> From: "Gorojovsky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 20:14:04 -0300
> Many of the features that "neo"-liberalism is displaying in the First World now
> have been repeatedly tested in the dependent countries before.
Yes, the Third World has taken the greatest burden of
shifting/stalling the devalorisation associated with the global
crisis. But Nestor, you'd also agree, wouldn't you, that any yankee
paying attention to neoliberalism would have had her/his
consciousness raised by the late 1970s onset of sustained
deindustrialisation, the early 1980s farm crisis, the mid-1980s
energy-sector crisis, the late 1980s savings&loan crisis, the early
1990s property market and junk-bond crises, and the other periodic
crashes of financial markets. Each had features associated with
"deregulation" and each reflected the intrinsic crisis tendencies of
particular markets. But because they were dealt with as particular
instances (not as elements of the general crisis), the broad
consensus was to "reregulate" just slightly, in the wake of painful
shakeouts, and in some cases to consolidate for yet another round of
deregulation. Hucksters of the economic profession found ways to say
the crisis apparently associated with deregulation was a crisis of
INSUFFICIENT deregulation (you hear them on California power now),
while other hucksters of modified neoliberalism (like Joe Stiglitz)
decided to explain the market "imperfections" as being associated
with "asymmetric information" and "uncompetitive markets" instead of
the deep-seated tendencies of rising organic composition of capital
and overaccumulation (albeit unevenly developed) -- and even class
struggle, occasionally, too.
(I'm continuing this rap because on another list, Comrade Jones was
hinting -- no, accusing -- that I've got no sense of broader crisis
theory. But what is needed is a set of intermediate concepts to
translate all these deeper, and theoretically-comprehensible, "laws
of motion" of capitalism into the sites of immediate crisis-symptoms.
My doctoral supervisor David Harvey uses the idea of
a "spatio-temporal fix"--or in english, shifting and stalling
the crisis--which I find useful. Or are such intermediate concepts,
to link people's observations of crisis to a critique of capitalism,
not so crucial in B.A. or London, Nestor and Mark? Just curious
on how you tell a broader story...)
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