Re: AUT: is truth enough (was): antiwar movement

[Tom Messmer <messmer@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 07:12:57PM -0500, Lautre Nom wrote:
> 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.

This is interesting stuff, I'll look at that article.

>
> 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.)
>
This is a fairly plausable argument, but it isn't the
argument Caffentzis makes, he seems to be saying that
the Bush admin is offering US workers some sort of
deal where they'll get jobs related to the new security
state, as privileged US citizen workers, and that this
is the basis of their support of the admins policies.
While I'm sure there are SOME who this accounts for,
I don't see it as a realistic basis for support on
a large scale.


> 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.
> >
> >
> >
> >      --- from list
> > aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>
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--
"All human errors are impatience, a premature
breaking-off of methodical procedure, an apparent
fencing-in of what is apparently at issue"
-Franz Kafka


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