Democracy as a Tool of Oppression

The passage of the Gay Marriage Ban in California and Arizona reflects, in my opinion, how oppressed groups should not expect to be liberated by their oppressors. Asking the citizenry to vote for ending oppression based on sexual orientation in a society that valorizes the patriarchal family and therefore the male headed nuclear family is a non-starter. This is also a society where ‘common sense’ still conflates homosexuality with pedophilia and conceives of marriage as a ‘God’ given and ruled relationship, rather than a social relation of ownership and domination that tied women to men and made them subordinate to and dependent upon the husband. The annals of history show that marriage is not the bastion of love and equality, but a power relationship created through violence and dispossession. It has only been in the last forty years that spousal rape is even a legal category, since before that women had no right to say no to sex, since they were the property and therefore the play thing of their owner, oh, sorry, I mean husband.

Putting these questions to vote reproduces the tyranny of the majority. It makes about as much sense as putting to vote whether to let African-Americans have the right to vote during slavery. Asking a population that views gay people as an inferior subhuman ‘other’ whether they should be given rights may be formally democratic, but it is not the path to equality, at the current historical juncture. I know that saying democracy and equality are not one in the same may come as a shock to some of you but re-read your history books: democracy shaped by capitalism, racism, sexism/patriarchy and classism, amongst others, will never realize an egalitarian society. You do not ask the master to give the slave rights, the slave must demand rights from the master, which happens through struggle.

The denial of rights to Gay’s highlights the contradictions within a democratic society, where we are not all given the same rights from birth, in opposition to what we are told in school. Moreover, it shows how the democratic process can be employed to deny rights through the passage of law: we are a nation of laws after all! And if you haven’t been watching the news lately, especially Obama, laws are apparently the only things standing between us and barbarism or anarchy, take your pick. Laws, Laws, Laws. What people forget is that the law is not some neutral entity devoid of power. Law is reflective of the dominant power groups and therefore of class, race, and gender hierarchies, amongst others: and will be employed to provide and deny rights based on the current formation of power.

With this passage into law we see how the concrete inequality of everyday life, the ‘private’ sphere, is transformed into the ‘public’ sphere and consequently becomes state law. The state is now directly reflective of the oppression occurring on the level of everyday life. What happens in the daily life of gays, their status as second-class citizens, is now legitimated as just because the oppressor, through the ‘democratic’ process of voting, reaffirmed their constitutional right to maintain their position of power vis-à-vis the oppressed.

The right of gay people to marry whomever they want to will not come by way of the ballot anytime soon, at the state or federal level. If must be wrestled in the streets, which means building a broad based coalition that fights for this, and not just at the level of electoral politics. It is battle for the hearts and minds of Americans. And as one approaches the battle we must realize that many hearts and minds are too couched in anger, violence, bitterness, and close-mindedness to see that the oppression of others means that they themselves are oppressed: that until all bonds of oppression are ended no one can be equal.

The goal is not to replace the master but to end the position of master.

Why Obama is not a socialist nor a Marxist.

In the past few weeks the right-wing media machine has made a lot of hay around Obama's downward re-distributional economic policies. Obama has been called everything from a socialist to a Marxist because he advocates increasing a progressive tax system where those who make more pay more - which means re-instituting higher effective tax rates on those who make over $250,000 a year and lowering taxes on those who made less than $250,000. This would only go a small way to re-imposing the tax levels of the 1970s - which is needed to repair the infrastructure of the United States, meet social need and reduce inequality, which in the US is the highest of all 'western' post-industrial nations. Ever since the tax revolt of the 1980s through the present - at the level of the corporation and wealthy families - there has been less and less money to lay the foundation for true social wealth for all, not economic wealth for the elite.

On a local Florida news station the anchor even asked Biden if Obama was a Marxist. Her empirical support? A famous quote from Marx: "from each according to their ability to each according to their needs." A hallmark statement for re-distributional class politics. This phrase is therefore not solely a marxist statement but one championed by all those fighting against oppression and for the creation of a truly egalitarian society that realizes and meets the concrete social needs of people - be you a marxist, socialist, anarchist, ad infinitum. The fact that this phase is treated as a slur is beyond imagination, except in the nation-state that is the hegemonic center of global capitalism, where social needs are secondary to an adequate rate of return. And for the most part in American society never the two shall meet! The capitalist system is not designed to meet social needs as a primary function, and if it does, that is merely by accident, not by choice.

That people's concrete social needs are seen in such a negative manner expresses the illogic and irrationality of the capitalist system: a system that produces a culture where the concrete daily needs of people are not only unimportant and for the most part denied/repressed but are verbally denounced as socialist and marxist. If demanding that people have a house to live in, a secure job that pays a living wage, food on their table, and an affordable education and medical plan makes one a Marxist, then the majority of American's, based on public opinion polls, would be Marxists and socialists, but sadly, non of these demands a Marxist does make.

The capitalist press is designed to maintain the capitalist system, we should not expect them to tell us anything but lies, as such, what passes as fact, truth, or reality is really falsity.

