Driftwork

There was a picture in the Guardian of an attack on Nato forces suplies by the Taliban. What is particularly interesting about the image is not the act of terrorism but the containers in the background.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/08/afghanistan-taliban-nato-raid-pakistan

For the containers, the boxes are the physical manifestation of the network, slow physical and unmistakable they represent the network of global capital as well as anything on the more familiar networks.

In 1956 when this network began to become operational the world was full of small local manufacturers selling locally, in the early 21st C purely local markets for goods of any sort are really quite rare.

It is only now after the end of neo-liberalism that it looks possible that the issue of ‘localism’ may become important and produce a change towards local manufacturing.

the “historical analogy", that may be faded but still it is an epic ideological battle that continues. The enemies of Keynesian economics are fighting-back. Hardly pausing, despite the failure of the rampant free markets, the old neo-liberals are back. Are the Keynesian economists and their political fellow travelers ready to make the necessary case ? Can it not only do the right thing, but capture the public imagination and own the spirit of these perilous times? The ideological struggle which will establish what good government means is what holds the key to winning the Keynes or Hayek argument ? But none have changed their position or learned any lessons. Alan Greenspan said: “I found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is.” Henry Paulson only admits: “I could have seen the sub-prime crisis coming earlier,” but adds, “I’m not saying I would have done anything differently.” Mervyn King can’t admit his mistake in keeping interest rates so high for the past year as this crisis brewed.

This began from reading a note from 16 neo-liberal economists in the press over the weekend which attacks the current plan to borrow and spend to ease the recession. “Occasional slowdowns are natural and necessary features of a market economy,” they said. Laissez-faire is the best policy, but if something must be done “which is highly disputable” then “taxes should be cut". This is the familiar policy solution of the market. It is almost insulting to Hayek to identify these people as Hayekians but neo-liberals they certainly are - This was the ideology of those who devised the catastrophic Thatcherite budget of 1981 which is what they want to repeat. It was designed to cut government spending (state, federal and local in American terms) and sent unemployment over 3 million. They turned what was a recession into a social catastrophe and now they are advocating the same solution again. We don’t yet know how much the current European governments intend to borrow and spend. We should have a reasonable idea within the next month. In the UK certain commitments have been made already to bring forward the infrastructural spending for Crossrail and other similar projects. How much is needed to adopt the Green New Deal and build renewable energy ? What would it take to build all the social housing (state owned housing) that has been forgotten about in the past few decades? How much to ensure a good apprenticeship and real work to see all young people through the bad years? That too is a real investment, especially considering the
identifiable cost of its absence since the 1980s. Perhaps we are still waiting to see if imagination will win the day over monetarist caution. These are the actual sites of struggle.

The neo-liberal commentators are sharpening their knives against the European governments “Keynesian adventures". The argument has not yet been won: the left of centre parties have to make the ideological case more eloquently, as the public have not yet recovered from their skepticism of government’s ability to spend money well. Conservatives may be wavering, uncertain which way the public will jump, but the liberal-left would be mistaken to think that the pro-Keynesian turn was aguaranteed. I’m hoping that the talk of tectonic plates shifting and paradigm shifts is accurate but people have been good at seeing new dawns in public consciousness.

In Europe as the left accepts the necessity of a more Keynesian turn it is becoming a question of which way the right will jump - towards Hayek or Keynes? In the USA…

Here you’ll find Virillo on the crisis

http://sites.google.com/site/radicalperspectivesonthecrisis/news/paul-virilio-on-the-crisis

t’s always the same. A taxi to the airport, checking in through the computer checkin, a slight frisson of concern that the system might be down. It never is but still… Then after a quick review of the papers a weak cappuccino, pain au chocolat and the boredom of waiting for the flight…. I surf waiting, read the Guardian on the latest moments of the economic crisis.

The media is speaking now of the recovery of the market, “is this really the end of capitalism…” the presumption being that neo-liberal free-market orientated thinking and policies are equivalent to capitalism. It is extraordinarily peculiar that journalists, the commentariat, continue to confuse capital and neo-liberalism. Perhaps it really is a lack of history, the writing of the moment that causes them to make such foolish statements. The fear of thinking about the actual situation is shown by their inability to ask Darling any interesting questions this morning and Wilby’s attempt at humor in the Guardian today framed by his thinking that the left (for which read liberal newspaper columnists) have failed to capitalise on the crisis. As if the paradigm shift from one liberal socio-economic discourse to another liberal socio-economic discourse is a crisis of capitalism. A crisis would surely be 1968 or to put some perspective on it the social and economic crisis of the medieval period was 1381 and the wonderful peasants revolt. This is not a crisis but a necessary paradigm shift…. The US has now planned to invest greater than $700Bn in the financial bailout…

He was walking down the hill towards me , from his head a cloud of smoke puffed. Looking at him you might think that he had a cigarette in his hand but this delusion merely obscured the truth, which was that it was a dragon, perhaps even the long lived Fafner himself, walking down the hill towards the shops and the train station. Perhaps the dragon was going to the deli to eat toast and drink coffee or the petshop to buy hamsters for tea ? Exactly what folk tale the dragon had escaped from, something mentioned in Propp, Cortazar or the Strugatski Brothers, remains a mystery. We passed one another and as I turned into the passage into the Close I couldn’t help wondering if I had an equivalent Anthropological function, or should that be a Dragonopological function ? To that which he as a dragon had for me…