Great Lakes Conference Abstracts

Great Lakes Political Economy Conference 2008
April 23-24, Department of Political Science
York University

Panel: “Culture(s) of Neoliberalism”

CHAIR: *Simon Black Department of Political Science, York University

*Julian Ammirante Department of Political Science, York University

Sport and the Political Economy of Culture in the era of Neo-liberal Globalization

This paper explores some of the more tenable arguments and issues surrounding the conceptualization of sport, leisure and entertainment industries in the social sciences and their particular relationship to culture and popular culture in this current phase of globalization. The omnipresent character of sport, leisure and entertainment industries in the twenty-first century is onerously obvious enough to signal that it should be taken seriously as an academic subject worthy of scholarly investigation in its own right. Consequently, it should also be considered as an activity that has far-reaching political-economic and cultural significance and as such it is of importance to a wider policy-making community. This has significant implications for a wide range of issues; from the shifting meanings of production, distribution and consumption, to the ability of certain theoretical approaches, particularly a cultural studies framework that analyzes the political economy of the global culture industries, with major-league spectator sport being an extensive component of such industries. In short, this paper outlines a preliminary theoretical and methodological model that considers the impact of globalization on the intersection between production, politics and culture through an analysis of major-league spectator sport.


*Tanner Mirrlees Communication and Culture, York/ Ryerson Universities

Post-Fordism, Neoliberalism, and Reality-TV

Many cultural studies scholars have rescued Reality-TV from the ostensibly “elitist” aesthetic value-judgements and disciplinary taste-making practices of curmudgeonly critics. Against defenders of “quality television” and public service programming, cultural studies scholars have presented redemptive and affirmative interpretations of Reality-TV. For them, the content of Reality-TV reflects a progressive step beyond the homogenizing, paternalistic, and exclusionary programmes of the past: it turns private issues into public concerns, even “plurals up” the representation of the public by turning “ordinary” people and groups that were hitherto marginalized by the cultural industry in to stars. The form of Reality-TV, in turn, is said to herald a “democratization” of the cultural industry; it blurs previous boundaries that separated text/audience, industry/audience, and producer/consumer to establish an “interactive” feedback loop that conjoins media companies, information technology, and audiences in a new relationship of collaborative co-production. Contemporary discussions of Reality-TV are limited by prosaic positions and positive valuations that have long mobilized cultural scholars against immanent and negative critique. The cultural turn away from critical political-economic analysis continues. Reality-TV appears as the outcome of a “free and equal” media market that effectively reflects the demands of sovereign consumers and segmented cultural identity niches. To supplement cultural studies’ idealist and fetishistic interpretations of Reality-TV with a historical materialist one, I present a negative and immanent critique of this emergent genre. I relate and connect the form and content of a variety of different Reality-TV shows to micro and macro social transformations in the conjuncture of post-Fordism, postmodernism, and neoliberalism. Reality-TV articulates the cultural logics, practices and ideologies of the post-Fordist regime of accumulation, the postmodernized media industry and the post-Keynesian neoliberal state. Reality-TV is popular because it represents to audiences imaginary (cultural) resolutions to the social crisis and contradictions of this conjuncture. Reality-TV does not herald a new sphere of democratization, freedom, and choice, but rather, responds to and legitimizes the shifting terrain of capitalism and class power.


*Julian Holland Department of English & Cultural Studies, McMaster University

The Aestheticological Settlement: Modeling Neoliberal Ideological Forms

The privatized political and economic practices of neoliberalism constitute the customary logic of contemporary capitalism: the imaginative world of embedded liberalism has been disappeared to our collective unconsciousness. And yet, because the ideological field is determinately asynchronous, it has only recently become possible to discern the larger terms of a cultural settlement. By utilizing various econometric and narrative devices this paper seeks to offer an exploratory modeling of neoliberal ideological forms. Particular attention will be given to the structure of three interrelated historico-imaginative syntaxes: the primary "blue-chip fantasy" that introduces equilibrium shifts in social distribution; the secondary "temperate poetic" that legitimates the ongoing enforcement of aggregate class austerity; and, the tertiary "consolation song" that offers a compensatory substitution for declining public provision.