The history of both Western Europe and the United States displays that downward economic redistribution does not lead to socialism nor communism. In fact, in the US, capitalism operated very well under a Keynesian (Welfare Capitalism) social contract where income re-distribution towards the working class occurred for two reasons: (1) the working class' political organization forced concessions on corporations and the state in a time when the state wanted to prevent the development of truly oppositional socialist, communist, and anarchist political movements, and; (2) the integration of the working class into the circuits of capitalism via higher wages was necessary to fuel mass consumption and thus increase accumulation through the development of a mass consumer society. The problem of effective demand required re-distributional policies combined with higher wages for more work (increased productivity - think of the Ford $5 wage as a national strategy). Keynesianism essentially combined the expanding of the economic pie with a larger share being given to the working class.

Capitalism is about production for profit as the guiding indicator of investment and thus production; along with the requirement that production be owned by private individuals, and under the current formation of capitalism - neoliberalism - this means ownership by transnational corporations [since corporations are now legal individuals and have the same rights as you or me - thank you ingenious lawyers for expanding the 14th amendment that freed the slaves and gave them personhood to include that of the corporation as well - may you rot in hell]. Therefore, economic redistribution is compatible with capitalism as long as it does not infringe upon the profit motive, in the sense of causing an unhealthy or detrimental decline in the rate of profit.

Socialism is about production for social needs where production is in the hands of the people. Obviously state-socialism fails to put production in the hands of the people, instead it goes into the hands of a bureaucratic political elite. Thus, libertarian socialism calls for the production of social needs as determined by worker and consumer councils - removing corporations and the state from control over production and therefore putting people in the hands of crafting the social world directly.

Moreover, if we look at Marx himself, he argued that the working class struggle was not solely about becoming better compensated wage-labor, sure that was a part, no one is going to argue against getting a higher wage, better working conditions and shorter hours, except your boss. But this was not the end-goal of Marx, who argued that the goal of the working class was to end their existence as a class: to end their existence as wage-labor. Marx sought the end of capitalism through the struggle of the working class to reclaim their power over shaping the world, their power of labor, from capital and subsequently place it in their own hands. Such a maneuver would end the workers subordination to the capitalist through the obliteration of that relationship of domination: a relationship where the employer controlled the labor of the worker and denied them their capacity for self-determination. Under capitalism, labor, as free spontaneous creative practice was denied the worker who had to submit to the work demands of their boss. Workers would only be free to realize their power over shaping the social world when they expropriated the expropriators - the capitalists - and ended the existence of capitalist private property - individual and corporate ownership over the means of production - and replaced it with the means of production held in common by the workers.

Therefore, we can see that Obama is no socialist nor Marxist. Obama supports both the profit motive, its priority over social need, and the right of capitalist property relations to determine what is produced, for how much, where it is produced, and so on. Obama is a capitalist and imbues and eschews capitalist ideology, but his re-distributional rhetoric speaks to the working class who is swamped with debt, and seeks to appeal to their psychological anxieties in order to obtain the imperial office. He could in fact institute this re-distributional politics but it does nothing to address the question of power, of having control over shaping the social world, which would be left in the hands of transnational corporations (an extremely undemocratic form of governance). Ownership over productive property is key, ownership over consumptive property provides no power whatsoever.

Obama is not a threat to US capitalism nor global capitalism. If Obama was truly a socialist or a Marxist there is no way he would be on the democratic ticket - which is bought and paid for by finance capital - Wall Street - amongst others, foremost among them, Goldman Sachs. The fact that sections of the capitalist media are trying to paint him in such a way show their affiliation with the McCain ticket - another faction of the capitalist class vying for power - or their explicit identification with the logic of the capitalist system unmediated by any political party, as such they are merely capital personified.

The Financial Crisis: An Opening for Housing Reform?

This is the synopsis of the argument put forth by a NYU economics professor

Brief synopsis:

The bailout proposed by Henry Paulson does not even address the systemic collapse of the financial and banking system brought on by the collapse in the asset (mortgage) and credit bubbles. If you are trying to stabilize the system, i.e. capitalism. What needs to be done is 3 things: 1) take toxic products off the balance books of wall-street, but in a way that does not have taxpayers footing the bill, meaning that the creditors and investors need to take the hit. 2) need to recapitalize the banks so they can start a new round of growth, this can happen only through government lending to the banks, because no one else has enough capital nor is willing to lend it. 3) and this is key, you need to decrease the debt levels of homeowners, meaning restructure the ARM loans into fixed rate loans and re-negotiate the loans at current market values so you do not have negative equity problems. Without this re-negotiation of debt the crisis will not resolve itself, because US consumption is and will drop dramatically and send us into a deeper recession then is already projected [18 months]. The average household debt to income ratio in the US is 140%, this is unsustainable given the current economic climate.

This recession will mean gradual decline in the value of the dollar and higher interest rates as well, and higher unemployment rates, officially up to 8% potentially, unofficially - once we include those out of work who stopped looking and those forced into part-time work who want full-time - around 13-15%. oh, and we still have the possibility of a massive number of smaller banks going belly up, this is in addition to the run on all the investment banks - Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, etc, the insolvency of IndyMac, WAMU, Wachovia, etc. What is next for collapse is the hedge funds and money market funds. and the FDIC is running out of money.

what we are now seeing is a global recession, one that if it is to be corrected requires a massive restructuring of the financial banking system. increased regulation and oversight along with the collapse of the shadow banking system - investment banks, hedge funds, money market funds, broker dealers, non bank mortgage lenders - and extensive regulation of mortgage backed securities and collateral debt obligations. along with increased minimum liquidity requirements, minimum capital requirements, limits to leverage, reporting requirements, etc. to prevent bank collapses if a 'run to withdraw money' occurs, which was a major problem this time. [the entities in the shadow banking system were over leveraged, had high debt levels with little capital on hand, since they had invested in long-term illiquid investments. thus when people ran to draw their money out, the entities did not have enough cash on hand, could not gather together enough capital in time because they could not sell off the illiquid investments, and no one would lend them more money. they were therefore unable to 'pay out' to their debtors while having enough left over to cover day-to-day expenses. they therefore went belly-up]

without this overhaul of the financial system and a restructuring of US household debt the 18 month recession could turn into a Japan style decade long recession - which was caused by doing too little too late and not addressing the fundamental structural problems.

