*Well, I'm pretty used to seeing overheated essays of this kind, even from Californian university professors; but I'm sure not used to seeing 'em on Al Jazeera. The Murdoch operation created the Tea Party, but the Al Jazeera apparatus can knock over entire chunks of continents. It's like tiger versus shark.
GLOBAL REBELLION: THE COMING CHAOS?
William L. Robinson
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/20111130121556567265.html
"As the crisis of global capitalism spirals out of control, (((I've been hearing that said for 30 years, but it used to be very much in the "you wish" category))) the powers that be in the global system appear to be adrift and unable to proposal viable solutions. From the slaughter of dozens of young protesters by the army in Egypt to the brutal (((1))) repression of the Occupy movement in the United States, and the water cannons brandished by the militarised police in Chile against students and workers, states and ruling classes are unable are to hold back the tide of worldwide popular rebellion and must resort to ever more generalised repression.
"Simply put, the immense structural inequalities of the global political economy can no longer be contained through consensual mechanisms of social control. The ruling classes have lost legitimacy; we are witnessing a breakdown of ruling-class hegemony on a world scale. (((Unless we're hegemonic Chinese. Indian ruling-class hegemony, not looking real perky this week. As for Italian ruling-class hegemony, the less said the better.)))
"To understand what is happening in this second decade of the new century we need to see the big picture in historic and structural context. (((Yeah, right, sure. Fetches historical structural contextual popcorn))) Global elites had hoped and expected that the "Great Depression" that began with the mortgage crisis and the collapse of the global financial system in 2008 would be a cyclical downturn that could be resolved through state-sponsored bailouts and stimulus packages. But it has become clear that this is a structural crisis. Cyclical crises are on-going episodes in the capitalist system, occurring and about once a decade and usually last 18 months to two years. There were world recessions in the early 1980s, the early 1990s, and the early 21st century.
"Structural crises are deeper; their resolution requires a fundamental restructuring of the system. Earlier world structural crises of the 1890s, the 1930s and the 1970s (((World War One, World War Two and, hey look, we missed a world war, thank you Mr Atom))) were resolved through a reorganisation of the system that produced new models of capitalism. "Resolved" does not mean that the problems faced by a majority of humanity under capitalism were resolved but that the reorganisation of the capitalist system in each case overcame the constraints to a resumption of capital accumulation on a world scale.
"The crisis of the 1890s was resolved in the cores of world capitalism through the export of capital and a new round of imperialist expansion. The Great Depression of the 1930s was resolved through the turn to variants of social democracy in both the North and the South - welfare, populist, or developmentalist capitalism that involved redistribution, the creation of public sectors, and state regulation of the market.
"Globalisation and the current structural crisis
"To understand the current conjuncture we need to go back to the 1970s. (((Aw, can't we go please back to the 1960s? The music, drugs and sex were so much better, etc))) The globalisation stage of world capitalism we are now in itself evolved out the response of distinct agents to these previous episodes of crisis, in particular, to the 1970s crisis of social democracy, or more technically stated, of Fordism-Keynesianism, or of redistributive capitalism. In the wake of that crisis capital went global as a strategy of the emergent Transnational Capitalist Class (((I've met these Three Initial TCC Guys, and, alarmingly, they're no smarter or better-spoken than the professor here))) and its political representatives to reconstitute its class power (((They don't have any "class power." They have heaps of money. Or they used to, before 2008))) by breaking free of nation-state constraints to accumulation. These constraints - the so-called "class compromise" - had been imposed on capital through decades of mass struggles around the world by nationally-contained popular and working classes. During the 1980s and 1990s, however, globally-oriented elites captured state power in most countries around the world and utilised that power to push capitalist globalisation through the neo-liberal model. ((("Globalution," as they used to call that. Boy, those were great days, especially when you were some kind of miserable disadvantaged local hick in the 1990s. That globally-oriented stuff was super. I loved that. Too bad that was all 20 years ago during a Long Boom.)))
