Greg Albo - Beyond Market Dystopia: New Ways of Living (Socialist Register 2020)

SOCIALIST
REGISTER
2020

THE SOCIALIST REGISTER

Founded in 1964

EDITORS
LEO PANITCH
GREG ALBO

FOUNDING EDITORS

RALPH MILIBAND (1924-1994)

JOHN SAVILLE (1916-2009)

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

COLIN LEYS

ALFREDO SAAD-FILHO

ASSISTANT EDITORS

ALAN ZUEGE

STEPHEN MAHER

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

GILBERT ACHCAR

AIJAZ AHMAD

NICOLE ASCHOFF

PATRICK BOND

ATILIO BORON

JOHANNA BRENNER

MICHAEL CALDERBANK

VIVEK CHIBBER

GEORGE COMNINEL

MADELEINE DAVIS

BARBARA EPSTEIN

NATALIE FENTON

BILL FLETCHER JR

ANA GARCIA

SAM GINDIN

ADAM HANIEH

BARBARA HARRISS-WHITE

DAVID HARVEY

JUDITH ADLER HELLMAN

CHRISTOPH HERMANN

NANCY HOLMSTROM

URSULA HUWS

RAY KIELY

MARTIJN KONINGS

HANNES LACHER

SASHA LILLEY

LIN CHUN

MICHAEL LOWY

EBNEM OUZ

BRYAN PALMER

ADOLPH REED JR

STEPHANIE ROSS

SHEILA ROWBOTHAM

JOHN S. SAUL

JOAN SANGSTER

MICHALIS SPOURDALAKIS

HILARY WAINWRIGHT

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SOCIALIST
REGISTER
2020

BEYOND MARKET DYSTOPIA

NEW WAYS OF LIVING

Edited by LEO PANITCH and GREG ALBO

THE MERLIN PRESS

MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS

FERNWOOD PUBLISHING

First published in 2019

by The Merlin Press Ltd

Central Books Building

Freshwater Road

London

RM8 1RX

www.merlinpress.co.uk

The Merlin Press, 2019

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

ISSN. 0081-0606

Published in the UK by The Merlin Press

ISBN. 978-0-85036-752-2 Paperback

ISBN. 978-0-85036-753-9 Hardback

Published in the USA by Monthly Review Press

ISBN. 978-1-58367-843-5 Paperback

Published in Canada by Fernwood Publishing

ISBN. 978-1-77363-244-5 Paperback

Printed and bound in the UK on behalf of Stanton Book Services

CONTENTS

CONTRIBUTORS

Amy Bartholomew is an Associate Professor of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University.

Alyssa Battistoni is an editor at Jacobin and a PhD student in political science at Yale University.

Karl Beitel is a Senior Lecturer at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Michelle Chen writes for In These Times and The Nation, and is a contributing editor at Dissent.

Yu Chunsen was recently awarded a PhD in Chinese Studies Research from Kings College London.

Nancy Fraser is the Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science at The New School in New York.

Sam Gindin is the former research director of the Canadian Auto Workers, and Packer Chair in Social Justice at York University.

Barbara Harriss-White is Emeritus Professor of Development Studies at the University of Oxford.

Owen Hatherley is the culture editor of Tribune.

Nancy Holmstrom is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University.

Ursula Huws is Professor of Labour and Globalisation at the University of Hertfordshire, and founder of Analytica Social and Economic Research.

Roger Keil holds the Research Chair in Global Sub/Urban Studies at York University.

Key MacFarlane is a PhD candidate in the History of Consciousness department at UC Santa Cruz.

Stephen Maher is a PhD Candidate at York University and an Assistant Editor of the Socialist Register.

Birgit Mahnkopf is Professor of European Social Policy at the Berlin School of Economics and Law.

Katharyne Mitchell is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Leo Panitch is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at York University.

Hilary Wainwright is the editor of Red Pepper magazine.

PREFACE

T his 56th volume of the Socialist Register is motivated by wanting to look beyond while still taking into account the deep contradictions of neoliberal capitalism that have so far dominated political and economic life in the twenty-first century. These contradictions amount to something of a register of the dislocations and distortions of capitalist markets over the last several decades: the gross income and wealth inequalities of class and nation; the massive global credit expansion in volume and complexity underpinning economic growth; the intricate interconnections between financial markets and global value chains; the ever more limited capacities of states to control economic crises; the breaching of greenhouse gas emission targets under the relentless acceleration of the circulation and accumulation of capital still thoroughly dependent upon fossil fuel energy supplies; and the massive void that now exists between liberal democratic politics deploying policies of social inclusion and the material sources of social polarisation and class divisions. In the Preface to last years volume, A World Turned Upside Down?, we suggested that these developments increasingly raise the stark question of whether we should once again be thinking of the options facing the world in terms of socialism versus barbarism In a world overturning old certainties, soberly expressing the prospects for a way forward for the left requires setting out new left agendas for confronting the corporate powers of capital, and indentifying new hopeful organizational dynamics that could lead to state transformations.

To look beyond the restricted horizons disciplining the range of acceptable political options today requires overcoming the current limits of vision as well as practice that would allow for other possible political choices. In the past years, we have seen a multiplication of writings on alternatives speaking to post-capitalism but most remain cast in terms of still working within and most often accommodating actually-existing capitalism. They too often reflect rather than transcend the contradictions entailed in, for instance, the promise of abundance from automation but also a severe intensification and degradation of work; or in the imperative to address ecological limits in a transformation of the socio-economic system but a seeming inability to reverse the waste economy or climate change; or the sickening over-housing of the few alongside a desperate need to address homelessness, social housing and the new global slums. All this recalls the warning with which Colin Leys, our former co-editor of the Socialist Register, persuasively closed his essential text, Market-Driven Politics: Neoliberal Democracy and the Public Interest (2001):

A strong non-market domain, providing various core services, as the common sense of a civilised and democratic society may sound farfetched in an era of market-driven politics. But it is debatable whether it is really as far-fetched as hard to imagine or as absurd as the world towards which market-driven politics is tending, in which more and more of the workforce is absorbed in ever-intensified competition for ever higher output and consumption, while the collective services for which democracy depends gradually decay.