Capitalism and its response to crises: Who pays?

The global economy is yet again under severe pressure. While it was the global financial market crisis, which shook the global economy to its core in 2007/2008, it is now the coronavirus, which has increasingly undermined capitalist accumulation. With countries forced to implement strong control measures, closing their borders and asking people to stay at home, the global economy based on production in global value chains is more and more under pressure. Job losses in the airlines industry are likely to be only the first signs of rising unemployment with the whole travel industry under immediate pressure. As in 2007/2008, governments are committed to investing large amounts of money in order to keep the economy afloat for the benefit of everyone, as they argue. Nevertheless, what can we learn from the experience of more than ten years ago?

Photo by Sergio Santos

The End of Cheap Labour in China?

China’s developmental strategy has been based on cheap labour, foreign direct investment (FDI) and the assembling of pre-fabricated parts for export to North American and European markets. This export-oriented growth strategy in low value added production sectors has, however, come under pressure as a result of the global economic crisis and a decline in global demand. In his presentation at Nottingham University on 17 February, jointly hosted by the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies and the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice, Florian Butollo from Jena University in Germany investigated whether China’s attempts at industrial upgrading in response to the crisis have also resulted in ‘social upgrading’ for its workforce. 

The global financial crisis and service provision: The public sector in difficult times.

Public sector restructuring is generally justified with reference to the need to save money in view of large public debt resulting from the global financial crisis. In this post, I want to investigate this claim and unravel the real motivations behind current attacks on the public sector.

National Demo against Sussex University Privatisation - Serena Cheung

Exploited for a good cause? Campaigning against unpaid internships in the UK charity sector.

Unpaid internships in businesses are considered by many to be unfair. However, what if this unpaid work, takes place in a non-profit organisation purporting to fight poverty and human rights abuses? As an intern for such a charity, Vera Weghmann campaigned for workers’ rights, especially union recognition and fair pay, while she was expected to work for free! Despite her great admiration for this charity she and her fellow interns decided to campaign against this injustice. After six months they had successfully managed to stop the charity’s use of unpaid internships. In this guest post, Vera Weghmann tells her story:

Fighting against water privatisation in Italy: Road to Victory!

Against the background of the global and Eurozone financial crises as well as austerity sweeping across Europe, the pressure on privatising public services is immense. The story of the Italian water movement, a broad alliance of social movements and trade unions, which successfully mobilized for a referendum against the privatization of water in June 2011, is a story of hope for alliances involved in resisting privatization elsewhere. From 25 March to 8 April, I conducted a series of interviews with members of this movement. In this post, I will report on the emergence and ultimate success of this movement in the referendum.

Labour and transnational action in times of crisis!

With the repercussions of the economic crisis still reverberating through the global system, what are the possibilities of labour movements to form relationships of transnational solidarity in resistance to the exploitative and destructive dynamics of global capitalism? This question was at the heart of the two-day international workshop Labour and transnational action in times of crisis: from case studies to theory, organised by the Transnational Labour project in Oslo on 27 and 28 February 2014. In this post, I will discuss some of the key themes, which emerged from the various presentations and debates.

Globalisation and Resistance: critical engagements with neo-liberalism.

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.

Forget the welfare state?

The welfare state has been under pressure since the mid-1980s and the onset of neo-liberal economic policies across Europe. Capital has used the current crisis to intensify this pressure further. In Southern Europe, this is often directly enforced through the Troika in exchange for bailout packages, but in other countries such as the UK too, drastic cuts are justified by reference to increasing national debt and the global financial crisis. Trade unions and civil society organisations have struggled hard to defend the welfare state, but it has been a defensive struggle all the way and many aspects have already been lost. Trade union rights have been curbed in many countries, key industries such as telecommunications and postal services privatised and core services such as health and education increasingly marketised. Full employment policies have been a thing of the past for quite some time. In this blog post, I will reflect on the nature and contents of the welfare state and the possibilities of defending its achievements.

Democratic global Keynesianism as a way out of crisis? Critical reflections on Heikki Patomäki’s The Great Eurozone Disaster.

When the financial market crisis in 2007 and 2008 threatened the global economy, governments around the world stepped in and bailed out many financial institutions, which were on the brink of collapse. Large amounts of private debt were transformed into public debt. In the Eurozone, this resulted in the sovereign debt crisis. In his excellent book The Great Eurozone Disaster: From Crisis to Global New Deal (Zed Books, 2012), Heikki Patomäki not only provides an insightful analysis of the crisis, but he also makes clear recommendations for the best way out of crisis.

SIGTUR’s Futures Commission and the search for alternatives in and beyond capitalism!

