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Very promising new blog:

D. Harvey, “Towards Urban Revolution?”

From David Harvey’s “THE URBAN ROOTS OF FINANCIAL CRISES: RECLAIMING THE CITY FOR ANTI-CAPITALIST STRUGGLE” in SOCIALIST REGISTER 2012.

The city is a terrain where anti-capitalist struggles have always flourished.

The history of such struggles, from the Paris Commune through the Shanghai
Commune, the Seattle General Strike, The Tucuman uprising and the Prague
Spring to the more general urban-based movements of 1968 (which we now
see faintly echoed in Cairo and Madison) is stunning. But it is a history that
is also troubled by political and tactical complications that have led many on
the left to underestimate and misunderstand the potential and the potency
of urban-based movements, to often see them as separate from class struggle
and therefore devoid of revolutionary potential. And when such events do
take on iconic status, as in the case of the Paris Commune, they are typically
claimed as one of ‘the greatest proletarian uprisings’ in world history, even as
they were as much about reclaiming the right to the city as they were about
revolutionizing class relations in production.
(more…)

Labor’s location and power in finance

“[L]abour itself is being incorporated into capital in new ways, not just via workplace discipline but via the process of securitization. Some have sensed this new development, but have cast it in terms of growing household debt, with the appropriation of interest payments out of labour’s income being treated as a further ‘take’ on surplus value. But this is not the critical aspect of the development, and it is certainly not new….The critical development is the recasting of labour as the provider of income streams for securities, to facilitate asset diversification and the search for yield. The rapid growth of mortgage, auto, credit card and student loans, as well as contracts on telephones, energy and healthcare, all provide the raw materials on which securities are built to meet the demands of global investors.

(more…)

Anticipating the Occupy Movement

There is a vicious campaign underway at the moment against ‘communism’, this despite the utter lack of a Left with any social power. The most meager Democratic Party proposals, or defenses of remaining aspects of the social safety net, minor extensions in unemployment aid, are branded ‘class warfare.’

(More…)

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The Malthusians who masquerade as Marxists [Daniel Ben-Ami]

From Spiked:

Both radical and mainstream authors now frequently attack ‘neo-liberalism’ and ‘free-market fundamentalism’. But their alternative to these largely mythical creeds would be far, far worse.

One of the great puzzles of contemporary political debate is what exactly critics of Western governments mean by the term ‘neo-liberalism’. Typically, the concept is associated with the ideas propagated by a familiar cast of conservative villains, including Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. Behind the scenes, pulling the strings, are said to be the financial powers of Wall Street and the City of London. But this will not do as a definition. It is rarely made clear whether the ultimate object of their attack is a theory, a set of policies, a phase of capitalism, or something else.

The mystery deepens when it comes to David Harvey, one of the most sophisticated exponents of the concept of neo-liberalism. In the current intellectual climate, it would probably come as a surprise to many to learn that the work of a 75-year-old professor of anthropology and self-proclaimed Marxist is so popular. Yet his 2010 YouTube lecture on the crises of capitalism has received over one million hits. Other critics of neo-liberalism also widely cite Harvey’s many books as authorities on the subject.

[READ THE REST]

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• The Project Is Far More Insidious Than That: (brothersjuddblog.com)

The enigma of capital

[Via AGT]

Read this post by Resonance, and then watch the video (embedded below the fold).

“The crisis reveals its true face, we are drowning in excess capital, in our own alienated labour.”