Month: April 2009

“A couple of years ago if you had held a panel about banks at the Left Forum at 10 a.m., nobody would have showed up!” The theater of Pace University, however, was full this morning, and I got one of the very last seats. So, the panelists were asked, should we nationalize the banks or not? Yes, they unanimously answered, with slight divergences. The first one proposed using bailout money to create new, accountable financial institutions; he advocated for “creeping socialism” which, although “disappointing” was actually “heroic under current conditions”: creating economic alternatives to Wall Street economy–changing material relations concretely instead of changing the system first. The second speaker advocated for a not only complete but also permanent nationalization of the banks (not the alan greenspan type, which he called not nationalization but “pre-reprivatization”!) in order to get democratic control of finance and credit–he quoted Stiglitz saying that the neoliberal theory of the efficiency of the private sector had been proven false. He stated that Geithner’s plan was worse than Paulson’s, as, while they had the same objective–Geithner’s plan was more “deceptive” as it delays its financing over several years. Both he and the following speaker challenged the notion according to which banks absolutely had to be bailed out to avoid a complete collapse of the economy, and the “too big to fail” argument. Nomi Prins, the next speaker (a lively, loud, boastful, charismatic young woman, standing out in a born-before-WWII all white male academics panel) “Why would you let something become “too big to fail?”” she asked; plus, AIG could have been left to fail: “the system will collapse argument is simply not true.” She also debunked the myth of the bailout money ultimately coming back to taxpayers in the form of loans: “Goldman Sachs has not intention to deal with any of you.” she told the audience. She advocated for a partial nationalization of the banks: nationalizing the commerical banks (everyday consumer transactions) and for letting “the other parts fail”. She very vehemently condemned the current decisions of the Obama administraion: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results,” she said, “this is doing worse things each time and getting worse results.”
David Harvey was the last to speak, and all of us groupies in the room (who read his “brief history of neoliberalism” and consider it a gateway drug) held out our breath. He started his speech by saying that even though he was very glad to be part of this panel in front of such a large audience today, he wanted to remind us that for the past 30 years, he and the other few scholars who had argued along similar lines had been systematically marginalized, and that there had been a rising depletion of such scholars through the neoliberalization of academia, and, as a result, he said, we are finding ourselves with “a whole Economics profession that is dominated with people who have no idea what the fuck is going on.” Later, he said that he was seeing a rising generation of grad students that were promising but that for years to come academia would suffer from the vacuum created by the “neoliberal takeover of academics.”
Of course, Antioch comes to mind here, as at many other times in the forum, and especially the role it could take in being a leader in this rise of the left in years to come. About 7 or 8 times this weekend I got very excited, started scribbling frantically in my moleskine notebook about how Antioch could be exactly what this speaker is talking about, and how the story of the nonstop struggle and the rehired faculty and staff could be the beginning of a grand project as the renewed bastion of the left, a think tank for a post-neoliberal world. After a few minutes, though, I tend to remember that this does not seem at all like something that the PTB are even thinking about, and I went on to ask myself if there was, at all, any institution that ever held on to its promises.
So, back to David Harvey, who was using his celebrity status to extend his speech way over the time limit. What else? Wall Street controls part of Congress: as long as this is not changed, little hope for mainstream politics. “Bail out the bank and screw the people is the government’s strategy. We didn’t care when it happened in Mexico but now it’s happening to us.” Harvey is also pissed at how we’re misappropriating Keynes in the discourse about the rescue packages, the G20 etc…. when we’re still evidently operatiing in a neoliberal framework. He called for the left to expand its imagination. He talked about demonetarizing parts of the economy, for example, decommodifying housing completely.

Later I went to a panel about the impact of Venezuela on Latin America. (By the way, I don’t know if you saw, but Chavez yesterday gave Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America, the idea of which makes my stomach jolt a little every time i think about it.) Nothing new at the panel, mostly, and even some party line as the Consul herself was speaking (but not only, professors too so it wasn’t too polished.) the solidarity programs were described in much detailed (ALBA, the Miracle Program, Heating Oil, PetroCaribe, Banco del Sur, etc…), but, most importantly, William Robinson outlined the three current tendencies in Latin American, as a response to the crisis: 1) the radically anticapitalist reponse (Venezuela, Bolivia, and possibly Ecuador), the more moderate, reformist states (Argentina, Chile, Brazil), and the right wing reaction (Columbia, Mexico, Peru.) He argued that Venezuela could very well tip the balance and set the example for moving beyond limited reform, thus influencing his neighboring countries. (Especially if the Banco del Sur is a success–though Brazil is a strong obstacle to it.)