Session: “Neoliberalism in Canada”

CHAIR: *Gregory Albo Department of Political Science, York University

*Jordan Brennan Department of Political Science

Neoliberalism in Canada after 25: Capitalist Power and Income Inequality

It has been 25 years since the Trudeau Liberals began the shift towards neoliberal governance. In recent years the Canadian press has alerted us to the growing ‘prosperity gap’ within Canada. And with calls from both the Liberal Party and New Democratic Party for redistributive policies, it is an opportune time to examine the political economy of income in Canada. The conventional (neoclassical) account would have us believe that income inequality is the product of ‘endowments and abilities’, ‘human capital’, ‘factor prices’, ‘marginal productivity’, and ‘market forces’. In short, this account explains, and indeed justifies, income inequality on the basis that everyone gets his or her due in a competitive marketplace. This paper will break with the conventional approach and will instead adopt a power approach to political economy. Employing Nitzan and Bichler’s concept of ‘dominant capital’, this paper will attempt to draw a correlation between the growing income inequality and capitalist power. This will be done through an analysis of the dominant actors in the Canadian political economy, namely the 100 largest multinational corporations. The preliminary hypothesis is that the growing income gap results from dominant capital claiming a larger share of the wealth in the political economy. As a proxy for ‘power’, this paper will rely on aggregate concentration ratios and the market share of the 100 largest firms. If the latter two measures have risen over the previous 25 years, and if returns to capital have indeed risen, this may be sufficient evidence of a positive correlation between capitalist power and income inequality.


*Benjamin Christensen Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University

Building a Culture of Innovation: How the Canadian Council of Chief Executives
Creates Consent

The Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) is a lobby group of Canada’s top 150 CEOs representing the voice of big business in Canada. This organization consolidates the various demands of corporate capital into a unified voice to provide more leverage when lobbying Canadian governments and other private and public institutions. My paper will examine the discursive strategy of “innovation” used by the CCCE to establish their influence in shaping Canadian economic and social policy. Drawing on Jessop’s (1993) concept of the “Schumpeterian Workfare State,” I will argue that the CCCE has been instrumental in producing successful policy recommendations that have been used in attempts to restructure and reorient the Canadian state, business, and the minds of Canadians towards a new form of capital accumulation. Closed national boundaries and economies of scale are no longer viewed as competitive by the CCCE, which now looks to increased competition with other national economies and the production of new and innovative technologies to maximize wealth creation. I will also employ Gramsci’s (1971) theory of hegemony to understand how the CCCE persistently attempts to replace existing forms of “common sense” with their own particular form of economic rationality. Contextualized within a framework of “progress” and “objectivity,” the CCCE presents “innovation” as the only means that can lead Canadians towards a secure life of social and economic well-being. However, I will argue that “innovation” is used in part to generate consent for economic restructuring while simultaneously depicting the interests of capital as universal. I will conclude that the discourse of innovation is an ideological project threading together the aspirations of corporate capital to produce a new hegemonic order of understanding of what it means to remain competitive in the international global economy.


*Isabel Sousa Department of Sociology, York University

Virtual Vulnerabilities: Locating Teletriage and Health Informatics in a Changing Geography of Work and Care

Reform is taking place in many health care settings, under many guises and with many implications. Operating under a neo-liberal rationale to increase market reliance, to stay competitive and to meet rising ‘consumer’ demands, the impulse to invest in and apply information communication technologies (ICTs) to the delivery and management of health services in Canada is intensifying. Reforms are introducing a range of strategies aimed at reorganizing and managing nurses’ skill, labour and time according to market oriented task-based industrial production models. Embedded in this impulse, the growth of telehealth initiatives such as Telehealth Ontario is dramatically changing the provision of health ‘care’ across time and space. As a cost reduction strategy, the emergence of telenursing triage call centres raises questions about the re-engineered work designs that control, measure and mange nurses’ care work. Despite recent imperatives for ‘evidence-based’ practices, there is relatively little research or ‘evidence’ on telehealth that takes into account ‘place’ and its impact and meaning for workers and care. The adoption of ICTs and the disinvestment of responsibilities and funding for health care are key to understanding the underlying interests and macro-structural forces shaping reforms to health care. The reforms are not only changing the locus of care, (from formal to informal settings in the home and community) but they fundamentally alter the conditions under which all care is provided and consumed. The process is increasingly rendering people to places of vulnerability. Using Telehealth Ontario as a case in point, this paper offers insight into how ‘place’ matters for health care and care work.