"Globalisation and neo-liberal policies opened up vast new opportunities for transnational accumulation in the 1980s and 1990s. (((Like, for instance, you could "transnationally accumulate" some cool Brazilian electronica music. Under conditions of working-class social justice, it oughta be verboten even to look at that alien stuff.))) The revolution in computer and information technology and other technological advances (((why does he call those "advances," given their demonstrably sinister effect on the precarity of the blue-collar masses, one wonders))) helped emergent transnational capital to achieve major gains in productivity and to restructure, "flexibilise," and shed labour worldwide.
"This, in turn, undercut wages (((yep))) and the social wage (((huh?))) and facilitated a transfer of income to capital and to high consumption sectors around the world that provided new market segments fuelling growth. In sum, globalisation made possible a major extensive and intensive expansion of the system and unleashed a frenzied new round of accumulation worldwide that offset the 1970s crisis of declining profits and investment opportunities. (((Well, that analysis sounds pretty tight, until you realize that former Communists under "transition" did exactly the same frenzied thing, only much more so. Narcoterror guys did it; "global guerrillas" did it; the G-8, the BRICs, everybody did it. The cops did it. The Pope did it. Just look how much global travel Popes have been up to since the distant 1970s.)))
"However, the neo-liberal model has also resulted in an unprecedented worldwide social polarisation. (((Yup. Sure did.))) Fierce social and class struggles worldwide were able in the 20th century to impose a measure of social control over capital. (((Well, sorta. Maybe in Sweden.))) Popular classes, to varying degrees, were able to force the system to link what we call social reproduction to capital accumulation (((what "we" call "social reproduction to capital accumulation."))) What has taken place through globalisation is the severing of the logic of accumulation from that of social reproduction, resulting in an unprecedented growth of social inequality and intensified crises of survival for billions of people around the world. (((Okay, So far so good. One wonders what he would say if it wasn't mere "crises of survival for billions," but several billion actually dead people. World War II killed off four percent of mankind. Back then, they didn't even have climate change.)))
"The pauperising effects unleashed by globalisation (((it's nice to hear this bluntly said after all that "rising tide" hokum))) have generated social conflicts and political crises that the system is now finding it more and more difficult to contain. The slogan "we are the 99 per cent" grows out of the reality that global inequalities and pauperisation have intensified enormously since capitalist globalisation took off in the 1980s. Broad swaths of humanity have experienced absolute downward mobility in recent decades. Even the IMF was forced to admit in a 2000 report that "in recent decades, nearly one-fifth of the world’s population has regressed. This is arguably one of the greatest economic failures of the 20th century". (((It's touching when the global mandarins of the IMF are somehow construed as the bad guys and also some ultimate source of credibility.)))
"Global social polarisation intensifies the chronic problem of over-accumulation. This refers to the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, so that the global market is unable to absorb world output and the system stagnates. (((Just can't feed enough champagne to the racehorses.))) Transnational capitalists find it more and more difficult to unload their bloated and expanding mass of surplus - they can’t find outlets to invest their money in order to generate new profits; hence the system enters into recession or worse. (((How about they just make a lot less stuff and charge a lot more for it? How hard could that be to arrange?))) In recent years, the Transnational Capitalist Class has turned to militarised accumulation, to wild financial speculation, and to the raiding of sacking of public finance to sustain profit-making in the face of over-accumulation. (((Look, if they we really a "Class," they'd get together and say, "hey, this wild financial speculation and all this sacking and rapine is ruining our ability to marry off our daughters." Because that's exactly what the Old 400 used to say in Edith Wharton novels. Really, you don't have to read it, you could watch the movie,)))
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106226/
"While transnational capital’s offensive against the global working and popular classes dates back to the crisis of the 1970s (((and you oughta see these brutal mobile-roaming fees and brutal bank transfer charges that I get from the brutal war against transnational capital))) and has grown in intensity ever since, the Great Recession of 2008 was in several respects a major turning point. (((Yep. Sure does. 9/11 was just suicidal Moslem sorcerer voodoo, but this stuff hits the wallet.)))
