Myles Carroll | York University (original) (raw)
Papers by Myles Carroll
Journal of Contemporary Asia, 2022
Critical Sociology, 2021
This article draws on Gramsci’s theory of passive revolution to explore the second tenure of Japa... more This article draws on Gramsci’s theory of passive revolution to explore the second tenure of Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzō from 2012 to 2020. It sees the high degree of political stability that Abe achieved as a contrast to the preceding two decades of Japanese politics and asks what accounts for Abe’s success in restoring Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) dominance in an era of enduring economic and social crisis. The article argues that Abe executed a strategy of passive revolution that incorporated two “faces”: an “outward” face oriented around consent and an “inward” face rooted in coercion. The former involved economic policies (in particular “Abenomics”) designed to appear capable of resolving chronic economic stagnation, growing inequality and other social and economic problems, restoring popular support for the LDP without undermining conditions for capital accumulation or empowering subaltern classes. In contrast, the latter involved various low-profile security and adm...
Capital & Class, 2019
This article explores elements of contemporary Japan’s long-term and deep-rooted organic crisis. ... more This article explores elements of contemporary Japan’s long-term and deep-rooted organic crisis. It is a crisis with various inter-related components, including a long-term economic crisis that has now spanned nearly three decades, a political crisis that brought about significant upheaval and discord, particularly in the 1990s and 2000s, and a cultural crisis characterized by widespread popular anxiety over the future, all without any clear alternative in sight, echoing Gramsci’s understanding of organic crisis as conditions under which ‘the old is dying and the new cannot be born’. This article considers how conditions of social reproduction have been affected by the crisis. It argues that efforts to restore conditions for profitable accumulation pursued in the wake of economic stagnation in the 1990s and 2000s, including labor market reform, led to the decline of what Mari Miura has called Japan’s ‘welfare-through-work’ model of welfare, and the emergence of a new employment and ...
The Japanese Political Economy, 2016
Abstract This article explores the social relations that gave rise to both Japan's postwar bo... more Abstract This article explores the social relations that gave rise to both Japan's postwar boom and its more recent period of stagnation. While holding that the creation of a hegemonic order led by the LDP enabled the period of rapid growth, it argues that a key factor behind the unraveling of this regime since the 1990s has been the opening of a contradiction between conditions necessary for capital accumulation and those required for the reproduction of society, leading to a crisis of social reproduction as much as a crisis of production, evinced by the problem of Japan's declining and aging population.
Journal of Political Ecology, 2018
This article considers the role played by discourses of nature in structuring the cultural politi... more This article considers the role played by discourses of nature in structuring the cultural politics of anti-GMO activism. It argues that such discourses have been successful rhetorical tools for activists because they mobilize widely resonant nature-culture dualisms that separate the natural and human worlds. However, these discourses hold dubious political implications. In valorizing the natural as a source of essential truth, natural purity discourses fail to challenge how naturalizations have been used to legitimize sexist, racist and colonial systems of injustice and oppression. Rather, they revitalize the discursive purchase of appeals to nature as a justification for the status quo, indirectly reinforcing existing power relations. Moreover, these discourses fail to challenge the critical though contingent reality of GMOs' location within the wider framework of neoliberal social relations. Fortunately, appeals to natural purity have not been the only effective strategy for ...
New Political Economy, 2016
Studies in Political Economy, 2015
The most enduring lesson of Occupy Wall Street is the value of dynamically assembling different t... more The most enduring lesson of Occupy Wall Street is the value of dynamically assembling different tendencies into a multitudinous force. Anarchist leadership was central to launching the movement but contributions from socialists and social democrats were integral to its overall success. Moreover the limitations of anarchist-inspired movement features like horizontalism and refusing demands began to reveal themselves as the encampments advanced, further evidencing the value of dynamic assembly (versus a case for anarchist or socialist universality).
Review of International Political Economy, 2015
ABSTRACT This paper draws on the work of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi in analyzing the conseq... more ABSTRACT This paper draws on the work of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi in analyzing the consequences of legal regimes that regulate genetically modified foods. Against the tide of neoliberalism, a binding, precautionary agreement over trade in genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has emerged through the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. This Protocol exemplifies what Polanyi termed the ‘self-protection of society,’ the second phase of his double movement. The Protocol's final form was a product of European governments’ responses to public concerns over the potential environmental and health impacts of GMOs in an unregulated global economy. This ‘self-protective’ turn has been manifest at regional and national scales, including in Australia. Drawing on Gramsci, I argue that this unlikely turn emerged in the context of shifting public opinion, effective anti-GMO activism, and alternative discursive framings. It took hold with European publics and governments, generating the relations of force needed to become the hegemonic framing of GMOs globally. The objectives of this paper are thus to demonstrate how a double movement has occurred in the regulation of GMOs and to use Gramsci's relations of force to explain how this double movement has nonetheless failed to challenge the underlying neoliberal basis of GMO agriculture as it exists today.