*David Cavett- Goodwin Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University

The Hollowing-Out of the Canadian Economy: Quantitative vs. Qualitative Analysis

In the past few years some of Canada's largest, best-known corporate names have been acquired by even larger global competitors. With the increasing loss of head offices and reliance on foreign capital for tax revenues, some observers have worried that Canada is reverting to its “branch-plant” past in the global economy. Foreign ownership as practiced by the multinational corporations is at the very core of corporate globalization. Therefore, my thesis is situated within the theoretical context of Bob Jessop’s “Schumpeterian Workfare State”, as an explanation for this behaviour, exercising the states “new role” as an accumulation regime. To quote Jessop: “It is innovation-driven structural competitiveness which is becoming central to the successful performance of the economic functions of the contemporary capitalist state”. The argument that the recent wave of corporate takeovers by foreign firms is leading to a “hollowing-out” of corporate Canada, while nothing new, has elicited a number of responses from all sides of the political spectrum, including Statistics Canada, the CCCE, and the CCPA. Canada becomes faced with a risk assessment decision: Are the risks of potentially being hollowed-out greater than the benefits of FDI? By comparing quantitatively supportive and qualitatively critical arguments of the debate, from many different “realities” and perspectives, this paper will seek to provide an explanation: that there are many positive, neutral, and negative effects associated with FDI, while studying merger & acquisition activity in particular. These realities reflect evidence from different schools of thought, such as political science, economics, political economy, management, business, etc.


SESSION: “Capital, Class, and State: Comparative Neoliberalisms”

CHAIR: TBA; LOCATION: TBA

*Ray Silvius and Neil Burron Department of Political Science, Carleton Univesity

Transnational Neoliberalism and its Relation to Low-Intensity Democracy:
The Case of Haiti

Historical materialist scholars have, from the time of Marx, been conscientious of the manner in which economics transcends national borders. Bastian van Apeldoorn (2004: 143) echoes this sentiment, writing that “the world of international relations has from the start been inextricably bound up with the expanding capitalist world economy and thus embedded within and shaped by transnational social relations growing out of that globalizing capitalism.” The debate and discussion surrounding the internationalization and transnationalization of the state is an important contemporary discussion in the critical vein of International Political Economy (IPE) scholarship and a concern for historical materialist thinking. The key insights from its proponents surround the adjustment of a national state’s policies and laws according to the exigencies of the international economy and the manner in which a variety of domestic political regimes are both constituted and challenged by transnational class forces. Theorists such as Robinson (1996; 2004) have argued that we may even speak of a transnational capitalist class that promotes low-intensity democracy to legitimate the project of neoliberal globalization. In our estimation, the need to investigate the relation between democracy as a hegemonic practice providing nation-states with partially-inclusive political institutions and an unequal global social structure of accumulation is particularly urgent. It remains particularly important to trace this relation as it is instantiated in a variety of state forms in the current historical epoch by competing and conflicting social forces. We wish to present a synopsis of contemporary thinking on the internationalization/ transnationalization of the state and its contradictory relation to the implantation of low-intensity democracy in the case of Haiti, where an alliance of transnational capitalist forces with local elites has repeatedly failed to politically anchor an extremely polarized neoliberal structure of accumulation (Fatton 2002; Shamsie 2007). The case study serves to give concrete expression to a key tension of world order and presents a basis for further conversation.


