The Crisis and the Consolidation of Class Power
David Harvey interviewed by Marco Berlinguer and Hilary Wainwright on December 13th, 2008.
Available at Red Pepper
Does this crisis signal the end of neoliberalism? My answer is that it depends what you mean by neoliberalism. My interpretation is that it’s a class project, now masked by a lot of rhetoric about individual freedom, liberty, personal responsibility, privatisation and the free market. That rhetoric was a means towards the restoration and consolidation of class power, and that neoliberal project has been fairly successful… Read the rest of this article at Red Pepper.
on Mar 9th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Thanks so much for having this interesting work online and free to the general public. I am a member of a radical union (the IWW) and appreciate the discussion on the changing role of labour. I also live in a unique part of the US (Montana) that is so far marginally affected by housing bust or unemplyment so in searching for a point of attack we have more questions than answers. We are hoping to connect concerns over environment, healthcare and lack of pensions to a radical critique of capitalism and call for more social ( not State) ownership.
on Mar 9th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
I am wondering how Prof Harvey sees as Marx and Engels in “setting up the problem” when he states that:
To me M&E have not set up the problem in one place but in multiple places and differently (e.g. in the famous quote from Hegel’s Philosophy of Right to Engels’ Condition of the Working Class). The proletariat being the most revolutionary class is central to Marx’s thought (and in my view, historically, an incorrect one).
on Mar 9th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
I find much of this article an intriguing examination of how the current crisis is unfolding and where it’s likely to go, but I have to wonder what your point is with your section “Radical politics beyond class divides”.
Much of what you’ve written in that section is true enough for the US and many other countries of the center eg populism-as-substitute-for-class-politics, auto unions lining up behind the owners for cash injections (instead of occupying factories, I suppose), the lack of a substantial place for organized labour in the “re-setting” of the system (certainly true in the North America of the past sixty years or so), and the current (petty bourgeois) fashion of refusing political power rather than seeking to conquer it. Absolutely in North America, there are no organized proletarian political movements of any significance (and such movements in other countries have tacked to the Right over the past few decades). But what do you expect from the working classes whose nascent thinkers and organizers were murdered, imprisoned, deported, suborned, or who simply gave up in frustration? Only a truly vulgar marxist (or a “marxist”) would believe that any revolution is right around the corner, and the proletariat is actively working to bring it about now thanks to this new crisis.
You state:
“I don’t think we are in a position to define who the agents of change will be in the present conjuncture and it plainly will vary from one part of the world to another.”
Quite right; certainly an organized proletariat isn’t doing this or even having a hand in it, but this is hardly news. It hasn’t been news since the Russian and Chinese Revolutions.
So why state the obvious then bring Marx into this? I really don’t see how he fits. It’s hardly his fault that the state of any proletarian revolution in the US is near to non-existant or that most workers there are ignorant about class politics.
Readerswords said:
“The proletariat being the most revolutionary class is central to Marx’s thought (and in my view, historically, an incorrect one).”
Really? Who is (assuming you think there is such a creature)?
on Mar 10th, 2009 at 8:02 am
Prof. Harvey has raised up a very interesting point which has intrigued me for quite a while, and this is the issue of “agents of change”.
You state:
“In the United States right now there are signs that elements of the managerial class, which has lived off the earnings of finance capital all these years, is getting annoyed and may turn a bit radical. A lot of people have been laid off in the financial services, in some instances they have even had their mortgages foreclosed. Cultural producers are waking up to the nature of the problems we face…”
I would appreciate it if Prof. Harvey can elaborate on the managerial class’ annoyance. How does it manifest itself? And will this class not take its own share and continue to support the current system?
Furthermore, I am not a resident of the US but I would say that in Israel, the three sectors of society mentioned – managerial, financial, cultural producers – are basically of the upper-middle class. These people, along with mass communication professionals, Hi-Tech engineers, lawyers and accountants are the key players in the public arena and set the tone of the response to the crisis.
I believe the upper middle class has linked itself with the capitilist class to the degree of symbiosis. They are accepting the dynamic feature of the labor market as a natural phenomenon and are prepared to wait until the financial tide will rise again.
As the labor market becomes more and more, like the world as a whole, a sphere for the young (“No country for old men”), we should look for the “agents of change” in long term unemployed people, 45 + y.o, of the middle and upper middle classes.
Maybe some sort of international organization of this class will bring the much anticipated change.
on Mar 10th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Ori said:
“we should look for the “agents of change” in long term unemployed people, 45 + y.o, of the middle and upper middle classes”
What leverage do the unemployed of the middle and upper-middle classes have? And if these classes are so close to the owners (and I have no reason to doubt they are: they were so in Marx’ time as much as in our own) ideologically, why would they, as a group, turn on the hand that feeds it (except maybe to set themselves up as “new bourgeois”)?
on Mar 11th, 2009 at 2:52 am
Todd,
By the same token, what leverage does the proletariat have?