New Political Science, 2014
Canadian Political Science Review, Jan 27, 2012
for their critical engagements with the arguments developed here. The research for this article w... more for their critical engagements with the arguments developed here. The research for this article was funded by Carbon Management Canada.
The Japanese Political Economy
This article uses Marxist theories of agrarian capitalism to explore the political economy of gen... more This article uses Marxist theories of agrarian capitalism to explore the political economy of genetically modified organisms (GMO) agriculture. It argues that the successes and failures of GMO agriculture have been partly circumscribed by the structural requirements of the capitalist system, as well as by the materiality of GMO crops themselves. Successful innovations have been able to mitigate the material barriers to accumulation found in agricultural production, and thus appeal directly to farmers as comparatively profitable capital inputs. In this way, they cohere with David Goodman’s notion of appropriationism, where manufactured capital inputs (such as pesticides, machinery and fertilisers) replace ‘natural’ inputs (such as manure or draft animals), reducing labour time and biological contingency, and thus creating a competitive advantage for those farmers who adopt the new technology (at least temporarily). Conversely, innovations that are geared at consumers rather than farmers have largely failed due to their status as value-added products (whose value is subjective and market-driven) rather than capital goods. The article uses contrasting case studies of herbicide-tolerant soybeans, beta-keratin-enhanced rice and slow-ripening tomatoes to demonstrate how and why the structural imperatives of global capitalism have enabled the success of some, and the failure of other innovations.
Studies in Political Economy
The most enduring lesson of Occupy Wall Street is the value of dynamically assembling different t... more The most enduring lesson of Occupy Wall Street is the value of dynamically assembling different tendencies into a multitudinous force. Anarchist leadership was central to launching the movement but contributions from socialists and social democrats were integral to its overall success. Moreover the limitations of anarchist-inspired movement features like horizontalism and refusing demands began to reveal themselves as the encampments advanced, further evidencing the value of dynamic assembly (versus a case for anarchist or socialist universality).
New Political Science, 2014
We examine two recent cases of relative Left success-the Battle of Seattle and Occupy Wall Street... more We examine two recent cases of relative Left success-the Battle of Seattle and Occupy Wall Street-and argue that in each case an effective dynamism between radical and reform wings drove gains. This analysis is not meant to deny political difference and hawk false unity. Instead we want to challenge the luxury of mutual dismissal with the actually existing benefits of movement dynamism. By dynamism we mean contributions arising from different activist wings and productively interacting to increase overall movement power. Our ultimate claim is that the North American Left will yield greater success by becoming more self-conscious about the concrete benefits of movement dynamism.
The most enduring lesson of Occupy Wall Street is the value of dynamically assembling different t... more The most enduring lesson of Occupy Wall Street is the value of dynamically assembling different tendencies into a multitudinous force. Anarchist leadership was central to launching the movement, but contributions from socialists and social democrats were integral to its overall success. Moreover, the limitations of anarchistinspired movement features, such as horizontalism and refusing demands, began to reveal themselves as the encampments advanced. This is further evidence of the value of dynamic assembly, versus anarchist or socialist universality.
We examine two recent cases of relative Left success-the Battle of Seattle and Occupy Wall Street... more We examine two recent cases of relative Left success-the Battle of Seattle and Occupy Wall Street-and argue that in each case an effective dynamism between radical and reform wings drove gains. This analysis is not meant to deny political difference and hawk false unity. Instead we want to challenge the luxury of mutual dismissal with the actually existing benefits of movement dynamism. By dynamism we mean contributions arising from different activist wings and productively interacting to increase overall movement power. Our ultimate claim is that the North American Left will yield greater success by becoming more self-conscious about the concrete benefits of movement dynamism.
Acknowledgements. The authors would like to thank Jamie Lawson, Bill Carroll and Warren Magnusson... more Acknowledgements. The authors would like to thank Jamie Lawson, Bill Carroll and Warren Magnusson for their critical engagements with the arguments developed here. The research for this article was funded by Carbon Management Canada.
