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“Peak Oil” and “Resource Curses” from a Class Perspective
George Caffentzis
[From a presentation at the Historical Materialism Conference, CUNY Grad Center, New York, NY, Jan. 14-16, 2010.]
The intention of these notes is simple: to strip both the peak oil hypothesis of its apocalyptic pathos and the “resource curse” conjecture of its apologetic halo and examine them in the light of historical materialist categories. This translation from the realms of apocalypse and apology to a class analysis is a modest but, I believe, necessary step in fashioning an anti-capitalist energy politics.
I do this not because I am an adherent of what I call the “peak oil complex,” or of the “resource curse” hypothesis, but because they have become major features of contemporary energy politics, and in order to enter into the discussion, one must recognize the milestones along the way.
Emancipation under Conditions that the Left Didn’t Want:
Generalized Resource Shortages as a Historical Crisis of the Social
Andreas Exner, Christian Lauk & Konstantin Kulterer
“If there is a lack of appropriate analysis of environmental processes and societal relations to nature because they don’t fit into the wishful thinking of ‘eternal capitalism,’ dangerous ways of ideologically processing the crisis can gain momentum.”
Rising prices for food are increasing hunger, a global recession is waiting in the wings, and at the same time, energy is getting more and more expensive. Within only a few years, the terrain has changed dramatically for left movements. Nonetheless, many people are still holding on to well-known formulas. Unfortunately, they don’t fit the new circumstances.
"Government Cuts: As Stupid As They Seem?"
Hillel Ticktin
[There are a surprising lack of convincing explanations as to why the capitalist class is pushing through the present unprecedented austerity drive - even at the risk of provoking both mass opposition and a double-dip recession. The following excerpts, from Hillel Ticktin's recent articles in Critique, do offer an interesting partial explanation.]
It remains very unclear why a section of the ruling class is going for these cuts. It is one thing to reduce government spending and raise taxes during an upturn, as Canada did in the 1990s, and quite another to do so today. The large scale unemployment consequent on such reductions in the public sector is being matched with substantial salary reductions. As there are often disproportionate numbers of female employees in the sectors being proposed for downsizing, the measures will bear heavily on women and families. There are suggestions that the poorest will be protected, but this is a fig leaf to provide a semblance of humanity. The poorest may be protected but most people are by definition not in that category, but are nonetheless scraping by, with incomes a fraction of the so-called upper middle class. Whatever their present views, they will be jolted into opposition to the government and ultimately to the system.
The Debt-Based Tendency of Japan’s Student Movement:
The View of the Association of Blacklisted Students
Norihito Nakata
Following the financial crisis of the fall of 2008, struggles in universities erupted across the world. Beginning from the Greek Insurrection, universities in Italy, Spain, England, and France witnessed student uprisings. In North America, the New School University in New York and the UCs in California were shaken by occupations. Having had its ups and downs, the impetus of students’ struggles goes on or is even intensified in places in Europe, as we have just heard about the Milbank occupation.
In retrospect, what the financial crisis provoked was nothing but a reinforcement of the exploitative regime of cognitive capitalism, in the costume of a fake Keynsianism called the Green New Deal. During the past forty years, capitalism has been trying to dodge the material limitation of growth and the tendency of the interest rate to fall by way of capturing our immaterial activities and transforming them into commodities. Calling out “There is no money to clean up your mess”; “let capitalism die,” students and teachers have continued their struggles, precisely because they intuited this course of events from the onset. Having functioned as an authorized basis for cognitive and affective productions, universities are now the lifeline of capitalism that it cannot let loose.
This essay is the contribution of the Association of Blacklisted Students (hereafter ABS), a Japan-based new student movement, to the discussion of “a global campaign for a debt abolition movement” and to promote “a global day of action,” launched by Edu-factory. We would like to share the history, problems, and aspirations of the student movement in Japan, now facing a new phase with the broad crisis surrounding student loans, with the participants and readers of the Edu-factory project, and get as much feedback as possible, to empower our movement and to be an active part of the global impetus to abolish capitalism and the state that in amalgamation are growing into an unprecedentedly menacing apparatus.
Does the Notion of Activist Art Still Have Meaning?
Alain Badiou
[Is it still possible to propose a general definition of a militant vision of artistic creation? Alain Badiou proposes a work of art which is in relationship to local transformations and experiences, which is intellectually ambitious and which is formally avant-garde in the classical sense of the substitution of presentation for an ornamental vision of representation. A Lecture presented at the Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York City, October 13, 2010, in collaboration with Lacanian Ink.]
