khukuri

What should be be the future of this planet beyond capitalism and how do we reach that future? The current economic crisis, which is far from having run its course, offers not only an opportunity but a necessity to discuss this question broadly. This is a prominent David Harvey’s argument in the following essay; if he’s right, as I think he is, it is not a necessity which has been very widely grasped by those who see themselves as opponents of the current order.

Harvey’s essay will be published in two parts. The following, part 1 of course, is a very cogent outline the genesis, dynamics, and likely (capitalist) outcome of the economic crisis. The second part, to be published tomorrow, is Harvey’s discussion of anti-capitalist tendencies and possibilities.

David Harvey, a professor at City University of New York, has written a number of very fine books, and on his website you can find an extremely helpful series of videos of a class he teaches consisting of a close reading of volume 1 of Marx’s Capital. The following essay draws on material from his forthcoming book The Enigma of Capital. This essay appears on his website.

Questioning the future of capitalism itself as an adequate social system ought, therefore, to be in the forefront of current debate.

Yet there appears to be little appetite for such discussion, even among the left. Instead we continue to hear the usual conventional mantras regarding the perfectibility of humanity with the help of free markets and free trade, private property and personal responsibility, low taxes and minimalist state involvement in social provision, even though this all sounds increasingly hollow. A crisis of legitimacy looms.  But legitimation crises typically unfold at a different pace and rhythm to that of stock markets.  It took, for example, three or four years before the stock market crash of 1929 produced the massive social movements (both progressive and fascistic) after 1932 or so. The intensity of the current pursuit by political power of ways to exit the present crisis may have something to do with the political fear of looming illegitimacy.

The last thirty years, however, has seen the emergence of systems of governance that seem immune to legitimacy problems and unconcerned even with the creation of consent. The mix of authoritarianism, monetary corruption of representative democracy, surveillance, policing and militarization (particularly through the war on terror), media control and spin suggests a world in which the control of discontent through disinformation, fragmentations  of oppositions and the shaping of oppositional cultures through the promotion of NGOs tends to prevail with plenty of coercive force to back it up if necessary.

Organizing for the Anti-Capitalist Transition

by David Harvey

The historical geography of capitalist development is at a key inflexion point in which the geographical configurations of power are rapidly shifting at the very moment when the temporal dynamic is facing very serious constraints.  Three percent compound growth (generally considered the minimum satisfactory growth rate for a healthy capitalist economy) is becoming less and less feasible to sustain without resort to all manner of fictions (such as those that have characterized asset markets and financial affairs over the last two decades). There are good reasons to believe that there is no alternative to a new global order of governance that will eventually have to manage the transition to a zero growth economy.  If that is to be done in an equitable way, then there is no alternative to socialism or communism.  Since the late 1990s, the World Social Forum became the center for articulating the theme “another world is possible.”  It must now take up the task of defining how another socialism or communism is possible and how the transition to these alternatives are to be accomplished.  The current crisis offers a window of opportunity to reflect on what might be involved.

Continue reading →