AUT: is truth enough (was): antiwar movement

[Lautre Nom <lautrenom@xxxxxxxxx>]

Probably, 1997 is chosen as the date of the asian
financial crisis.  This has triggered reverbations
that continue today, for example in the inability of
the US fed reserve to raise interest rates above the
effective zero mark.  One reprecussion has been
constant and simultaneous pressure on the US dollar
and its balance of payments.  In Zmag last month there
was an article that it was exactly this pressure on
the dollar, in concert with the threat of iraq to sell
oil denominated in Euros that pushed the US to invade.
 The logic being that the only thing keeping the
american economy afloat the past several years has
been its status as a reserve currency.  Under this
system, the US prints up money that the rest of the
world has to take on faith.  Thus the entire US
consuming population receives a dividend for being at
the centre of the world economy.  I don't really think
that the sale of iraqi oil in euros would have done as
much to upset this situation as some have argued, but
one can see the connections nonetheless.

There is something different about this argument and
the old new left argument you refer to, since it is
specifically the terms of trade that benefit US
workers in particular, as a result of the current
arrangement of global financial archetecture, rather
than the more general claim that the first world
benefits from the exploitation of the the third.  (I
don't want to stress too much the financial angle,
since obviously there are military, environmental and
other angles that might be focused on.  E.g.  the
extremely low price of gas and oil in the US relative
to other industrial, and net oil importing countries
must act as a subsidy to some degree and probably
plays a role in raising support for the war.  But then
these issues are connected.)

As for the role of workers' resistance, we saw between
1997 and 2001 escalating opposition to the forces of
globalization around the world and within the US (e.g.
Seattle 1999).  This is in part a reaction to the
economic crisis of globalization, but has also been a
force in challenging the neo-liberal agenda,
reproducing its crisis of legimacy.

Josh

 --- Tom Messmer <messmer@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Ok,
new thread here. Caffentzis, in his ' Is Truth
> Enough?'
> http://www.endpage.org/Archives/Subversive_Texts/
> Midnight_Notes_Collective/Is_Truth_Enough.txt piece
> puts forth the
> following, which I believe is the hinge of his
> piece:
>
> "The neoliberal system of capitalist accumulation
> (what we in the
> US call "globalization") that replaced the Keynesian
> one in the
> late 1970s has been in deep crisis since 1997 and
> the Bush
> Administration must respond to this crisis or it too
> will be thrown
> out by its masters (if not by its subjects!). "
>
> My questions are these:
> 1. What exactly is this "deep crisis" which he
> refers to? What part did
> the working class play in this crisis?
> 2. What role does primitive accumulation play in
> this war?
> 3. Was anyone convinced by the argument that Capital
> is offering a sort
> of bargain to "US Citizen workers"? This really
> reminds me of New Left
> arguments with regards to the "White Working Class"
> in the US and their
> hopeless golden cage.
>
>
>
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