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I still think 18 months sounds rather tame. I do like how he is addressing 'main street'.

now lets move from the level of capitalism as a system and its needs to everyday life, the arena for struggle and revolution. I would love to see some bottom up movement. i see no better time for an 'organizational' push for affordable or socialized - community owned and operated but state and federal funded - housing. No other time highlights the disconnect between capitalism's demands for profit above anything else and people's social need and right to affordable housing. but rights are not given by those from above but taken by those from below, rights are won through struggle. rather than letting those at the bottom continually be subjected to the profit motive, which underproduces low cost affordable housing and overproduces high profit luxury homes, it is time for community mobilization to demand the social right to affordable housing, thus the elimination of the profit motive from housing. homes should be about living not making money. the subprime crisis is a perfect example of why the lower classes will never have good quality affordable housing under capitalism - there is no profit in it without the creation of mortgage products that are systematically unsustainable and toxic. leaving home ownership for the poor and people of color to the vagaries of the marketplace and the profit motive created this whole mess in the first place. now is the time for a movement for socialized housing at the community level. this would allow the local community to have control over the rebuilding of social space, to create a space for life, debate, party, labor, art, pleasure, peace and so on, operated from the flow of life. rather than social space dominated by the logic of profit, control, the automobile, and so on - the time of death.

The fact that this collapse or 'moment' has not spurred a grassroots push to raise this issue is deeply problematic.

MARX’S INVERSION OF HEGEL’S DIALECTIC

Followup to the Hegel piece below.

Marx is greatly influenced by Hegel’s dialectical theory. Yet, at the same time he is bothered by Hegel’s mystification of the dialectic: “with him it [the dialectic] is standing on its head. It must be inverted, in order to discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.”(1) The rational kernel being the conception of the self creation of man as a process, labor as the essence of man, humanity’s alienation (estrangement) from their social world and the dialectic of negativity as the motor of social change:

The outstanding achievement of Hegel’s Phenomenology and of its final outcome, the dialectic of negativity as the moving and generating principle, is thus first that Hegel conceives the self creation of man as a process, conceives objectification as loss of the object, as alienation and as transcendence of this alienation; that he thus grasps the essence of labor and comprehends objective man – true, because real man – as the outcome of man’s own labor.(2)

Thus, while Hegel grasps these concepts he mystifies them by locating them within the mind, a product independent of material experience: “Hegel’s Encyclopaedia …is in its entirety nothing but the display, the self-objectification, of the essence of the philosophic mind.”(3) The result of situating self-objectification within the mind is that alienation becomes that of thought – the alienation of consciousness. Alienation fails to be grounded in the social relations between material practice and the corporeal body:

Logic…is alienated thinking, and therefore thinking which abstracts from nature and the real man: abstract thinking…the whole history of the alienation process and the whole process of the retraction of the alienation is therefore nothing but the history of the production of abstract (i.e.) absolute thought.(4)

Subsequently, alienation - the objectification of the powers of humans – is merely the loss of power over thought and the objects of thought. Alienation is not grounded in material processes and is therefore not alienation of the worker from the product of their labor, from the act of production, from their species being and from other men. (5) For Hegel,

the appropriation of man’s essential powers, which have become objects— indeed, alien objects—is thus in the first place only an appropriation occurring in consciousness, in pure thought, i.e., in abstraction: it is the appropriation of these objects as thoughts and movements of thought.(6)

Since man only alienates thought, all that he can reclaim is his thought. Hegel’s confinement of alienation to consciousness results in man being unable to reclaim power over the commodities that are alienated during the course of capitalist production. Under Hegel’s scenario, dealienation is merely the supersession of an alienated abstract man and his alienated abstract thought. Subsequently, alienation not grounded in material reality and the relations of men and nature is one ‘torn from real mind and from real nature.’ While the Phenomenology of the Spirit ‘grasps steadily man’s estrangement’ it fails to escape the realm of consciousness and place man in his material world. For that reason, Hegel’s man appears not in his corporeal form but merely as mind.

Despite Marx’s critique of Hegel for constructing concepts that reside solely in consciousness and therefore in abstraction from nature and material man, Marx praises Hegel for realizing the importance of these concepts. Foremost is Hegel’s conception of labor as the essence of man. Even though Hegel’s labor is only that of ‘abstractly mental labor’, he conceives of the process of abstract mental labor as one of alienation, as the objectification of thought and eventually its dealienation through the realignment of reality with thought – the unification of what is and what ought to be.(7) Moreover, Hegel formulates supersession as a process of transcendence involving the recombination of the self and their alienated objects. Through supersession the individual reappropriates the object of their estrangement by ending the alienating nature of reality: “supersession as an objective movement of retracting the alienation into self…the real appropriation of his objective essence through the annihilation of the estranged character of the objective world.”(8) The culmination of which is that Hegel posits a process of alienation/disalienation as the nodal point around which the concept of labor fluctuates.(9) Hegel’s formulation of the process of alienation/disalienation is itself an example of another concept central to his theory, the negation of the negation. Through his creation of each concept he conceives “of each of them first as negation—that is, as an alienation of human thought—and then as negation of the negation—that is, as a superseding of this alienation, as a real expression of human thought.”(10) Following Hegel, Marx perceives this negativity to be the positive and creative force in history. Nonetheless, Marx flips this principle on its head and places the negation of the negation in the material world, positing the advent of communism and the death of capitalism as the material realization of the negation of the negation.

