A series of seven posts, published from June 16 to June 27, 2016, reflect on Asin Shivani’s article, “This Is Our Neoliberal Nightmare: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Why the Market and the Wealthy Win Every Time” (Alternet, June 8, 2016).  In these posts, I express agreement with Shivani’s description of Hillary Clinton as an avatar of neoliberalism; in contrast to Bernie Sanders, who represents a humane alternative to neoliberalism, and Donald Trump, who rejects neoliberalism through a turn to authoritarianism.  And I maintain that Shivani’s rejection of what he calls “neoliberal multiculturalism” has some validity.  

     At the same time, I maintain that the article is not sufficiently historical and global, and that the author does not seem to understand the origins of the neoliberal project, nor discern its unsustainability.   He does not, in this article at least, propose a political strategy to hasten the future demise of neoliberalism.  

     Drawing upon what has been occurring in Latin America during the last twenty years, I call upon intellectual and activists of the North to form alternative popular parties, rooted in an alternative comprehensive and global understanding, that would seek take control of governments in key nation-states of the core, directing these governments toward policies that are consistent with the universal human values that have been proclaimed by humanity.  The Bernie Sanders campaign is not necessarily the take-off point for such a project, and neither is the Occupy Movement.

      The series of posts reflecting on Shivani’s article are as follows:
“Neoliberalism” 6/16/2016; 
“What are the origins of neoliberalism?” 6/17/2016; 
“Ideological frames” 6/20/2016; 
“The nation-state in a neoliberal world” 6/21/2016; 
“Neoliberalism and presidential elections” 6/23/2016;
“Neoliberalism, multiculturalism & identity politics” 6/24/2016; and
“The future of neoliberalism” 6/27/2016.
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To find them, in the category Critique of the Left, scroll down.

Posted June 16, 2016  

​     “This Is Our Neoliberal Nightmare: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Why the Market and the Wealthy Win Every Time,” by Anis Shivani, was published on Alternet on June 8, 2016.  

      Shivani maintains that neoliberalism has not been well defined, even though it has been the dominant ideology of the last forty-five years.  He offers the following definition.

     Neoliberalism, in Shivani’s view, believes that the market can resolve all problems, including climate change, educational inequality, unequal access to health care, racial injustice, and police violence.  In the neoliberal perspective, education is treated not as a right, but as a consumer good; accordingly, all persons should invest in their own education, as a form of investing in their own future earning potential. Neoliberalism cannot fathom education, health care, child care, and a minimum wage as human rights, nor can it grasp the responsibility of the state to ensure such rights.  

      Shivani maintains that neoliberalism seeks to transform everything. “Neoliberalism expects . . . that economic decision-making will be applied to all areas of life (parenthood, intimacy, sexuality, and identity in any of its forms), and that those who do not do so will be subject to discipline. Everyone must invest in their own future, and not pose a burden to the state or anyone else, otherwise they will be refused recognition as human beings.”

     Shivani rejects, however, the description of neoliberalism as “market fundamentalism.”  He maintains that neoliberalism is different from classical liberalism, which idealized a free market, untethered by states, as it pretended that states were and should be neutral.  In contrast, neoliberalism, he argues, makes no pretense to state neutrality; it advocates for a strong state that interferes in the market to defend the interests of the wealthy, as it seeks to reduce state intervention in the market in defense of the needs of the people.

     Shivani observes that neoliberalism became the prevailing paradigm in the 1970s, replacing Keynesianism, which had been the dominant economic theory since the 1930s.  He notes that since the adoption of neoliberalism, inequality has exploded, undermining the principal ideological claim of neoliberalism, namely, that it promotes the general welfare.  Shivani maintains that neoliberalism must therefore turn to multiculturalism as a form of social recognition.

     Shivani’s description of the neoliberal project rightfully focuses on its emphasis on the reduction of market regulation, except to defend the interests of the capitalist class.  And the article insightfully sees neoliberalism not only as an economic policy but as a project that shapes our philosophical and cultural assumptions and that pervades all aspects of life.

     However, in my view, Shivani describes neoliberalism as it has unfolded in the core nations of the world-economy, and not as an economic package imposed on peripheral and semi-peripheral regions of the capitalist world-economy by the core.  Not describing neoliberalism from a global perspective, the articles does not point to an understanding of neoliberalism as a new phase of imperialism. This omission is related to the article’s insufficient analysis of the origin of the neoliberal project, a theme that I will discuss in the next post.

      For a description of the characteristics of neoliberalism, when it is understood as a core project imposed on peripheral and semi-peripheral regions and as a stage in the continuous application in imperialist policies, see “Imperialism as neoliberalism” 10/7/2013.


Key words: neoliberal, Shivani

Posted June 17, 2016  

     In our last post (“Neoliberalism” 6/15/2016), we looked at the definition and description of neoliberalism offered by Asin Shivani in “This Is Our Neoliberal Nightmare: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Why the Market and the Wealthy Win Every Time” (Alternet, June 8, 2016).  I maintained that Shivani’s description focuses on the dynamics of neoliberalism in the core nations, and it lacks an historical and global perspective.  This limitation is evident with respect to Shiyani’s speculation concerning the origin of neoliberalism.  He writes:

     Let us seek to address the question of the origins of neoliberalism with an historical and global perspective.  

     The modern world-system and the capitalist world-economy were constructed on a foundation of colonial domination of the world by seven Western European nations from the beginning of the sixteenth to the beginning of the twentieth centuries.  The conquered regions of Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia (excepting China and Japan) were converted into suppliers of the raw materials of the nations of the core, on a base of forced labor.  In addition, with their traditional economies destroyed, the conquered regions provided markets for the surplus industrial and agricultural goods of the core (see various posts on the origin and development of the modern world-system).  