Unfortunately, the western-world proletariat holds the values and ideology induced by the capitalists – individualism, consumerism, private property, etc.
Our case is much worse than in Marx’ time – mass media has a tight grip on the minds of us all, while social structures have totaly disinetgrated.
on Mar 11th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Ori said:
“By the same token, what leverage does the proletariat have?”
Assuming they learn to use their position, the proles as a class can simply take over work-places, effectively elbowing out the owners. But this also needs political power to back up that take-over legally.
“Unfortunately, the western-world proletariat holds the values and ideology induced by the capitalists – individualism, consumerism, private property, etc.”
Right (which was also the case for Marx’s time); we’re talking here about false consciousness, ruling class ideology being picked up by workers, etc. This is where Marxists step in and show the problems, contradictions, truths, and out-right lies. Especially after the long attack on “Official Communism” (and the problems and that manifested with it) as well as socialists of all stripes, is it any wonder that there still _are_ commies around any more to teach this stuff and fight against the ones who can afford the best megaphones?
“Our case is much worse than in Marx’ time – mass media has a tight grip on the minds of us all”
Oh, they had a mass-media then, too (not as pervasive as ours, true, but it was still performing the same function); besides: if the media has us in such a tight grip, how do freaks like you, me, and Prof. Harvey happen along? !{)> Supermen, we are not!
“while social structures have totaly disinetgrated.”
Oh, things’ve definitely gotten worse in the past fifty-sixty years (much worse in some places), but doom-saying’s not very helpful. Look around! See the good and the bad instead of hewing to an ideology of pessimism!
on Mar 14th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Class warfare is alive within the USA but due to what I believe is one of the most effective propaganda systems in the world, the average USA citizen has been indoctrinated/brainwashed into believing that the way “things” are within the USA is correct, proper and as it should be.
To think otherwise is to be un-American, non-patriotic and leaves one open to denunciation by one’s peers.
The USA educational systems from Kindergarten to 12th grade (typically ages 5 to 18 or so) both public and private (public schools in the USA are the taxpayer-paid-for schools) are a primary indoctrination tool.
Also, the USA mass media is mainly a for-profit affair owned by the wealthy elite class who mainly do not upset the status quo that serves our elite class here so well.
We are lucky in carrying the general culture created in western Europe. Mainly, the masses of commoners are ruled by a benevolent elite class who coerce via peaceful means rather than raw brutality as seen with Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and other evil cruel dictators.
Yes, the USA’s elites HAVE used the barrel of the gun to maintain the status quo as a search of our history reveals.
Generally, however, on the whole, the ruling elite class of the USA and their minions and lackeys (and there are many in their pay) tend to be gentle tyrants but tyrants they are and…..
I fear that if the masses of commoners rose up in revolt that the ruling elites might be willing to murder millions to maintain their positions of wealth and power.
Sadly, with the USA’s vast resources, the elite’s military and law enforcement bureaucracies from the smallest local level to the nation-wide FBI and the massive military would easily be able to muster the resources to quell a revolt even if 50 million armed citizens marched against the elite class.
Trained disciplines troops have proven a multitude of times their ability to defeat opponents that vastly outnumber them. Add in pre-existing infrastructures, communications, supplies and vastly superior armaments and I believe that only a military coup led by patriotic freedom-loving military officers could oust our elite class and initiate meaningful changes in the USA’s political, economic and social structures.
The odds of that happening are extremely slight though I DO believe a growing percentage of USA citizens are fed up with our current elite class and would welcome some major changes… and the current president Obama is not the initiator of that change. He is merely yet another figurehead for the elite class, corporate America and wealthy/powerful special interest groups.
If curious what an American commoner thinks about affairs within the USA, a member of the USA working-poor underclass who via much education, extensive non-fiction reading and introspection was able to shed a fair amount of the brainwashing/indoctrination that has stifled the thought processes of so many Americans I invite you to visit this blog:
obbop.wordpress.com/
on Aug 29th, 2010 at 1:40 am
Walter Lippmann believed that the modern world was becoming too complex for the average voter to have an intelligent position–that the “omnicompetent citizen” was an unrealistic ideal. Marx argues that the lumpenproletariat, a class of people so disenfranchised by capitalism that they are not inclined to act in their own common class interest, will be unable to rise up and join the proletariat revolution. Marx goes on to explain the dangers of a lumpenproletariat using the rise of Napoleon as his example. He argues that Napoleon built a motley coalition of anti-social elements who ultimately forwarded the agenda of the bourgeoisie. One wonders what Marx would have made of the Tea Party movement–a group made up mostly of lower-middle class individuals who, in response to their feelings of disenfranchisement, have embarked on an anti-government (not to say racist or antisocial) agenda which the Republican party tries to exploit and co-opt (as they have done historically with fundamentalist Christians and rural poor) to form a coalition of misdirected energies which in fact strengthen and perpetuate the existing dominant powers. Is the Tea Party a modern lumpenproletariat?