Returning to the Political Economy
Craig at Theoria suggests that, given the current financial crisis, we ought to return to studying the political economy:
In 1968, Alexandre Kojeve, then one of the chief planners for the European Common Market working the French Ministry of Economic Affairs, was asked what the students in the streets of Paris should do. Kojeve’s answer was “learn Greek.” It is only in recent years through Giorgio Agamben’s work that we’ve come to understand what Kojeve meant.
While I don’t claim to be nearly as smart or clever as Kojeve, it would be my suggestion, given the current financial crisis, to return to the classics of political economy.
I don’t really know much about political economy, but I do happen to be reading Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, Mill, and Marx at the moment, and just from that I think this is good advice. Check out the link for recommendations on specific texts. (Note: None of them are in ancient Greek!)
Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists
N. Pepperell on the ontological dimension of Marx’s critique of capital:
Saving capitalism from the capitalists - the language of gambling, of speculation, of irresponsible and reckless individuals - it’s all over the coverage. There are historical resonances here too - framings that were once used to push through the reforms of the welfare state. I’m also interested, though, in this specific distinction between “capitalism” and “capitalists” - this is a distinction that was, I think, quite important in Marx’s work: individuals as bearers of economic roles - individuals as beneficiaries and as more or less wilful and abhorrent exploiters of social circumstances - but capitalism itself having an ontological status that is in some meaningful sense externalised in relation to those individuals whose actions nevertheless perform the reproduction of capital. For Marx - and I’ll try to write more on this in the future - this externalisation opens up some important options for critique and transformation, while at the same time, and within current circumstances, operating as a form of domination of the collective consequences of social action over the actors. The passage above treats the externalised entity capitalism as distinct from its imprudent bearers - and this entity also becomes an ideal that must be preserved, at the expense of those bearers if needed. The capitalists can go - capitalism, no. The bearers are more contingent that the process they bear - the process is taken to carry, not simply hard force, but a distinctively normative power.
Disaster Capitalism: State of Extortion
Naomi Klein writing for The Nation:
One week after the no-bid service deals were announced, the world caught its first glimpse of the real prize. After years of back-room arm-twisting, Iraq is officially flinging open six of its major oil fields, accounting for around half of its known reserves, to foreign investors. According to Iraq’s oil minister, the long-term contracts will be signed within a year. While ostensibly under control of the Iraq National Oil Company, foreign firms will keep 75 percent of the value of the contracts, leaving just 25 percent for their Iraqi partners.
This development seems hardly surprising given U.S. foreign policy towards the Middle East over the past several decades, but surely such an endeavor might make suspect the claim that we went to fight in Iraq in order to liberate them and to eliminate the threat of weapons of mass destruction, etc. But of course that would be ludicrous.
Moreover, it strikes me as impossible to call the relationship between the U.S. and Iraq as anything other than “imperial,” but that can’t be, we hate empires! After all, the U.S. was born out of anticolonial struggle. Perhaps something to remember over fourth of July weekend.
Blindly Into The Bubble
Paul Krugman writing for The New York Times:
Given the role of conservative ideology in the mortgage disaster, it’s puzzling that Democrats haven’t been more aggressive about making the disaster an issue for the 2008 election. They should be: It’s hard to imagine a more graphic demonstration of what’s wrong with their opponents’ economic beliefs.
I agree with Krugman on politicizing the mortgage crisis, but I disagree on Krugman’s alternative, which simply involves a rejection of ideology (here he’s referring to Greenspan’s Objectivist overtness). I’m all for pragmatic solutions, but Krugman is missing the Althusserian point which is that the rejection of ideology constitutes ideology at its finest. It’s important that the Democrats use this to articulate a critique of neoliberal economic policy, but the problems of the mortgage crisis, which are, of course, of a global nature, are perhaps more suited to a fundamental critique of late capitalism — that is, global capitalism.