     The conquered peoples resisted.  At first, the resistance was military.  Those initially conquered were no match for the politically concentrated and more militarily advanced emerging nation-states of Western Europe.  As the Western European states were able to accumulate more power through the emerging colonial systems, the empires of China, India and the Islamic World ultimately would have to make significant concession to the new global powers of Western Europe.  Later, the resistance of the conquered peoples took the form of anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial social movements, seeking to transform colonies into independent nations, and seeking to form an interstate system based on the principles of the equality and sovereignty of all nations.  However, the European nations-states were able to contain the Third World movements through the development of a neocolonial world-system, characterized by formal political independence of the nations of the world, and by imperialist economic and financial penetration of the peripheralized zones, in practice maintaining inequality among nations and negating true sovereignty for the formerly colonized nations (see “The characteristics of neocolonialism” 9/16/2013).

     In addition to managing the anti-colonial movements in the colonized regions, the world-system was able to contain popular movements in the core.  These movements, formed by workers, artisans, peasants, farmers and the middle class, were a constant threat to take control of the core states from the capitalist class.   However, the elite was able to undermine the revolutionary potential of the popular classes through the granting of material concessions and the development of a consumer society.  The concessions to popular demands in the core were financed by the superexploitation of the peripheral and semi-peripheral regions and by government deficit spending.

      The world-system provided a relatively high standard of living for the popular sectors of the European colonial nations and of the ascending European settler societies, such as the United States and Canada.  Thus, the world-system worked fairly well for those who were strategically positioned to benefit from colonial and neocolonial domination of vast regions of the world.  However, in the middle of the twentieth century, the world-system began to reach its geographical and ecological limits, in that had run out of lands and peoples to conquer, thus losing the principal motor that drove its expansion.  And this was occurring just as the Third World national liberation movements were reaching their zenith, demanding more and more political and economic concessions from the global powers.  At the same time, the deficit spending strategy in order to satisfy popular demands in the core had reached its limits, as core government debts exceeded sustainable levels.  

      In modern capitalism that have been periodic crises of overproduction, giving rise to economic recession or repression.  And there have been other periodic crises, such as the Mexican debt crisis, the Third World debt crisis, and the financial crisis of 2008.  But in the 1970s, the world-system was beginning to see signs of a more profound type of crisis: a fundamental structural crisis of the world-system, which was rooted its basic contradictions.  There was, on the one hand, the contradiction between the economic system and the environment, in that it is a system that economically expands by conquering more lands and peoples, yet it pertains to a planet with a finite amount of land and peoples.  Secondly, there is the contradiction between the democratic ideology, which proclaims the equality of persons and nations, that has been the dominant ideology of the system since the late eighteenth century; and the logic of colonial and neocolonial domination and the exploitation and superexploitation of labor, which provides the economic foundations of the system.  The contradiction between democratic values and domination/exploitation had the consequence that popular movements were invoking democratic values as an arm of struggle, compelling the elite to continually make concessions to anti-colonial movements in the Third World as well as popular sectors in the core, concessions that were beyond the capacity of the system to sustain.  

     Thus, by the 1970s, the system had reached its limits.  Corporate profits were stagnating.  Economic stagnation was combined with inflation.  Global production has surpassed ecological limits.  Peoples all over the world, in core and peripheral zones, were in movement, demanding concessions and/or structural change.  The hegemonic neocolonial power was overextended, with balance of payments and government deficits, which compelled it to eliminate the gold standard for the US dollar.

      It would not have been unreasonable for global elites to respond to this situation by the taking of an enlightened turn, recognizing that the world-system had reached its limits, and that it would be necessary to change the logic of the system from domination to cooperation, and to search for mutually beneficial forms of international trade and ecologically sustainable forms of production.  It would have been reasonable, given objective conditions, but it would have been inconsistent with the previous comportment of the elite, which had persistently pursued its interests at the expense of the common good. During the second half the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, it had turned to monopoly capitalism, imperialism, consumerism, and war, seeking to maximize production and profits. Following World War II, rather than reconverting to a peacetime economy and seeking to develop peace and cooperation among nations, as Franklin Roosevelt had envisioned, the US power elite led the world in the development of a military-industrial complex, a permanent war economy, ecologically unsustainable forms of production and consumption, military intervention in the Third World, and new forms of imperialism.  The neoliberal turn of the global elite in 1980, provoked by a fundamental structural crisis of the system, was fully predictable.

     Consistent with its past behavior, perhaps true to its nature, the global elite, rather than taking a reasonable and enlightened turn, took an aggressive turn, driven by the pursuit of short-term particular interests.  It sought to reassert its control over the world-system, reversing forty-five years of concessions.  It imposed the neoliberal program on the neocolonies, using the debt of Third World governments as leverage, thus rolling back concessions that had been made to the Third World during the course of the twentieth century.  At the same time, it turned to an economic war on the popular sectors of the core, rolling back programs that had been developed in response to popular demands.

     As applied in the Third World, neoliberal policies had direct short-term benefits to core corporations.  The neoliberal project required Third World governments to eliminate government protection of national currencies and to permit the trading of currency at a free market rate, thus greatly increasing the purchasing power of the US dollar in Third World nations, reducing the costs of labor.  The neoliberal project compelled privatization of government-owned enterprises, thus making economic enterprises available for purchase at devalued prices.  Neoliberal policies required Third World governments to reduce protection for their national industries, reducing or eliminating tariffs and taxes on imported goods, thus expanding the market for the goods of core corporations.  Neoliberal policies facilitated the free flow of capital into and out of countries, thus making possible enormous profits through financial speculation.  And neoliberal policies reduced or eliminated union restrictions, thus increasing profits to core corporations through the exploitation and superexploitation of labor in the Third World (Prieto 2009:108-11).  

     Thus, the neoliberal project of the core powers was an aggressive response by the global elite to the structural crisis of the world-system, and it had a certain logic to it.  But the logic pertained only to the short-term.  In dismissing the needs of the humble people who form the majority of humanity, the neoliberal project provoked popular indignation, giving rise to a renewal of popular movements that seek structural transformation of the world-system.

     The origins of neoliberalism cannot be treated as a mystery or the subject of mere speculation.  We intellectuals of the North have the duty to understand it, and to explain it to our people, so that our options can be more fully understood.  We must be clear on two issues.  First, the world-system, based on neocolonial domination and the superexploitation of labor, has overextended its ecological and political limits, and it cannot be sustained.  Humanity must seek to develop an alternative world-system based on cooperation and mutually beneficial trade, if it hopes to avoid chaos and/or extinction. Second, the mainstream and established political-economic actors of the nations of the core have demonstrated that they are morally and politically unprepared to rule the world in anything approaching a necessary and responsible form.  They must be removed from power by the people in movement.  

