Chandresekhar at Columbia, April 2010

collapse of actually-existing socialism 'has to do' with the collapse of finance—the increasing exposure of hese countries to finance. [?]

an 'informational inadequacy' that confronts central planning, it is argued (hayek's fatal conceit). planners working at cross-purposes.

the danger, also, of 'bureaucratization' (irfan habib: when socialism is established, there is no economic law pushing it in advance.)

the argument is premised on the proposition that the alternative has to be fully elaborated. you can only elaborate these mechanisms in practice.

what we do need to recognize is that the 'collapse of actually-existing socialism' has delayed the Left alternative. with this in mind, there need to be 'reformist'/'welfarist' measures in the interim (without making us sound like those who call for a 'human face')

in Latin America, neo-liberalism is thoroughly discredited. in Africa, it destroyed the State. but in Asia, you have 'successful' engagement with international capital (E. Asia). you have countries like China and India, as well. the point is that these are 'successes'. (crisis of 1997 was because of a more definite shift to neoliberalism, loss of financial controls, etc.). Asia as the region on which the reputation of neo-liberalism depends.

this 'working' (in a growth and balance of payments sense) means two things

1. there exist a group of people who can sustain this kind of growth trajectory—you have a section of the upper middle-class which (1) has additional incomes; (2) generates a situation where you expand the univers of borrowers because of the freedom you give to investors (you relax the requirements on financiers) [the 'feel-good' factor: confident lenders and confident borrowers are both necessary if you want a debt-financed trajectory to work]. today you're in a situation where you have double-digit inflation, but not seen as a threat. this used to be fatal. now not so much, because vocal classes have been co-opted. in other words, the 'middle-classes' are separated from the Left.
2. as part of your 'success', you are the 'flavor of the season'-- you need foreign capital and footloose productive capital. you're caught, then, in a situation where pushing against the status quo, you're confronted with the exit of capital. you can't even find your way to a reformist line.

you use all of these arguments, at an ideological level, to discount all alternatives.

the obvious implication is that you have to pursue different tactics, which the Left is doing. basically, we are talking about the need to be innovative.

in addition, fundamental structural constraints:

1. the organized working class is 6 or 7% of the total working class; and you're anyway confronting growth of informal and casualized labor (you're not progressing amongst the vanguard class, but in fact progressively seeing the undermining of the vanguard class). even within the formal sector, you're getting a lot of informal workers.
2. when employment increases, most of it is amongst self-employed workers. you have workers who don't have an 'enemy' in their productive life. who do you organize these workers against?
3. stagnation in real wages, but a rise in productivity-- you have a collapse of the shares of wages in value-added. those who are outside this citadel of formal workers have to come to terms with the fact that what set the standard is something that, itself, is eroding.

so you have what seems, almost, like a conspiracy. an attack all-round.

this is not to say that there is no Left, that the Left has disappeared. it is simply to say that this is a long and arduous struggle.

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anwar's questions

1. neoliberalism as a global phenomenon?

what is it about capitalism that in the US, for example, one of the most tightly regulated financial sectors in the world was demolished. why did capitalism 'allow' for this trajectory? now, ruling classes pursue the path of 'international' financial credit, rather than public expenditure (taxation, etc.)

2. success as growth and employment?

success, the real argument, is growth, resolution of balance of payments problems, and the attenuation of inflation.

3. multiplier effects of public and private investment?

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it doesn't make any sense to argue that we need growth before we can re-distribute surpluses, precisely because the form of growth that is pursued has the effect of incapacitating the State (the State's ability to do anything in the long-term, certainly, but also its ability to attenuate short-term deprivation). and I would add,in fact, that this is entirely unscientific and politically backward—who, exactly, is going to demand and push the redistribution of that surplus at the end point?