Capitalism’s Crises. Alfredo Saad-Filho

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СКАЧАТЬ and alternatives, to a hegemonic politics of sustaining life. This means the question of a just transition has to be integral to the politics of contemporary left agency. For such a conception to emerge at the centre of society, it has to be situated in a hegemonic politics that sustains life by realising the following necessary conditions: first, it has to be rooted in mass-based transformative social forces confronting the systemic crisis tendencies of capitalist civilisation, which are accumulating progressive class and social forces into a new state and civil-society historical bloc. Second, it has to be constantly engaged in forms of democratic political pedagogy to raise political consciousness and build self-emancipatory capacities at the grassroots level to help advance alternatives from below. Third, it has to build a deeply democratic and humanised political instrument, anchored in logics of mass power, transformative resistance and international solidarity. And, finally, it has to clarify and develop a transformative conception of the just transition linked to a vision of building democratic eco-feminist socialism in the present as part of realising it in the future.

      If the Left rises to these challenges, it would ensure that class and popular struggle are not read out of history or obscured by the current crises of capitalist civilisation. Human civilisations have risen, fallen and regenerated. Contemporary capitalist civilisation is not about to collapse but it is at an impasse, bedevilled by a fundamental question: ecocide or transformation? Class and popular struggle are necessary to ensure the balance of forces and the scales of history tilt towards transformation. The systemic crises of capitalist civilisation add up to the potential for a transformative moment for radical change. Such a moment calls for the creative, ethical and humanised power of the working class and progressive social forces to inaugurate a transition that departs from the marketisation–destruction logic of capitalism. History is still undecided and open. The time for transformative change is now.

      CONCLUSION

      This chapter tested a thesis about the systemic crises of capitalist civilisation to identify signposts, openings and new ways of thinking. It asked what Marx’s thought can offer us, both in its strengths and limitations, to comprehend the contemporary crises of capitalist civilisation. If the empirical world of capitalism is showing morbid signs of civilisational crisis – self-destruction, systemic breakdowns, gridlocks and failures in terms of various dimensions – we need to engage with Marx’s way of thinking about capitalism to understand its logic of destruction. This may, however, mean challenging and departing from Marx at the level of our theoretical understanding of the systemic crisis tendencies of capitalism and how we periodise historical capitalism. It also means we have to understand how the systemic crisis tendencies of the capitalist civilisational crisis are constituted by the US-led bloc and transnational class practices. Such an analysis and understanding have to guide us through the millenarian narratives and catastrophic discourses of our time. The crux of the matter is, if the US superpower and capital have produced a crisis-ridden civilisation, then this can be undone with transformative agency.

      NOTES

      1 Clarke (1994) has done the most extensive and detailed study that confirms this.

      2 See Brenner (2002, 2006) for an explication of overproduction and competition, and the centrality of economic-centred explanations for capitalist crisis. Also see Bello’s (2013) more recent analysis of the current global crisis, in which overproduction features prominently in his explanation. Also see Lapavitsas (2013), who explicates the notion of financialisation and financial overaccumulation by building on Marx and Hilferding.

      3 Harvey (2014) highlights disparities in income and wealth as an important ‘moving contradiction’, and identifies endless compound growth and capital’s relation to nature as ‘dangerous contradictions’ in his mapping of the 17 contradictions of contemporary capitalism. Also see Piketty (2014) on the state of inequality.

      4 In Marxist historiography this is a very contentious issue. Some claim the origins of capitalism lie in mercantile relations, others in agrarian capitalism, others in primitive accumulation and others maintain that capitalism has its origins strictly in industrial capitalism.

      5 Sassen (2011) uses the term ‘savage sorting’, which refers to the spatial spread of systemic financialisation to zones of profit making, such as developing countries and cities.

      6 China has eclipsed the US in terms of aggregate emissions, with its share of world carbon emissions estimated at twenty-six per cent while the US is at sixteen per cent.

      7 According to The New York Times (12 November 2014), China plans to have its CO₂ emissions peak by 2030, while the US plans to cut emissions by twenty-six to twenty-eight per cent from 2005 levels by 2025, which would merely drop US emission output from a high of 6 billion metric tonnes to about 4.5 billion metric tonnes. However, even this is way less than what Obama pledged in the 2009 Copenhagen accord, which was more along the lines of 3.2 billion metric tonnes as a voluntary target, compared with 1.5 billion tonnes in the US–China agreement.

      8 The planet has also experienced the hottest years on record over the past decade, with scientists confirming that 2014 was the hottest year in the history of climatology. See http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/science/earth/2014-was-hottest-year-on-record-surpassing-2010.html?emc=edit_th_20150117&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=69791458&_r=0.

      9 Cock J. ‘The political economy of food in South Africa’, Amandla Magazine 37/38, December 2014.

      10 Hilary (2013: 121) suggests 400 million of the 525 million farms that are estimated to exist across the world are classified as small farms (i.e. under two hectares). These farms belong mainly to the global peasantry and provide most food staples required on the planet.

      11 Wolin (2008) refers to this as ‘managed democracy’ and cautions that the American political system and its imperial aspirations are displaying a tendency towards ‘inverted totalitarianism’.

      12 See Gill (2001) for an elaboration of this concept in relation to the neoliberalisation of the European Union.

      REFERENCES

Ahmed, N.M. 2010. A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization. London: Pluto Press.

Arrighi, G. and Moore, J.W. 2001. ‘Capitalist development in world historical perspective’. In Phases of Capitalist Development: Booms, Crises and Globalizations, edited by R. Albritton, M. Itoh, R. Westra and A. Zuege. New York: Palgrave.

      Bello, W. 2013. Capitalism’s Last Stand? Deglobalisation in the Age of Austerity. London and New York: Zed Books.

Bond, P. (ed.). 2011. Durban’s Climate Gamble: Trading Carbon, Betting the Earth. Pretoria: Unisa Press.

Brenner, СКАЧАТЬ