1. Rethinking crisis

Monthly Review

Volumn 54, Issue 6, 2002, Pages 34-46

  Gindin, Sam ^a   Panitch, Leo ^b  

^a YORK UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

^b NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0040620481     PISSN: 00270520     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.14452/MR-054-06-2002-10_4     Document Type: Article

References (16)

1. Economic Report to the President, 2002, Table B-31.
2. Angus Maddison, The World Economy, A Millennial Perspective (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2001), p. 264. The numbers in Table 1 (p. 3) of the Monthly Review article consider medians as opposed to weighted averages (China gets the same weight as Ghana). This is useful in capturing the uneven development of global capitalism, but very misleading with regards to global growth and global opportunities for capital.
3. Productivity growth outside of manufacturing was generally slower and it also carried a larger weight during this period. To some extent the numbers outside of manufacturing are simply hard to assess given the well-know problems in determining productivity in the service sector (and generalizations need to be treated cautiously given the diversity of this "sector"). But from capital's perspective, the growth of the service sector - including its lower productivity sections - represented new opportunities for accumulation, accessing labor, and for the consequent restructuring of services.
4. The modern history of capitalism includes, by general consensus, three major crises: one in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the Great Depression, and the crisis that began in the late sixties or early seventies.
5. If the argument is that Americans are consuming but there is excess capacity in the United States because they are consuming goods made by others - i.e., that the United States is uncompetitive - that is quite a different argument (but one that has its own kinds of problems).
6. Economic Report to the President, 2002, Table B-31.
7. Similar to the point made in the earlier discussion on work time, the mechanism through which consumption is maintained matters very much to working class politics. When debt is public, it finances public goods like education and health care, supports a degree of decommodification of labor (e.g., unemployment insurance), and invites political mobilization to defend or expand such gains. When debt is privatized-when governments collect less taxes and provide less services - the burden is shifted to individuals who, in self-defense tend to look to private solutions like lower taxes both because the services aren't as generous and because they need more disposable income to pay off their growing debts.
8. See Business Week, "Economic Trends" June 8, 2002.
9. Economist, August 24, 2002, p. 55.
10. Ironically, the greatest danger of the world slipping into a double-dip recession currently come not so much from the weakness of the American economy as it does from the weakness of Germany and Japan.
11. We won't elaborate on this here, because we have each often made this point before. See Leo Panitch, Working Class Politics in Crisis (London: Verso, 1986), esp. ch 3; and Sam Gindin, "Turning Points and Starting Points: Brenner, Left Turbulence and Class Politics," The Socialist Register 2001, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000).
12. We won't elaborate on this here, because we have each often made this point before. See Leo Panitch, Working Class Politics in Crisis (London: Verso, 1986), esp. ch 3; and Sam Gindin, "Turning Points and Starting Points: Brenner, Left Turbulence and Class Politics," The Socialist Register 2001, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000).
13. See Leo Panitch, "The New Imperialism," New Left Review 2, March/April, 2000; and Sam Gindin, "Social Justice and Globalization," Monthly Review, June 2002.
14. See Leo Panitch, "The New Imperialism," New Left Review 2, March/April, 2000; and Sam Gindin, "Social Justice and Globalization," Monthly Review, June 2002.
15. See Peter Gowan, "The American Campaign for Global Sovereignty," The Socialist Register 2003, forthcoming, fall 2002. This tension in the relationship between the role of the American state acting on behalf of global capital as well as on behalf of American capital has aggravated relations with Europe. This should not be seen as leading to any serious inter-imperialist rivalry - Europe's demands, for all the rhetoric, are not about any fundamental challenge to the American state but basically pleas that the United States in fact act responsibly on behalf of all of global capital. Nevertheless, the tensions created between American and European governments do create openings for resistance to American imperialism (as evidenced in the large demonstrations in Europe around not only globalization but the Middle East and a possible invasion of Iraq).
16. Samir Amin, "Africa: Living on the Fringe," Monthly Review, March 2002.