      If we intellectuals of the North were observing with a more open attitude what has been occurring in the Third World since the 1990s, we would see that there has begun a process of peoples in movement seeking to develop an alternative world-system.  We intellectuals of the North must discern not only the unreasonable and morally irresponsible behavior of those in power, but also the dignified behavior of the world’s humble.  We must call our peoples in the North to participation in the movement that has been formed by humanity in defense of itself.

​ 
Reference
 
Prieto Rozos, Alberto.  2009.  Evolución de América Latina Contemporánea: De la Revolución Cubana a la actualidad.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.
 
 
Key words: neoliberalism, Shivani, crisis

Posted June 20, 2016  

     In “This Is Our Neoliberal Nightmare: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Why the Market and the Wealthy Win Every Time” (Alternet, June 8, 2016), Asin Shivani sees four ideologies in the modern world: classical liberalism, communism, fascism, and neoliberalism.  He speaks of them in a form suggesting that none of them is good for the human person, with the possible exception of classical liberalism. Classical liberalism, he maintains, elevates the individual; in contrast to fascism, which elevates the state, and communism, which elevates the collectivity.  The new ideology of neoliberalism, which emerged in the 1970s, “has been more successful than most past ideologies in redefining subjectivity, in making people alter their sense of themselves, their personhood, their identities, their hopes and expectations and dreams and idealizations,” in accordance with the demands of the market.  He appears to dislike classical liberalism because it did not practice what it preached, for capitalism under the sway of liberal ideology in practice elevated the market and not the individual.

       The difficulty with this characterization of modern ideologies is that it implies that ideologies necessarily have negative consequences for humanity.  This negative view of ideology is made possible by not seeing the alternative ideology that has been forged by Third World popular movements during the last 100 years.  These Third World ideologies and movements were conceived during the first half of the twentieth century with the intention of constructing an alternative to the capitalism of the modern West and the communism led by the Soviet Union, rejecting both as different forms of materialism that debased the human person.  In their more radical formulations, the Third World movements were anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial, seeking to establish the independence, equality, and full sovereignty of all nations; and they sought to protect the social and economic rights of all persons.  After the setback caused by the global neoliberal project, they reemerged in the 1990s, with greater maturity, incorporating insights that had emerged in the West, such as the principle of equality between men and women and the need to protect and sustain the natural environment.  When they took control of governments, they proceeded to take fundamental measures in defense of the nation and the people.  The lists of steps that they have taken is impressive: literacy programs; free education; free health clinics; and the subsidizing of food, housing, utilities and transportation.  Being countries that were underdeveloped, a legacy of colonialism and neocolonialism, they took necessary steps to fund their programs: nationalization, agrarian reform, and alliances with “outlaw” nations, thus provoking the hostility of the global powers.  Finding themselves in a situation in which they had to fight both the legacy of poverty and the wrath of the global powers, they persisted, and they never ceased in proclaiming to the world the need for a more just and democratic world-system.

      The significance of this global movement from below cannot be denied in an historic moment in which the world-system is experiencing a profound systemic crisis, increasingly demonstrating its unsustainability.  But the theory and practice of the Third World movement does not appear in the characterization of modern ideologies presented in the Shivani article.  Does this represent a subtle form of Eurocentrism? 

      Equally problematic is the list of bad guys that Shivani presents, each of which is associated with communism or fascism, but not liberalism, classic or neo:  Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao and Franco.  In the first place, we should maintain a distinction between fascism, which is based on the identification and repression of scapegoats, exploiting the fears and confusions of the people, in alliance with the capitalist class; and communism, which at least began as something more noble.  Secondly, the cases of Stalin and Mao should be treated with more care.  Stalin qualifies as an evil dictator, but we should make an effort to understand and explain the fall of the project of Lenin and the rise of Stalinism.  The Trotskyites have done excellent work in this regard (see Grant 1997), but they have made an historic, strategic error in rigidly applying the lessons of the Soviet Union to other lands and times.  The case of China and Mao is complicated and exceptional.  It is an oversimplification to suggest that Mao is a bad guy, as a piece in the construction of a pejorative role of ideology.

     But where are the good guys?  In this list of persons who emerged as leaders who forged ideologies, where are Ho, Nasser, Fidel, Nyerere, Allende, Chávez, Evo, Correa, Lula, Dilma, and Cristina?  I suppose that overlooking Third World charismatic leaders comes with overlooking Third World popular movements.

     If we do not see the Third World movements and leaders and the ideology that they formed, how can we hope to construct an ideology that responds to the conditions of our own nations, thus participating in the making of a more just and democratic world-system?  The characterization of modern ideology presented by Shavani contributes to the cynicism and pessimism of the North, consistent with the realism or pragmatism that is an adjustment to neoliberalism, as Shavani observes.  To overcome cynicism, we must learn to listen to the voices from below, emerging in the Third World, for they are voices that educate and inspire.

 
Reference
 
Grant, Ted.  1997.  Rusia—De la revolución a la contrarrevolución: Un análisis marxista.  Prólogo de Alan Woods.  Traducción de Jordi Martorell.  Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels. [Originally published in English as Russia: From Revolution to Counterrevolution].
 
 
Key words: ideology, neoliberalism, liberalism, communism, fascism, Third World popular movements, Shivani

     We have been discussing “This Is Our Neoliberal Nightmare: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Why the Market and the Wealthy Win Every Time” (Alternet, June 8, 2016) by Asin Shivani (see “Neoliberalism” 6/16/2016; “What are the origins of neoliberalism?” 6/17/2016; “Ideological frames” 6/20/2016).

     Shivani maintains that under the force and logic of neoliberalism, the state no longer exists in the form that we are accustomed to viewing it.  Like everything else in the age of neoliberalism, the state is being made over in the image of the market.  He maintains that “a new entity is being created, which is not the state as we have known it, but an existence that incorporates potentially all the states in the world and is something that exceeds their sum.”  Accordingly, “the state has become the market, the market has become the state, and therefore both have ceased to exist in the form we have classically understood them.”