Marx therefore adopts from Hegel a certain conceptual framework that seeks to relate appearance and essence within a social totality where concepts are always in motion.(11) For instance, Marx separates value into its form of appearance, exchange value, and its essence, abstract labor.(12) Moreover, concepts can only be understood through their reciprocal relation to one another and their connection within the totality, which for Marx was the totality of capital. Subsequently, concepts form a unity through the contradiction of opposites, e.g. commodity as use-vale and exchange-value, mode of production as relations of production and forces of production.(13) In addition, the movement of phenomena, including the totality, is based upon the ongoing contradiction between the reciprocally related phenomena, e.g. capital and labor, use value and exchange value, wages and profits, relations of production and forces of production.(14) All of these presuppositions form the basis of dialectical theory and method.

1) Karl Marx, Capital Volume I (New York: Penguin Books, 1976[1990]), p. 103.
2) Karl Marx, “Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole,” Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, New York: International Publishers, 1964[1988]), p. 177.
3) Ibid., p. 174.
4) Ibid., p. 175.
5) Ibid., p. 178.
6) Ibid., p. 175.
7) Ibid., p. 177.
8) Ibid., p. 187.
9) Ibid., p. 188.
10) Ibid., p. 190.
11) Marx, Capital Volume I, p. 18.
12) Harry Cleaver, Reading Capital Politically (San Francisco: AK Press, 1979[2000]), p. 111.
13) Karl Marx, Grundrisse (New York: Penguin Books, 1973[1993]), p. 39, 41.
14) Marx, Capital Volume I, p. 18.

HEGEL’S DIALECTICAL PHILOSOPHY

Excerpt from a paper I was working on for class. the basis of the paper is a critique of positivism. Up next is Marx's "inversion" of Hegel's dialectical method.

HEGEL’S DIALECTICAL PHILOSOPHY(1)
Hegel’s philosophy constituted an amalgamation of the enlightenment exposition of reason as the harbinger of freedom and the romantic notion of historical progression as an organic process.(2) Through the utilization of reason, Hegel sought to empower individuals as masters over themselves. However, in opposition to positivism, rational society and thus the realization of freedom are not born through separation from and domination over nature. For Hegel, freedom through reason is produced in the course of the “subject’s entering the very content of nature and history.”(3) The historical process of the actualization of freedom is only possible through the dialectical interplay of the subject and object. His theory thereby broke with the general inclination of enlightenment thinking that articulated a fixed subject-object hierarchy. Moreover, Hegel’s philosophy, whose foundation is dialectical, revolves around a subject-object relationship that is encased in a continual process of conflict and negativity and therefore an unrelenting historical movement.

The articulation of a concept of reason that contains a ‘spirit of contradicting’ leads Hegel into a critical intercourse with the Kantian dualism of form and content and positivism’s reification of the social world. His exposition of the dialectic is a critique of Kant’s epistemological framework “dissociating form from content, thought from the ‘thing-in-itself’, and the faculty of knowing from the object of knowledge” as well as positivism’s endeavor to confine truth to a given state of existence.(4) Instead of separating subject/object, form/content or attempting to create a system of independent fixed things, Hegel puts forth the statement that there exists a relation between subject and object, one born from their antagonism as opposites that is the moving, generating principle of history: “in being and in thought negativity is creative, it is the root of movement and the pulse of life.”(5)

Hegel’s thought is organized around the conception that only through the transformation of subject and object in unison can freedom be realized: only through the incorporation of the object into the subject can the subject undergo a development towards the actualization of their potential.(6) Truth is not to be sought in objects that are independent of the knowing subject, for subject and object mutually constitute each other. The unity of a thing, its truth, is determined neither through its separation from others as a particular within the general nor in its existence at a given state of space and time. Positivism’s whole project is founded on an inaccurate premise: that the subject can be removed from their relationship with the subjective world and that the objective world can be frozen in space-time. Hegel argues that to know the thing is to know it through its relations, its oppositions and its contradictions because phenomena are always in a state of movement from actuality to potentiality due to their content of negativity. In fact, positivism’s conflation of existence with the real, the potential, and the essence not only leads to the reification of social reality but also denies the demands for fulfillment of the ‘ought’ implicit in phenomena.

