Economics After Capitalism: A Guide to the Ruins and a Road to the Future - Softcover

Wall, Derek

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745335071 ISBN 13: 9780745335070

Verlag: Pluto Press, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

‘There is no alternative’ has been the unofficial mantra of the neoliberal order since its utterance by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. As Derek Wall argues in Economics After Capitalism, there is in fact an alternative to our crisis-ridden, austerity-inflicted world - and not just one alternative, but many. Challenging the arguments for markets, mainstream economics and capitalism from Adam Smith onwards, Economics After Capitalism provides a step-by-step guide to various writers, movements and schools of thought, critical of neoliberal globalisation. These range from Keynesian-inspired reformists such as Geroge Soros and Joseph Stiglitz, critics of inequality like Thomas Piketty and Amaitya Sen, to more radical voices including Naomi Klein, Marxists such as David Harvey, anarchists, and autonomists including Toni Negri and Michael Hardt. By providing a clear and accessible guide to the economics of anti-capitalism, Derek Wall successfully demonstrates that an open source eco-socialist alternative to rampant climate change, elite rule and financial chaos is not just necessary, but possible.

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Derek Wall is the author of numerous books including Elinor Ostrom's Rules for Radicals (Pluto, 2017), Economics After Capitalism (Pluto, 2015), The Rise of the Green Left (Pluto, 2010) and The Sustainable Economics of Elinor Ostrom (Routledge, 2014). He teaches Political Economy at Goldsmiths College, University of London and was International Co-ordinator of the Green Party of England and Wales.

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Economics After Capitalism

A Guide to the Ruins and a Road to the Future

By Derek Wall

Pluto Press

Copyright © 2015 Derek Wall
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7453-3507-0

Contents

Foreword to the New Edition by David Bollier, x, 
Foreword to the First Edition by Nandor Tanczos, xv, 
Acknowledgements, xviii, 
1 Warm Conspiracies and Cold Concepts, 1, 
2 Vaccinating against Anti-capitalism: Stiglitz, Soros and Friends, 18, 
3 White Collar Global Crime Syndicate: Korten, Klein and Other Anti-corporatists, 36, 
4 Small is Beautiful: Green Economics, 50, 
5 Planet Earth Money Martyred: Social Credit, Positive Money and Monetary Reform, 62, 
6 Imperialism Unlimited: Marxisms, 76, 
7 The Tribe of Moles: Autonomism, Anarchism and Empire, 93, 
8 Ecosocialist Alternatives: Marx's Ecology, 116, 
9 Women of the World Unite: Feminist Economics, 129, 
10 Life After Capitalism: Alternatives, Structures, Strategies, 141, 
Bibliography, 153, 
Index, 163, 

CHAPTER 1

WARM CONSPIRACIES AND COLD CONCEPTS

The capitalist epoch will come to be seen as one in which we relied on incredibly crude economic mechanisms called 'markets'. Markets are like machines for coordinating and relaying information, but they are only effective in relaying limited kinds of information in very circuitous ways. Markets are often thought to be highly efficient, but in the future they will be seen as highly inefficient and costly. Markets not only fail to take account of social and environmental costs, but they also generate instability, insecurity, inequality, antisocial egotism, frenetic lifestyles, cultural impoverishment, beggar-thy-neighbour greed and oppression of difference. (Albritton 1999: 180)

Frank Knight is often described as the founder of the Chicago School. The economics department at the University of Chicago, famous for Milton Friedman and other neo-liberal economists, inspired Mrs Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and other right-wing politicians. It could be said that their neo-liberalism, which promotes capitalism above all else, has transformed the world and now dominates our planet. Democrats from Obama to Clinton, and Labour leaders from Bob Hawke to Tony Blair, accepted many of the Chicago School's key assumptions and the 'Washington consensus' of deregulation, privatisation, tax cuts (at least for corporations), slashed welfare, and reduced trade union rights, based on Chicago School economic sentiments, remain almost universal today.