     If this were true, what would it imply for political action?  How would it be possible for the people to take control of, or even influence, a political process with such a hazy existence?  The implication is that the people are powerless.

     I submit, however, that this description of a nebulous entity that is neither state nor market, but somehow both at once, is not consistent with the empirical reality of the political dynamics of the modern world-system.  Nation-states were the principal actors in the creation of the modern world-system, and they continue to be the principal actors. International organizations of various kinds are playing an increasingly important role, reflecting an increasing global consciousness of the need for cooperation among nations and peoples, but these organizations have been created and are sustained by nation-states, which sometimes seek to work through international organizations in the pursuit of nationalist goals.   And transnational corporations are increasingly powerful, but when they act politically, they do so primarily through states, whose representatives they control.

      From the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries, Western European nation-states were forged by an alliance between monarchs and the emerging merchant class, which overcame the decentralized power of the feudal lords and consolidated centralized economic and political power through conquest of the empires and societies of America (see “The modern nation-state” 8/14/2013).  At the end of the eighteenth century, the bourgeois revolution cast aside the kings and queens, and it established representative democracy, which is a political system with the appearance of rule by the people, but in reality is a political system that enables control of the state by the capitalist class.  The phenomenon of states acting, both domestically and internationally, in the interests of the capitalist class, but pretending to respond to the people, continues to our time.  The modern nation-state, for more than 200 years, represents the interests of the capitalist class, governed by ethically compromised political figures who are adept at pretending to promote the needs of the nation and the people as they represent the interests of the capitalist class, on whose support they depend for political survival.

      Following World War II, seeking to protect its recently attained global hegemony, the United States played a leading role in establishing the United Nations.  With the support of its principal allies, it established structures in the new international organization that ensured control by the United States and the nation-states that were allied with it.  As colonialism came to an end, the newly independent nations became member states of the United Nations, constituting an overwhelming majority of states, and representing the great majority of humanity.  But their capacity to influence the United Nations is limited by its undemocratic structures.  The democratic reform of the United Nations has been a persistent demand of the nation-states of the Third World, which they express through organizations that they have formed among themselves.

      In the post-World War II era, the United States also established a number of regional defense alliances, such as NATO.   And it established the Organization of American States, culminating more than sixty years of seeking to institutionalize the participation of Latin American and Caribbean nation-states in the US project of neocolonial domination and economic and financial penetration.    The United States no longer has absolute control of these organizations, and it is compelled to act to some extent multilaterally.  But this is a consequence of the decline of the United States from hegemony, and not a decline in the role of nation-states as actors in the world-system.

      The nation-states of the Third World have formed their own associations of states, recognizing their common interests rooted in their common experience of colonialism and neocolonialism.  These organizations are based on the understanding that through cooperation they will be able to more effectively attain their interests as nation-states.  They include the Group of 77 and the Non-Aligned Movement, which have in recent years made more evident the contrast of interests between the nation-states of the Third World and those of the North.

     In the history of the world-system, states have always been constrained by the conduct of other states, by their relative amount of power in the world-system, by the prevailing economic structures, and by other factors.  A constant competition among states was the norm, with some winning and some losing.  But states, nearly always under the control of the national bourgeoisie and its allies that formed an elite, have been and are the principal actors in the world-system.

      In the process of change that has occurred in Latin America during the last twenty years, the peoples in movement were for the most part not hindered by the confusion that states as conventionally understood no longer exist.  Out of the popular movements came new political parties, which consciously sought to take control of states.  In those nations in which the movements took control of the states, or at least partial or shared control, they changed the behavior of the states, both domestically and internationally.  In the process, they improved the conditions in which the people live, and they established new patterns of cooperation among nation-states.  

     The last twenty years in Latin America have demonstrated that states continue to be principal actors in national and international affairs.  And they have shown that, when the people take power from the elite, the way that states act can be changed.  This occurs when the people, guided by charismatic leaders, arrive to understand that they have the right and the capacity to take control of states and to redirect them in accordance with universal human values.

     We should not be confused.  States exist, and they are the principal actors in the world-system.  The great majority of states in the world-system are controlled by the national bourgeoisies.  If there is representative democracy, control by the bourgeoisie is hidden, and there is a great pretense of democracy and responding to the will of the people.  But control of states by an elite through a process that pretends to be democratic is not the only viable option for humanity, because there also have emerged states that are, or have been for a time, under the control of delegates of the people.  Such states act differently in the world-system, and when they do, they are punished by the powerful states.  They thus confront many obstacles, but often they persist.  Certainly, the more of them that emerge, the greater the possibility that they will prevail in the establishment of an alternative and more just, democratic and sustainable world-system.

     We intellectuals of the North have the duty to understand and to explain to our people the whole of the modern human story, as one that includes, in the past and in the present, states that act in accordance with the needs and interests of the people, having become this way as a result of the advanced understanding, organization, commitment and courage of the people.  It is a story that could inspire our people and help them to overcome their confusion and cynicism. Who will teach it to them, if not us?

     The state continues to exist.  The key questions are:  Who will control states in the future, the capitalist class or delegates of the people?  Can humanity avoid chaos or extinction if most states continue to be controlled by the capitalist class, which during the last thirty-five years has demonstrated its indifference to the well-being of humanity, the clamor of the people, and the needs of nature?


Key words: nation-state, neoliberal, Shivani

Posted June 23, 2016  

     An important insight in Asin Shivani’s article, “This Is Our Neoliberal Nightmare: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Why the Market and the Wealthy Win Every Time” (Alternet, June 8, 2016), is that neoliberalism is more than economic policy.  It is a philosophy of life that interprets everything from the perspective of the market.  And as result of the fact that neoliberal policy and philosophy have dominated the public discourse of the nation since 1980, it has arrived to influence the beliefs and assumptions of many.  But not all.  Many people in US society are ill at ease with neoliberal philosophy and its cultural implications, without having the capacity to articulate their discomfort.