As was alluded to in the prior sentence, Hegel employs the distinction between appearance and essence to critique the separation of form and content, the isolation of social phenomena and the reification of the social world. In stark contrast to positivism, dialectical thinking conceptualizes the appearance or existing form of things in contrast to their potentiality. Through emphasizing the contradiction inherent between phenomena, do to their essence of negativity, dialectical thinking underscores the discrepancy between ‘is’ and ‘ought’. The current state of being of any thing is only a temporary moment towards the realization of its potential. Each thing is not to be concretely understood based upon its present reality, for its potential is held back by its ‘determinate conditions’. Only through the negation of its existing conditions can the thing transition to a stage closer to its ‘ought’. Hegel’s emphasis on the negativity of being and the historical movement from actuality to potentiality produces a critical and positive conception of social change: “in being and in thought negativity is creative, it is the root of movement and the pulse of life.”(7)

Intertwined with Hegel’s conception of ‘negativity’ and contradiction are the notions of labor and alienation (estrangement). Labor is a vital activity within Hegel’s system because of its centrality in the relationship between subject-object and in its basis as the mechanism for overcoming alienation. Through labor, humanity as subject is able to bring the object into them and overcome their current state of existence. Thus, labor becomes the mechanism through which transcendence is possible, as it enables humanity to enter into nature and history and thereby transform them while transforming themselves. Additionally, the active transformation of subject/humanity and object/ nature through labor assists in dealienating the reified world through demonstrating that it is humanity who constructs this world. For Hegel, it was through labor than humanity is able to overcome alienation: “the estrangement between the objective world and the subjective world.”(8)

Hegel’s philosophy emphasizes the essential features of the dialectic: the relational nature of subject and object, the historical and contradictory qualities of phenomena and the distinction between appearance and essence. These notions are front-and-center in Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of history, which seeks to investigate and explicate the concept that “world history is the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”(9) History being the gradual elimination of self-alienation: “the tension between (its potentiality and its actuality) what it is in itself, subjectively, in its inner purpose and essence, and what it really is (objectively), is thus abolished. It is with itself (actualized), it has itself objectively before itself.”(10) Freedom is thereby actualized when the individual has ‘power of self-determination’, a culmination of the subject’s ability to transcend historical determinations through their negation vis-à-vis their subsumption into themselves.

(1) This synopsis of Hegel’s philosophical theory is extracted from two books: Herbert Marcuse’s Reason and Revolution (New York: Humanity Books, 1941[1999]) and Henri Lefebvre’s Dialectical Materialism (London: Jonathan Cape, 1968).
(2) Irving, M. Zeitlin, Marxism: A Re-Examination (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1967), p. 2.
(3) Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, p. 7.
(4) Lefebvre, Dialectical Materialism, p. 25 and Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, p. 113.
(5) Lefebvre, Dialectical Materialism, p. 33.
(6) Ibid., pp. 37-39.
(7) Ibid., p. 33.
(8) Ibid., p. 77.
(9) G. W. F. Hegel, Reason in History: A General Introduction to the Philosophy of History (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc, 1953), p. 24.
Ibid., p. 90.

CLASS STRUGGLE AND THE STATE:FROM KEYNESIANISM TO NEOLIBERALISM

This section is from a paper I wrote on Emissions Trading Schemes and the neoliberalization of carbon for a course called 'Key Debates in the Study of Capitalism.'  This section is a good overview of the differences between Keynesianism and Neoliberalism, so I thought I would share it.

Akin to the emergence of the environmental movement in the 1970s the last decade has witnessed the re-emergence of the environmental turn in both academia, the political constituency and the working class as well as its recuperation by the state and capital. However, unlike the flourish of historic legislation that was instituted in the United States and Europe in the 1970s, the omnipresence of 'global warming' today has not similarly manifested itself in renewed environmental regulations or if it has the principles behind the new legislation are markedly different. What accounts for this reversal and policy change? Why has the environmental movement, so successful in the 1970s been unable thirty plus years later to maintain its effectiveness and protect human and nonhuman life from capitalist exploitation and degradation? The answer can be found in the transition from Keynesianism to Neoliberalism and the alteration in power relations that are born from this historic shift. For neoliberalism represents an attempt by capital to reclaim conditions conducive to accumulation through an attack on working class gains, and in order to accomplish this feat it must dramatically alter the formation of the state and the state's mediation of capital-nature relations.

The environmental legislation of the 1970s was premised upon the principles of state regulation of the environment through the erection of state agencies geared towards regulating business relations with the environment, measures designed for land and species preservation and conservation, and designating what could be externalized and what had to be internalized as a cost of production. The formation of the EPA was a landmark in state regulation of capital's relations with nature. Overall, the environmental movement of the 1970s was successful in forcing limits on capital: making it internalize some of the ecological and social costs of production and in limiting its access to nature in both a qualitative and quantitative manner. However, as all of these limits placed upon capital occurred through a movement that worked “in and against the state”, they were not fixed in stone but subject to erosion or elimination based upon a loss of power to capital. This loss of power is exactly what has occurred over the past twenty-five years and with it environmental regulations and enforcement. Capital's power over labor through the state has increased dramatically and been able to re-impose a capitalization of nature that far succeeds that of previous decades. This power alteration between capital and labor through the state is starkly apparent when we delineate the different theoretical logics of each form of capitalism, how they are historical responses to the power of labor vis-a-vis capital and how each encompasses different strategies in terms of how the state should mediate capital-nature relations.