" In particular, as the crisis spread it generated the conditions for new rounds of brutal (((2))) austerity worldwide, greater flexibilisation of labour, steeply rising under and unemployment, and so on. Transnational finance capital and its political agents utilised the global crisis to impose brutal (((3))) austerity and attempting to dismantle what is left of welfare systems and social states in Europe, North America, and elsewhere, to squeeze more value out of labour, directly through more intensified exploitation and indirectly through state finances. Social and political conflict has escalated around the world in the wake of 2008. (((Indeed it has.)))
"Nonetheless, the system has been unable to recover; it is sinking deeper into chaos. (((That's true, too.))) Global elites cannot manage the explosive contradictions. (((Because they're "elites," if you call them that and make it stick, but these "elites" don't have any smoke-filled "explosive contradiction management room." Where is that supposed to be? Davos? Bilderberg? It's a left-wing phantom, it doesn't exist))) Is the neo-liberal model of capitalism entering a terminal stage? (((Could be. Nothing inherently eternal about neo-liberal models of capitalism.)))
"It is crucial to understand that neo-liberalism is but one model of global capitalism; to say that neo-liberalism may be in terminal crisis is not to say that global capitalism is in terminal crisis. (((I'd be inclined to go ahead and admit the crisis, because, you know, crises do happen, and then something else happens.))) Is it possible that the system will respond to crisis and mass rebellion through a new restructuring that leads to some different model of world capitalism - perhaps a global Keynesianism involving transnational redistribution and transnational regulation of finance capital? (((Bring it on.))) Will rebellious forces from below be co-opted into some new reformed capitalist order? (((The Brasilia Consensus! Neo-Chinese Hegemony, etc)))
"Or are we headed towards a systemic crisis? A systemic crisis is one in which the solution involves the end of the system itself, either through its supersession and the creation of an entirely new system, or more ominously the collapse of the system. (((Well, those collapses happen too; take a stroll around modern Rome and you can see collapses stacked up in layers.))) Whether or not a structural crisis becomes systemic depends on how distinct social and class forces respond (((no it doesn't, not at all – this like claiming that epidemics, earthquakes, asteroids and volcanoes are all about "social and class forces"))) - to the political projects they put forward and as well as to factors of contingency that cannot be predicted in advance (((http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4H1RHqVI58
"This raises in new ways the dangers of a 21st-century fascism and new episodes of genocide to contain the mass of surplus humanity and their real or potential rebellion.
"- There is a disjuncture between a globalising economy and a nation-state based system of political authority. (((Boy, that's for sure. I wouldn't live a week without that healthy disjuncture.))) Transnational state apparatuses are incipient and have not been able to play the role of what social scientists refer to as a "hegemon", or a leading nation-state that has enough power and authority to organise and stabilise the system. Nation-states cannot control the howling gales of a runaway global economy; states face expanding crises of political legitimacy. (((If you're on the side of the "howling gales," then state borders are best described as "speed bumps.")))
"Second, global elites are unable to come up with solutions. (((Because they don't actually exist. The solutions may exist, but the elites don't.))) They appear to be politically bankrupt (((they are))) and impotent to steer the course of events unfolding before them. (((They only read the WSJ, and they only watch Fox News because they think that the Murdoch clan are a source of global stability somehow.))) They have exhibited bickering and division at the G-8, G-20 and other forums, seemingly paralysed, (((LITERALLY paralyzed, come on, imagine yourself a member of this "elite" and contemplating the US Republican presidental candidates))) and certainly unwilling to challenge the power and prerogative of transnational finance capital, the hegemonic fraction of capital on a world scale, and the most rapacious and destabilising fraction. (((Look: WHO, exactly? Gates? Murdoch? Sarkozy? Merkel? Putin? Obama? The Gnomes of Zurich? Who do you think is in charge?))) While national and transnational state apparatuses fail to intervene to impose regulations on global finance capital, (((they couldn't buy a cup of coffee, these "apparatuses"))) they have intervened to impose the costs of the crisis on labour. The budgetary and fiscal crises that supposedly justify spending cuts and austerity are contrived. (((Well, yeah.))) They are a consequence of the unwillingness or inability of states to challenge capital and their disposition to transfer the burden of the crisis to working and popular classes. (((Get over it. There are massive climate-crisis floods in Pakistan right now and it's somehow all about drone strikes.)))