      Shivani maintains that the unarticulated divide among the people of the United States with respect to neoliberalism is playing itself out as a basic factor in the US presidential elections, without it being formulated as such.  Among the candidates, Hillary Clinton has been the fullest expression of neoliberalism.  Shivani writes:

In Clinton’s view, education and health care are not conceived as rights that ought to be ensured by the state, but as consumer goods. Accordingly, one should invest in education in order to guarantee future capacity to provide education for children, health care, housing, transportation, and other consumer goods.  

     Bernie Sanders, in contrast, rejects neoliberal assumptions.  Sanders endorses the conventional progressive affirmation of the responsibility of the state to guarantee the social and economic rights of the people, such as education, health care, nutrition, and housing. Shivani writes:

Sanders’ rejection of neoliberalism, however, is not formulated as such.  “Although Sanders doesn’t specify ‘neoliberalism’ as the antagonist, his entire discourse presumes it.”

     Donald Trump also rejects neoliberalism, but in a manner different from Sanders.  Shivani maintains that “Trump is an authoritarian figure whose conceptions of the state and of human beings within the state are inconsistent with the surface frictionlessness neoliberalism desires.”  And he asserts: “while Trump supporters want to take their rebellion in a fascist direction, their discomfort with the logic of the market is as pervasive as the Sanders camp.”  Trump represents an inhumane rejection of neoliberalism, in contrast to Sanders, who expresses a humane alternative to neoliberalism.

      Shivani interprets the emergence Sanders and Trump as an indication of the “breakdown of both major political parties.”  He attributes the breakdown to the frustration of the people, which has been caused by the fact that “there was no sustained intellectual movement to question the myth of the market” following the crash of 2008.    

     I submit that the failure of progressives to offer an alternative paradigm to the neoliberal myth was evident long before 2008.  It dates to 1980, when the nation took the neoliberal turn, and the Left failed to draw upon the insights of the various popular movements to formulate a comprehensive analysis and plan of action, delegitimizing the ahistorical and superficial discourse of neoliberalism.  The period of 1955 to 1972 was a revolutionary period in the United States, during which the fundamentals for an alternative progressive paradigm were formulated by popular movements.  The African-American movement had proposed: full political and civil rights for persons of color (NAACP, SCLC, SNCC); a coalition of the poor of all colors, including whites, for the attainment of social and economic justice (Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign); black control of black community institutions, including economic, political, educational, criminal justice, and cultural institutions (Malcolm’s formulation of black nationalism); and an end to imperialist policies with respect to the Third World (King and Malcolm). For its part, the student/anti-war movement: rejected the classical Marxist class analysis as not applicable to the United States; cast aside the anti-communism of American liberalism; and formulated an anti-imperialist perspective with respect to US foreign policy (SDS). Meanwhile, the women’s movement emerged with a gender consciousness that named patriarchy as a central dynamic of domination in human history and that called for full citizenship rights for women.  And the ecology movement emerged to defend the rights of the earth and to critique unsustainable forms of production and consumption.  All of these movements assumed a central role of the state in addressing issues of racial, gender, income, educational and health inequality as well as questions of global inequality and the ecological balance of the earth. None believed that these problems could be addressed by the market.  All possessed historical consciousness and a fundamentally accurate reading of contemporary national and global dynamics.  All appreciated the democratic heritage of the nation and were indignant at policies that intended to dominate and exploit in the name of democracy.

      Thus, all of the elements necessary for the formulation of an alternative paradigm were present in US political culture in 1980.  But we intellectuals and activists of the Left failed to formulate an alternative paradigm.  Academics have been trapped by the bureaucratization of the university and distorted assumptions with respect to scientific objectivity, and they have been unable to formulate an alternative interdisciplinary paradigm tied to political practice. Activists have been disconnected from intellectual work and have been unable to formulate an alternative comprehensive paradigm, and they have moved from issue to issue in the organization of protests. Intellectuals and activists of the Left have been unable to move forward with the revolutionary thinking and proposals of the period 1955 to 1972 in order to present to the people an alternative to the neoliberal paradigm, an alternative rooted in the historic struggles of the people for the attainment of full democracy.  Jesse Jackson pointed us in the right direction with his presidential campaigns of 1984 and 1988, but his project was rejected by white society (he received only 12% of white votes in the presidential primaries of 1988, as against 95% of the black vote and 67% of the Latino vote), and Rev. Jackson himself was not committed to the development of the Rainbow Coalition as a mass organization following the 1988 elections.

     Thus, the failure to seize upon the crash of 2008, converting it into an event that could galvanize the people into new ways of thinking and political action, was predictable, reflecting an historic failure that was rooted in the inability of the Left to build sustained popular movements in the post-1972 period.  

      We intellectuals and activists of the Left have the duty to offer an alternative understanding of national and international issues to our people, thus tapping into what Shivani has described as the unarticulated frustrations of our people.  Drawing upon the historic popular struggles in the United States, and also learning from revolutions in other lands, we have the capacity to formulate a progressive alternative that is more advanced and developed than that offered by Sanders.  A more comprehensive historical and global understanding, tied to concrete popular needs and to political action, could be more attractive to our people that what Sanders has offered, and it could eclipse the potential for fascism that Trump represents. This is the challenge and the duty that we intellectuals and activists of the Left confront in the years ahead.

     Please take a look at an earlier post, “Presidential primaries in USA” 8/25/2015.  I maintained that the unexpected success of Sanders and Trump in the presidential primaries is an indication that the people of the United States are not satisfied with the two mainstream political parties and established politicians.  And I argued that the emergence of Sanders and Trump suggests that intellectuals and activists should reflect on the possibility of an alternative political party of the Left, giving consideration to the characteristics that such an alternative political party ought to have.