*Cemil Boyraz Department of Political Science, Instanbul Bilgi University

Privatization, Contradictions in the Capital Accumulation Process,
and the Labour Movement: The Turkish Case

In this study, two aspects of the privatization process will be analyzed. On the one hand, privatization will be related to the capital accumulation process and intrinsic contradictions of capital on the national and global scale. On the other hand, privatization will be associated with collective organization and massive reactions of labour unions against it. The Turkish case presents both aspects of this process in many ways. For the first aspect, two decades of privatization experience in Turkey display various articulations or alliances between international capital and national capital and contradictions arose from them. The fractions of the bourgeoisie in Turkey argue the inevitability of privatization process to sustain neo-liberal objectives (shrinking public expenditures, commodification of public services and sustaining debt recycling of treasury; preventing corruption and achieving transparency-accountability). It also constitutes one of the most important means of integration of large scale domestic capital groups to the global circuits of capital. Moreover, middle-scale capital groups having a lust for a certain level of accumulation and then internationalization, and small scale capital groups seeking to survive within the domestic market took a reactionary stance in this process (as also seen in discussions after the enactment of the Public Procurement Law in 2000s) to share in the benefits of economic globalization. As a second aspect; anti-neoliberalist and anti-imperialist (but not anti-capitalist) reactions and serious critics against WB, IMF with a highly nationalist tone rose (associated with a “national interest-sovereignty-independence discourse” and “calling the state back” with national developmentalist and protectionist policies) and have been the counter-position of collective labour union movement. In a manner, both aspects of privatization brought the problematic of “scale” into the theoretical and practical agenda of the class- based Leftist movement against neo-liberalism in Turkey.


*Tom Marois Department of Political Science, York University

Comparative Neoliberalism, Banking, and Finance-led Accumulation
in Mexico and Turkey

The varieties of neoliberalism found today have been subject to increasing study (Coates 2005; Saad-Filho and Johnston 2005). So too has the rise of financialization (Epstein 2005). Indeed for many, financialization is tied to neoliberalism, itself an expression of the reasserted power of finance capital (Duménil and Lévy 2005). Comparative political economic case studies that explore the internal relations of state banking and neoliberal financialization are uncommon, however. From a historical materialist analytical approach, my paper investigates ‘most different’ cases of state banking and the emergence of finance-led neoliberal accumulation in Mexico and Turkey. Mexico statized all commercial banks in 1982 and then privatized them rapidly from 1990-1992 and is now dominated by foreign banks (85% control). Turkey has long had state banks, which retain importance today despite significant privatization efforts recently. I make the following argument: whereas in Mexico bank statization counter-intuitively enabled a more rapid process of neoliberal restructuring, in Turkey, by contrast, neoliberal restructuring has served as the modus vivendi of continued state bank viability. In both distinct cases, I argue money and credit relations, and by extension developmental and poverty alleviation options, are increasingly disciplined by financial imperatives. The paper draws on recent fieldwork in Mexico and Turkey and is a critical intervention into a subject almost entirely dominated by market-based approaches to banking and development.


SESSION: “Dispossession and Primtive Accumulation”

CHAIR: TBA; LOCATION: TBA

*Bikram Gill Department of Political Science, York University

Agrarian Crisis in India: Processes of Accumulation by Dispossession

Working through David Harvey’s theory of the ‘new’ imperialism, one that identifies processes of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ as the central constituting element of contemporary imperialism, my masters research paper attempts to explore and elucidate the links between the new imperialism, neo-liberal economic reforms, and the deepening agrarian crisis in India. I first argue that the premise for such an exploration can be found in the central role that the social (dis)organization of agrarian relations in the South have historically played in the struggle between imperialist and anti-imperialist forces. Central to the anti-colonial struggle in India were questions of land reform and food self-sufficiency that sought to overturn the regressive property regimes and gross misuse of agricultural resources that were constitutive of colonial rule. While the national developmental state that was born out of the anti-colonial struggle was beset by various contradictions, primary agricultural producers were nonetheless able to secure significant social protections through publicly managed institutions. I argue that India’s much celebrated structural adjustment from developmental state to neo-liberal state has in practice provided policy mechanisms – namely privatization, financialization, state withdrawal, liberalized trade – that have allowed multinational and domestic agribusiness corporations to engage in predatory forms of ‘primitive’ accumulation through dispossessing agrarian communities of control over knowledge (through the intellectual property rights regime), resources, and public institutions which are integral to their security of livelihood.


