Polarizing Development

Description

The global economic crisis has exposed the limits of neoliberalism and dramatically deepened social polarization. Yet, despite increasing social resistance and opposition, neoliberalism prevails globally.



Radical alternatives, moreover, are only rarely debated. And if they are, such alternatives are reduced to new Keynesian and new developmental agendas, which fail to address existing class divisions and imperialist relations of domination.



This collection of essays polarizes the debate between radical and reformist alternatives by exploring head-on the antagonistic structure of capitalist development. The contributors ground their proposals in an international, non-Eurocentric and Marxian inspired analysis of capitalism and its crises. From Latin America to Asia, Africa to the Middle East and Europe to the US, social and labour movements have emerged as the protagonists behind creating alternatives.



This book's new generation of scholars has written accessible yet theoretically informed and empirically rich chapters elaborating radical worldwide strategies for moving beyond neoliberalism, and beyond capitalism. The intent is to provoke critical reflection and positive action towards substantive change.
Foreword

1. Polarising Development – Introducing Alternatives to Neoliberalism and the Crisis

Part I: Alternative Themes

2. Beyond Impoverishment: Western Europe in the World Economy - Lucia Pradella

3. Banking on Alternatives to Neoliberal Development - Thomas Marois

4. The Political Economy of Development: Statism or Marxism? - Benjamin Selwyn

5. The Globalisation of Production and the Struggle for Workers’ Unity: Lessons from Bangladesh - John Smith

6. The ‘Rise of the South’ - Alfredo Saad-Filho

7. Hegemony in Question: U.S. Primacy, Multi-Polarity and Global Resistance - Jerome Klassen

8. Neoliberalism, Crisis and International Migration - Pietro Basso

9. Neoliberalism, Social Reproduction and Women’s Resistance: Lessons from Cambodia and Venezuela - Sarah Miraglia and Susan Spronk

10. Exploding in the Air: Beyond the Carbon Trail of Neoliberal Globalisation - Andreas Malm

11. Defend, Militate and Alternate: Public Options in a Privatised World - David A. McDonald

12. Utopian Socialism and Marx’s Capital: Envisioning Alternatives - Hugo Radice

Part II: Alternative Cases

13. Beyond Neoliberalism and New Developmentalism in Latin America: Towards an Anti-Capitalist Agenda - Abelardo Mariña-Flores

14. Crisis and Class, Advance and Retreat: The Political Economy of the New Latin American Left - Jeffery R. Webber

15. Taking Control: Decommodification and Peasant Alternatives to Neoliberalism in Mexico and Brazil - Leandro Vergara-Camus

16. The Rise of East Asia: A Slippery Floor for the Left - Dae-oup Chang

17. Labour as an Agent of Change: The Case of China - Tim Pringle

18. Alternatives to Neoliberalism in India - Rohini Hensman

19. Musical Chairs on the Sidelines: The Challenges of Social Transformation in Neocolonial Africa - Baba Aye

20. Challenging Neoliberalism in the Arab World - Adam Hanieh

21. Socialist Feminist Alternatives to Neoliberalism in Turkey - Demet Ozmen Y lmaz

22. Uneven Development and Political Resistance against EU Austerity Politics - Angela Wigger and Laura Horn

23. Crisis, Austerity and Resistance in the United States - David McNally

List of Contributors

Index

Sujets

• Economic Policy
• Public Policy
• Political Ideologies
• Political Science
• África
• América del Norte
• General officer
• Political economy
• North America
• General
• Union européenne
• Africa
• China
• India
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 novembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783711826
• Langue: English

Extrait

POLARISING DEVELOPMENT
Polarising Development
Alternatives to Neoliberalism and the Crisis
Edited by Lucia Pradella and Thomas Marois
First published 2015 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © editing by Lucia Pradella and Thomas Marois 2015.
The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3470 7 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 3469 1 Paperback ISBN 978 1 7837 1181 9 PDF eBook ISBN 978 1 7837 1183 3 Kindle eBook ISBN 978 1 7837 1182 6 EPUB eBook
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Typeset by Curran Publishing Services, Norwich Text design by Melanie Patrick Simultaneously printed digitally by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Bros in the United States of America
Contents
 
Foreword
1
Polarising Development – Introducing Alternatives to Neoliberalism and the Crisis
Thomas Marois and Lucia Pradella
Part I: Alternative Themes
2
Beyond Impoverishment: Western Europe in the World Economy
Lucia Pradella
3
Banking on Alternatives to Neoliberal Development
Thomas Marois
4
The Political Economy of Development: Statism or Marxism?
Benjamin Selwyn
5
The Globalisation of Production and the Struggle for Workers’ Unity: Lessons from Bangladesh
John Smith
6
The ‘Rise of the South’
Alfredo Saad-Filho
7
Hegemony in Question: US Primacy, Multi-Polarity and Global Resistance
Jerome Klassen
8
Neoliberalism, Crisis and International Migration
Pietro Basso
9
Neoliberalism, Social Reproduction and Women’s Resistance: Lessons from Cambodia and Venezuela
Sarah Miraglia and Susan Spronk
10
Exploding in the Air: Beyond the Carbon Trail Of Neoliberal Globalisation
Andreas Malm
11
Defend, Militate and Alternate: Public Options in a Privatized World
David A. McDonald
12
Utopian Socialism and Marx’s Capital: Envisioning Alternatives
Hugo Radice
Part II: Alternative Cases
13
Beyond Neoliberalism and New Developmentalism in Latin America: Towards an Anti-Capitalist Agenda
Abelardo Mariña-Flores
14
Crisis and Class, Advance and Retreat: The Political Economy of the New Latin American Left
Jeffery R. Webber
15
Taking Control: Decommodification and Peasant Alternatives to Neoliberalism in Mexico and Brazil
Leandro Vergara-Camus
16
The Rise of East Asia: A Slippery Floor for the Left
Dae-oup Chang
17
Labour as an Agent of Change: The case of China
Tim Pringle
18
Alternatives to Neoliberalism in India
Rohini Hensman
19
Musical Chairs on the Sidelines: The Challenges of Social Transformation in Neocolonial Africa
Baba Aye
20
Challenging Neoliberalism in the Arab World
Adam Hanieh
21
Socialist Feminist Alternatives to Neoliberalism in Turkey
Demet Özmen Yılmaz
22
Uneven Development and Political Resistance against EU Austerity Politics
Angela Wigger and Laura Horn
23
Crisis, Austerity and Resistance in the United States
David McNally
 
