Economics After Capitalism , livre ebook

Economics After Capitalism
Economics After Capitalism
A Guide to the Ruins and a Road to the Future
Derek Wall
Forewords by David Bollier and Nandor Tanczos
First published as Babylon and Beyond, 2005
This revised expanded edition first published 2015 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Derek Wall 2005, 2015
The right of Derek Wall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3508 7 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3507 0 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7837 1302 8 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7837 1304 2 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7837 1303 5 EPUB eBook
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Text design by Melanie Patrick Simultaneously printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Bros in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Foreword to the New Edition by David Bollier
Foreword to the First Edition by Nandor Tanczos
Acknowledgements
1 Warm Conspiracies and Cold Concepts
The Anti-capitalist Movement
Globalisation, Capitalism and the Arguments for Neo-liberalism
What’s Wrong with Capitalism?
Diversity or Chaos: Cataloguing Different Anti-capitalisms
Debating Apocalypse
2 Vaccinating against Anti-capitalism: Stiglitz, Soros and Friends
Stiglitz and Soros
Stiglitz and Soros on Financial Crisis, Recession and Austerity
From Keynes to Bretton Woods
Against Washington
Asymmetric Information and Reflexivity
1001 Uses for a Dead Karl Polanyi
Anti-empire
Vaccinating Against Anti-capitalism
3 White Collar Global Crime Syndicate: Korten, Klein and Other Anti-corporatists
The Rise of the Corporate Criminal
The Hidden History of Humanity
Unnatural Monopolies
Global Government Inc.
Outsourcing
Adam Smith’s Ecotopia
4 Small is Beautiful: Green Economics
Against Growth
Economics as Alienation
Bad Trade
Green Alternatives to Globalisation
A Green New Deal
Beyond Green Anti-capitalism
5 Planet Earth Money Martyred: Social Credit, Positive Money and Monetary Reform
IMF Apocalypse
Financing Enclosure and Ecocide
On the Attac
Monetary Reform
Lets and Local Currencies
Positive Money
6 Imperialism Unlimited: Marxisms
Marxist Economics: The Utter Basics
Marxist Theories of Imperialism
Marxist Approaches to Globalisation
Castro on Globalisation
David Harvey’s Seventeen Contradictions of Capitalism
Marx in Caracas
Marx Beyond Marx
7 The Tribe of Moles: Autonomism, Anarchism and Empire
Anarchist Marxism
Marxist Anarchism
Foucault on Rioting
Empire as a Pure Model of Capital
Strategy
8 Ecosocialist Alternatives: Marx’s Ecology
The Anti-capitalism of the Poor
The End of the World?
Socialism and Ecology
Malthusianism as Murder
Ecotopia
Ecosocialism in the Twenty-first Century
9 Women of the World Unite: Feminist Economics
Feminist Revolutions
Deirdre McCloskey and the Methodological Challenge to Economics
Amartya Sen’s Reformist Feminism
The Unhappy Marriage of Frederich Engels and Revolutionary Feminism
Ecofeminism
Autonomist Feminism and Zerowork
The Ostrom Alternative
10 Life After Capitalism: Alternatives, Structures, Strategies
Marx, Ostrom and the Commons
Defend, Extend and Deepen the Commons
Alternatives
The Mirror Stage
Bibliography
Index
Mr. Lebeziatnikov who keeps up with modern ideas explained the other day that compassion is forbidden nowadays by science itself, and that that’s what is done now in England, where there is political economy.
Dostoevsky 1993: 14
FOREWORD TO THE NEW EDITION
David Bollier
As a cascading series of crises converge – economic, ecological, social – what better time to review the long history of anti-capitalist thinking? The past is rich with important lessons, ones that can help orient us to grapple with present-day challenges, refine our strategic judgement and develop practical alternatives.
History can be instructive in a double sense: it can show us what worked and what didn’t work, and so guide our own efforts, but it can also reveal that the past does not define the scope of realistic ambitions today. The future is not yet written. If Economics After Capitalism demonstrates anything, it is that we must step bravely into history with our own creative energies and seize the unique opportunities of our time. But because time is short and the challenges are great, we must do so with intelligence and resolve.