*Maita Abola Sayo Department of Political Science, York University

Accumulation and the problem of violence

Embedded within Karl Marx’s account of “so-called” primitive accumulation is a critique of the “origin story” of bourgeois capitalism. Perhaps this enacts a primal scene of capitalism – the violent transition from “primitive” to “modern” forms of accumulation. Ellen Wood argues that this transition is only possible through “extra-economic” imperatives – that is, through acts of violence that both foreground but remain external to the “economic”. My work will examine the tensions around origins in Marxist accounts of primitive accumulation, questioning its linear teleology by opening up the problem of eschatology. What would it mean then to understand the contradictory imperatives of capital in the present, in its cannibalization and enclosure upon de-commodified spaces but simultaneous treatment of these spaces as a “constitutive outside”? Walter Benjamin further complicates the problem of violence by forwarding the notion of the “Messianic” in order to question the “origins” and “ends” of violence. Can the Messianic be understood as a radical way of revisioning time, a notion of Messianic time that fundamentally displaces the telos of violence? What would it mean then to examine the circulation of violence within the ongoing consolidation of a particular conception of social life – to weave together the stories and various configurations of violence in history (colonization, genocide, occupation) with the eschatology of capital?


*Chris Hurl Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University

The Mode of Production as Event: The Legacy of the British Marxist Historians

How have the conditions necessary for the accumulation of capital been established? This paper will examine the process of so-called primitive accumulation as an event. I will begin by examining the concept of primitive accumulation as developed by Marx (1972) who explored the emergence of capitalism as a historical process of dispossession. In the post-war period, British Marxist historians such as Maurice Dobb (1947), Christopher Hill (1972), E.P. Thompson (1978), and Phillip Abrams (1982) took up this problematic in examining class as “a historical relationship, an event not a structure or object” (Abrams, 1982, xi). The English Revolution provided a central case study in the examination of dispossession as a contingent and contested process rather than a historical inevitability. In this paper, I will examine the ontological and epistemological claims underlying the analysis of this event which will enable me to develop my own method for the examination of the ‘mode of production’ as a contingent, material encounter (Read, 2002).


SESSION: “Empire and the New Imperialism”

CHAIR: *Leo Panitch Department of Political Science, York University
LOCATION: TBA

*Andrew Lee Department of Sociology, University of California- Santa Barbara

Querying the Conditions for Warfare: The Political Economy of U.S. Military Spending in the 21st Century

Within the critical social sciences, there has been a great resurgence of interest on the topic of “American militarism,” and rightfully so: in the age of the Bush administration, the “war on terror,” and the quagmire of Iraq, it is crucial that we attempt to understand the motions and motivations of the immense U.S. military structure. This starts by interrogating the act of military spending with respect to massively inflated annual budgets, potential political/economic motivations and their resulting effects (whether intended or not), and opportunities for corporate profiteering in the defense industry. This paper looks at the phenomenon of recent U.S. military spending with the following pressing questions in mind: Does military spending ultimately “boost” or “drain” the economy? What is the size, scale, and scope of U.S. spending in the present, compared to previous periods of 20th century U.S.-led war? And how has business been of late for the largest and most dominant firms that “wheel and deal” militarized commodities to the Department of Defense (their biggest customer)? Through a theoretical and empirical examination of these issues, I argue that despite the official justifications of needing to maintain “security” and “freedom” worldwide, 21st century American military spending is overall a politically safe and economically ready-made strategy of capitalist accumulation. What we are seeing now, I will suggest, is a general movement towards conditions of permanent war, for the permanent realization of profits.


*Michael Skinner Department of Political Science, York University

Afghanistan and the Militarist “Humanitarian” Empire: The Latest Stage of Capitalism.

