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Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World

William Mitchell

Thomas Fazi

Copyright Date: 2017

Published by: Pluto Press

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvvp

Table of Contents

Front Matter

(pp. i-iv)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvvp.1

Table of Contents

(pp. v-v)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvvp.2

Acknowledgements

(pp. vi-vi)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvvp.3

Introduction: Make the Left Great Again

(pp. 1-14)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvvp.4

The West is currently in the midst of an anti-establishment revolt of historic proportions.

The Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, the election of Donald Trump in the United States, the rejection of Matteo Renzi’s neoliberal constitutional reform in Italy, the EU’s unprecedented crisis of legitimation: although these interrelated phenomena differ in ideology and goals, they are all rejections of the (neo)liberal order that has dominated the world – and in particular the West – for the past 30 years.

Even though the system has thus proven capable (for the most part) of absorbing and neutralising these electoral uprisings,¹ there…

PART I The Great Transformation Redux:: From Keynesianism to Neoliberalism – and Beyond

1 Broken Paradise: A Critical Assessment of the Keynesian ‘Full Employment’ Era

(pp. 17-35)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvvp.5

Looking back on the 30-year-long economic expansion that followed World War II, Adam Przeworski and Michael Wallerstein concluded that ‘by most criteria of economic progress the Keynesian era was a success’.¹ It is hard to disagree: throughout the West, from the mid-1940s until the early 1970s, countries enjoyed lower levels of unemployment, greater economic stability and higher levels of economic growth than ever before. That stability, particularly in the US, also rested on a strong financial regulatory framework: on the widespread provision of deposit insurance to stop bank runs; strict regulation of the financial system, including the separation of commercial…

2 Destined to Fail: Understanding the Crisis of Keynesianism and the Rise of Neoliberalism

(pp. 36-59)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvvp.6

In the early 1970s, the capitalist world economy entered a period of instability and crisis. Even though the collective GDP of the advanced economies was expanding (though at a diminished rate compared to previous decades), and the core capitalist countries were far richer than ever before, many of the problems that had plagued the capitalist economies prior to the Keynesian era – poverty, squalor, mass unemployment, inequality, instability (within as well as between nations) – reappeared. As a result, the Keynesian framework, and the institutions and policies associated with it, which until then had sustained an ever-rising tide of economic…

3 That Option No Longer Exists: How Britain, and the British Labour Party, Fell Into the Monetarist Trap

(pp. 60-75)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvvp.7

The UK once again provides an interesting case study, reflecting the wider trend across advanced nations. In the mid-1960s, the Labour government of Harold Wilson (1964–70) attempted to manage the distributional struggle – and more generally the wide range of economic problems facing the country, including high inflation and unemployment, and a serious balance-of-payments deficit – through a consensual approach, aimed at combining wage restraint with measures aimed at stimulating private investment and boosting productivity. The plan had the benefit of acknowledging the responsibilities of British capital in bringing about the ‘stagnation’ of the late 1960s (relative to the…

4 The Paris Consensus: The French Left and the Creation of Neoliberal Europe

(pp. 76-92)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvvp.8

By the early 1980s, the French economy had succumbed to the disastrous austerity imposed by the Barre Plan. Unemployment had risen sharply and the French people were in a mood for a change away from the conflictual politics and poor economic outcomes that had characterised the 1970s. The Socialist François Mitterrand was elected president on 10 May 1981, after more than two decades of the French left being excluded from office (ever since the establishment of the Fifth Republic in 1958). Five weeks later, the left backed up Mitterrand’s success by winning a majority of seats in the National Assembly…

5 The State Never Went Away: Neoliberalism as a State-Driven Project

(pp. 93-149)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvvp.9

So far, the term ‘neoliberalism’ has figured quite heavily throughout the text. It is now time to take a more in-depth look at the term, but before we do that, let us briefly take stock of what we have covered so far, insofar as neoliberalism (in theory and practice) is concerned. In Chapter 2, we saw how neoliberalism as a political philosophy and ideology emerged in the 1930s and can be traced back to the work of economists and political philosophers such as Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, who saw the capitalist market as something that is ‘natural’ and…

