The global economic crisis
continues almost unabated and yet neo-liberalism still reigns supreme. In this
blog post, I bring together a range of book reviews, which all challenge
neo-liberal economics, point to its devastating effects on people’s lives as
well as reflect on alternatives. Together, this set of reviews intends to
provide a useful critical resource for discussions against the currently
dominant economic thinking.
The Rise and Fall of the
Welfare State
In his book The
Rise and Fall of the Welfare State (Pluto Press, 2011) Asbjørn Wahl
makes two important claims. First, the welfare state is the result of class
struggle, when workers were successful at balancing capital’s power in society.
It was not tripartite institutions between labour, capital and state, which
brought it about. Second, the welfare state was a compromise, in which capital
accepted full employment, expansive public services for workers and a role for
trade unions in social and economic decision-making in exchange for retaining
control over the means of production. It had never been the end goal for
workers, which initially demanded a socialisation of the means of production on
the road to socialism. For the full review, click here.
Grounding Globalization
The book Grounding
Globalization: Labour in the Age of Insecurity (John Wiley and Sons Ltd,
2008) by Eddie Webster, Rob Lambert and Andries Bezuidenhout analyses labour’s
current role in the global economy through an analysis of the white goods industry
in Australia, South Korea and South Africa. Importantly, the book also examines
the ‘hidden abode of reproduction’, the concrete impact restructuring has on
the life of families and communities beyond the hardship inflicted on workers
at the work place. And yet, as the authors make clear, it is not all doom and
gloom. Global restructuring has also provided workers with new weapons for
their struggles against exploitation including symbolic or moral power as well
as logistical power. For the full review, click here.
Global History: A View from the
South.
In the broad historical sweep in
his book Global History: A
View from the South (Pambazuka Press, 2011), Samir Amin provides an
important corrective to our standard, Eurocentric understanding of development,
which links issues of development back to medieval Italian Renaissance and the industrial
revolution in Britain from the 18th century onwards. In his analysis
of the period between 500 BC and 1500 AD, Amin outlines that Europe was little
more than a barbarous and backward periphery lacking behind major tributary
systems such as India, China and the Islamic Orient and their scientific,
intellectual and general civilizational achievements. The question then is why
was it Europe, where capitalism took off rather than one of these other, much
more advanced regions in the world? For the full review, click here.
The Precariat: The New
Dangerous Class?
In this path-breaking book The
Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), Guy
Standing illustrates well how the informal economy characterised by short-term,
atypical and insecure work contracts becomes ever more the norm within
industrialised countries. Especially female and young workers are often left
without alternatives to accepting one of these precarious, generally low paid
jobs. Importantly, Standing argues that these informal workers constitute a new
class in itself; a class, which may become the agent for transformative change.
For the full review, click here.
Solidarity Transformed
Mark Anner analyses transnational
labour solidarity in buyer-driven
value chains as well as producer-driven chains in his
book Solidarity
Transformed: Labor Responses to Globalization and Crisis in Latin America
(Cornell University Press, 2011). His main argument is that the type of value
chain has crucial implications for trade unions’ potential strategies.
Analysing trade union strategies in the automobile sector in Argentina and
Brazil, and the apparel industry in Honduras and El Salvador, Anner presents a
large number of fascinating case studies of individual union campaigns
illustrating examples when transnational solidarity strategies worked as well
as when they failed. For the full review, click here.
The Poverty of Capitalism
John Hilary’s book The Poverty of
Capitalism: Economic Meltdown and the Struggle for What Comes Next
(Pluto Press, 2013) not only analyses the current economic crisis, it also provides
a stinging critique of global capitalism. The destructive power of
transnational capital is revealed in three economic areas, extraction, garments
and food production. While the environment is severely damaged, basic human
rights of workers are attacked. And yet, TNCs have managed to hide behind
elaborated company policies of corporate social responsibility. As Hilary makes
clear, only a transformation of capitalism can overcome exploitation.
Importantly, he discusses several examples of alternatives beyond capitalism,
which are already existing today. For the full review, click here.
Prof. Andreas Bieler
Professor of Political Economy
University of Nottingham/UK
3 February 2014
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