Re: <nettime> Who said the US is boring?

[David Garcia <d.garcia@new-tactical-research.co.uk>]

As cracks appear in the neo-liberal paradigm and market fundementalism falters (even in the UK Tory party where Brexit flys in the face

of what neo-liberal business wants).. we must be wary of seeing “public ownership” as an unalloyed -good-. State (or public) entites can 

quite easily become self reproducing interest groups, lobbying on behalf of themselves as effectively as any corporation. Anyone who has 

had to deal regularly with public institutions will know that they do not always serve the best interests of the public. 

As the paradigm shifts away from market fundementalism to the various alternatives it may be good to keep on remembering this. The pendulum

cannot simply swing back to earlier forms of state ownership without a fundemental re-imaging of what that means for our every day lives. We may 

be moving away from the world in which we are always seen as a customer rather than a citizen, a patient, a student or a passenger. But being 

re-categorised is no guarantee of being better looked after, or that our best interests will be served.   

David Garcia

On 17 Aug 2017, at 07:05, Keith Hart <keith@thememorybank.co.uk> wrote:

Brian,

 

Thanks once more for your stimulating perspective on the political crisis. I have tried to boil down my take on that crisis, without yet proposing possible initiatives, which will in any case be contingent and perhaps more local than previously imagined.

 

Market fundamentalism is at the crossroads. We are entering a global paradigm shift comparable to that of 1979/80, when a world revolution led by development states after 1945 was overthrown by a neoliberal counter-revolution that is itself now under threat. The freedom of capital to flow everywhere has subordinated politics to markets for decades. No-one runs for office on a programme of increased state intervention today.

 

Thatcher’s mantra (“there is no alternative”) was confirmed when the parties of the centre-left made a Faustian compact with finance capital in the 90s. I identify the social forces now undermining neoliberal globalization, in the light of recent political developments in the current and former imperial powers: Trump’s presidency, Macron’s improbable rise and May’s snap election.

 

The American Empire has supervised a rigid international regime comparable to the British Empire’s gold standard.  In both cases market fundamentalism (Polanyi’s “self-regulating market”) outlawed protectionist measures and marginalized the state’s economic role. This monolithic ideology has suddenly sprung two versions, with a xenophobic nationalism that combines limited market freedom and protection challenging the cosmopolitan universalism of the transnational corporations. As a result, the West has fallen into a moral panic fuelled by an escalating division between those who want to leave the world and those who embrace it.

 

Responses to Trump’s reactionary white supremacy, along with the surprising French and British elections, suggest that neoliberal hegemony may be cracking and a swing back to state intervention, whether fascist or Keynesian, is now more likely than at any time in the last four decades. National politics is back on the agenda.

Best,

 

Keith

On Thu, Aug 17, 2017 at 6:59 AM, Frederic Neyrat <fneyrat@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Brian,

Like you, I don't see any organization able to do this coup. But what seems to me very important is to understand that, IF there is a strategy at stake in Trump's politics, this is not a democratic one

 

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