On Capitalism's impossibility....

Slavoj Zizek is a very important influence on my thinking and academic work, because he takes it step further, viz., by not compromising with liberal-democracy, than most critical theorists are wiling to go today. One of his  ingenious insights is on how capitalism's own impossibility and inherent contradiction, its own lack of totality is, simultaneously, it's structuring condition. The following passage is a quote from his book and will certainly influence my academic work:

      

• Recall the classical Marxist account of the overcoming of capitalism: capitalism unleashed the breathtaking dynamics of self-enhancing productivity—in capitalism, "all that is solid melts into air," capitalism is the greatest revolutionizer in the history of humanity; on the other hand, this capitalist dynamic is propelled by its own inner obstacle or antagonism—the ultimate limit of capitalism (of capitalist self-propelling productivity) is Capital itself, that is, capitalism's incessant development and revolutionizing of its own material conditions, the mad dance of its unconditional spiral of productivity, is ultimately nothing but a desperate fuite en avant to escape its own debilitating inherent contradictions . . . Marx's fundamental mistake was here to conclude, from these insights, that a new, higher social order (communism) was possible, an order that would not only maintain, but even raise to a higher degree and fully release the potential of the upward spiral of productivity without it being thwarted by socially destructive economic crises. In short, what Marx overlooked is that, to put it in standard Derridean terms, this inherent obstacle/antagonism as the "condition of impossibility" of the full deployment of the productive forces is simultaneously its "condition of possibility": if we abolish the obstacle, the inherent contradiction of capitalism, we do not get the fully unleashed drive finally freed from its shackles, but rather we lose precisely this very productivity that seemed to be simultaneously generated and stifled by capitalism, for it simply dissipates . . . And it is as if this logic of the "obstacle as a positive condition" which underlay the failure of socialist attempts to overcome capitalism, is now returning with a vengeance in capitalism itself: capitalism can fully thrive not in the unencumbered reign of the market, but only when an obstacle (from minimal welfare-state intervention, up to and including the direct political rule of the Communist Party, as in the case of China) constrains its unimpeded rampage (190).


1989: Twenty-years on, history thrives!

    A recent poll done by Pew Research on the attitudes of Eastern Europeans after two decades of liberal-capitalist reforms suggests that the shine is off the market-utopia.  Indeed, the poll goes much further than I even expected; in it most E.Europeans actually expressed their belief that their economic situation was better under bureaucratic-socialism than under neoliberal capitalism. This flies in the face of all conventional--ideological--wisdom that is propagated here in the West about the inherent superiority of our system.  Here is the actual quote:

  

Majorities or pluralities in six of the eight Eastern European countries surveyed say the     economic situation of most people in their country is worse today than it was under     communism. Hungarians offer the most negative assessments – 72% say most in their     country are worse off today. Majorities in Bulgaria and Ukraine share that view (62%     each), as do about half of Lithuanians and Slovaks (48% each) and 45% of Russians. (40)

    This is actually very telling considering that all these countries, with the exception of the Ukraine, have far surpassed their 1988-89 per capita peak.  Therefore, this suggests that the problem with the capitalist economies is that the gains of that growth have not trickled down, but upwards. This puts into question the very importance of economic growth without equity, indeed, what is the purpose of growth if the people do not benefit. This measure is a very large indictment against the capitalist system, because the persons are saying that they are actually worse off.

    Although, to be fair, the condemnation of the capitalist system is not equal, as the burdens do not fall equally within the capitalist system. There are differences among the generations and sexes. According to the poll:

   

As is the case with opinions about the move from a state-controlled economy to a market economy, women, those who did not attend college and those who are 65 or older are     generally more negative in their assessments of whether most people in their country are     better off or worse off today than they were under communism. The views of those in     urban or rural areas vary slightly, if at all.  (Ibid)

The part about women is instructive, women in the socialist bloc were certainly more free than women in the capitalist West. The socialist states facing severe labour shortages needed women to participate and the state created institutions that allowed women to become ‘breadwinners’, with child-care being largely done by the state, free of charge. Never-mind the large state funded youth-organizations that further enabled women to pursue careers and have more free-time, a luxury that most women in the West do not have. The importance of these organizations were so important that even the East German currency highlighted the importance of family and the state’s provision of child-care as a defining characteristic of its system (http://www.banknotes.com/ddr32.htm)

As the ‘wall fell’ in 1989, those institutions were privatized or simply eliminated. Women did not simultaneously lose their responsibilities as ‘breadwinners’, instead they now had to juggle family and work like their counterparts in the West. The Pew poll goes on to note about the gender gap:

   

As was the case in 1991, women are generally less enthusiastic about the move from a     state-controlled to a market economy. For example, 52% of Hungarian men approve and 38% disapprove of the economic changes that have taken place in their     country since 1989. Hungarian women express more negative views – 41% approve and 45% disapprove of the changes. In Ukraine, just 30% of women approve of their country’s     move to a market economy, while a majority (52%) disapproves; Ukrainian men are nearly     evenly split (44% approve and 41% disapprove).  In Russia, however, the gender gap on     views about economic changes since the collapse of communism has evaporated. In 1991,     Russian men and women were more divided than men and women in any other country     surveyed – 64% of men approved of the changes, compared with 46% of women. Today,     about half of men (49%) and women (50%) express positive views of Russia’s move to a     market economy (38-39).