​Key words: neoliberalism, presidential elections, Clinton, Sanders, Trump, Shivani

Posted June 24, 2016  

​     In “This Is Our Neoliberal Nightmare: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Why the Market and the Wealthy Win Every Time” (Alternet, June 8, 2016), Asin Shivani sees neoliberalism as promoting multiculturalism and identity politics, in a form that severs identity politics from a class foundation.  He considers multiculturalism to be the dark side of neoliberal ideology, implying a form of exclusion and intolerance: “This is the dark side of neoliberalism’s ideological arm (a multiculturalism founded on human beings as capital), which is why this project has become increasingly associated with suppression of free speech and intolerance of those who refuse to go along with the kind of identity politics neoliberalism promotes.”  He maintains that neoliberal multiculturalism ostracizes and excludes working-class whites who are uncomfortable with neoliberal conversion of the self into a market commodity, and that such alienated working-class whites form the basis of support for Trump.  He writes that from the neoliberal point of view, “those who fail to come within the purview of neoliberalism should be rigorously ostracized, punished, and excluded.”  And further: “It is not surprising to find neoliberal multiculturalists—comfortably established in the academy—likewise demonizing, or othering, not Muslims, Mexicans, or African Americans, but working-class whites (the quintessential Trump proletariat) who have a difficult time accepting the fluidity of self-definition that goes well with neoliberalism, something that we might call the market capitalization of the self.”  He views neoliberal multiculturalism as an elitist discourse that reinforces the neoliberal glorification of the market: “neoliberal multiculturalism, operating in the academy, is so insidious, because at the elite level it functions to validate market discourse, it does not step outside it.”

     Thus, Shivani suggests that the progressive discourse that emerged during the 1960s has evolved into a pejorative dismissal of the white-working class, invoking a language that is exclusive and that offends, alienating working-class whites from progressive causes, even as the progressive message seeks to speak on their behalf.  At the same time, it is a discourse that does not really offer an alternative to neoliberal policy and philosophy.  

     Shivani writes in a tone that appears to not appreciate that multiculturalism emerged as a progressive response to the systemic exclusion of ethnic and cultural minorities.  Nevertheless, I think he points to a problem with the progressive discourse.  The Left seeks to promote a nation characterized by cultural pluralism, in which racial and ethnic groups with distinct cultures, languages and identities have social and political space; and rightly so.  But the Left does so in a way that fosters white resentment.  This suggests the need for a reconstruction of the discourse of the Left.  

      Please see various posts in the category Race in the United States: “Black community control” 5/10/2015; “The unresolved issue of race in the USA” 6/23/2015; “The abandonment of the black lower class” 6/24/2015; “On racism and affirmative action” 6/26/2015; “The need for a popular coalition” 6/27/2015; “Race and Revolution” 1/19/2016; and “Race, the university and revolution” 1/25/2016.  The posts explain and affirm the historic goals of the African-American movement.  At the same time, they suggest strategies and a discourse with respect to race that is oriented to building a popular coalition.

     We intellectuals and activists of the Left need to return to our roots in popular movements, recalling the discourses of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and seeking to forge a popular coalition based on an inclusive calling of all our people.


Key words: neoliberalism, multiculturalism, identity politics, Shivani

Posted June 27, 2016 

     We have seen that Asin Shivani’s, in “This Is Our Neoliberal Nightmare: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Why the Market and the Wealthy Win Every Time” (Alternet, June 8, 2016), sees the candidacy of Hillary Clinton as the full expression of neoliberalism, understood as the reshaping of everything in accordance with market principles.  In contrast, Bernie Sanders (like Ralph Nader and Howard Dean before him) formulates a humane alternative to neoliberalism, whereas the discourse of Donald Trump suggests an authoritarian alternative (“Neoliberalism and presidential elections” 6/23/2016).  

     Shivani would like us to consider what will happen after the Sanders campaign: “It is existentially imperative to ponder what happens beyond Sanders, because neoliberalism has its end-game in sight, letting inequality continue to escalate past the crash point (meaning the point where the economy works for most people), past any tolerable degradation of the planet (which is being reconceptualized in the shape of the market).”  He believes that a much will depend on the extent to which the people will be capable of thinking outside the neoliberal perspective.  He writes: “What remains to be seen is the extent to which the millennial generation might be capable of thinking outside the neoliberal paradigm, i.e., they don’t just want more of what neoliberal promises to give them yet fails to deliver, but want things that neoliberalism does not or cannot promise. On this rests the near-term future of the neoliberal project.”  He asks: “to what extent will Americans continue to believe that the self must be entrepreneurially leveraged toward maximum market gains, molded into mobile human capital ever ready to serve the highest bidder?”

      I believe that in reflecting on the future of neoliberalism, we must begin with consciousness of the fact that neoliberal policy and philosophy is unsustainable in the long term.  This is the conclusion to which we arrive if we understand what neoliberalism is and how it came to be.  Neoliberalism emerged in the 1970s as a desperate response by a global elite that was experiencing stagnating profits and was losing political control of the world-system.  The neoliberal project is a war against the formerly colonized nations as well as the popular sectors of all regions, developed in response to the unresolved contradictions of the world-system, particularly the contradiction implied by the fact that it must expand by conquering new lands and peoples on a planet with finite limits.  It was intended to restore profit margins and to reestablish political control.  Its benefits to the elite were short-term.  In the long run, it has functioned to deepen the economic financial, political, and ecological crisis of the system. Placing the market and profits above all else, it can resolve none of the problems that humanity confronts, such as climate change and other symptoms of ecological imbalance, high levels of poverty in vast regions of the world, uncontrolled migration, criminal gangs, trafficking in drugs and persons, and the delegitimation of the political system of representative democracy.  The neoliberal czars can only conceive of wars, the imposition of policies, and economic sanctions, cynically proclaiming that its actions in defense of its particular interests are defending democracy in the world.  Neoliberalism has resolved nothing, and it cannot.  It can only lead to either a continuing spiral of disorder and chaos, including the possibility for the extinction of the human species; or to the continuing mobilization of the people in the construction from below of an alternative, more just, democratic and sustainable world-system.  Either scenario would involve the end of the neoliberal project, which seeks to preserve the exploitative structures of the neocolonial world-system through aggressive actions against the governments and peoples of the world (“What are the origins of neoliberalism?” 6/17/2016). 