Journal of Contemporary Asia, 2022
Critical Sociology, 2021
This article draws on Gramsci’s theory of passive revolution to explore the second tenure of Japa... more This article draws on Gramsci’s theory of passive revolution to explore the second tenure of Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzō from 2012 to 2020. It sees the high degree of political stability that Abe achieved as a contrast to the preceding two decades of Japanese politics and asks what accounts for Abe’s success in restoring Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) dominance in an era of enduring economic and social crisis. The article argues that Abe executed a strategy of passive revolution that incorporated two “faces”: an “outward” face oriented around consent and an “inward” face rooted in coercion. The former involved economic policies (in particular “Abenomics”) designed to appear capable of resolving chronic economic stagnation, growing inequality and other social and economic problems, restoring popular support for the LDP without undermining conditions for capital accumulation or empowering subaltern classes. In contrast, the latter involved various low-profile security and adm...
Capital & Class, 2019
This article explores elements of contemporary Japan’s long-term and deep-rooted organic crisis. ... more This article explores elements of contemporary Japan’s long-term and deep-rooted organic crisis. It is a crisis with various inter-related components, including a long-term economic crisis that has now spanned nearly three decades, a political crisis that brought about significant upheaval and discord, particularly in the 1990s and 2000s, and a cultural crisis characterized by widespread popular anxiety over the future, all without any clear alternative in sight, echoing Gramsci’s understanding of organic crisis as conditions under which ‘the old is dying and the new cannot be born’. This article considers how conditions of social reproduction have been affected by the crisis. It argues that efforts to restore conditions for profitable accumulation pursued in the wake of economic stagnation in the 1990s and 2000s, including labor market reform, led to the decline of what Mari Miura has called Japan’s ‘welfare-through-work’ model of welfare, and the emergence of a new employment and ...
The Japanese Political Economy, 2016
Abstract This article explores the social relations that gave rise to both Japan's postwar bo... more Abstract This article explores the social relations that gave rise to both Japan's postwar boom and its more recent period of stagnation. While holding that the creation of a hegemonic order led by the LDP enabled the period of rapid growth, it argues that a key factor behind the unraveling of this regime since the 1990s has been the opening of a contradiction between conditions necessary for capital accumulation and those required for the reproduction of society, leading to a crisis of social reproduction as much as a crisis of production, evinced by the problem of Japan's declining and aging population.
Journal of Political Ecology, 2018
This article considers the role played by discourses of nature in structuring the cultural politi... more This article considers the role played by discourses of nature in structuring the cultural politics of anti-GMO activism. It argues that such discourses have been successful rhetorical tools for activists because they mobilize widely resonant nature-culture dualisms that separate the natural and human worlds. However, these discourses hold dubious political implications. In valorizing the natural as a source of essential truth, natural purity discourses fail to challenge how naturalizations have been used to legitimize sexist, racist and colonial systems of injustice and oppression. Rather, they revitalize the discursive purchase of appeals to nature as a justification for the status quo, indirectly reinforcing existing power relations. Moreover, these discourses fail to challenge the critical though contingent reality of GMOs' location within the wider framework of neoliberal social relations. Fortunately, appeals to natural purity have not been the only effective strategy for ...
New Political Economy, 2016
Studies in Political Economy, 2015
The most enduring lesson of Occupy Wall Street is the value of dynamically assembling different t... more The most enduring lesson of Occupy Wall Street is the value of dynamically assembling different tendencies into a multitudinous force. Anarchist leadership was central to launching the movement but contributions from socialists and social democrats were integral to its overall success. Moreover the limitations of anarchist-inspired movement features like horizontalism and refusing demands began to reveal themselves as the encampments advanced, further evidencing the value of dynamic assembly (versus a case for anarchist or socialist universality).
Review of International Political Economy, 2015
ABSTRACT This paper draws on the work of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi in analyzing the conseq... more ABSTRACT This paper draws on the work of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi in analyzing the consequences of legal regimes that regulate genetically modified foods. Against the tide of neoliberalism, a binding, precautionary agreement over trade in genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has emerged through the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. This Protocol exemplifies what Polanyi termed the ‘self-protection of society,’ the second phase of his double movement. The Protocol's final form was a product of European governments’ responses to public concerns over the potential environmental and health impacts of GMOs in an unregulated global economy. This ‘self-protective’ turn has been manifest at regional and national scales, including in Australia. Drawing on Gramsci, I argue that this unlikely turn emerged in the context of shifting public opinion, effective anti-GMO activism, and alternative discursive framings. It took hold with European publics and governments, generating the relations of force needed to become the hegemonic framing of GMOs globally. The objectives of this paper are thus to demonstrate how a double movement has occurred in the regulation of GMOs and to use Gramsci's relations of force to explain how this double movement has nonetheless failed to challenge the underlying neoliberal basis of GMO agriculture as it exists today.
