RADICAL
INTERPRETATIONS OF THE PRESENT CRISIS
November 14th, 2012
8-10:30PM
8-10:30PM
WITH: LOREN GOLDNER | DAVID HARVEY | ANDREW KLIMAN | PAUL MATTICK
The Present Crisis
The present moment is arguably one of unprecedented
confusion on the Left. The emergence of many new theoretical perspectives
on Marxism, anarchism, and the left generally seem rather than signs of a
newfound vitality, the intellectual reflux of its final disintegration in
history. As for the politics that still bothers to describe itself as
leftist today, it seems no great merit that it is largely disconnected from the
academic left’s disputations over everything from imperialism to ecology. Perhaps
nowhere are these symptoms more pronounced than around the subject of the
economy.
As Marxist economics has witnessed of late a flurry of
recent works, many quite involved in their depth and complexity, recent
activism around austerity, joblessness, and non-transparency while quite
creative in some respects seems hesitant to oppose with anything but nostalgia
for the past the status quo mantra, “There is no Alternative.”
At a time when the United
States has entered the most prolonged slump
since the Great Depression, the European project founders on the shoals of debt
and nationalism. If the once triumphant neoliberal project of free
markets for free people seems utterly exhausted, the “strange non-death of
neo-liberalism,” as a recent book title has it, seems poised to carry on
indefinitely. The need for a Marxist politics adequate to the crisis is
as great as such a politics is lacking.
And 2011 now seems to be fading into the past. In Greece today as elsewhere in Europe
existing Left parties remain largely passive in the face of the crisis,
eschewing radical solutions (if they even imagine such solutions to exist).
In the United States ,
Occupy has vanished from the parks and streets, leaving only bitter grumbling
where there once seemed to be creativity and open-ended potential. In Britain , the
2011 London Riots, rather than political protest, was trumpeted as the shafted
generation’s response to the crisis, overshadowing the police brutality that
actually occasioned it. Finally, in the Arab world where, we are told the
2011 revolution is still afoot, it seems inconceivable that the revolution,
even as it bears within it the hopes of millions, could alter the economic fate
of any but a handful.
While joblessness haunts billions worldwide, politicization
of the issue seems chiefly the prerogative of the right. Meanwhile, the
poor worldwide face relentless price rises in fuel and essential foodstuffs. The
prospects for world revolution seem remote at best, even as bankers and fund
managers seem to lament democracy’s failure in confronting the crisis. In this
sense, it seems plausible to argue that there is no crisis at all, but simply
the latest stage in an ongoing social regression. What does it mean to say that we face a crisis, after all, when there is
no real prospect that anything particularly is likely to change, at least not
for the better?
In this opaque historical moment, Platypus wants to raise
some basic questions:
* Do we live in a crisis of capitalism today and, if so, of
what sort — political? Economic? Social?
* Why do seemingly sophisticated leftist understandings of
the world appear unable to assist in the task of changing it?
* Conversely, can the world be thought intelligible without
our capacity to self-consciously transform it through practice?
* Can Marxism survive as an economics or social theory
without politics?
* Is there capitalism after socialism?
From: Radical Interpretations of the Present
Crisis: http://newyork.platypus1917.org/11-14-2012-radical-interpretations-of-the-present-crisis/
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Thanks to Ross Wolfe for alerting me to this important event:
Glenn Rikowski
**END**
Posted here by Glenn
Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
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