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In May 2009, a Soundings seminar on the credit crunch discussed several of the papers published here.1 The purpose of the debate was to get beneath the surface of the immediate tumultuous events of bank failures and financial crisis, and to explore what might be at stake in a larger political perspective. We believe it is impossible to seriously consider these issues, and formulate a significant political response to them, unless debate is based on the kinds of a theoretical and historical analysis that once characterised debate on the left.
It was widely noted in the seminar that while the neoliberal model of capitalism, triumphant for three decades, had entered a severe crisis, serious political alternatives were still conspicuous by their absence from the scene. Although in the United States, the financial meltdown did crucially contribute to the election victory of President Obama, in Britain Labour has never been less popular. Prime Minister Brown's leading role in mobilising international action to stave off a major recession has not so far been winning his government much support. It is not only in Britain that conservatives seem likely to be political beneficiaries of a crisis that one might have expected to bring discredit to the advocates of markets.
Contents
Gavin Poynter The crunch and the
crisis: the unravelling of lifestyle capitalism?
John Urry The
great crash of 2008: pouring oil on troubled waters
Sylvia Walby
Contested futures: is the financial crisis a tipping point?
John Clarke After neoliberalism?
Markets, states and the reinvention of public welfare
Michael Rustin Reflections
on the present
Neal Lawson and John Harris No
turning back
In the papers published here various aspects of the crisis are explored:
Gavin Poynter explains the crisis as a consequence of a long-term decline in the performance of the productive industries of the US and other advanced western economies, and the unsustainable shift to financial operations which has followed from this. He suggests that current measures to mitigate the consequences of this change in the balance of economic forces are unlikely to resolve the underlying problems.
John Urry argues that even more significant than the financial crisis is the imminent decline of the petroleum and car-based economy which has been the dominant force in the world economy for nearly a century. Drawing on the perspectives of complexity theory, he argues that adjustment to this, necessary as it is to avoid environmental disaster, will be an unpredictable process, full of risks.
Sylvia Walby argues that the financial crisis of 2007-9 and the ensuing recession create the possibility that we are at a global tipping point away from neoliberalism. She sets out two alternative pathways, neither of them merely a continuation of neo-liberalism. One of these is social democratic, the other nationalist, protectionist, authoritarian and xenophobic. She sees the differences between the European and American models of economic and social development as fundamental to the determination of this future, strongly identifying Europe with the social democratic path.
John Clarke examines the weakening and fragmenting, under the impact of the crisis, of what had previously been the hegemonic discourse of neo-liberalism, penetrating almost every sphere of life, as much under New Labour as under the previous governments. His focus is on the discourses and imaginaries of politics, and how they shape political possibility. He notes that the weakening of neo-liberal ideas and habits of thought by no means guarantees that coherent alternative ways of thinking of a more 'social' kind are going to emerge.
Michael Rustin compares the present crisis to the period of intense conflict which led to the collapse of social democracy in the late 1970s, and to the neo-liberal counter-revolution. He sees the present crisis as the implosion of the market system from its own contradictions, where the earlier crisis was a response to overt challenges to its power. He makes use of the Gramscian discourse of historical conjunctures - which primary means crises in class relations - to map the present situation. His argument is that this crisis is likely to be long-drawn-out, and that we should be preparing politically for a period in which considerable tensions may emerge.
Neal Lawson and John Harris, in a piece first published in the New Statesman, set out a political programme which they believe could bring together progressive currents of opinion both within and outside the Labour Party, to establish an alternative to New Labour's neo-liberal drift. This programme draws on work undertaking the campaigns around Compass, which are attempting to mobilise significant numbers to give a new direction to progressive politics.
We hope that Soundings readers will contribute to these on-line debates, as you have done to our previous on-line publications.
Note: Some papers were written specially for the conference, some were adapted from other work, others represented work in progress. They are presented here for discussion, and are not for reproduction without permission.