The United States invaded Afghanistan ostensibly to punish the Taliban government for harbouring the alleged masterminds of the 9/11 attacks. In the popular realm, the war is spun not only as a necessity to save “Western Civilization” from “barbarians”, ala Huntington, but also as a humanitarian mission to liberate Afghans and especially Afghan women through state-building. In the theoretical realm, the war is embraced not only by the neoconservatives closely allied to the Bush administration, but also by notable neorealists and liberal internationalists. Principle players in these paradigms form an uneasy alliance attempting to legitimize the role of the Afghanistan mission as part of the larger game for “New World Order”. The tactic of counterinsurgency warfare recognized as ill-advised, at least since Machiavelli described it, distracts most observers from the strategic geopolitical and economic objectives of this imperialist war. The members of what Robinson describes as a trans-national capitalist class, the same people Huntington describes as the “Davos Culture”, fear extinction if they cannot subsume or destroy their opponents and expand globally. The geopolitical position of Afghanistan is a key to expansion. This state is a strategic location from which to contain inter-imperialist rivalries with China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and India. It is also a key to establishing regional free trade and exploiting the wealth of resources in the region. Afghanistan is the western most territory of what Condoleezza Rice has redefined as the “New Middle East” as part of the quest for a new capitalist world order.


*Can Cemgil Department of Political Science, Instanbul Bilgi University

Dialectic of New Imperialism: A Historical-Structural Account of Capitalist Imperialism

The 'two logics approach' –one territorial/geopolitical and the other capitalist– proposed and advanced primarily by David Harvey and Alex Callinicos occupies a significant place in the literature on the form imperialism assumed recently. Their 'dialectical' construction of the relation between the economic and the political creates two particularly important and interrelated pitfalls for a sound analysis of contemporary imperialism: first, the idea of two autonomous logics introduces an unsubstantiated Weberian methodological pluralism into the study of imperialism, and second, giving primacy to capitalist logic in the ultimate analysis as Callinicos does, paves the way for a structurally determinist account of imperialism. In this paper, I will argue that although such a methodology seems to be analytically useful, in the final analysis it reifies these 'logics' as distinct and autonomous categories. I will further claim that a balanced approach sensitive to both agential and structural factors may be possible by integrating historical sociological approaches built on 'political' Marxism and historical-structural approach of neo-Gramscian theorists of international relations into a conceptual architectonic without falling into the snare either of voluntarism or of economic determinism. While materialist historical sociology precludes the risk of determinism, an historical-structural approach helps in locating historical totalities and identifying ‘structure-transformative’ role agential factors can play without any need to appeal to methodological pluralism.


*Sean Starrs Department of Political Science, York University

American Aggression Against Asian Aspiration? Ten Years After the Asian Financial Crisis

Many bottles of ink have been spilled on the East Asian financial crisis 1997-1998, as the crisis served as a battleground for debates raging across the political spectrum on the nature of contemporary world order. The Left has certainly not shied away, and many have characterized the crisis as the dawn of the neoliberal era in East Asia, with the “imperialist” IMF/US-imposed structural adjustment programs, and the inevitable influx of foreign “vulture” capital seeking “fire-sale” assets in the midst of massive depreciations. Curiously, however, this literature dries up around 2003 (with only a few exceptions), and it seems that there is little follow-up on whether the initial prognostications and diagnoses have proven accurate with the benefit of hindsight. This paper seeks to fill this gap. It is now a decade after the crisis, so it may be fruitful to investigate what has actually happened in the intervening ten years. In this paper, I propose to focus on South Korea, and investigate the following questions: what is the present nature of South Korea’s political economy? Is it a “neoliberal state”? Or has it been able to retain key features of the “developmental state”? Has foreign, in particular American, capital “bought up” key assets in South Korea, and does foreign capital now dominate its political economy? I think these questions are important because it provides an empirical test-case for some of the larger debates on the Left concerning the “New Imperialism” and the nature of neoliberalism in the global political economy.