    Another interesting, although not entirely surprising conclusion, is the rise of nationalism and ethno-centrism in the former socialist bloc. With the erosion of the ideal of socialist-internationalism, the ‘other’, instead of being an ally in the struggle for emancipation, became the competitor for scarce resources. What is interesting is how the Pew poll measures this. They asked Russians if ‘Russia is a naturally imperialistic nation’ in 1991 and today, the results are frightening:


As for the Russians themselves, there has been an upsurge in nationalist sentiment since the     early 1990s. A majority of Russians (54%) agree with the statement “Russia should be for     Russians”; just 26% agreed with that statement in 1991. Moreover, even as they embrace     free market capitalism, fully 58% of Russians agree that “it is a great misfortune that the     Soviet Union no longer exists.” And nearly half (47%) say “it is natural for Russia to have     an empire [up from 37 percent in 1991]” 
(2)

    The collapse of a viable, uncompromising left-alternative throughout the world in the last quarter of the twentieth-century saw the emergence of a reactionary, rightist discourse that re-articulated what it means to be anti-systemic: from anti-capital, for capital; and in a typically fascist twist, obfuscated and denied class by appealing to ethno-centrism. This is the esssence of the left-right distinction put forward by Zizek:



They [the Leftist and Rightist] not only occupy different places within the political space;     each of them perceives the very disposition of the political space differently--a Leftist as     the field that is inherently split by some fundamental antagonism; a Rightist as the organic     unity of a Community disturbed only by foreign intruders (Zizek, 113). 


Anti-establishment can be articulated in both senses, although, only one is truly anti-establishment, the left--that is not to suggest that the left will reach the positive utopian space communism, but it certainly is a progressive force fighting for more not less equality and liberty. However, appealing to the racialized other as the enemy is the time-honoured tradition of the reactionary wing of politics. This aspect of post-modern politics is not limited to the former Soviet bloc, even in the United States, the anti-'illegal immigrant’ mania of CNN’s Lou Dobbs, among others is indicative of this regressive political trend with the collapse of the left--this anti-illegal immigrant position is ironic on many levels, including, but not limited to: the pilgrims were, essentially, ‘illegal’ colonizers; the United States, like Russia, illegally colonized, dispossessed and appropriated the lands that were occupied by the now ‘illegals’. Indeed, the left should be articulating the aforementioned ironies, or founding sins of history, to get over the reactionary logic's of the right and to build bridges between peoples, viz. cosmopolitanism. This can only be accomplished by a left that is unafraid of being a left, that does not accept the terrain of the enemy, for to accept it is to lose the battle before it has even begun.

    If we want a more just society, the left must not be so polite as to assume that antagonism is over and we can have, what Chantal Mouffe calls ‘consensus politics’. All politics, where I agree with Ernesto Laclau, is based on antagonism and, essentially, populism. If we want to build a cosmopolitan era, we must still have an antagonism and that antagonism must within not without, and that antagonism must be capital and all it symbolizes. As the polls from  Russia show, socialist-internationalism was well entrenched in 1991; today, with the logics of liberal-nationalism, we have seen a great regression back into the abyss of reactionary subjectivities.

Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story', Review-Part I

The latest movie from Michael Moore, Capitalism: A Love Story, is an enthralling expose into the current structure of American capitalism. The movie pulls at the heart-strings of the viewers by showcasing working and middle class Americans being evicted from their homes after taking loans from predatory lenders. It shows how their loved ones, without their knowledge, have life insurance policies taken out on them by corporate America in what they call ‘dead peasant’ policies, to make millions off the death of their employees. Corporate America then leaves the families with the debt of healthcare and burial without offering any financial support from the death they profited from. The movie also, effectively, targets those individuals who exploit the foreclosure crisis, otherwise the poverty and desperation of others, as ‘vultures’--a term that the ‘vultures’ have proudly coined themselves.

