Global elites are very worried about the fate of capitalism. The hype about capitalism is being widely questioned and (here in the US at least) some of its media boosters are getting skewered. The conservative Financial Times (a good read nonetheless) has even started an online series “The Future of Capitalism” as well as put up a blog dedicated to it.
And, starting yesterday, the Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck College in London (my alma mater; I have a PhD from its School of Politics and Sociology), has a conference on “The Idea of Communism.” The man behind the conference is showman philosopher Slavoj Žižek. He has invited an all-star cast to debate these issues: Judith Balso, Alain Badiou, Bruno Bosteels, Terry Eagleton, Peter Hallward, Michael Hardt, Toni Negri, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Ranciere, Alessandro Russo, Alberto Toscano and Gianni Vattimo.
Last weekend the FT featured an interview with Žižek:
… [H]e insists, the financial crisis has killed off the liberal utopianism that flourished after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and all the grand talk about the “end of history”. The terrorist attacks of September 2001 and the financial meltdown have exploded the myth that the market economy and liberal democracy have all the answers to all the questions. In the short term, at least, governments will introduce more state regulation and global co-ordination strengthening the capitalist system. In this sense, he suggests that the liberal Barack Obama may one day be counted as among the best conservative presidents in US history.
But even if capitalism is temporarily repaired, Žižek says, this will do nothing to resolve its inherent contradictions. The alarming breakdown of society will lead to new forms of apartheid and emergency states. He highlights the growing militarisation of Italy, where the government has sent the army into Naples to deal with the mafia. He claims that São Paulo in Brazil is mutating into a real-life version of the film Blade Runner (1982). The city now has 70 heliports with the rich travelling on another level to the poor.
Capitalism is, he believes, incapable of resolving the biggest challenges of the day: environmental catastrophe and the abuse of information technology, intellectual property rights and biogenetics. Societies must invent new forms of property ownership and common goods or perish. “My main criticism of liberal capitalism is not that it is bad but that it cannot last indefinitely. Communism has to be reinvented,” he says.
BTW, it costs of £100 to get into this weekend’s conference.
P.S. Zizek has his critics like Zimbabwean-born, London-based leftist, Alex Callinicos.
If I understand the roster, an all star cast includes one woman, no Africans, no Asians, no Latin Americans. That’s one helluva galaxy. I guess the sky really is all white, huh?
Indeed. Especially since the most interesting attempts at alternatives to unfettered capitalism are being worked out in South American countries now.