7PM; PLENARY AND SOCIAL

SPEAKERS:

Alfredo Saad-Filho School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Genevieve LeBaron Department of Political Science, York University

Alan Sears Department of Sociology, Ryerson University

LOCATION: TBA


Thursday, April 24

SESSION: “Theorizing Capital and Value”

CHAIR:TBA; LOCATION: TBA

*Eric Newstadt Department of Political Science, York University

Work, Measurement, and the Neo-liberal University:
The On-going Relevance of the Labour Theory of Value

A spate of allegedly “left” and “radical” interpretations of the contemporary moment have tended to buy into mainstream discourses about the apparent transition to a knowledge based economy, or about the emergence of a risk society. In such analyses, new forms of work are unquestioningly declared to be “knowledge-intensive” and though questions are raised about one or another particular measure that governments have used to assess and ensure that our universities produce “quality”, they never question the utility of measurement itself; without examining the emergence of our ‘audit culture’ in light of the re-emergence of global finance and neo-liberal globalization, measurement appears not as a means of social re-negotiation and regulation, but as a tool that can be adapted to the needs of any policy program, or operate in service of any ideological orientation. This means that some proponents of intellectual and academic pluralism are blind to the way in which even more nuanced forms of quality assessment reproduce both neo-liberalism and a narrowed intellectual landscape. This becomes clear when we look at popular notions of knowledge-intensive work and quality assessment through a Marxian value-theoretic; the centrality of labour to the production of surplus value coupled with the transition to a services-based, though not necessarily more knowledge-intensive, economy has presented an on-going challenge for capitalism: how to price labour when the underlying commodity is of an immaterial nature? Because the determination of prices and therein the distribution of surplus value is always a social process, we find that the discourse of knowledge intensity and quality assessment of the university are regulative principles and practices that function to set post-graduation income wage expectations.


*Daniel Moure Department of Political Science, York University

Marx Versus Weber and the Limits to Their Explanatory Potential

Karl Marx and Max Weber have had an enormous impact on social science, and their work has largely defined the social scientific project—what social science investigates, how it investigates it, and what can be concluded from that investigation. But Marxism and Weberianism may have reached the limits of their explanatory power: the specific details will vary, but the questions and conclusions of both perspectives can be predicted in advance, as can their shortcomings and their critiques of each other. Marxists focus on class conflict and conclude that overall social dynamics result from a society's mode of production. Weberians focus on social institutions and conclude that overall social dynamics result from the interaction of separate and irreducible power sources. According to Weberians, Marxism offers an ultimately reductionist monocausal explanation of social phenomena that dismisses as irrelevant what it cannot explain. And according to Marxists, Weberianism's multicausal explanation is incapable of understanding that society is more than the sum of its parts. Both critiques are valid and apparently insuperable, and the result appears to be a stagnating social science. I will attempt to demonstrate this claim by presenting the historical sociology of Marx and Weber, with references to the contemporary historical sociology of Robert Brenner and Michael Mann.

*Troy Cochrane Social and Political Thought, York University

What we talk about when we talk about capital

Despite naming our current system, how many political economic theorists can really say what capital is? The neoclassicists think they know. But they have never retrieved the concept from its defeat in Cambridge Capital Controversies. The Marxists think they know. But Marx himself was starting to question the labour theory of value upon which Marxian capital is based. So, where does that leave us? We have an -ism we cannot properly define because we cannot identify to what its most fundamental concept refers. Using the iconoclastic and underused works of Thorstein Veblen, Lewis Mumford and Cornelius Castoriadis, political economists Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler have developed a new theory of capital. Rejecting the ‘two-faced’ notions of capital that claim the material factors of production are the ‘real’ face of capital as opposed to the merely ‘nominal’ financial face, the pair maintain that capital is finance and only finance. Further, these monetary values represent neither utility nor labour but instead the relative power of the owners of capital. Nitzan and Bichler’s theory points away from the Marxist focus on the relations of production and toward a refocusing on the relations of ownership and control. This new conception of capital cannot simply be inserted into favoured old theories of capitalism. Instead it requires a reexamination of what we mean when we talk about capitalism. I will make some preliminary suggestions of what this reexamination may find.


