Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Against the Anti-Globalization Critiques
Added by Mira Vogel on November 05, 2007 01:30:46 PM.
The dominant anti-globalisation grievance against capitalism goes something like this. Money- and market-orientated processes have reduced human beings to commodities, robbing them of any means of existence except the sale of their own labour-power in exchange for tokens of commodity-value: money. Value therefore comes to be overwhelmingly predetermined by the concrete terms of money. Money comes to dictate social relations with human and environmental degradation as an inevitable consequence. Money is therefore the essence of capitalism and capitalism's overthrow will hinge on the rejection of money and money-grubbing and the adoption of more natural, authentic, humanising forms of capital - craft and agricultural. Here the discourse becomes personalised.Why Your Revolution is No Liberation is a reader critiquing this analysis of capitalism. From the introduction:
"A criticism of capitalism limited to big players bypasses the totality of societal relations and disguises these by presenting a concrete scapegoat that can also serve as the object of violence for the anti-capitalist revolution."
"... the personalisation of the capitalist socialization creates the structure of modern anti-Semitism. Value, money and trade as abstract homeless and exploitative forms are being ascribed to particular persons: Bankers, Fat Cats and capitalists. The step then to the personalisation of anti-Semitism, to the Jew, which most globalisation critics have not taken yet, is only a small one."Containing writings of Max Horkheimer, Theodore Adorno, Jean Amery, Stephan Grigat and Moishe Postone, Why Your Revolution Is No Liberation was compiled in response to a debate between German and Austrian anti-facist groups
and anti-globalisation activists in the run-up to the 33rd G8 summit last June.
It's also available in French and German.