Wearing an Antioch College t-shirt at a leftist symposium is either a fantastic or a terrible idea, depending on your level of sociability of the day. This morning, I was stopped every three feet, more or less, by alumni or sympathizers. An older woman stopped me and said, “Oh I’m from Antioch too. I work with their PhD program. -I’m from the college, I answered, I’m in Yellow Springs -But there’s nothing there, she said, what do you do? -The faculty are still teaching -You mean you’re at McGregor? -No, No, the faculty of Antioch College are still teaching in Yellow Springs. We’re not closed, we’re still fighting. -Oh. We’re still fighting too, good luck.” She hurried off quickly

Whenever I go to any leftist gathering, whether it’s an anti-G8 rally, an alter-globalist european symposium or an academic conference, I always feel like running with open arms to every person who crosses my path and shouting “God am I glad to see you!” I usually manage to refrain myself though, but I must say that this time, at the Left Forum, it is particularly hard. First,everybody is evidently in a good mood because of the current wind shift–and quite astonishingly friendly and united–it’s a little bit like Antioch alumni around the the time of the first Business Plan, if you can still picture it. Second, you can tell from the program that we all have a lot in common: panels hold names ranging from Seattle-generation hipster buzzwords (“From the barrio to the barricades: visions for a better world,” “Is another world really possible?”) to more old-fashioned stuff (“Beyond Capital’s Crisis,””Class struggle and the crisis: from workers to capital and back again” and Marx, Marx, Marx.) There’s also some more specific panels about campus activism, foreign policy, economic development, radical media, latin american examples, anarchy, global warming, race and gender, and yes, here and there, Obama.

Since between twenty and thirty 2-hour panels happen simultaneously at every time slot, you can imagine it’s quite difficult to choose. I decided to adopt the Groupie Strategy: my main criteria, then, is to go see the people I know; I have my list of the People-I-Just-Can’t-Miss. This morning, for example, I went to a discussion about Joseph Schwartz’s book “The future of democratic equality: rebuilding social solidarity in a fragmented America” because (drumrolls) Gayatri Spivak was there.( Now, the fact that I usually understand about a third (on good days) of what she writes is in no way a deterrent to my adoration. Students of Isabella’s will understand this feeling, I am sure.) The first speakers summed up Schwartz’s book–one of the main theme being the rebuilding of solidarity–“solidaristic politics”– in the US both as a moral and an intrsumental force. This “solidarity of citizenship” would be expressed in rainbow coalitions in which unity would be found among different groups, while preserving each one’s distinctiveness (Textbook alterglobalism, but okay…) A public philosophy should also be created, it was argued–and this is where Schwartz became controversial for the panel– as he accused post-structuralist thinkers to have given up on influencing public discourse and thus having abandoned the frontlines of the struggle against inequality. Corey Walker, Brown University Professor, critiqued that view by positing that 1) politics of identity were “always already a condition of any politics” (We, the people… who is included in the we? he asked) and that 2) our political imaginations were limited by the “citadels of western thinking”, and the limits of that thinking, sealed too early, needed to be pushed back–and new categories created… an activity of the poststructuralists! There was a visible rift, on the panel, between the two old-school marxists, talking about very concrete measures, and the two poststructuralist advocates, who advocated for placing the political fight on another level–the usual tension between the urgency of the socio-economic situation and what it requires as immediate answers, and the skepticism over an over-used proven-to-fail system–and the seemingly never-ending process questioning it would imply.

Then Spivak finally spoke, and, I must say, I could not repeat word for word what she said, or even weave an argument in a linear way. Not that I wasn’t listening to her every word, but I think even if you were there it wasn’t all linear and coherent. (I think she’s queering the idea of coherence, as Chelsea would say…) She is very elliptic, (if not ADD..) going from one idea to the next quickly– expecting you to get an idea in a sentence and then move on, as in “i’m going to drop an intellectual bomb on your every 5 seconds and then change the subject: deal with it”. She’s definitely one of the most charismatic, lively, interesting, funny speakers I ever saw. So, in about 14 minutes, she talked about: learning Chinese, Education, Criminal Capitalism, High school children, the falling bottom of the global South (“and they’re not in trouble because of poststructuralists you know”), she made fun of Derrida, Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs and the french media, she mentioned the system defeating Obama, short-lived mobilizations around crises, European centered masculine humanism, the failure of poststructuralists to pay attention to industrial capitalism, their inability to get tenure so quit accusing them, Communism in Bengal, Union politics, the world social forum, Dubois, Eric Foner, and the intellectual subaltern. Memorable quotes include: “Education–that’s where you build solidarity, that’s where I begin.” “To be equal is not to be the same, we can’t refuse this double bind.” and “Poststructuralists are a blip in the machine. They’re interesting, I like them, but….”
During Questions and Answers, I walked to the microphone shortly after Norman Birnbaum asked his question– and asked about the prospects for solidarity-building education in the current global context of the corporatization of Higher Ed, etc… Spivak said she signed the Antioch petition even though she rarely signs anything, really, and called Marx to the rescue, in a mid-weary, mid-esoteric way. Meanwhile, Colombus-Lawyer-Gerry- Bello-friend Bob Fitrakis had spotted me in the audience and came up to me afterwards to talk about Antioch.