Although our mainstream institutions are loath to admit it, we are in the midst of a civilisational crisis. Existing structures and practices are crumbling. The moral and political legitimacy of the nation state and international governance bodies is waning. The relentless promises of economic growth, consumerism and ‘progress’ are being exposed as utopian fantasies. The neo-liberal vision can now be seen as not only grossly unfair and unattainable, but deeply destructive of our planet and human well-being.
But how to move forward?
It is helpful to revisit the many traditions of anti-capitalist critique, dissent and creative world-making, as outlined in the pages below. ‘The past is never dead,’ wrote William Faulkner. ‘It’s not even past.’ From reformist finance to green economics, anarchism to ecofeminism, and Marxist economics to the commons, we actually have a rich palette of experiences, ideas and alternatives to draw upon. Some of these anti-capitalist traditions seem deeply rooted in their times and therefore feel remote, while others are perennial and timeless, ready to be thrust into action immediately. Some approaches feel highly prescriptive and run the risk of becoming totalising, rigid ideologies, while other challenges to capitalism function more as open-ended templates that invite creative improvisation.
I see great potential in the commons as an attractive framing paradigm and discourse because it is not just a critique of capitalism but a constellation of constructive, working alternatives. It consists of general design principles, ethical norms and a diverse array of actual projects that resemble fractal variations on a theme. The commons is less of an ideology or critique than a meta-framework of principles and values that describes a wide variety of collective action projects, each with their own situational politics, cultural and geographic circumstances, and intellectual character. Indeed, the commons is already serving as a staging area in which numerous movements of self-identified commoners are working out the details of what the commons means to them in their particular local, political, economic and ecological circumstances.
Despite a diverse range of on-the-ground realities for commoners, they adhere to a general principle of ‘unity in diversity’. This is entirely appropriate not just in a time when globalised capitalist markets have penetrated most corners of the earth, but at a time when most of humanity is now interconnected through a single network of networks, the Internet, which for the first time brings us together (fitfully) as a single human species. The commons seizes this moment in global culture by offering us a vision of human society that is inclusivist, ecologically minded, and committed to social justice and basic human needs. It demonstrates that, pace the claims of economists that we are all Homo economicus, selfish, utility-maximising individuals, human beings can in fact self-organise themselves to create fair, sustainable systems of governance and management for their shared wealth. This has in fact been the primary mode of self-governance throughout human history. Unlike the nation state and capitalist market, which have trouble respecting ecological limits and minimising social conflict, the commons is predisposed to internalise negative economic externalities, welcome participation by ordinary people and cultivate an ethic of sufficiency. No wonder it is seen as an attractive alternative to bureaucratic systems and predatory markets.
Unfortunately, the commons has long been eclipsed by the destructive interventions of the market/state duopoly, otherwise known as ‘enclosures’. It has also been crippled by the smear that it is an inherently impractical, failed model for managing resources – a brilliant cover story to justify the private appropriation of the common wealth. That tradition was given new life in 1968 when biologist Garrett Hardin published his famous essay, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’. Few people then or now have dared to consider that Hardin was not really describing a commons; he was describing an open-access regime – a free-for-all in which there is no community, no rules, no monitoring of the resource and no penalties for those who violate community rules. This, of course, is a scenario that more closely resembles the normal working of unfettered ‘free markets’ than the that of the commons – the tragedy of the market, one might say.
The ‘tragedy of the commons’ parable has nonetheless been embraced by conservative ideologues and property-rights advocates for nearly fifty years, as a useful way to discredit collective action to protect shared wealth. As a result, exiled from the circle of respectable policy making and politics, the commons has remained largely invisible, and the state and the market are routinely portrayed as the only two serious systems of governance and production.
Margaret Thatcher famously declared, ‘There is no alternative’ – a phrase memorialised in the acronym TINA. She was keen to forestall any challenges to her neo-