The Keynesian State signals the emergence of the state as a regulative arm of the economy, primarily in its attempt to smooth out the business cycle to prevent another Great Depression or long-lasting recession. This is the major difference that separates Keynesianism from capitalism's prior to its existence. Rather than letting the business cycle self-regulate the state was expected to intervene directly into the business cycle and ensure that the conditions for continued economic growth, i.e. accumulation, were maintained for reasons of political sustainability. Additionally, Keynesian policies represented a rupture from previous economic orthodoxy's because its spotlight was concentrated on effective demand, as it assumed that a lack of effective demand contributed to the Great Depression and the inability of the business cycle to regulate its way out of depression into growth. Appropriately, the state's primary role was to ensure effective demand through enlargement of the public sector, increased taxation, running state deficits and the attempt to institutionalize the 'productivity wage' by tying wage increases to productivity increases. 

Keynesian policies represented a profound change in capitalist relations with labor. They were a response to the newfound power of labor through unionization and the fact that wages became “sticky downward.” As a result, the old methods of regaining growth through increased unemployment and wage reductions were no longer successful. Rather than grapple with the political and social ramifications of wrestling with labor Keynes advocated that through the “productivity wage” the power of labor could be used to capital's advantage. By implementing taylorist and fordist principles of production rates of profits would be regained at the same time as the objective conditions of the working class increased: it was a win-win scenario. The solution was not to announce a war on labor but to bring unions into a compact with capital and the state.

In combination with the “productivity wage,” increased taxation upon business in-conjunction with running state and federal deficits were instituted by the Keynesian state as a strategy to insulate effective demand – the newfound key to economic growth – from downturns in the business cycle. By increasing taxes and running deficits massive public works projects could be instituted that maintained employment and thus consumer spending irrespective of recessions. These policies were also expected to reduce the severity and length of recessions through maintaining effective demand and therefore, hopefully, investment opportunities. Additionally, the government became more active in monetary policies and creating the conditions necessary for economic growth through the Federal Reserve which regulated interests rates and the liquidity of money through the central bank, both of which were either increased or decreased based upon upswings and downturns in the business cycle. The federal government now acted directly in economic matters to balance growth, consumer spending, inflation, productivity rates and wage levels.

Before I explicate the major differences between the Keynesian state and the Neoliberal State, it must be understood that Neoliberalism emerged as the dominant capitalist response to the crisis of Keynesianism that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. A rupture in the “productivity wage” with wage increases outpacing productivity increases meant falling profit rates, slower economic growth, rapid inflation. These production problems combined with a student revolt in the university system, an energy crisis, the civil rights movement, colonial rebellions and the reemergence of economic competition from Europe and Japan led American capital to squeeze labor through rising inflation, automation and reductions in real wages, pensions, healthcare benefits, and union power. Moreover, capitalism launched this attack against labor through the state which was now regulating capital-labor relations. What emerged out of the Keynesian crisis was an attempt to reclaim conditions suitable to economic growth, which required a decrease in the collective power of labor and therefore altered capital-state-labor relations: alterations whose unity is referred to as Neoliberalism. 

Neoliberalism represents a significant break with Keynesian theory and practice and constitutes a return to several basic principles of orthodox economic theory but with a more statist glare. The foremost discrepancy is that Keynesian economies were largely production orientated and production led. Growth under Keynesianism was based upon expansion of commodity production within factories through taylorism and fordism. As a result, industrial capital was the dominant faction of capital and its demands were adhered to by the Keynesian state. However, under Neoliberalism finance capitalism is the key factor, thus monetarism is the predominant economy theory and policy guiding capitalist growth into the twenty-first century. Not only has there been an explosion in the financialization of everyday life since the 1970s, with almost all social relations being incorporated into financial markets but there has occurred the exponential growth in secondary and tertiary capital markets with the emergence of derivatives, hedge funds, mutual funds, commodity markets, currency markets, and future's markets (Martin 2002). Whereas Keynesian growth was premised upon the M-C-M' cycle Neoliberalism has sought liberation from direct commodity production with its inherent complexities and labor problems through a flight to M-M' (Arrighi 1994). Neoliberalism is a phase of capitalism engulfed in speculation and the financialization of all social relations, an impetus reflected in the predominance of and dependency on credit that fuels the escalation of consumer and national debt. 

The move from production-led to finance-led capitalism is not the only major difference. There are significant alterations in the role of government in the economy. Neoliberalism represents a movement towards pre-Keynesian economic theory and practice, where government intervention into market operations are generally considered detrimental to economic growth. It is presumed that the business cycle can regulate itself through the laws of supply and demand and that government intervention to alleviate market slowdowns or turndowns will only exacerbate the movement back towards equilibrium by upsetting the basic operations of the market. Subsequently, government is expected to take a hands off approach and let business regulate itself. However, this theoretical logic rarely applies to practice where the neoliberal state is expected to create markets and enforce their existence - legally and militarily – through enclosure, privatization, commoditization and marketization. In addition to securing the existence of markets and their continued functioning because it is presumed that through the coercive laws of competition markets are the most efficient allocators of resources and the mechanism that best ensures personal freedom and liberty state regulated industries or resources are forced to 'deregulate' themselves and become subject to privatization and the laws of the marketplace. State regulation in the form of the provision of services or setting the terms of exchange - the price of goods and the quality of goods - are denounced as bureaucratically burdensome, economically harmful and a limitation on choice. 