My question this evening will be: Is it still possible to propose a general definition of a militant vision of artistic creation? The first and simple possibility is to say that a militant vision of artistic creation is when an art – a work of art – is a part of something which is not reducible to an artistic determination; for example, stained glass windows in churches. Stained glass is a symbol of the light of God and it is also part of artistic creation. Greek temples are also something for a collective cult. Military music is something inside the creation of patriotic courage. Egyptian pyramids are works of art certainly but also the whole symbolic question of the temple, and so on.
Protesting Degree Zero:
On Black Bloc Tactics, Culture and Building the Movement
Marc James Léger
[The following considers the use of Black Bloc tactics at anti-capitalist demonstrations with a particular focus on the Toronto 2010 protest marches. My conclusion is that the calculated use of violence, usually the smashing of windows of retail chain stores, can best be understood through an aesthetic appreciation of political action – politics interpreted through the lens of culture. I relate Black Bloc tactics to three works of contemporary art that examine contemporary conflicts in terms of training and role-playing. While anarchist politics typically refuse the logic of representation, mediation could be said to return in the symbolic performance of conflict. The fact that capital feeds on subjective violence, and the fact that systemic violence cannot be attributed to individuals, as Žižek argues, allows us to perceive both the merits of anarchist practice and some of its theoretical limitations.]
Bowles-Simpson: The Unequal Marriage of Reaganomics and Rubinomics
People's Pension
Eric Laursen
The Bowles-Simpson plan isn't a fair and equitable way to reduce the long-term federal deficit, whatever its co-authors might claim. In fact, it's the biggest proposed experiment in supply-side economics since early Reagan.
Long story short: The proposal put on the table last week by the co-chairs of the president's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is essentially a wedding of Rubinomics and Reaganomics. As such, it's what we might get if Bill Clinton and the late Ronald Reagan were locked in a room together and required to cut the long-term budget deficit – without any regard for the impact of their handiwork on low- and middle-income people.
You've probably guessed which partner has the upper hand in this deal. And we'll explore that in a moment. But first, some background.
Bank of America Is in Deep Trouble, and There May Be Financial Disaster on the Horizon
Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Will Bank of America be the first Wall Street giant to once again point a gun to its own head, telling us it'll crash and burn and take down the financial system if we don’t pony up for another massive bailout?
When former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was handing out trillions to Wall Street, BofA collected $45 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to stabilize its balance sheet. It was spun as a success story -- a rebuke of those who urged the banks be put into receivership -- when the behemoth “paid back” the cash last December. But the bank’s stock price has fallen by more than 40 percent since mid-April, and the value of its outstanding stock is currently at around half of what it should be based on its “book value” -- what the company says its holdings are worth.
“The problem for anyone trying to analyze Bank of America’s $2.3 trillion balance sheet,” wrote Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Weil, “is that it’s largely impenetrable.” Nobody really knows the true values of the assets these companies are holding, which has been the case ever since the collapse. But according to Weil, some of BofA’s financial statements “are so delusional that they invite laughter.”
Capitalist Instability and the Current Crisis
Hillel Ticktin
[The article considers whether there are limits to capitalist strategies for survival. It argues that the present downturn represents a crisis in the capitalist system itself, in that the mediating forms by which it could maintain control and grow have reached their limits. As there is no working class opposition or any socialist opposition worth the name, capitalism is not in danger of overthrow, but low growth or stagnation and disintegration are possibilities. In brief, the article argues that capitalism has used imperialism, war, and the welfare state as successful mediations in the contradictions of capitalism. However, Stalinism played the crucial role through the Cold War, controlling the left, ruining Marxism and providing the basis for an anti-communist ideology. In the last period, finance capital played a particular role of control which, in the end, became cannibalistic in that it was using and devouring itself. With the end Stalinism and of the Cold War, the implosion of finance capital, the failure of the present wars and the limited welfare state, there is one alternative—to go for growth and reflate, as in the immediate post-war period. However, capital would find that too dangerous, as it risks a repeat of the militancy of the 1960s and 1970s.]
Capitalism has used imperialism, war and the welfare state as successful mediations in the contradictions of capitalism. However, Stalinism controlled the left, ruining Marxism and providing the basis for an anti-communist ideology. In the last period, finance capital played a particular role of control which, in the end, became cannibalistic in that it was using and devouring itself. With the end Stalinism and of the Cold War, the implosion of finance capital, the failure of the present wars and the limited welfare state, there is one alternative—to go for growth and reflate. However, capital would find that too dangerous, as it risks a repeat of the militancy of the 1960s and 1970s.
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