Left and Right in the Economic Crisis (Journal of Political Ideologies, 2013) (original) (raw)
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Political Responses to the Economic Crisis: Is it Different this Time?
Swiss Political Science Review, 2012
Responding to the financial and economic crisis that began in 2007-2008commonly called the Great Recessionhas been a challenging and pressing problem for many governments, but in particular, for the advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe. These countries have experienced their most severe economic downturn since the 1930s. In this issue of the SPSR, we asked a set of prominent scholars to discuss and revisit several of the key existing results and expectations in comparative political economy in light of the events observed so far. While it is still too early to come up with a full understanding of the political dynamics in motion, this set of contributions provides a series of interesting observations and results that should stimulate further debate and research. In the remainder of this introduction, we both announce things to come and put them into context.
Studies in Political Economy, No. 91, Spring 2013, pp. 87-114, 2013
In 2013, the world is entering the sixth year of the global crisis. In those six years, sparked by the unfolding events, there has developed a burgeoning literature regarding the origins, conjunctures and regional manifestations of the crisis. In many ways, this debate evolved from long-term disputes regarding the nature of the current phase of capitalism and its periodization (monopoly-finance capitalism, post-Fordism, finance driven accumulation regime, financial-market capitalism, neoliberalism, high-tech capitalism etc.) and has brought to light the epistemological and political differences between the various approaches. However, as Magnus Ryner (2012) has pointed out, with a few notable exceptions, the debate has shed insufficient light on the political articulation of the crisis and the interrelations between the political and the economic sphere. With regard to not only the origins of the crisis but also and particularly the viability of exit strategies from it, the struggles over hegemony occurring during the crisis are essential. Hence, complementing the Marxist and Marxian crisis debate, it is the goal of this paper to shed some light on the political articulations of the global crisis and assess the interrelations between global leadership efforts seeking exit strategies from the crisis and the hegemonic struggles underlying their agencies. While in looking at the struggle between left and right projects of leadership references will be made to numerous core and non-core capitalist countries, the main focus will be on the two dominant actors in NAFTA and the EU, the United States and Germany, which have shaped the politics of exit strategies from the crisis in North America and the Eurozone.
Resistance, via James Scott and the moral economy school, has established itself as a central notion in political anthropology for decades now, while crisis, as a core subject of historical investigation, has been more recently resuscitated (see, e.g., Koselleck 2002). Some current discussion of the crisis in anthropology and sociology has leaned toward the idea of resistance and dissent. In that sense, the subject of the two books under review—comprehending and resisting an ongoing crisis—might refresh our understanding of these notions' relationship, as well as illuminate the dizzying temporal processes of the age of austerity. Both books recognize that the current politics, as a strategic exercise in stretching social consensus, has begat an 'age of resistance' (for Douzinas) and 'organization against austerity' (for Laskos and Tsakalotos). There might be an underlying Polanyian predicament here in the form of a 'double move-ment', but the authors do not lay claim to that intellectual genealogy in order to conceptualize societal responses to economic deregulation and neo-liberal fiscal austerity measures. The normalization of crises in the capitalist core since 2008 has both shifted global attention to the 'rise of the BRICs' and brought the logic of precarity regarding our experience and appreciation of history closer to home. The critical juncture of the European sovereign debt and the related processes that brought the euro to the brink of collapse have been the most heatedly debated...[
Cooling Out the Marks: The ideology and politics of the financial crisis
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The factions within the ruling classes have, for nearly three years now, been engaged in fierce struggles over the current management of the crisis and possible strategic options. There is much evidence that the crisis has generated a new fragmented crisis-neoliberalism, in which various accumulation models will be contested for a very long time to come. As an immediate result we can see a remarkable rearrangement of the political forces. There is a consolidation of a politically fortified authoritarian direction and, in contrast, extreme market-radical elements of the neoliberal power bloc have clearly been weakened. A third center-right, social conservative group has been consolidated, playing at times the role of the center of crisis-neoliberalism. The social- democratic reformist variants of neoliberalism have been virtually toppled. Finally, comparatively small and very heterogeneous groups have emerged which see themselves as post-neoliberal and often recruit strongly from the...