Another primary attribute of neoliberalism is the emphasis placed upon the 'free mobility of capital' and the necessity of creating a 'positive environment for economic growth.' These phrases amount to the reduction and elimination of barriers on capital movement “such as tariffs, punitive taxation arrangements, planning, environmental controls, or other locational impediments (Harvey 2005:66).” Coinciding with the calls for reduced taxation and the reduction of state regulation is a direct attack upon the formation of a social welfare state that occurred through Keynesian policies. Budget austerity is imposed, first upon New York City and then on numerous states and the federal government in an attempt to force state's to reduce social service spending and taxation levels on business. These maneuvers are conducted in an attempt to free capital of the gains forced upon it by labor and the working class and thereby restore the conditions favorable for an increased rate of profit and economic growth. By preventing states from running deficits and implementing balanced budget demands capital succeeds in lightening its 'obligations' to labor through a reformation of the state in a Neoliberal manner: one where markets reign supreme. The most recent example of budget austerity, as of this writing, is in California under Governor Schwarzenegger. 

The state therefore appears to recede from the lives of individuals as the markets take over the functioning of everyday life. In actuality, the state's form has merely been altered in a manner that puts the control over the facets of life in the hands of capitalism, a transition that can only occur through and with continual support by a reformulated state. This philosophical and political transition in the state, from Keynesianism to Neoliberalism, cannot be explained through a systems theory approach describing the political-administrative system as an autonomous externally constituted integrative mechanism that balances the demands of the economic system and the socio-cultural system. The state is an outcome of and historically constituted by the class struggle and represents the historical legacy and current configuration of class power. As class power has been dramatically rescaled under Neoliberalism, where capital is on the offensive and labor the defensive, the state becomes a purveyor of neoliberal principles, which is explicit in the articulation of carbon trading and emissions trading schemes as the premiere strategy to combat global warming. 

Bush's Economic Stimulus Plan - Part I

Bush released his 'economic stimulus plan' today and called for more of the same, that is, neoliberal economic restructuring. We are told that we must institute more of the same restructuring to solve problems that the last round of restructurings were supposed to solve. Fool the U.S. population once, looks like you can fool them again and again.

If you watched the Bush proposal, as I did on C-Span, and then the followup debate with Edward P. Lazear , President's Council of Economic Advisers and Henry M. Paulson Jr., Department of the Treasury, then you actually learned quite a deal about the basics of Neoliberalism: what it is what it is not.

The primary problem for Global capitalism and many national capital's is a downturn in U.S. consumer spending. For it is the US's ability to run massive consumer and national debts that is fueling global capital growth, even though that growth percentage is weak, as a historical average. U.S. consumer overspending and thus increasing consumer debt props up a sagging global economy, without it the economies of Asia, notably China and Japan, and Europe, notably Germany, would be in a far worse state - most of these economies are export led and while they have strong domestic markets - China's is still developing, the others are pretty much solidified - their recent growth is export led. A downturn in U.S. consumer spending means that these national capitals need to find other outlets to pick up the slack, otherwise their economies will suffer a downturn as well. There is no telling where this increased demand might come from. China and India are not developing fast enough nor a rich enough middle class yet to devour these commodities. where will this demand come from? All look to the U.S. and the U.S. government, manager not only of US capital but global capital, puts forth the initial salvo that other countries might try and follow, if they can force it upon their citizens - knowing the collective organization of labor and the favor that the welfare state has throughout Europe, trying to get this policies enacted in Europe is much more of a struggle, but capital has been increasingly successful over the last decade of pealing back gains by labor under claims of global competitiveness, flexibility, nationalism and xenophobia. The U.S. government's - manager of collective capital - primary solution is therefore mechanisms to increase consumer spending at a time when U.S. consumer debt is at historic levels. the government's problem is then how to increase spending that is already economically unsustainable at a global level - correcting this imbalance would be catastrophic, so it must go on - at a personal level - people will be unable to save for retirement and forced to work into their twilight years - but moreover is ecologically unsustainable - an issue that no mainstream spokesperson dare raise. Trying to maintain or increase consumer spending at a time when it is out of control displays the irrationality of capitalist development and its need for growth.

This is where you see the first of two major components of Bush's economic stimulus plan, consumer spending must be maintained, as this is the key to growth. We will discuss the fetishization of growth in a little bit and how it is the sin qua non of capitalism. Back to consumer spending. the other major component was the solution - reduces taxes!

Now, there are several historical methods to increase consumer spending and thus prop up sagging effective demand:

(1) you can increase the wages of workers, thus shrinking profits for individual or sectors of capital while maintaining conditions for capitalist development as a whole. Since workers earn more money they can potentially spend this on commodities, thus realizing the profit (unpaid labor) in the commodities. However, this potentiality is the problem, capitalism must get workers to parley the increased wages into commodity consumption and not into savings - this struggle occurred throughout the 20th century - I think we all know that time free from work was turned into leisure time as cultural activities soon became recuperated into commodified activities - and capital won: time outside of work must now reproduce capital as well; it cannot be self-managed time allowing for self-determination. This was the major strategy under Keynesianism. It was able to get around the inverse ration between wages and profits through a relative surplus strategy of the 'productivity wage', where wage increases were tied to productivity increases. Thus working class power was tied to increasing capitalist power over labor, particularly as power over the labor process was given up under taylorist and fordist methods of production. Capital and the working class both won, supposedly, and as of the 1960s you might have given a qualified yes. but now it clearly seems that capital, on the offensive, is stripping away all the hard one gains of labor during the 20th century.

