Tag: Business

Review of Value and Crisis by Alfredo Saad-Filho

Link to a review by Fabian Van Onzen of the book Value and Crisis: Essays on Labour, Money and Contemporary Capitalism (2019) by Alfredo Saad-Filho:

Review of Value and Crisis

 

Bonus links: Review of Making Money and “How Decades of Neoliberalism Led to the Era of Right-Wing Populism” (this article reviews another book on the same topic but is rather questionably historicist, though it is absolutely correct to note that “all policies — whether statist or neoliberal — are normative”) and “When Socialist Hungary Went Neoliberal” (“neoliberalism represents a class project, aiming not so much to ‘restore’ the power of economic elites . . . but instead to re-establish the conditions for capital accumulation following the global crisis of capital accumulation (1968-75).  . . . as neoliberalism gradually gained traction amongst ruling classes across the world it has come to represent the current phase of global capitalism. In this regard, neoliberalism is, among others, characterized by a structural reorientation of the state towards export-oriented, financialized capital, open-ended commitments to market-like governance systems, privatization and corporate expansion, a deep aversion to social collectives and the progressive redistribution of wealth on the part of ruling classes, etc.”) (note that this interviewee makes much-contested if not outright dubious claims about “Soviet-style state capitalism” and “the Stalinist myth that the Soviet bloc regimes were somehow ‘post-capitalist’ societies”, that is, he calls the former USSR “state capitalist” rather than communist/socialist)

Intan Suwandi – Outsourcing Exploitation

Link to an article by Intan Suwandi:

“Outsourcing Exploitation: Global Labor-Value Chains”

The key seems to be that, at a minimum, contracting with outsourced suppliers on terms that are (objectively) unreasonable should force the large contracting party to bear responsibility for foreseeable problems — much like old fraudulent conveyance laws.  Suwandi’s article nails the problem, though this article provides only a cursory explanation of why Global South suppliers would agree to such an arrangement, something that others have explained more fully:   Slavoj Žižek Quote About Domination, “Multiculturalism, or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism”, Ruy Mauro Marini‘s “Brazilian ‘Interdependence’ and Imperialist Integration” (“sub-imperialism” involves peripheral economies collaborating actively with the imperialist expansion of core economies like the United States, assuming in that expansion the position of a key nation), “Malcolm Describes the Difference Between the ‘House Negro’ and the ‘Field Negro.’”.  See also The Fissured Workplace

Dick Bryan & Mike Rafferty – How Finance Exploits Us

Link to an interview with Dick Bryan & Mike Rafferty, conducted by Llewellyn Williams-Brooks:

“How Finance Exploits Us”

 

(Note: the first part of the interview is non-substantive background information about publishing this theory in book form, and the substantive discussion of the theory is toward the end).

See also: Michael Hudson, especially “From Marx to Goldman Sachs: The Fictions of Fictitious Capital”, and “We Have Nothing to Lose but Our Debts”, and The Debt Collective

Geoffrey Dutton – Talking Trash

Link to an article by Geoffrey Dutton:

“Talking Trash: Recycling Inches Up, But Problems Remain”

 

Curiously absent from this otherwise excellent discussion of the present-day facts about recycling practices in the USA is why municipalities are expected to submit to a “market” rather than intervening directly in it or circumventing/modifying it (as governments often do).  Why shouldn’t municipalities create their own recycling entities and manufacturing facilities to bypass markets, or engage in more far-reaching bans (like banning all materials that are not provably and practically recyclable)?  The article simply tacitly accepts that municipal governments should look to private businesses and markets in significant ways, or simply treat private profitability as the uncrossable horizon of municipal politics, as if this is self-evident, which is precisely the goal of all political propaganda—“to annihilate an unnoticed possibility of the situation“.

Bonus links: “Recycling Crisis is Capitalist Business as Usual” and “It’s Time to Break Up Capitalism’s Love Affair With Plastic” and “Humanity Is Drowning in Plastic”

Lance Olsen – Why All the Uproar Over the Green New Deal?

Link to an article by Lance Olsen:

“Why All the Uproar Over the Green New Deal?”

 

Bonus links: “Will A Green New Deal Save the Climate, or Save Capitalism?” and “A Class Struggle Strategy for A Green New Deal” and “The Green New Deal, Capitalism and the State” and “A Green New Deal for Agriculture” and “This Historical Moment Demands Transformation of Our Institutions. The Green New Deal Won’t Do That.” (the Stan Cox quote is willfully obtuse — R. Buckminster Fuller? — but otherwise the article is good) and “How Green is the ‘Green New Deal’?” and “Modern Money Green Economics for a New Era” and “Communism, Fascism and Green Shaming” and “Politics, Democracy and Environmental Rebellion” (“Calls for a stripped down Green New Deal, one that forgoes a robust Job Guarantee, is a ploy to engineer a capital strike where millions of workers will be tossed out of their jobs to ‘prove’ that the economy requires environmental destruction and militarism.”) and “Planning the Green Tech Revolution” and “The Realism and Unrealism of the Green New Deals” and “Bernie’s Green New Deal Is for the Working Class” and The State and Revolution