     Fully exposing the unsustainability of the neoliberal project necessarily would involve delegitimizing the global elites who have created and defended it, including the directors of corporations and their representatives in the executive and legislative branches of governments, the conservative think tanks, and the mainstream mass media.  All who have forged careers in these institutions have fostered and have benefitted from the neoliberal project, and their immoral conduct would stand exposed by a thorough analysis of the neoliberal project.  

     Our people must come to understand not only that the neoliberal project will resolve none of the problems that humanity confronts, for it was not intended to do so; but also that those who occupy positions of leadership and responsibility, who have formulated and implemented the neoliberal project, have demonstrated their moral and intellectual unpreparedness to lead the nation in this time of global crisis.  Such “leaders” must be cast aside by the people; and others with alternative life trajectories, dedicated to understanding the true and doing the right, must be lifted up by the people to occupy positions of responsibility in the institutions of the nation

      How can the people come to such an understanding, which implies recognition of themselves as a revolutionary subject, seeking to place their delegates in power, replacing those who have represented the particular short-term interests of the powerful?  We can be assured that the people will not come to understand it by themselves, without help.  They tend to live in the world of day-to-day concrete problems, and they are manipulated and confused by an educational system that fragments and news reporting that ideologically distorts.  Thus, it must be the role of the intellectual to formulate the comprehensive historical and global understanding that the people need to grasp in order to liberate themselves from domination.

     Accordingly, intellectuals and activists must liberate themselves from the pervasive ideological distortions, attaining their liberation through sustained encounter with the movements that have been formed by the peoples of the world.  Intellectuals and activists must work together to present an alternative to the people, explaining to the people the sources of their rejection and exclusion, and calling them to act in their own defense.

      Sanders points in the right direction, but his humanist discourse is not enough.  More of an historical and global analysis, beyond what he has offered, is needed, including an anti-imperialist component. Moreover, what is needed is not a presidential candidate, but an alternative political party that educates and organizes the people and that seeks to capture, as a long term plan, the executive and legislative branches of the government.  For a fuller formulation of the characteristics of a future revolutionary party of the people, see “Presidential primaries in USA” 8/25/2015.

​Key words: neoliberalism, Clinton, Sanders, Trump, Shivani, third party, revolution

​     “Marx on automated industry” was posted on January 13, 2014, and it is one of the most frequently visited blog posts.  On June 4, 2016, David Taubmann, a philosopher and sculptor in Mexico, who also has more than ten years’ experience as a professional Web Developer, posted the following comment on “Marx and automated industry.”  

     Thank you very much, Dave, for your comment.  I think that I do not have a conclusion with respect to market movements.  However, I offer the following, in response to your comment.

     “Marx and automated industry” is a part of a series of eight posts on Karl Marx.  It seeks to describe Marx’s projection of a future socialist society with an economic foundation of automated industry, a projection that was rooted in Marx’s understanding of technological development as the driving force of human history.  For Marx, ideas are important as dimensions of class struggles, but revolutionary classes promote emerging technological developments that are consistent with its class interests.  Thus, revolutionary ideas are connected to real economic possibilities.  Marx advocated scientific socialism, based on observation of economic developments, in contrast to utopian socialism, which advocates new forms of human living that have no possibility of emerging from existing conditions.  

     I will focus here on the last two paragraphs of “Marx and automated industry.”  In the next to the last paragraph, I maintain that Marx discerned that the capitalist class would be so driven by the pursuit of profit that it would ignore the emancipatory implications of automation and would use its ever accumulating resources to forge a consumer society based in the acquisition of false needs.  Without doubt, Marx’s projection has been confirmed, as patterns of consumption in the societies of the North have reached absurd levels, and an advertising industry has emerged to manipulate the consumerist impulses of the people.  In other ways as well, the capitalist class has continued to demonstrate that it places its particular interests above the common good.  In the period 1865 to 1980, it developed monopoly capitalism, seeking total control of domestic production and banking, undermining economic competition; and imperialism, seeking penetration of foreign markets, undermining the sovereignty of nations.  Moreover, since 1980, it has turned to neoliberalism, financial speculation, and new forms of intervention in the neocolonized regions, undermining necessary regulation and promoting global political instability.  The global capitalist class places humanity and the earth at risk in its unrestrained pursuit of profit.

      In the final paragraph, I note that Marx believed that the working class would understand the emancipatory implications of automation, and it would act to establish a socialist society on a foundation of automated industry.  Marx’s projection has not come to be.  I think the problem was that Marx, although he understood that capitalism and colonialism are intertwined, underestimated the significance and importance of colonial domination.  This limitation in Marx’s perspective is rooted in the fact that he wrote from the vantage point of the popular movement in Western Europe of 1830 to 1871.  Marx died in 1883, before the emergence of national and social liberation movements in Africa and Asia.  Such movements had emerged in Latin America, but located in Europe, it was difficult for Marx to discern their potential as popular revolutionary movements.  Accordingly, Marx underestimated the capacity of the capitalist world-economy to use the superexploitation of the colonized and neocolonized regions as a material base for the core societies.

     The superexploitation of vast regions of the planet made possible not only the satisfaction of the genuine needs of the popular classes in the core of the world-system, but also the creation of false needs, establishing consuming societies in the core.  Thus there emerged a social phenomenon in which the people of the core have a style of life separate from and above the vast majority of humanity, generating in the peoples of the core a feeling of superiority.  These dynamics facilitated the evolution of the working class and popular struggles in the core in a reformist direction, undermining their revolutionary potential.  

    As a result, the torch of revolutionary leadership passed to the anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial movements of the Third World.  These movements were divided between reformers, who were allied with core interests; and revolutionaries, who sought to break the exploitative core-peripheral relation rooted in colonialism and to establish an alternative and more just and democratic world-system.  The Third World revolution of national and social liberation lifted up charismatic leaders who reformulated Marxism-Leninism from the vantage point of the colonized.  Thus, we can see today an evolution in the Marxist perspective: from Marx to Lenin; and to Mao, Ho and Fidel; and to Chávez, Evo, and Correa.  For various blog posts on the evolution of Marxism-Leninism, see the category Marxism-Leninism and its evolution.

