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Showing posts with the label deregulation
End of the Neoliberal Era? I have selected some key points in an article by David Kotz. [I]f accumulation and profit rates have not been stellar, in some respects neoliberalism was much better for capital than the previous economic regime, in directing a far greater flow of wealth to the capitalist class. By  2010, neoliberalism had returned in the guise of austerity policy. The misery and insecurity of the Great Recession helped to fuel unexpected political developments— a rise of right-wing nationalism and renewed support for some kind of ‘democratic socialism’.  The current structural crisis has taken the form of stubborn stagnation despite unprecedented monetary stimulus, with slow economic growth, a low rate of capital accumulation, stagnating real wages and worsening economic insecurity for working people— conditions that have helped to produce new political polarizations. The main features of post-war [WWII] capitalism in the advanced economies are well known. The sta
An admission that this one of the inherent aspects of capitalism In Tooze’s view,  “These crises are hard to predict or define in advance,”  and, short of more regulation, there is nothing we can do. In a way, as long as capitalism continues as the dominant mode of production globally, that is pretty much right.  That reminds me of what Greenspan said in his final summation of the crisis: “ I doubt that stability is achievable in capitalist economies, given the always turbulent competitive markets continuously being drawn toward but never quite achieving  equilibrium” . He went on,  “unless there is a societal choice to abandon dynamic markets and leverage for some form of central planning, I fear that preventing bubbles will in the end turn out to be infeasible. Assuaging the aftermath is all we can hope for.” Crashed: more the how than the why
Because of depression Mark Fisher took his life last year. A friend of mine sought counselling. She told me they had never asked her about work and her working conditions. I have recently heard that a colleague of mine is away because of stress. Personally, I narrowly escaped depression 18 months ago. Here is the context: "The ‘rigidity’ of the Fordist production line gave way to a new ‘flexibility’, a word that will send chills of recognition down the spine of every worker today. This flexibility was defined by a deregulation of Capital and labor, with the workforce being casualized (with an increasing number of workers employed on a temporary basis), and outsourced. Like Sennett, Marazzi recognizes that the new conditions both required and emerged from an increased cybernetization of the working environment. The Fordist factory was crudely divided into blue and white collar work, with the different types of labor physically delimited by the structure of the building it