The next panel I went to was much less impressive, I must say. It was called “Secularism and the Radical Imagination,” and I went so that I could make up to Iveta for my post-secularism essay being late by making it cutting-edge. There were, however, very few of us in the little classroom on the third floor of Pace University, to listen to the panel of CUNY Grad Students who gave their talks. The presentation was quite disappointing–content wise, it was really nothing you wouldn’t get in a handout Iveta would give you –secularism as false neutrality/tolerance, in reality very much based on christianity, double standards with islam, etc….Worst than the bland content, the delivery was either terribly boring– or the late-twenty-something grad student was unbearably pretentious, arrogant and, really, not that smart. This kindof thing is always a little reassuring however; former admissions director Angie Glukhov, who is now at University of Dayton always says that Antioch students could wipe the floor with the grad students she admits to UD– it’s quite reassuring (thinking about our uncertain shaky futures, Nonsters…) to know we could do the same with some CUNY grad students. (Sorry Frances Horrowitz…(ps it’s not too late to salvage us..!))

At 3 PM, the classroom for the future of Palestine after Gaza was so full I had to migrate to the end of the hall, to Africa and the Crisis of Global Capitalism. Panelists were editors or journalists for independent media covering African news and devoted most of their presentation to ridiculing the new york times and presenting alternative versions to popular newsstories about Africa. The East Congo conflict, for example, presented as “tribal wars” by the mainstream, is, Milton Allimadi argues, a well-planned project for Western companies to plunder raw materials in the region–and the guerrillas are not guerrillas but hired “corporate finance terrorists.” Another issue: Somali piracy, suddenly on the forefront when it’s nothing new–whereas the toxic dumping of western corporations on somali shores, or illegal fishing in somalian waters are hardly mentioned. Rosalind McLymont told the story of the group of women in one of Uganda’s poorest slums who, when they heard about Hurricane Katrina, broke and sold rocks to raise up to one thousand dollars, and called the american embassy in Uganda to give them the money for the victims. She put this kind of generosity in an asymetric parallel with the “Bono-style notion of aid” manufactured in the west.

What comes after Neoliberalism? was the title of the last pannel of the day, and, even though I was exhausted, I owed it to SANE to attend. First panelist was a member of the Berlin-based Rosa Luxemburg institute. He posited that neoliberalism was “still ruling but not leading anymore” and presented a pretty standard version of the different alternatives we could expect to surge out of the crisis: a public sector new deal, a green deal, the risk of authoritarianism, scandinavian-style Keynesianism etc… To tell the truth, he was not an exciting enough speaker to catch my attention for very long after 7 hours of lecture. But Walden Bello certainly was. He started by emphasizing that the crisis of neoliberalism preceded the financial crisis, that ever since Seattle, the paradigm shift had started to happen and was starting to reach mainstream consciousness–through mass movements but also ruling class intellectuals (Soros Stiglitz Sachs). The financial crisis only confirmed and precipitated the neoliberal crisis of legitimacy. He predicted that the alternative model that was likely to emerge would be a “global social-democrat agenda,” traces of which had already been seen at the G20. The crisis would continue to be blamed on extreme neoliberals, bad apples and some practical mistakes, and everything would be done by states to preserve and salvage the system as a whole. How successful would such a plan be? The methods of the 30s might not be applicable in a society that has, because of thirty years of neoliberal hegemony, lost a lot of the structures needed to implement keynesian reform, and there was always the danger of authoritarianism. Like other speakers, he emphasized that the crisis of neoliberalism was not going to automatically benefit the left. Interestingly, he mentioned Sarkozy as an example of straying towards that kind of authoritarianism: while declaring the end of free-market fundamentalism, the french president was going towards the far right, having co-opted most of the extremist national front electorate (I believe this is far-fetched, though I would love to use that argument against Sarkozy–his anti-immigration, law and order agenda was put in place way before the crisis, it is based on a political discourse that has been circulating in france for years and years, and he certainly hasn’t seemed to tighten his grip recently at all, quite the opposite.)

Walden Bello concluded by calling for a stronger left, that would shift the social-democrat agenda to the center, where it belongs. Other speakers, at the opening plenary and elsewhere, made the same call: when Paul Krugman is depicted as the radical left by the mainstream media, we’ve definitely got a problem. A strong, imaginative, bold, uncensored left should focus on bursting its self-containing bubble to reach the mainstream and build strong public support. A strong civil society is indispensable in a post-neoliberal society.

More tomorrow. It’s really warm in New York.