    From the perspective of Marxism-Leninism as it has emerged in the Third World project, one can reformulate Marx’s projection and envision a socialist world-system, in which science and technology provide the foundation for ecologically sustainable forms of production that satisfy human needs, and in which an interstate system respects the equality and sovereignty of nations, each of which is governed by delegates of the people.  It is this reformulated Marxist vision that the revolutionary movements of the Third World today are seeking to make real.

       Please visit the series of posts on Karl Marx:
“Marx and the working class” 1/6/14; 
“Marx illustrates cross-horizon encounter” 1/7/14; 
“Marx’s analysis of political economy” 1/8/14;
“Marx on human history” 1/9/14; 
“Marx on the revolutionary bourgeoisie” 1/10/14; 
“Marx on automated industry” 1/13/14; 
“Marx on the revolutionary proletariat” 1/14/14; 
“The social and historical context of Marx” 1/15/14.

Once in the category Karl Marx, scroll down.

     In response to the campaign launched by the Right (see “Economic and media war against Venezuela” 6/9/2016), Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro solicited the support of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), proposing dialogue between the government and the opposition, with the hope that differences can be resolved peacefully and in the context of democratic institutions and the Venezuelan Constitution.  UNASUR is constituted by twelve countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela.  The formation of UNASUR in 2008 was a major step in the process of Latin American union and integration (see various posts in the category Latin American and Caribbean unity).

     UNASUR has sponsored the initiative proposed by Maduro.  It invited ex-presidents José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain, Leonel Fernández of the Dominican Republic, and Martín Torrijos of Panama to facilitate dialogue.  Leaders of the opposition political parties initially supported this process of dialogue, but they did not attend the most recently scheduled meeting.  

     On June 1, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS) submitted a request for the convening of a special session of the Permanent Council of OAS (see “Economic and media war against Venezuela” 6/9/2016).  The 114-page request can be interpreted as an attempt to disrupt the incipient national dialogue and create a process of OAS intervention in favor of the opposition.  OAS has a purpose different from that of the recently formed organizations of Latin American and Caribbean unity, which consist only of nations of Latin America and the Caribbean.  OAS was established by the United States in 1948 for the purpose of institutionalizing the cooperation by Latin American and Caribbean governments in US neocolonial domination (see “Pan-Americanism and OAS” 10/2/2013).  

     The Seventh Summit of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), held in Havana from June 2 to June 4, issued a Special Communication over Venezuela on June 4.  The Communication noted the efforts at dialogue by the Venezuelan government, through the auspices of UNASUR.  And it backed the initiative of the three ex-presidents of Spain, the Dominican Republic and Panama, supported by UNASUR, to reopen dialogue between the government and the opposition.  Founded in 1994, the Association of Caribbean States is formed by twenty-five Caribbean nations.  It seeks to establish cooperation among the Caribbean nations with respect to problems of common concern, such as climate change; and with respect to projects of mutual benefit, such as multi-destiny tourism.

     On June 6, the Secretary General of UNASUR sent a communication to the Table for Democratic Unity (MUD), the organization that represents the various opposition parties.  The UNASUR message called upon the opposition to reincorporate itself into the previously agreed upon national dialogue as soon as possible. MUD responded with a request that the meeting be postponed.  

     At the Fifth Extraordinary Session of Foreign Ministers of the member countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Treaty of Commerce of the Peoples (ALBA-TCP), held in Caracas, Venezuela, the Ministers emitted on June 8 a “Special Declaration in Support of democratic institutions, dialogue and peace in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.”  The Declaration noted that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is committed to the defense of democratic institutions and is determined to guarantee human rights. It expressed “the need to fully respect the inalienable right of any state to choose its political, economic, social and cultural system, as an essential condition for ensuring that nations live together peacefully.” And the Declaration noted “the illegitimate attempt to apply the Democratic Charter against Venezuela by the Secretary General of OAS, Luis Almagro, with the intention of bringing about an intervention against the constitutional government of said country.”  The Declaration proceeded to express eight resolutions, including the following.  (1) “We demand absolute respect for the sovereignty of Venezuela, emphasizing the principles of non-interference, self-determination, and the right to exercise the constitutional, political, economic and social system that its people have developed for themselves.”  (2) “We back the Constitutional Government of President Nicolás Maduro Moros.”  (3) “We support the initiative of national dialogue proposed by President Nicolás Maduro, under the auspices of UNASUR.” (4) “We reject the conduct of Mr. Luis Almagro, Secretary General of the Organization of American States, who . . . has assumed an interventionist role in the internal affairs of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.”     

     ALBA is a regional association of states that is the most advanced expression of Latin American and Caribbean unity and integration.  Its members include Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and several Caribbean island nations.  It was proposed in 2001 by Venezuelan resident Hugo Chavez, and it was formally initiated in 2004 by an agreement between Venezuela and Cuba.

     We have seen that the Right in Venezuela has attempted to create a humanitarian crisis and civil disorder, with the intention of creating a situation that would justify foreign intervention (see “Economic and media war against Venezuela” 6/9/2016).  It has been driven by a desire to bring to an end the control of the government of Venezuela by the Bolivarian Revolution, which has given priority to the sovereignty of the nation and the needs of the people, overriding the particular interests of the wealthy and the traditional ruling class and their international allies.  The Bolivarian government of Venezuela has responded to this situation with a call to national dialogue, believing that it can address any demand of substance.  The Right initially responded by accepting the proposal for dialogue, but now may be retreating from a commitment to dialogue, as a result of the disruptive strategy of the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, But the government of Venezuela and the majority of nations of the region are supporting the proposal of the Maduro government for national dialogue.

     The conflict over Venezuela makes evident the difference in purpose and objectives between, on the one hand, an association of states formed with imperialist objectives by a neocolonial power (OAS); and on the other hand, associations of states formed for the purpose of mutual benefit on a basis of solidarity and mutual respect (ACS, ALBA, and UNASUR).  The former seeks to preserve the hegemony of a neocolonial power in an unsustainable neocolonial world-system; the latter are seeking to construct an alternative, more just and democratic world-system.


Key words:  ALBA, UNISUR, ACS, OAS, Maduro, Venezuela