It also brings to light the reactionary logic of capitalism’s 'organic intellectuals', like Stephen Moore’s--editor at The Wall Street Journal--rant against democracy as a obstacle to the true ‘freedom’ of the market. Lastly, it uncovers the elite’s self-laudatory proclamation of a ‘plutonomy’ in a leaked Citibank memo to their top-investors. The memo tells them that, due to the gross inequality of income in the ‘plutonomies’--United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand--, the problems that affect the ‘average’ worker, i.e. high oil prices, rising food costs, lower wages, etc., will not seriously undermine the economy; thus, since much of the country’s effective demand now emanates form the top 1-20%, it negates the need to structurally change the economy in a way to make the lives of millions better, so the paper argued. However, it is an assumption that has proven false in the current economic crisis. Why? Because the top 20%, and especially the top 1% depend on rentier income, basically redistribution from workers to themselves, via the debt mechanism. Since workers no longer could afford to pay back their loans, the contradictory logic of the 'plutonomy' exposed itself leading to a virtual implosion, an implosion that was stopped by another massive regressive redistribution of income, via tax-payer bailouts.

    Moore goes to contrast this sad, socially regressive state of affairs to the boom-time of the ‘golden age’ of capitalism, when the gains of the ‘New Deal’ were starting to bear fruit. These fruits included the increasing standard of living for virtually everyone in the society, the emergence of the civil rights movement and the socialization of large parts of the economy for the benefit of the ‘social good’, e.g. healthcare, education, the highway system, etc. All of this was possible due  in large measure, to the taxes levied on the rich--the marginal income tax rate in the 1950s was ninety percent--to pay for the necessary social infrastructures like schools, hospitals, highways that engender greater economic growth through greater productivity and innovation, while at the same time retaining effective demand among the mass of the population creating a virtuous cycle of economic growth. It was also possible due to the ideological legitimization of having the state play an important role in our lives economically and socially, in an egalitarian way--otherwise termed as 'modernism'--embodied in Keynesianism. Arguably, it was during this time when the greatest innovations in our history took place, largely within the non-profit, public sector, i.e. artificial and human space flight,  particularly the innovations brought about by the landing on the moon; telecommunications, particularly fibre optics and satellite communications; computers; the internet; polio and small pox vaccines, which saved tens of millions, etc. Many of these publicly funded advances were later privatized to benefit dominant capital, even-though they invested little or nothing in the creation of these technologies; starving the state of possible revenues from providing these services.

    The importance of high progressive rates of taxation cannot be understated: when capital retains most of its income it tends to go, rationally, to where it can make the most income (profit) and within a capitalist system that tends to be the financial markets, especially when they are deregulated as they were during the neoliberal era. It is no coincidence that as the income and corporate tax rates in the United States have fallen, gross fixed investment--not even counting net fixed investment--has fallen; while, financial investments--the capitalization of the stock markets--has increased. Finance went from being a means--the allocation of capital to productive and sound investments--to an end unto itself, to the detriment of employment. When the state had control over much of the capital's income, that capital was invested in productive and democratically demanded social programs that actually smoothed capitalism's vicious cycles of crisis, both economically and socially. It is no conicindence that East Asia's, particularly China's, massive economic growth is due to the state's control of  the financial sector in the allocation of resources to strategic industries.

    However, Moore makes a false distinction that the current era of capitalism is not some idealized ‘real capitalism’, but a perverted form of capitalism nearer to bureaucratic-corporatism. The reality is that the particular period of capitalist development that Moore idealizes, the ‘golden era’, was a result of decades of struggle from labour and other progressive social forces that coalesced around the populist movement around FDR in 1932; thus, it was not a natural state of capitalism--an argument that Moore and other progressives make, but it is a position that is actually impossible to conceptually grasp, since capitalism is a social system based on relations of power and not on 'natural' laws--and the current capitalist reality is a ‘perverted’ form of capitalism proper.  With progressive forces accepting that capitalism is actually functional on its own, in some idealized neoclassical form, legitimizes the libertarian, Haykeian argument that less government and more market is needed; even-though as Gramsci argues:

"Thus it is asserted that economic activity belongs to civil society, and that the State must not intervene to regulate it. But since in actual reality civil society and State are one and the same, it must be made clear that laissez-faire too is a form of State "regulation", introduced and maintained by legislative and coercive means. It is a deliberate policy, conscious of its own ends, and not the spontaneous, automatic expression of economic facts. Consequently, laissez-faire liberalism is a political programme, designed to change-in so far as it is victorious-a State's leading personnel, and to change the economic programme of the State itself-in other words the distribution of the national income" (Prison Notebooks 160).  

This is the confusing part of Moore's discourse and according to David Cheal, arguably this is due to 'contradictory consciousness' among the working masses--this should not be confused with 'false consciousness'. Moore is right to question capitalism proper and seek its destruction, but Moore then contradicts himself with the aforementioned arguments that capitalism can be saved by becoming MORE capitalist. What we must realize is that the only thing in capitalism cannot change, at pain of death, is accumulation. The means by which accumulation occurs--Keynesianism, neoliberalism, etc.--is not set in stone. Marx's axiom that capitalism is a system that ‘turns all that is solid into air’ holds true today more-so than it did even when he wrote it 160 years ago.