Readings for June 2nd

• Ch. 2: "The Construction of Consent" in David Harvey's A Brief History of Neoliberalism

• Sections 1-3 in Lorner Goldner's "The Biggest October Surprise of Them All"

The selection from A Brief History of Neoliberalism is available here on Google books. If you want to print, download this scanned version. Lorner Goldner's piece is here and the sections are clearly marked. You can also download an easy-to-print pdf.

Notes

Neoliberalism: The What?s and How?s

• Labor lost a lot of power
• Corporations moved to US south and overseas
• Threatened workers w plant closures
• opening of china
• 'United Capitalist Front' (competition can wait until after neoliberalism is implemented)
• Elite's class conciousness
• New York Fiscal Crisis
• Increasing profitability and power of finance
• 1973 coup in Chile
• Increasing millitary spending
• Neoliberalism vs. neoconservatism--what's the difference?
• Corporations give money to campaigns and increase political power
• TO LOOK INTO: 1971 end of gold standard
• Lowers price of dollars, makes US exports cheaper and devalues dollar-denominated loans
• OPEC Price Shock 1973
• Saudis / OPEC start recycling petrodollars to US investors who invest in foreign markets
• Individualism/Rebellion --> fodder for capitalist marketing strategies (Harvey)
• Dynamic/adaptive capitalism
• People adapting too
• Corporate liquidity/debt? What does it mean?

Slow-Motion Crisis since the 70s: Loren Goldner on the origins of the current crisis and its connection to the end of the post-war boom

For next week, I've recommended a reading from Loren Goldner, who argues that capitalism as a world system has been in a slow-motion crisis really since the early seventies--and that things like what is called neo-liberalism, the growth of the financial sector and the decline of industry, the exclusion of more and more parts of the working class in the industrial heartlands of the "1st World" (outsourcing, deindustrialization, mass unemployment in former industrial cities, decline of living standards for workers)--are really part of capitalisms managing a slow-motion crisis since roughly 1973. Now these measures are starting to fall apart & he is looking for their roots in the contradictions of capitalism as such not only since the 70s, but with an eye to the history of 20th Century capitalism. The reading I recommended, (The Biggest October Surprise Of All http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/october.html) is noticeably difficult and what I'm bringing next week is itself an exerpt, but Goldner explains himself very clearly in an interview given on a Berkely, CA Radio Program "Guns and Butter" with bonnie Faulkner, on KPFA, April 4th, 2007.

The interview is titled "Fictitious Capital, Real Retrogression." 59:55 (click to play)

(Loren's website is here: http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner
He has an essay with the same title as the talk here: http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/retrogression.html)

Lastly, there's a video of Loren Goldner giving a talk on January 22, 2008 at the Whitechapel Center, in London, sponsored by Mute magazine.

Fictitious Capital and Today's Global Crisis a talk by Loren Goldner Part I
I don't know where or even if the second half of the talk has been posted. :(

Enjoy!

Midnight Notes Members at City From Below Conference

In April 3 MN members had a really interesting panel discussion that includes analysis similar to the 'Promissory Notes' piece

Class Struggle and Crisis


Download

There's another one, not as closely related by still fascinating, about 'self reproducing movements.' If has Silvia Federici, MN member and amazing analyst of capitalist patriarchy and the economics of housework.

Urban Self-Reproducing Movements and Everyday Life


Download

There are tons of amazing audio and video at http://cityfrombelow.org/liveblog

Readings for May 19th

• "Crisis and Neoliberal Capitalism," by David Kotz, Dollars and Sense (Dec 2008)
  
• "Capitalism Hits the Fan," by Rick Wolff. Dollars and Sense (Nov 2008)
• "Promissory Notes," by Midnight Notes Collective (April 2009)
• Glossary of Terms About Financial Crisis, Philly Budget Crunchers

Notes
Real Wages go down after '73 --> dependency on credit
What lead to this?

• Corporate and economic elite 'got greedy' / wanted to make more profit
• Where did competition come from?
• 70s- China opens a huge labor pool
• 50-60s Nationalist gov'ts in South America, followed by coups and right wing military gov'ts
• Backlash against gains of social movements
• Worker struggle in 1960s and early 1970s—destroying Keynesianism?
• Did neoliberalism come out of this?

What was Keynesianism?

• Gov't controlling interest rates and markets 'artificially'
• regulates markets and gives people more comfortable living standard
• came out of Great Depression
• (Role of World War II in actually ending the great depression)
• Creating jobs, social security, welfare, foodstamps

Keynesianism and Struggle

• Gave people a means to struggle with
• Powerful social movements of 1960s
• Was a deal that people were asked to be included in...example of civil rights / black power movement
• Other side: control, pacifier, means of regulating the poor
• Keynesian deal mostly included white, male, unionized workers

The Neoliberal model

• unregulated markets
• privatizing all aspects of life
• Attacking unions
• Speculative markets
• dismantling social services
• profit over people

Resistance to neoliberalism: different or the same as resistance to keynesianism?

Rise of Neoliberalism:

• Regean: attack on air-traffic controllers' strike
• Paul Volcker: raising interest rate 20% in 1979
• Now in Obama Admin
• 'Upward mobility for people
• End of FDR era right to organize laws

Neoliberalism: Did it fail?

• Succeeds in fucking over people globally
• Failed in investment / deflated assets etc
• Attempts to take over economies
• Failure in iraq: US told by own puppets to get out, insurgency, struggling oil workers
• IMF/WTO: weren't able to come up with trade rules that were universal, 'globalization failed'
• “3rd world” governments refuse to sign away sovereignty, particularly around agricultural policies, where EU/US try to flood market

Natural resources and resistance to neoliberalism
What are the effects of nationalized vs. privatized natural resources?

• Eg mexico: state oil company, not progressive
• Resources dont' leave countries as fast when resources are nationalized
• OPEC: formally colonized countries sell at artificially higher price
• Brazil MST (landless worker movement)
• India: self-ruled communities
• Bolivia: privatization of gas stopped by protests
• Regional gas integration in S. Am
• Still entering into world market
• Zapatistas
• Chile: Pinochet never privatized copper mines

Still to cover: anti colonial struggles, 70s, 1968