(2) find cheaper labor to produce the commodities, thus maximizing the existing buying power of another group of workers, hoping that they now buy more goods. this can be more problematic than the first strategy in the sense that this labor must be found either internally or externally of the country. Now, this is the major strategy of U.S. capitalism, under neoliberalism, since the 1970s. Faced with increased working class power, student rebellions, increased global competition - Europe and Japan - and so on, US capital moved to automation and an attack on unions at home and outsourcing abroad in an attempt to stagnate US wages while increasing their purchasing power through exploitation of South American, Southeast Asian or Chinese workers. This also has problems, labor in these foreign countries can also fight back, but moreover, trying to exploit other workers so that you can continue to exploit and maintain power over another nation of workers is best by difficulties. trying to prop up effective demand through exploiting one group more than the other is a tricky balance and one obviously failing since the U.S. consumer must still go into debt to buy products that cannot be automated or outsourced that effectively - they cannot be rationalized enough, yet: thus, the reason why housing, education, health care are some of the most expensive items and what generally drives people into debt and bankruptcy. This strategy can only work for so long and not for all commodities, and it is not working now, as education, housing and healthcare are out of reach of a majority of americans by any reasonable standard of affordability.

(3) reduce taxes is another strategy, one employed increasingly by Neoliberals as a guise under which corporations, the capitalist and upper classes dramatically cut their taxation levels and institute a regressive tax system. cutting taxes also dries up social service spending, allowing the neoliberal governments to cut social spending and services - which they are more than happy to since they want to privatize everything and do not want any social obligation to 'the wretches at the bottom' - they advocate social darwinism through the market.

Deconstructing Bush quotes

Bush: This growth package must be built on broad-based tax relief that will directly affect economic growth -- and not the kind of spending projects that would have little immediate impact on our economy. This growth package must be temporary and take effect right away -- so we can get help to our economy when it needs it most. And this growth package must not include any tax increases.

Bush thereby rules out "outdated" Keynesian policies designed to maintain effective demand through downturns in the business cycle. The Keynesian state's primary role was to ensure effective demand through enlargement of the public sector, increased taxation, running state deficits and the attempt to institutionalize the 'productivity wage' by tying wage increases to productivity increases. The Neoliberal state does away with about all of these policies, favoring reducing taxes, not running budgets for social spending - but military deficits are of course ok. Thus Bush writes off spending projects, not based on any empirical reality but based on ideology, because the state is not supposed to be a social service provider anymore or a funder of even last resort for projects - the market is to be sole entity that people turn to. Spending projects cannot be instituted because this would mean that taxes would have to be raised on the rich and corporations, the exact opposite of neoliberal theory and practice. The state is purely an institution for monetary policies/adjustment and a military/prison state.

When one looks closer his tax rhetoric is really about taxes on the wealthy:

Bush: Passing a new growth package is our most pressing economic priority. When that is done, Congress must turn to the most important economic priority for our country, and that's making sure the tax relief that is now in place is not taken away. A source of uncertainty in our economy is that this tax relief is set to expire at the end of 2010. Unless Congress acts, the American people will face massive tax increases in less than three years. The marriage penalty will make a comeback; the child tax credit will be cut in half; the death tax will come back to life; and tax rates will go up on regular income, capital gains, and dividends.

It is really about cementing the temporary reduction of taxes on the rich, for the 'death' tax and tax rates on capital gains and dividends are what Bush and the capital class care most about and where most of the money in tax reductions went. Because the rich are the only who are affected by the death tax and capital gains/dividends tax - most americans and especially the lower classes do not own any stock and if they do, it is a small amount in their ESOP.

Moreover, when Bush speaks it is also in half-truths or one-sided statements:

Bush: In a vibrant economy, markets rise and decline. We cannot change that fundamental dynamic. As a matter of fact, eliminating risk altogether would also eliminate the innovation and productivity that drives the creation of jobs and wealth in America.

Yes, markets rise and decline. the issue is to what degree do the people or an alienated form of government have control over this market and how far will they let the market rise and fall - it is an issue of control over the market. Also, the issue of risk is not eliminating it outright, for under capital risk could never be eliminated, but subordinating the market to control by the people and therefore reducing risk. It is a question of severity and on a continuum of risk, how much is enough? You can have innovation and productivity with a quality welfare state/social safety net - look at the western european countries, they have good rates of productivity, innovation and balance it well with a high standard of living. Trying to argue that the U.S. could not have innovation or productivity with a larger social safety net or even a nice cushy one - since we have the largest economy around - is plain ludicrous. It not only assumes that people are inherently lazy and need to be forced to work but it is apologetic for an economic system premised on forced work and exploitation of labor - that needs us to work so it can extract surplus labor.

And to sum up, throughout the speech it is clear that capitalism is a system dependent on growth - that it is a 'grow of die' economy because the word growth was uttered 14 times. And the whole purpose of the bill was to address the "growth issues", nothing else, which means maintaining effective demand, which raises the problem of how to increase consumption when the market is in a downturn and for ideological and political reasons you are not going to increase wages, create spending initiatives and are unable to force greater exploitation on foreign labor, although this remains to be seen. Capital is thus in a bind and it must resort to reducing taxes, which is acceptable, as reducing taxes is a fundamental of neoliberalism. the problem with this is that it will only increase inequality in the long run and cause a further decline in the quality and quantity of social services and the infrastructure of the United States. It remains to be seen if the American public will buy this, but since it is not subject to a democratic vote or debate they will take it just like they accepted their $300 rebate last time and spent them on a sharper image foot massager.