politics for the 99%

… an interview with Leo Panitch – Published on red pepper, January 2014.

Globalisation and Imperialism: … //

• … Is it really the case that other states have not also assumed the responsibility for promoting and protecting global capitalism?
• That’s a good question, one that’s not fully resolved. The US is a new type of empire that only rules in conjunction with other states, especially G7 states. It’s not merely an imposition. It requires a lot of institutional coordination and interpenetration. That said, the Germans in particular have been recalcitrant in taking responsibility for ‘failure containment’ in light of financial volatility. Neither has Japan been very forthcoming. By contrast, the relationship between UK and US Treasury is particularly close in playing this failure containment role, although the UK accepts that the US is the senior partner, if for no other reason than it has greater capacity. A senior treasury official in the UK told us, ‘we all play a role but the US is qualitatively different: the UK is expert on 50 countries, whereas the US is on 150, and can go to the IMF to initiate decisions with incredible resources.’
• It is a big challenge for the left to understand the way in which the US is genuinely burdened by the responsibility of sustaining global capitalism. They are exercising their enormous power in a world they do not fully control. The American empire’s primary concern is with the capacities of other capitalist states to police and discipline themselves to the end of sustaining global capitalism, not least because the bureaucrats of US empire are constantly worried about over-stretching their global role. But the idea that Germany, Japan or China have the capacity, the appropriate institutional apparatus, let alone the will, to assume this role so as to displace the Americans from it, is other-worldy.

Many readers of Red Pepper might expect a book on American empire to say more about war, imperialism and the coercive side of making global capitalism, especially in the era of the ‘new imperialism’ since Bush Jr. Why did you not address these aspects of power more in the book? … //

… Crisis and resistance:

• What impact has the financial crisis had on the making of global capitalism?
• We are in for a very long period of capitalist stagnation, maybe like the period of 1873-1896. There is low investment despite the very low interest rates set by the advanced capitalist states because even though credit has resumed to the working classes, this does not by any means solve the problem of effective demand that comes from stagnating and even falling working class incomes, aggravated as this is by fiscal austerity. Although the G20 states of the global south like Brazil and China were encouraged by the G7 states to pick up the slack by expanding further their own domestic markets, they can’t do enough to offset the ways in which they have been primarily integrated into an export-oriented global capitalism.
• Given the likelihood of long-term stagnation, we can expect to see more nationalist and xenophobic sentiments, more calls for ‘gated capitalism’, but at the same time we have to be very careful not to frighten ourselves into immediately opting for a popular front strategy in response to this. If in fact globalisation is going to be reversed by the far right, then the left would have to fall back on such a strategy, where we minimise our political differences with all those who reject an extreme nationalism. But I do not think we are at such a reactionary moment, and in fact you still see a lot of public sympathy towards the plights of migrants, for example.
• The late Peter Gowan used to remind me that a break from globalisation might not come from the left but from the right, and this might one day especially come from Germany. The big question is whether there is a national bourgeoisie which has elements in it that are so powerfully oriented towards closing borders and not accumulating outside of their own borders. There are not many bourgeoisie like that left.
• It is much more likely in the current conjuncture that such a break could be initiated by the Greek left. The Americans are worried the Germans are aggravating the likelihood of this, and there is a fear that this could open the way to a wave of more and more radical capital controls.

What lessons, if any, can be derived from the book about the potential for un-making of global capitalism? … //

… (full interview text).

(Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin’s book The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire is published by Verso and has been awarded the prestigious Deutscher memorial prize. Peter Newell and Sam Knafo are based in the Centre for Global Political Economy in the department of International Relations at the University of Sussex).

Links:

Gates unmasks the real face of Davos: The global elites meeting at the World Economic Forum must not get away with pretending they have the interests of the world’s majority at heart says Nick Dearden, on red pepper.org, by Nick Dearden, director of the World Development Movement, January 2014;

Cameron’s government sided with the speculators – and lost, on Our Kingdom, by Nick Deardon, Jan 17, 2014;

Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin GEAB, no 81 /January 16, 2014;

National debt of the United States on en.wikipedia: The United States public debt is the amount owed by the federal government of the United States. The measure of the public debt is the value of the Treasury securities that have been issued by the Treasury and other federal government agencies[which?] and which are outstanding at that point of time …;   article with /foreign holdings; /interest Paid; /See also; /External Links;

Video on Socialist Ptoject.ca, by Stefan Kipfer and Parastou Saberi, For GTWA, GMM, January 2014? Can We Afford FORD More Years? 24.25 min, on Socialist Project, January 30, 2014 (also on YouTube, uploaded by LeftStreamed); See also this PDF: Stefan Kipfer’s Presentation: Making Sense of Ford?