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> > > > If Harvey is right, that capital never solves its crisis tendencies, > it merely moves them around,/ /then where in this recurrent cycle do > we effectively intervene to exhaust this threadbare pattern? I don't > see that anyone has found the answer, but that's surely the question. > Will it be in a time not of conjunctural but rather of structural > limits, where the alternatives no longer deceive or meet minimum > requirements for legitimation, when limits can no longer be turned > into barriers to be overcome? > I (and everyone else on the list) have been thinking about this. it seems to me that what is happening is a general degrading of people's morale. For example Harvey mentioned that Australia was "prospering". Well it certainly doesn't feel like it to the people. The recent election showed that my home state Qld is generally resentful and pissed off. granted that it is true that a lot of that negative feeling is directing safely into fears and hatreds of the boat people or refugees. But Labour copped a hiding at the polls largely because they were in office. What is happening of course is that the Reserve bank carefully keeps unemployment high and thus the "animal spirits" of the working class firmly in check. After all the workers are not suppposed to have animal spirits. Above all the ruling class and their avatars will move heaven and earth to maintain labour discipline and prevent a return to the wonderful ill-discipline of the 60s. If we look at Harvey's formula of Wage Repression - Depressed Demand -Debt- Financial Crisis- Fiscal Crisis- Austerity & attack on Social Wage we can see that the only time in the cycle the workers could feel well was when they were spending money they did not have- the Piling up of Debt interlude. We are now entering into the austerity phase. Everyone, including the working class, knows their role here. There is naturally grumbling from those who are about to get shafted. I put the election of Red Ed down to the union bureaucracy trying to signal their discontent and need to be involved in the process of shafting the workers. Nothing more than that. The big question is what will the workers do? No one knows the answer. The workers, I repeat understand they are supposed to tighten their belts and "Work for Britain" or the equivalent. None of this however is an exact science and a miscalculation like Thatcher's Poll tax could transform the workers' stoicism into anger and set them off on a spiral of resistance which if it involves other social layers such as students could lead to a number of decisive confrontations. However i am not overly optimistic about Britain. I am still looking towards Greece and the Arab world especially Egypt for a meaningful rupture with the common sense that is being spread by the Murdoch and other media. One thing however remains certain; when the break comes we, all of us, will be surprised. comradely Gary ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