However, in 1932, on the evening before the US presidential election of that year, Frank Knight did something very odd indeed. He gave a lecture entitled 'The Case for Communism: From the Standpoint of an Ex-liberal', and opened it by suggesting 'those who want a change and wish to vote intelligently should vote Communist' (Burgin 2009: 517). For most of his career, Knight was a committed free marketer, who was known for converting socialists like James Buchanan into fervent advocates of capitalism. Milton Friedman referred to him as 'our great and revered teacher' (Nelson 2001: 119). Knight was a richly paradoxical character; no simple free marketeer, he believed in capitalism but was aware of its innate contradictions. He argued that luck and inheritance, as well as hard work, determine how well we do. He saw capitalism as leading to increasing inequality and tending towards crisis, and was also sceptical of ideas of economic rationality (Burgin 2009). In the 1930s, capitalism was in crisis, a severe economic depression occurred and even the likes of Frank Knight, in his case both dramatically and briefly, were looking for alternatives.

In 2015, the world economy is growing but capitalism has been tarnished. In 2008, a financial crisis, caused by deregulation of banking in line with neo-liberal principles, led to a world recession. Neo-liberalism has led to increased inequality in the US and UK. To keep us spending, despite slower wage growth, there was a massive expansion of personal credit. Capitalism, after all, has many contradictions, but one of the most significant is the wage relationship. If wages rise, firms face greater costs and less profit, neo-liberalism has made it easier for companies to reduce wages by cutting trade union power and relocating to low wage economies. If wages fall, firms face more difficulty in finding consumers (who after all generally have to work to afford to buy products), and see profits decrease. There is, of course, no single unique contradiction; the geographer David Harvey (2014) has identified 17, and his list may not be exhaustive. The contradiction between wages, costs and consumption, means increased credit becomes vital as a way of allowing consumers to borrow to spend despite stagnant wages. Virtually fraudulent 'subprime' mortgages were sold to poor householders, most notoriously in Florida. Subprime is jargon, meaning mortgages for people who can't afford them. The mortgages started with ultra-low teaser interest rates which then rapidly increased. You don't have to be a genius to see that this would end in tears. Mortgage debt, as Michael Lewis in his beautifully written book, The Big Short (2010), was re-packaged and sold on, so that banks in Britain, such as Northern Rock, ended up with toxic debt from the US. Banks and other financial institutions descended into crisis, governments stepped in to bail them out, markets took fright, economic growth became negative and millions of us lost homes, jobs and incomes. The inequalities of capitalism contributed to the crisis, the mantra of deregulation meant that risks were allowed to build up and calls for an end to neo-liberalism grew loud. This book is about alternatives to neoliberalism, and argues that capitalism is merely one way of running the economy, that capitalism doesn't work and that alternatives are possible.

In writing this book I am, in a sense, taking the Frank Knight wager. Knight argued that capitalism was flawed but ultimately, despite his socialist origins and his 1932 episode of communist advocacy, he felt that there was no alternative. I enjoy reading Knight immensely; along with the free market feminist economists Deirdre McCloskey, he is an example of an intelligent advocate of capitalism, aware of its problems and committed to a society that works not simply for the rich and powerful, but for all of us. How can we create practical alternatives to capitalism that work to put food on the table, providing long-term material well-being not only for a minority but a whole planet?

Commentators predicted a new economics, and in 2009 Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for economics, delivered a lecture boldly entitled 'Beyond Markets and States'; however, the orthodoxy retained its power (Wall 2014). The journalist Richard Seymour, in Against Austerity (2014), argued that the neo-liberals retained a virtual monopoly on economics, there were few clearly articulated alternatives and the rich and powerful worked to turn a crisis into an opportunity. He noted that the growth of government debt was used to justify more cuts in public spending, and in countries like Britain ever more deeply market-based policies are justified as a source of growth.

The future looks both clear and bleak. The economic system we have at present cannot cope with climate change, cannot reduce inequality, and it attempts to overcome its contradictions by insisting upon more of the same. The left, strong in Frank Knight's day, seems weaker than ever. Greater inequality and reduced standards of workers'...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Pluto Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0745335071
• ISBN 13: 9780745335070
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 192
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland