Plenary, HM 2010

Duncan Foley

Three Questions

1. economic, relation between profitability of investment and the current crisis. Long-standing understanding of tendency of rate of profit to fall, but there is not much evidence that a dramatic fall in basic profitability preceded this crisis (controversial point—this is a question, however, not a claim). Most patterns show a definite fall from the high in the 60's to the 70's, which ushered in the period of neoliberalism. But neoliberalism succeeded in raising the rate of profit (capital productivity through technological change), and also because of raising the rate of exploitation in advanced capitalist countries (suppression of wage growth, but continued increase in productivity of labor). So is this a crisis of too little surplus value? Or is this a crisis of too much surplus value—and the inability of the financial system to recycle that surplus value into effective demand?
2. economic, relation between real GDP and unemployment. Over a very long period of time, there's been established a fairly regular relationship between unemployment and economic growth; but this has been absent from the current data. Why?
3. political, what is the ruling elite's plan? What we see I the media is very sanitized understanding--'green shoots', etc. They're buying time; but I can't believe, given the federal deficit, that there isn't very serious discussion going on about substantial change.

Response: Very sympathetic to Joel Kovel's call to rethink “the growth paradigm,” in a long-term perspective; but would urge us to recognize that the Left has not come to this question with entirely clean hands (a little self-criticism would be nice, in other words).

Not enthusiastic about 'chaos', etc., in lubricating the path towards something more just. We need, in fact, a 'compelling vision', not 'class struggle' [classically bad academic intervention!]

Sylvia Federici

Present crisis as a systemic crisis; not as a crisis of the financial sector, etc., etc.

Joel Kovel

A dimension to the crisis that is so rarely discussed, amongst Leftists – the crisis, broadly-speaking, has a two-fold character: a crisis of accumulation, yes, but also of degradation of the conditions of production.

Perhaps it's because it's so troubling, novel, and requires a reorientation of our notions of value, that it's so difficult to assimilate.

Both are crises of capitalism, which allows us to focus on the problem at-hand.

Furthermore, the means of resolving the overaccumulation crisis is destructive, in ecological terms.

Not talking only about climate change—but species extinction,, for example (50% by the end of the century, if present-trends continue). We have to think beyond the economy; we're slaves of economic logic.

'Exciting' – 10,000 years, and we've come to this—destroying the conditions of our own existence.

Anticipating permanent contraction—what are the terms of your departure from this planet? Towards ecological rationality. Not producing commodities, but ecosystems.

Ecosocialism or barbarism!

Response: Left has duty to chip away at the edifice, and dissolve illusions (Obama, etc.). The ideological ramparts are no longer intact in the way they once were (referencing Copenhagen).

Aaron Benanav

Crisis, ok—but 40 years of the same: precarity, informality, etc. Disturbingly similar conditions confronting working people across the world.

We need to work in order to live – but work is getting harder and harder to find, as society gets richer and richer. Referencing the general law of capital accumulation (1867); the thesis of 'immiseration' as applying to the neoliberal period.

(1) The first decade of the 21^st century demonstrated zero employment growth, involving periodic explosions and resistance.

(2) Proliferation, also, of ecological disasters.

Mike Davis question: In this country, we no longer see the working-class as the agent of social change (as all around them, a sea of superfluous humanity)--so, my question is: what will happen when this dissolution of working-class identity look like amidst this superfluity? What kind of subjective revolt is this going to throw up? And how are we going to adapt? [but if implication is that Marxist thesis requires a majority that is the industrial working-class, or anything like this, it is simply untrue—more than this, it has not panned out this way, in history]

Response: the fallacy of the Statist—Neoliberal--Statist vision; calling for a return to an anti-productivist Communism, what have you. There's not going to be a long stage of a development of heavy industry, what have you [the global South, though?]. Moreover, there's no pretext for the same kind of return (total war, etc.). But we're stuck, more and more, with precarity, informality, etc. We ought to think, also, of the anti-globalization, alter-globalization movement, etc. “Summits of struggle”.

Anna Agathangelou

The compromising of our crevices – control over bodies, etc., etc.