Capitalism ’09 is part of a series of international events that focus on the analysis of contemporary capitalism. On Thursday, April 23th from 11 am to 4 pm the Old Student House in Helsinki (free entry) becomes a venue for discussing alternatives to the capitalist world system. The evening will continue at a World political rock event with political debates and vibrant music performances (Cafe Mascot, Neljäs linja 2, tickets 5/7 euro, from 7 pm to 2 am). Performing bands are Maria Gasolina and Porvarihallitus.
The crisis at hand is also a crisis of the neoliberal system of governance established since the 1970s, the final breakthrough of which resulted in estimations stating “the End of History” in the early 1990s. Now the main economic and ideological power structures of this paradigm are collapsing. The crisis has given ground for a historical opportunity for change. It is time to propose alternatives that increase the actual power of people to decide and influence on matters regarding their own lives.
Speakers are Stephen Gill (York University), whose research interests include new forms of political agency and the political and juridical constitution of global capitalism, Isabella Bakker (York University), who specialises on global economic system and its effects on gender hierarchies, researcher and climate activist Tadzio Müller, who is a critic of Green capitalism and Hilary Wainwright, Research Director of the New Politics Programme at the Transnational Institute and editor of Red Pepper magazine and Oras Tynkkynen, MP of the Green party. There are also other international and Finnish guests invited.
Stephen Gill: Political Reflections on the Global Financial and Economic Crisis
Capitalism and climate change
Oras Tynkkynen: Can growth be green? The case for a green economy
Tadzio Müller: Green New Deal: ‘accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, that is Moses and the prophets!’
Reclaiming everyday life from the intrusion of capitalism
Isabella Bakker:The Financial Crisis, Risk and Social Reproduction
Hilary Wainwright: Rethinking the public in the face of the crisis of the market
World political rock event – “Capitalism ´09” aftermath
(7pm-2am, Cafe Mascot, 4 linja 2, Helsinki – tickets 7/5 euro at the door)
7.30pm Postcapitalist finance?
Stephen Gill and Markus Jäntti; with Otto Bruun
8.30pm Postcapitalist Europe?
Hilary Wainwright (Red Pepper), Tadzio Müller (turbulence.org.uk <http://turbulence.org.uk> ) and Petter Nilsson (Centrum för marxistiska samhällsstudier); with Emilia Palonen
Music
9.30pm Porvarihallitus (=’Bourgeois Government’)
10.30pm Maria Gasolina (Drum’n’Bossa)
The financial and economic crisis — which appears to be simply a crisis that is internal to the functioning of global capitalism — is in reality part of a much wider and deeper global crisis. In this state of economic emergency, those mainly responsible for the policies that led to the financial collapse have claimed the right to produce the solutions ˆ with relatively little significant challenge from the progressive lefts. What is needed however is a new way to think through global challenges in ways that go beyond the confines of narrow solutions that simply favour capital. In my lecture I will therefore outline some principles and policies for the progressive lefts to consider: in fiscal policy, on lifestyles and sustainability, on public services, on the ageing society and in education and culture.
Abstract: Oras Tynkkynen
The world is facing an ecological crisis. A radical increase in eco-efficiency is required to meet people’s legitimate needs while dramatically reducing environmental impacts.
There is reason to believe that the economy can grow while rapidly cutting pollution, waste and resource consumption. However, this will require a paradigm shift in economic policies.
Market-based mechanisms can have a significant role in recreating a green economy. Neglecting or even actively opposing economic measures would only serve continued overexploitation of the environment.
Abstract: Tadzio Müller
Social movement debates about climate change are increasingly framed in tired clichés: wild-eyed radicals pushing for a rejection of established climate policy (emissions trading, carbon offsets, other techno-social fixes) against reasonable moderates with tropes such as “the problem is too urgent to wait for the revolution”.
However, there has been only one process in the last twenty years that has led to a significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions: the collapse of the Eastern European economies in the early 1990s; and one that promises to have a similar effect, namely the current world economic crisis, which has reduced demand for fossil fuels. What do these processes have in common? Drastic reductions in economic growth rates. Allthewhile there have been two processes at the international level that have not led to significant emissions reductions: the market mechanisms of governmental climate politics, and attempts to increase the proportion of renewable energies in the energy mix. Is it maybe the ‘anticapitalist radicals’ that have realism on their side, while it is the moderates whose position is just wishful thinking? Do we maybe have to achieve more than a mere ‘greening’ of growth – do we maybe have to tackle our addiction to economic growth itself?
Abstract: Isabella Bakker
I will argue that the financial crisis and the response to it underscores the privatization of risk for the majority and also the gendered nature of economic systems. Three brief examples will illustrate this point. The first concerns the various stimulus packages that are being set into motion in many of the G8 countries. The second concerns the health and knock-on effects of the crisis both in the Third World and in Eastern Europe, and my final example refers to the way in which the costs of social reproduction are borne unequally by women across the social spectrum in both global North and the global South. Finally, I will outline some alternative political responses that progressives should argue for that take into account social reproduction – addressing the care debt; creating new values and ideas of social solidarity and socializing risk.
We face the implosion of the institutions of the profit-maximising
market without adequate institutions to maximise public benefit.
I speak from the experience of the UK , the hot-house of neo-liberalism
but unfortunately the fungus bred in that hot-house spread to become
the dominant economic paradigm of the past twenty years or so. And so
thoughts from the UK about how to break decisively from that paradigm
are, I think, relevant.The contribution I want to make to this task is
around the question of the public sector.
In the immediate post-war years in the British context as elsewhere,
public services, public housing and the public industries represented a
strong recognition, in practice and in political culture, of the
importance of institutions working in the public interest. A problem
which began to become apparent by the late 1960’s was that the
institutional forms through which the public interest was identified
and expressed in these years were in fact inadequately accountable to
the actual living public. They were very paternalistic – a legacy
perhaps of the war.
The movements of the 60’s and the 70’s (students, feminists, tenants,
claimants, teachers and so on) were the first attempt to remedy this,
demanding greater control over and democratic participation in running
of public institutions. Looking back one might say that the weakness of
these movements was that we did n’t produce sufficiently resilient new
institutions. But whatever theie failings or however we explain their
weaknesses, their attempts to experiment with more responsive,
genuinely public, institutions were swept aside by the rampant
individualism of Thatcher’s neo-liberalism.
The public sector really has no place in neo-liberalism. Governments
guided by this pernicious creed – Conservative and New Labour – have
in practice and in ideology systematic eroded the legitimacy and
viability of the public sector.
In practice all too many state institutions that were originally
founded to promote the public interest have been fragmented and
deskilled or remodelled on a market driven model. Ideologically and
culturally, public service values have been devalued
and public servants persistently attacked.
The result – of both the incomplete process of reform of the 60’s and
70’s and the neo-liberal onslaught of the last twenty years and more –
is that just when institutions are needed to pursue public interests in
relation to financial markets, to counter recession and genuinely to
green the economy, public institutions are weak and lacking in
confidence and capacity. Moreover politicians hold to a self-fulling
prophecy that they have no legitimacy; they are not prepared to risk
rebuilding such legitimacy. The public are in a state of confusion. And
uncertainty
In this context the rethinking of the public in theory and in pratice is urgent.
In many ways practice is at this time ahead of theory. Though there
are insights from the late 60’s and 70’s on which we can draw in
thinking about the practice of today.
democratic control over public money and administration emerging out of
struggles against privatisation.