List of contributors
 
Index
Foreword
This book is the result of a collaborative research project that started in 2011 with a debate on the theoretical premises of development studies. After initially attempting, but ultimately failing, to organise a research seminar that involved both Marxist and new developmentalist scholars, we thought it more productive to focus on clarifying our own Marxian-inspired approach to development. This opportunity seemed especially important. Ten years had passed since the height of the alter-globalisation movement and some four years had gone by after the eruption of the global economic crisis. Yet remarkably little Marxist research had been produced on international and collective strategies to move beyond neoliberalism and the crisis.
We thus organised two research seminars at SOAS, University of London – the first in May 2012 and the second one year later in 2013. Here we discussed the various aspects of the project, issues of solidarity, and some grounds for our Marxian approaches to alternatives. This book meets our initial objectives to varying degrees. It is a first and important step in the elaboration of a distinctively Marxian-inspired approach that sees labour and social movements as core determinants of development outcomes and of alternatives to the ravages of capitalism. It is for this reason that the book does not want to, nor does it pretend to, offer a neutral analysis. Rather, as a diverse collection inspired by critical and socially progressive frameworks, the book seeks to provide existing movements of all shapes and sizes with some tools and lessons for the active transformation of society.
We would like to thank Ben Fine for his support throughout this project, beginning with the first seminar, and Benjamin Selwyn for his essential role in bringing forward this initial idea. We are also grateful to Dae-oup Chang, Adam Hanieh, Abelardo Mariña-Flores, Tim Pringle, Alfredo Saad-Filho and John Smith for their inputs and help during various stages of the project, and to the SOAS Department of Development Studies for its financial support.
As a final word, we wish to dedicate this book to all those movements that, by resisting neoliberalism and imperialism, create the conditions for realising progressive alternatives to capitalism.
Lucia Pradella and Thomas Marois
CHAPTER ONE
Polarising Development – Introducing Alternatives to Neoliberalism and the Crisis
Thomas Marois and Lucia Pradella
Polarising the Debate on Alternatives
Neoliberal economic policies, with their emphasis on market-led development and individual rationality, have been exposed as bankrupt not only by the global economic crisis but also by increasing social opposition and resistance. Social movements and critical scholars in Latin America, East Asia, Europe and the United States, alongside the Arab uprisings, have triggered renewed debate on possible different futures. While for some years any discussion of substantive alternatives has been marginalised, the global crisis since 2008 has opened up new spaces to debate, and indeed to radically rethink, the meaning of development. Debates on developmental change are no longer tethered to the pole of ‘reform and reproduce’: a new pole of ‘critique and strategy beyond’ neoliberal capitalism has emerged.
Despite being forcefully challenged, neoliberalism has proven remarkably resilient. In the first years since the crisis erupted, the bulk of the alternative literature pointed to continued growth in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and in other big emerging market countries to affirm the necessary role for the state in sustaining capitalist development. New developmental economists have consequently reasserted themselves. Their proposals converged into a broader demand for global Keynesianism (Patomäki, 2012) – a demand that is proving to be less and less realistic in the face of a deepening global economic crisis.
Advocates of ‘reform and reproduce’ – be they new developmental or neo-Keynesian – share deep commitments to capitalism and the subordination of workers to the needs of accumulation. In contrast, this book represents a collaborative attempt by a group of Marxian-inspired scholars to explore real and potential alternatives to the exploitative reality of neoliberal capitalism. Despite varying approaches, contributors to this book understand that neoliberalism and the ongoing crisis are an expression of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism. They reflect on the alternatives that workers, women, peasants and oppressed peoples have defended and struggled to create. At the same time the book seeks to provide an analysis of capitalism, and its crisis, as a global phenomenon, and in doing so overcome academic divisions between development studies of the South and the study of neoliberalism in the North.
Importantly, a guiding theme helping to shape the book has been a refusal to accept nation-states as self-contained units of analysis: that is, the ‘methodological nationalism’ found in much of the developmental literature. Contributors instead seek to understand the case-specific dynamics of neoliberalism in ways that capture the global tendencies of capitalist accumulation as an integrated whole. In this approach contemporary development is not separated from existing labour and social movements, just as concrete alternatives depend on real social mobilisations. Capitalist development is taken as an inherently antagonistic and polarising process shaped by class struggle. Alternatives are assessed by the extent to which they enable the fulfilment of social aspirations for an equal and just existence free from exploitation and oppression. The contributors’ critical analyses thus seek to reveal the contours of different and better possible forms of social development.
The book is structured as follows. Part I , Alternative Themes, develops a broad analysis of capitalist relations of production, social reproduction, climate change, crisis and alternatives. Part II , Alternative Cases, explores the specificities of capitalist development in Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, North America and Western Europe. The remainder of this Introduction is intended to orient the reader to the book’s key concepts, with reference to specific contributors as relevant. It is organised around four sections. The first explores neoliberalism in historical and conceptual terms. T