"Third, there will be no quick outcome of the mounting global chaos. (((Short of a nuclear strike, that is.))) We are in for a period of major conflicts and great upheavals. (((Sometimes those can be good things. Cavour certainly thought so, and who knows, I'm writing this in Torino and maybe the guy was right.))) As I mentioned above, one danger is a neo-fascist response to contain the crisis. We are facing a war of capital against all. ((("The evil empire," as the Gipper used to say.)))
"Three sectors of transnational capital in particular stand out as the most aggressive and prone to seek neo-fascist political arrangements to force forward accumulation as this crisis continues: speculative financial capital, (((to the lanterne with the 1%))) the military-industrial-security complex (((our beloved protectors at Guantanamo))), and the extractive and energy sector (((guilty of massive crimes against humanity and nature. These are the kinds of bleak and indefensible enemies you'd wanna have.))) Capital accumulation in the military-industrial-security complex depends on endless conflicts and war, (((not in our name, etc))) including the so-called wars on terrorism and on drugs, ((("Narcoterror," "global guerrillas," "black globalization"))) as well as on the militarisation of social control (((dude, a week doesn't go by.))) Transnational finance capital depends on taking control of state finances and imposing debt and austerity on the masses (((we used to have "masses" before we had the "long tail," but when everybody's broke, who knows, all previous bets are off))), which in turn can only be achieved through escalating repression. And extractive industries depend on new rounds of violent dispossession and environmental degradation around the world. (((They always did, but sometimes that's especially galling.)))
"Fourth, popular forces worldwide have moved quicker than anyone could imagine from the defensive to the offensive. The initiative clearly passed this year, 2011, from the transnational elite to popular forces from below. The juggernaut of capitalist globalisation in the 1980s and 1990s had reverted the correlation of social and class forces worldwide in favour of transnational capital. Although resistance continued around the world, popular forces from below found themselves disoriented and fragmented in those decades, pushed on to the defensive in the heyday of neo-liberalism. Then the events of September 11, 2001, allowed the transnational elite, under the leadership of the US state, to sustain its offensive by militarising world politics and extending systems of repressive social control in the name of "combating terrorism".
"Now all this has changed. The global revolt underway has shifted the whole political landscape and the terms of the discourse. Global elites are confused, reactive, and sinking into the quagmire of their own making. It is noteworthy that those struggling around the world have been shown a strong sense of solidarity and are in communications across whole continents. Just as the Egyptian uprising inspired the US Occupy movement, the latter has been an inspiration for a new round of mass struggle in Egypt. What remains is to extend transnational coordination and move towards transnationally-coordinated programmes. On the other hand, the "empire of global capital" is definitely not a "paper tiger". As global elites regroup and assess the new conjuncture and the threat of mass global revolution, they will - and have already begun to - organise coordinated mass repression, new wars and interventions, and mechanisms and projects of co-optation in their efforts to restore hegemony.
"In my view, the only viable solution to the crisis of global capitalism is a massive redistribution of wealth and power downward towards the poor majority of humanity along the lines of a 21st-century democratic socialism in which humanity is no longer at war with itself and with nature." (((I wonder what the lifespan of a "viable solution" is nowadays. Is it a decade, maybe? Probably not.)))
****
William I. Robinson is a Professor of Sociology, Global Studies, and Latin American Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara. His latest book is Latin America and Global Capitalism.