New Political Science, 2014
Canadian Political Science Review, Jan 27, 2012
for their critical engagements with the arguments developed here. The research for this article w... more for their critical engagements with the arguments developed here. The research for this article was funded by Carbon Management Canada.
The Japanese Political Economy
This article uses Marxist theories of agrarian capitalism to explore the political economy of gen... more This article uses Marxist theories of agrarian capitalism to explore the political economy of genetically modified organisms (GMO) agriculture. It argues that the successes and failures of GMO agriculture have been partly circumscribed by the structural requirements of the capitalist system, as well as by the materiality of GMO crops themselves. Successful innovations have been able to mitigate the material barriers to accumulation found in agricultural production, and thus appeal directly to farmers as comparatively profitable capital inputs. In this way, they cohere with David Goodman’s notion of appropriationism, where manufactured capital inputs (such as pesticides, machinery and fertilisers) replace ‘natural’ inputs (such as manure or draft animals), reducing labour time and biological contingency, and thus creating a competitive advantage for those farmers who adopt the new technology (at least temporarily). Conversely, innovations that are geared at consumers rather than farmers have largely failed due to their status as value-added products (whose value is subjective and market-driven) rather than capital goods. The article uses contrasting case studies of herbicide-tolerant soybeans, beta-keratin-enhanced rice and slow-ripening tomatoes to demonstrate how and why the structural imperatives of global capitalism have enabled the success of some, and the failure of other innovations.
Studies in Political Economy
The most enduring lesson of Occupy Wall Street is the value of dynamically assembling different t... more The most enduring lesson of Occupy Wall Street is the value of dynamically assembling different tendencies into a multitudinous force. Anarchist leadership was central to launching the movement but contributions from socialists and social democrats were integral to its overall success. Moreover the limitations of anarchist-inspired movement features like horizontalism and refusing demands began to reveal themselves as the encampments advanced, further evidencing the value of dynamic assembly (versus a case for anarchist or socialist universality).
New Political Science, 2014
We examine two recent cases of relative Left success-the Battle of Seattle and Occupy Wall Street... more We examine two recent cases of relative Left success-the Battle of Seattle and Occupy Wall Street-and argue that in each case an effective dynamism between radical and reform wings drove gains. This analysis is not meant to deny political difference and hawk false unity. Instead we want to challenge the luxury of mutual dismissal with the actually existing benefits of movement dynamism. By dynamism we mean contributions arising from different activist wings and productively interacting to increase overall movement power. Our ultimate claim is that the North American Left will yield greater success by becoming more self-conscious about the concrete benefits of movement dynamism.
The most enduring lesson of Occupy Wall Street is the value of dynamically assembling different t... more The most enduring lesson of Occupy Wall Street is the value of dynamically assembling different tendencies into a multitudinous force. Anarchist leadership was central to launching the movement, but contributions from socialists and social democrats were integral to its overall success. Moreover, the limitations of anarchistinspired movement features, such as horizontalism and refusing demands, began to reveal themselves as the encampments advanced. This is further evidence of the value of dynamic assembly, versus anarchist or socialist universality.
We examine two recent cases of relative Left success-the Battle of Seattle and Occupy Wall Street... more We examine two recent cases of relative Left success-the Battle of Seattle and Occupy Wall Street-and argue that in each case an effective dynamism between radical and reform wings drove gains. This analysis is not meant to deny political difference and hawk false unity. Instead we want to challenge the luxury of mutual dismissal with the actually existing benefits of movement dynamism. By dynamism we mean contributions arising from different activist wings and productively interacting to increase overall movement power. Our ultimate claim is that the North American Left will yield greater success by becoming more self-conscious about the concrete benefits of movement dynamism.
Acknowledgements. The authors would like to thank Jamie Lawson, Bill Carroll and Warren Magnusson... more Acknowledgements. The authors would like to thank Jamie Lawson, Bill Carroll and Warren Magnusson for their critical engagements with the arguments developed here. The research for this article was funded by Carbon Management Canada.