On 24 and 25 June, I participated in the first meeting of the Southern Initiative on Globalisation and Trade Union Rights’ (SIGTUR) Futures Commission. The meeting was hosted by Eddie Webster in the Chris Hani Institute in Johannesburg/South Africa and supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. A group of left-wing intellectuals and trade union representatives was entrusted with the task to undertake the first steps towards developing concrete alternatives to neo-liberal globalisation. In this post, I will reflect on some of the key discussions during the two days.

Let’s accept a smaller slice of a shrinking cake: Irish public sector trade unions in crisis.

Trade unions find themselves in difficult situations during times of economic crisis. Should they negotiate with the government and potentially become co-opted into austerity policies or should they resist any cuts in public spending and risk being completely excluded from the policy-making process? In this guest post, Roland Erne raises some crucial questions in relation to current developments in Ireland.

European trade unions and the Struggle for Public Services

Against the background of the global financial crisis and the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, the public sector and services have come under heavy restructuring and privatisation pressure across Europe. In this guest post, Christoph Hermann assesses a variety of different strategies, European trade unions have adopted in defence of the public sector. Ultimately, he argues, the strengthening of the link between service producers and service users has to be at the centre of a successful strategy of resistance.

The Occupy Movement – a lasting legacy? Reflections by a participant.

Exactly one year ago, on 28 February 2012, the Occupy camp next to London's stock exchange was evicted. In this guest post, Vera Weghmann will share her experience as an activist at Occupy London Stock Exchange (Occupy LSX) and evaluate the lasting legacy of the Occupy movement.

Firenze 10+10 – Reflections on the Left in Europe

From 8 to 11 November 2012, I attended the Firenze 10+10 meeting of European anti – neo-liberal globalisation movements in Florence/Italy. Florence had partly also been chosen as the location for this meeting in memory of the remarkable first European Social Forum held in that city in November 2002. In this post, I will reflect on the achievements of Firenze 10+10 and analyse the situation of the European Left more generally.

The Dance of the Undead - Not only at Marikana, Not only in South Africa ...

Starting from the recent massacre of striking South African workers at the Marikana mine (The Guardian, 7 September 2012), in this guest post Peter Waterman looks more closely at current trade union policy-making in view of the global crisis of capitalist civilisation. The massacre does not only indicate that the hopes for post-apartheid South Africa have not materialised. It also highlights the intensity of the capitalist crisis. What are the key requirements for an emancipatory movement towards another South Africa, towards another world?   

Crisis in the Eurozone, Part I – the fundamental unevenness between core and periphery!

With their book Crisis in the Eurozone (Verso, 2012) Costas Lapavitsas and his colleagues have accomplished an impressive assessment of the underlying dynamics of the Eurozone crisis as well as provided an insightful analysis of potential ways forward. In this post, the first part of a two-part review of the book, I will focus on their discussions of the underlying dynamics.

The precariat – a new class agent for transformation?

In this blog post, I provide a critical engagement with Guy Standing’s powerful book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (Bloomsbury Academic, 2011). While it provides important insights into the conditions of the increasingly large informal sector of the economy, I will argue that several conceptual as well as empirical problems ultimately undermine the analytical significance of the book.

The global economic crisis and the challenges for trade unions in the UK!

The financial market crisis has led to global economic recession. While many banks were bailed out by governments at high costs, it is now working people and society more generally, who are made to pay for the crisis. In this post, I will assess the challenges for British trade unions in their attempts to resist welfare state cuts and austerity.

Corruption in the banking industry – the problem of a few ‘bad apples’?

The working practices of banks have come under close scrutiny recently. After Barclays' involvement in the LIBOR-rigging scandal (BBC, 17 July 2012), news broke on 17 July that HSBC, another prominent player in the global financial markets, provided ‘a conduit for "drug kingpins and rogue nations", according to a US Senate committee investigating money laundering claims at the bank’ (BBC News, 17 July 2012). This adds further to the general pressure on banks widely regarded as responsible for the global financial market crisis. In response, calls are issued to tighten the regulation of financial markets. In this post, I argue that scandals of this type are not the occasional result of criminal or reckless behaviour by individuals. Rather, they are a logical consequence of the systemic pressures within the capitalist mode of production, in which companies constantly have to achieve larger profits than their competitors in order to stay in business.

Success of the Left in Greek elections?

'At this moment the opinion polls show the combined vote to the left of Pasok approaching 40 percent' states Panos Garganas, editor of the Greek newspaper Workers Solidarity in an interview with the journal International Socialism.

In this wide-ranging interview on the forthcoming Greek elections on 6 May, Garganas describes the people's sufferings as a result of imposed austerity programmes and the increasing resistance to these programmes, he deals with the dangers of a shift to right-wing extremist parties, as well as assesses the chances of the progressive left. Solidarity strike action in other countries as well as the debate of an anti-capitalist programme are the key challenges in his eyes.