Marxist Interventions Issue 1 2009

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://dspace-test.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/12541

Marxist Interventions was an annual Australian-based on-line journal which published theory and empirical research informed by Marxism in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Articles were published after a double-blind review process.

IN THIS ISSUE:

As we publish, the Australian dimension of the global economic and financial crisis is deepening, but still in its early stages. It is likely to become far more serious in coming months, and as it does we expect a major discussion among Marxists. This issue does not pre-empt that discussion, but provides some raw materials for the debate and foreshadows some likely issues.

There is likely to be a sharp debate about the costs and benefits of emissions trading. In his article, Peter Jones argues that emissions trading is not a solution to global warming but rather represents a new vehicle for capital accumulation.We are beginning to see arguments for economic protectionism, both from vulnerable sections of capital and from the labour movement. Bill Dunn explains how about the cases for protection and free trade are, in reality, seriously exaggerated; and that both are inherently capitalist.

The roots of capitalist crises typically lie in preceding booms. For that reason, Ben Hillier reviews the recent special issue of the Journal of Australian political economy. Looking at the evidence, he argues that an underlying tendency for profit rates to fall even in boom times laid the basis for today’s crash.

In times of crisis, both the right and social-democrats can be expected to play the race card. In a discussion of the Howard era, Rick Kuhn considers how the Howard government used racism to manage the political situation.

The Great Depression culminated in world war, and while it would be rash to forecast this for the near future, imperialist conflict is likely to sharpen. Tom O’Lincoln challenges conventional views about the Pacific war.

To meet the political challenges of capitalism in crisis, the left needs organisation. But what kind? Louis Proyect, moderator of the Marxmail internet discussion list, debates Mick Armstrong, author of From little things big things grow.

News

CONTRIBUTORS:

Mick Armstrong is a member of the National Executive of Socialist Alternative. His publications include: 1, 2, 3, what are we fighting for? The Australian student movement from its origins to the 1970s and The Labor Party: a Marxist analysis. sbma2 @ bigpond.net.au

Bill Dunn teaches political economy at the University of Sydney. His latest book is Global political economy: a Marxist critique (Pluto, London 2009). bill.dunn @ usyd.edu.au

Ben Hillier bmh @ netspace.net.au

Peter Jones is a socialist activist, and recently completed his honours thesis on the political economy of emissions trading. u2545097 @ anu.edu.au

Rick Kuhn’s Henryk Grossman and the recovery of Marxism won the Deutscher Memorial Prize in 2007. Rick is a socialist activist in Canberra. rick.kuhn @ anu.edu.au

Tom O’Lincoln is a Melbourne activist, and author of several books on left and labour history. suarsos @ alphalink.com.au

Louis Proyect is a computer programmer at Columbia University who was active in the Socialist Workers Party from 1967 to 1978 and in the Central America solidarity movement in the 1980s. He moderates the Marxism list, www.marxmail.org. lnp3 @ panix.com

Janey Stone is a long time socialist, women’s liberationist and activist in many radical movements, who knew Jeff Goldhar all his adult life. Janey has contributed to several books, including Rebel women, and is at present working on an article about the Australian folk revival of the 1960s. chacha_1_2_3 @ hotmail.com

