I really enjoy K-punk's blog (as well as the other 0 Books related blogs). The cultural analysis is great, but I find that the reliance on cultural studies and philosophy a little bit ineffectual as a means of mounting a serious critique of the capitalist system, or eventually providing alternatives. It seems like an instance of "when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail".
If I'm interpreting K-punk correctly, he views the main problem as an ontological one: "there is no alternative" (to capitalism). I view ontologies as expressions of underlying economic conditions. While the dominant ontology does reinforce the economic conditions, I view the economic conditions as prior to the hegemonic ontology that they produce. I think that attacking the ontology itself is doomed to fail, so long as the underlying conditions make the ontology "true" persist.
In an important sense, Thatcher was stating an empirical fact (even if she didn't mean it that way, and even if it was not universally true) when she said that there was no alternative. She was right, there was no alternative (for Britain). The economic conditions had fundamentally shifted from a Fordist to Post-Fordist system, and there was no choice but to get with the program. K-punk's comment that woebot highlighted was quite correct IMO: "when the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 20 points on October 6th 1979, a shift was made to the Post-Fordist industrial climate and employment was increasingly out-sourced."
When the US, the global hegemon, decided to go this route it forced the same decision on all others through its position as producer of the reserve currency and largest market for finished goods. If you wanted to have any economic growth, you had to play by the new rules (neo-liberalism). There was an alternative for the United States itself, the metropole, but for all others there really was no alternative, unless you wanted to end up like Cuba, locked out of the world trade system and consequently impoverished.
Even though people have internalized neo-liberalism to a certain extent, I don't think that is what blocks out alternatives. The alternatives are blocked, at the highest level, by the Federal Reserve and the US Government, which are controlled by the elite for the benefit of the elite. The ideology that they work under is mainstream economics, and it is a sham. The last crisis provided a fairly clear exposition of its faults, and has left the profession in disarray.
The thing that most on the left are unaware of, or ignore, is that free market economics has been completely and utterly debunked for over 20 years now. Joseph Stiglitz won a Nobel Prize for his papers with Greenwald that systematically dismantled the core of free market economics. His arguments have never been disproved, and are even grudgingly respected by mainstream economists. They are just ignored. If you want to watch any top-rate economist squirm, just mention Greenwald-Stiglitz.
Anyways, my point in bringing this up is that k-punk and co. could use some modern heterodox economics to fill out their narratives. It would tie in quite nicely, and probably yield some useful results.
Here's an example of Stiglitz, effortlessly demolishing the entire concept of "the invisible hand":
The Invisible Hand and Modern Welfare Economics - Joseph Stiglitz
In terms of the larger project of providing alternatives, and the implications of his work for modern marxism/socialism, Whither Socialism is the one:
Whither Socialism - Joseph Stiglitz
http://books.google.com/books?id=Bp...whither socialism&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false
If I'm interpreting K-punk correctly, he views the main problem as an ontological one: "there is no alternative" (to capitalism). I view ontologies as expressions of underlying economic conditions. While the dominant ontology does reinforce the economic conditions, I view the economic conditions as prior to the hegemonic ontology that they produce. I think that attacking the ontology itself is doomed to fail, so long as the underlying conditions make the ontology "true" persist.
In an important sense, Thatcher was stating an empirical fact (even if she didn't mean it that way, and even if it was not universally true) when she said that there was no alternative. She was right, there was no alternative (for Britain). The economic conditions had fundamentally shifted from a Fordist to Post-Fordist system, and there was no choice but to get with the program. K-punk's comment that woebot highlighted was quite correct IMO: "when the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 20 points on October 6th 1979, a shift was made to the Post-Fordist industrial climate and employment was increasingly out-sourced."
When the US, the global hegemon, decided to go this route it forced the same decision on all others through its position as producer of the reserve currency and largest market for finished goods. If you wanted to have any economic growth, you had to play by the new rules (neo-liberalism). There was an alternative for the United States itself, the metropole, but for all others there really was no alternative, unless you wanted to end up like Cuba, locked out of the world trade system and consequently impoverished.
Even though people have internalized neo-liberalism to a certain extent, I don't think that is what blocks out alternatives. The alternatives are blocked, at the highest level, by the Federal Reserve and the US Government, which are controlled by the elite for the benefit of the elite. The ideology that they work under is mainstream economics, and it is a sham. The last crisis provided a fairly clear exposition of its faults, and has left the profession in disarray.
The thing that most on the left are unaware of, or ignore, is that free market economics has been completely and utterly debunked for over 20 years now. Joseph Stiglitz won a Nobel Prize for his papers with Greenwald that systematically dismantled the core of free market economics. His arguments have never been disproved, and are even grudgingly respected by mainstream economists. They are just ignored. If you want to watch any top-rate economist squirm, just mention Greenwald-Stiglitz.
Anyways, my point in bringing this up is that k-punk and co. could use some modern heterodox economics to fill out their narratives. It would tie in quite nicely, and probably yield some useful results.
Here's an example of Stiglitz, effortlessly demolishing the entire concept of "the invisible hand":
The Invisible Hand and Modern Welfare Economics - Joseph Stiglitz
In terms of the larger project of providing alternatives, and the implications of his work for modern marxism/socialism, Whither Socialism is the one:
Whither Socialism - Joseph Stiglitz
http://books.google.com/books?id=Bp...whither socialism&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false