6 Après Elle, Le Déluge: Are We Entering a Post-Neoliberal Age?

(pp. 150-158)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvvp.10

In Chapter 5, we saw how the stagnationary effects of the post-1970s neoliberal policies of profit maximisation pursued throughout the West were temporarily offset, from the 1980s onwards, through financialisation and debt-based consumption. The inherent contradictions of this new finance-led regime of accumulation exploded in 2007–9, as the mountain of debt accumulated in the previous decades came crashing to the ground, threatening a meltdown of the global economy. Even though Western governments were able to avoid the worst-case scenario and contain (for a while) the economic and political fallout from the financial crisis by reinstating – with even greater…

PART II A Progressive Strategy for the Twenty-First Century

7 Towards a Progressive Vision of Sovereignty

(pp. 161-171)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvvp.11

Times of organic crisis can be frightening, but they can also be incredibly fertile. They throw dominant paradigms into doubt, expose the false claims made by elites and open up new horizons. They set the wheels of history – of which elites always claim to represent the end point – in motion once again. In doing so, they create huge opportunities for change – including progressive change, of course. The current crisis is no different. Jim Stanford provides a poignant example of how the crisis is bringing about an important paradigm shift:

For a quarter-century we were told that monetary…

8 A Government is Not Like a Household: An Introduction to Modern Monetary Theory

(pp. 172-220)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvvp.12

There has been a lot of talk regarding ‘post-truth’ in recent years. We are increasingly being told that we have entered a new era of politics: the post-truth era. But what does the term mean exactly? TheOxford English Dictionary– which chose the term as its 2016 word of the year – defines post-truth politics (or post-factual politics) as a political culture ‘in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’. According to this commonly accepted definition, however, it hard to see what is so novel about the so-called post-truth…

9 I Have a Job For You: Why a Job Guarantee is Better than a Basic Income

(pp. 221-247)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvvp.13

There is a quasi-consensus among progressives that the solution to most of the social ills of modern capitalism – poverty, income insecurity, unemployment – lies in the provision of a universal basic income (UBI): that is, an income unconditionally granted by the state to all citizens on an individual basis, irrespective of income. This idea has gathered strength in recent years due to the widespread belief that we are on the verge of a ‘second machine age’ that, unlike the first machine age – the industrial revolution – will render obsolete most of human involvement in the production process, not…

10 We Have a (Central) Plan: The Case of Renationalisation

(pp. 248-262)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvvp.14

As we saw in Chapter 1, the post-war development of core capitalist countries – particularly in Europe – was based on extensive industrial policy. Not only did the state heavily support private firms through financial and investment aid, R&D funds, public procurement, market protection, consortiums, public education strategies, telecommunications, transport and energy networks, etc. National policy tools also included the creation or expansion of a vast array of state-owned firms in strategic industries, key infrastructures and natural monopolies. France was probably the most significant example of this strategy. The centrepiece of France’s post-war reconstruction effort was a massive nationalisation programme,…

Conclusion: Back to the State

(pp. 263-268)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvvp.15

As the reader will have surmised by now, what we have outlined in the second part of the book is not apolitical programme. With the exception of the job guarantee, we have not put forward specific policies. It is not our job to do so; besides, every country has different needs and requirements in that respect. A one-size-fits-all left-wing programme would therefore make little sense. Rather, what we have done is to provide what we consider to be the necessary requirements – in theoretical, political and institutional terms – for conceiving a political-institutional framework within which the achievement of…

Notes

(pp. 269-291)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvvp.16

Index

(pp. 292-302)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvvp.17

Sovranità o barbarie

(Italieraz)

Sovranità o barbarie.Il ritorno della questione nazionale

(ii) Bigarrena: argitaratzekoa

Sarrera gisa, ikus ondoko linka: Bill Mitchell eta Thomas Fazi: liburu berriaz

Gehigarri orokorrak:

Nazio-estatua ezina omen da

Islandiak frogatzen du nazio-estatua bizirik eta ongi dagoela (1)

Islandiak frogatzen du nazio-estatua bizirik eta ongi dagoela (eta 2)

Globalizazioa, neoliberalismoa, nazio-estatua eta ezkerra

Nazio-estatu txikiez hitz bi

Sei (6) urrats XXI mendean independentista izateko1

Euskal Herriarentzat:

Euskal Herria Suitza txiki bat izan daiteke

Ekonomiaz jakin nahi zenuen eta galdetzeko ausartu ez zinen ia guztia (eguneraketa)


1 Eusko barik Balparda hobetsi dut aspalditik: Ongi etorri Balparda! (https://www.unibertsitatea.net/apunteak/gizarte-zientziak/ekonomia/ongi-etorri-balparda) .

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