bi-lal-kaifa-blog

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The profound error made by those who have announced the ‘death of liberalism’ is to confuse ideological representation accompanying the implementation of neoliberal policies with the practical normativity that specifically characterises neoliberalism. As a result, the relative discredit surrounding the ideology of laissez-faire today in no way prevents neoliberalism from prevailing more than ever as a normative system possessed of a certain efficiency - that is, the capacity to direct from within the actual practice of governments, enterprises and, in addition to them, millions of people who are not necessarily conscious of the fact. For this is the crux of the matter: how is it that, despite the utterly catastrophic consequences in which neoliberal policies have resulted, they are increasingly operative, to the extent of pushing states and societies into ever graver political crises and social regression? How is it that such policies have been developed and radicalised for more than thirty years without encountering sufficient resistance to check them? "The answer is not, and cannot be, confined to the ‘negative’ aspects of neoliberal policies - that is, the programmed destruction of regulations and institutions. Neoliberalism is not merely destructive of rules, institutions and rights. It is also productive of certain kinds of social relations, certain ways of living, certain subjectivities. In other words, at stake in neoliberalism is nothing more, nor less, than the form of our existence - the way in which we are led to conduct ourselves, to relate to others and to ourselves. Neoliberalism defines a certain existential norm in western societies and, far beyond them, in all those societies that follow them on the path of ‘modernity’. This norm enjoins everyone to live in a world of generalised competition; it calls upon wage-earning classes and populations to engage in economic struggle against one another; it aligns social relations with the model of the market; it promotes the justification of ever greater inequalities; it even transforms the individual, no called on to conceive and conduct him- or herself as an enterprise. For more than a third of a century, this existential norm has presided over public policy, governed global economic relations, transformed society, and reshaped subjectivity… "The thesis defended in this book is precisely that neoliberalism, far from being an ideology or an economic policy, is firstly and fundamentally a rationality, and as such tends to structure and organise not only the action of rulers, but also the conduct of the ruled. The principal characteristic of neoliberal rationality is the generalisation of competition as a behavioural norm of the enterprise as a model of subjectivation. … Neoliberalism is a rationality of contemporary capitalism, freed of its archive references and fully acknowledged as a historical construct and general norm of existence … Neoliberalism can be defined as the set of discourses, practices and apparatuses that determine a new mode of government of human beings in accordance with the universal principle of competition.

Pierre Dardot & Christian Laval, The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society, Verso, London & New York, 2013, pp. 2-4 (via leninology)

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If you're not physically present at the People's Assembly there's a live streaming webcast.

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The Thirteen Commandments of Neoliberalism

By Philip Mirowski.

Neoliberals are not fundamentalists. But they approach crises with a certain logic—one that is directly relevant to comprehending neoliberalism’s unexpected strength in the current global crisis.

Read More

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Nigel Falange riding to Westminster in a sedan chair carried by the sweating, gurning, clueless shower of BBC journalists for whom he exerts such a fascination. He daintily extends a boot – British leather, of course – for Nick Robinson to lick. Across the country, moustachioed &...

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Instagramsci

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The Hour of Power-2013-03-24-17:00:00

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Thousands of Chavistas mourned the death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez earlier today as his casket was driven through the streets of Caracas.

The socialist leader died on Tuesday after a two-year battle with cancer after leading the country for 14 years. 

“Being rich is bad and inhumane. So condemn the rich.” - Hugo Chavez (2005)

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“It is impossible to remain in a large German city where hunger forces the most wretched to live on the banknotes with which passers-by seek to cover an exposure that wounds them.” – Walter Benjamin[1]

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Bringing Out the Structure

Not a big fan of animated gif files usually, but I love these parallax space images for the way they foreground the structure of the objects depicted. http://www.petapixel.com/2013/02/20/amazing-animated-gifs-capture-nebulae-in-3d-using-artificial-parallax/

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Yes, wary; but also precise

a lot of artists are fascists. a lot of artists are also unwitting apologists for neoliberalism. if you’re reading a novel or watching a movie that is focused on familial strife and makes no reference to the larger political/economic/cultural frameworks that structure the central conflict and the relationships between the main characters, be very wary.

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The Inseparable Domains of Mental and Material

As Maurice Godelier has emphasized in his underappreciated work of economic anthropology, The Mental and the Material, the mistake has hitherto often been to see the processes of production and distribution as one thing and their mental representation and content as another, similar to Marx's so abused metaphor of the ‘base’ and the ‘superstructure’... [I]n the real experience of society, these two domains cannot be separated. The mental perception of society (what Godelier calls ‘idéel’), at least insofar as it concerns the processes of production and distribution of goods (the matériel), is an integral part of these processes themselves. (http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=6714)

This deceptively simple point is something I always seem to struggle to put into words, and feel that others seem always to express much better than I can. The linked article is actually one of the clearest pieces of writing on the subject of the Labour Theory of Value I've come across.

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Seriously, 2nd page and I already expect that this could be my new favorite book ever. David McNally’s Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires and Global Capitalism

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Reposted from Fantastic Metropolis, author China Mieville lays out a list of 50 science fiction and fantasy works he feels every socialist ought to read.

When I became a socialist I was also studying Sociology and Philosophy academically. I experienced something that seems to be a trend...

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