy, exuberance, creativity, and wonderful humor keep me inspired. And they remind me that another world truly is possible. This book is dedicated to all of them, those incredible “Fergallys,”—Liam, Sam, Adam, and Sue—my co-conspirators in love and happiness.


INTRODUCTION The Mutating Crisis of Global Capitalism
“The global fi nancial crisis of the late 2000s . . . stands as the most serious global fi nancial crisis since the Great Depression. The crisis has been a transformative moment in global economic history whose ultimate resolution will likely reshape politics and economics for at least a generation.” 1
T HOSE WHO LIVE THROUGH GREAT HISTORIC RARELY realize it at the time. This has something to do with the fact that, as the radical philosopher Georg Lukács once observed, it is exceptionally diffi cult to grasp the present as history . We tend to think of history as a record of past events, of things that are over and done with. We find it difficult to view our current moment as profoundly historical. Yet, the present is invariably saturated with elements of the future, with possibilities that have not yet come to fruition, and may not do so—as the road to the future is always contested. That is why, if we wish to make history, we “must be able to comprehend the present as a becoming.” 2 One would think that it should be easier to see things this way during moments of profound crisis in our social and economic system, like that which broke out in 2008. As the tectonic plates of the global economy shifted, financial shocks rocked the world’s banks, leveling many of them. Panic gripped money markets, stocks plunged, factories