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Now showing 1 - 8 of 8

Access status: Open Access ,
Financial fault lines
(Rick Kuhn & Tom O'Lincoln, 2009) Hiller, Ben
There are almost as many theories of the nature and causes of the global financial crisis as there are toxic assets burning holes in the balance sheets of large financial institutions. The problem with many of the theories is that they haven’t really explained a lot. As the late Peter Gowan noted, ‘Much of the mainstream debate on the causes of the crisis takes the form of an “accidents” theory’ (p. 62). The refrain of capitalism’s defenders has been that a generally good vehicle was crashed by the ‘contingent actions’ of reckless drivers. Whether it is the passing of the Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act in the early 1980s, the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 or cavalier policies of the US Federal Reserve in the wake of the dot.com collapse, the prognosis is the same: the powers-that-be failed to adequately straightjacket the greed of financial traders. No doubt there is truth in this charge, but there is an ocean of systemic failure beneath the surface of human error. The Great Credit Crash , edited by Martijn Konings, brings together contributions that attempt to penetrate beneath this surface. Divided into three sections, eighteen essays cover the nature, geography and politics of the crisis. Much of the focus is on the structural and long-term problems that have afflicted the United States economy and the rest of the world. Many of the contributors identify contradictions in the ‘neoliberal growth model’ as being at the heart of the crisis. Originating in the stagflation of the 1970s and industrial decline of the 1980s, neoliberalism sought the construction of ‘new institutional mechanisms of control’ (Konings, p. 6) to shore up private capital in the face of a spate of economic crises in the heart of the world system. The tremendous growth of interest-bearing financial capital—as the financial sector overtook manufacturing to become the largest sector of the US economy—was the centrepiece, many argue, of an unstable and unsustainable regime of accumulation.
Access status: Open Access ,
Jeff Goldhar’s socialist legacy
(Rick Kuhn and Tom O'Lincoln, 2009) Stone, Janey
When life-long socialist Jeff Goldhar died in 1997, he left a bequest. Set up at the end of 1998, the Jeff Goldhar Project is now celebrating 10 years of activities. Jeff became politically active in the 1960s, attending demonstrations against the Vietnam War and as an active member of the Labour Club at Melbourne University. While in the UK in the early 1970s he joined the International Socialists (now Socialist Workers Party), and on his return to Melbourne, became a member of the fledgling Australian organisation, Socialist Workers Action Group. Jeff was diagnosed with a terminal illness in the mid-1990s. He wanted to leave a bequest to ‘allow us to bring our history and ideas to those receptive to them’. (First three paragraphs of article).
Access status: Open Access ,
Debate on revolutionary organisation
(2009) Proyect, Louis; Armstrong, Mick
One of the more rapidly growing groups on the left is Socialist Alternative. Unfortunately it would appear from a book by Mick Armstrong that they remain wedded to partybuilding conceptions that will inhibit future growth. It is understandable why such selfstyled Leninist formations would cling to counter-productive methodologies since the dead hand of tradition weighs heavily on any group seeking to establish itself as the avatar of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky. Perhaps a better approach would be to start with a fresh sheet of paper, an approach virtually ruled out for small propaganda groups obsessed with ‘revolutionary continuity.’
Access status: Open Access ,
Whose liberty? Australian imperialism and the Pacific war
(Rick Kuhn & Tom O'Lincoln, 2009) O'Lincoln, Tom
Australia presents its Pacific War effort as a fight for liberation. This article challenges that view. The Allied forces were fighting to re-impose their own imperialist control, and this includes Australia. The war is best understood as part of a long term pattern of imperialist contention. The wartime intervention in East Timor, the battle to sustain control of Papua New Guinea, the restoration of Dutch rule in eastern Indonesia and Canberra’s determination to play a role in the occupation of Japan, all illustrate this theme.
Access status: Open Access ,
Xenophobic racism and class during
(Rick Kuhn and Tom O'Lincoln, 2009) Kuhn, Rick
Between 1996 and 2007, the Howard Government used racism to sustain its popularity. From the late 1990s, the primary victims of racist campaigns against immigrants were refugees who arrived by boat, without official permission. After 9/11 2001 the focus increasingly shifted to Muslims and Arabs, who were more explicitly targeted from 2005. While the conservative parties’ racist policies served electoral purposes, their campaigns were also shaped by a deeper logic: the interests of the capitalist class and its capacity to influence state policies. The declining appeal of racist arguments and policies contributed to the Government’s demise in 2007.
Access status: Open Access ,
Going gangbusters?
(Rick Kuhn & Tom O'Lincoln, 2009) Hillier, Ben
The Journal of Australian Political Economy special issue on the long Australian economic boom is timely for two reasons. First, because its release comes at the end of the boom, allowing for a comprehensive overview of and a vantage point from which to appraise the long period of expansion which began back in 1992. Secondly, the contributors are generally critical of the neo-liberal orthodoxy, whose bankruptcy is now apparent. The most obvious question to ask is: ‘how were 16 years of expansion sustained?’ Michael Howard and John King, while citing ma ny factors, evoke ‘long wave theory’ to explain the period. This theory, put forward by Russian economist Nicolai Kondratiev in the 1920s, postulates that in addition to short-run boom-bust cycles, the capitalist economy undergoes long-term upswings and downswings in price movements, accumulation and economic growth. Howard and King suggest that the period from 1992 represented the first half of a new global long wave upswing.
Access status: Open Access ,
Neither free trade nor protection but international socialism: contesting the conservative antinomies of trade theory
(Rick Kuhn and Tom O'Lincoln, 2009) Dunn, Bill
Attitudes towards international trade are remarkably polarised. Most mainstream economists advocate free trade as a mainstay of national and global prosperity. Meanwhile, many critics see it as the major cause of inequality and poverty. This polarisation is remarkable given the weakness of any systematic relationship between the propensity to trade and overall economic well-being and the practical infrequency of complete openness or autarchy. The dualism of trade theory is supported by, and reproduces, a conservative worldview which tends to obscure other more determinant aspects of political economy, and directs opposition to global capital into safe, nationalistic channels.
Access status: Open Access ,
Saving the planet or selling off the atmosphere? Emissions trading, capital accumulation and the carbon rent
(Rick Kuhn and Tom O'Lincoln, 2009) Jones, Peter
Governments are increasingly implementing emissions trading schemes, ostensibly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Karine Matthews and Matthew Paterson argue that the drive to implement emissions trading is primarily driven by the goal of supporting capital accumulation, rather than environmental considerations. This article ultimately agrees, but argues that their approach is not consistent with Marx’s labour theory of value. The concept of the ‘carbon rent’ is used to develop a more consistent approach to understanding how the state can use emissions trading to distribute income away from the poor and working class.

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