SESSION: “Enclosure and the Commons”

CHAIR: TBA; LOCATION: TBA


*Shiri Pasternak Planning, University of Toronto

Empty Lands and Raw Seeds: From the Doctrines of Discovery to Patents on Life

This paper brings to light a relationship between the colonial doctrine of discovery and patents on life today. By tracing the deployment of the doctrine of discovery and the related discourses of terra nullius (no man’s land) and improvement from colonial land settlement to intellectual property right claims over indigenous knowledge, this paper aims to show the ways in which indigenous people’s relationship to nature has been defined and circumscribed to justify the denial of Aboriginal ownership of land and knowledge in North America and around the world. In this paper I want to argue that primitive accumulation is central to understanding the relationship between colonization of land and intellectual property rights regimes of “biopiracy” and beyond. I want to show the ways in which private property rights – developed during the colonial era precisely as a response to the problem of staking imperial dominion – are central to a liberal capitalist framework in which a particular image of indigenous peoples is captured: those of a people occupying “empty lands” and planting “raw seeds.” This argument will take us through some history of the concept of primitive accumulation where I will briefly consider the relevance of various interpretations to the experience of settlement in British North America, and following confederation, the Canadian state. I conclude this survey of the doctrine of discovery by suggesting some problems with progressive critiques of terra nullius that place indigenous people back within the descriptive domain of liberal capitalism that First Nations have so adamantly resisted. I suggest instead that we recognize indigenous territorial claims within the social and political integrity of indigenous legal traditions of property ownership, stewardship and allocation.


*Wilhelm Peckhaus Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario

Primitive Accumulation and the Commons: Applying the Theory to the Study of Biotechnology in Canada

In this paper I suggest that the re-invigoration of Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation offers a suitable theoretical register for apprehending contemporary erosions of the agricultural and environmental commons as they pertain to biotechnology. Following theorists like Harvey and DeAngelis, I contend that primitive accumulation must be understood as a continuous process that remains important to capitalist accumulation and that it assumes a variety of forms, including the privatization of public goods that had been made public through prior social struggle. My theoretical framework derives largely from autonomist Marxism. Just as Marx’s methodology orients itself toward a new social vision based on the perspective of the working class that is founded on its own historical activity, contemporary efforts at understanding and situating the current conjuncture of capitalism can be advanced through research into the genealogy of social and political opposition movements. By apprehending these emerging subjectivities we might begin developing a new social vision of our own era. It is precisely those struggles mobilized around biotechnology issues in Canada that my research seeks to elaborate. The paper thus outlines some of the emerging counter struggles in Canada organized against various aspects of biotechnology, including the way such movements are engaging in a radical reappropriation of the information and knowledge systems insinuated in biotechnology and their attempts to appropriate or foreclose the products and processes developed by biotechnological capital.


*Kevin Sutton Department of Political Science, York University

Enclosing the Ancient Commons: The Role of the Pharmaceutical Sector in Defining the Boundaries of Ownership and Accumulation

This paper demonstrates how the pharmaceutical sector shapes the trajectory of capital accumulation through its particular structure of ownership. It focuses on how pharmaceutical firms are able to establish new sources of capital accumulation through unprecedented forms of property ownership. Recent developments in the pharmaceutical sector have seen the imposition of intellectual property rights upon an array of politically contested sites of knowledge: from traditional medicinal practices to the information encoded in our bodies and in life itself. I call this process “the enclosure of the ancient commons” to emphasize how the drug-patent system imposes capitalist practices on historically untouched areas of social life. The crucial question I ask is, “On what basis can a particular combination of political and business interests define the boundary between public and private interest?” My work draws on extensive empirical research and various theories of primitive accumulation to demonstrate the role that capital and state play in setting this boundary according to the needs of accumulation.


SESSION: “Disaster, Conflict and Accumulation”

*Orsan Senalp Transnational Institute, Amsterdam

Disciplinary Neoliberalism, Transnationalization through Governance Mechanisms
and Dispossession through Disaster & Loot

In her recent book, Naomi Klein (2007) -unconsciously or without directly referring to his work- is confirming and developing Stephen Gill’s theses of Disciplinary Neoliberalism and New Constitutionalism (Gill, 2001). There are two distinct points which we would like to stress between these two important theorizations, before connecting them to another essential perspective from the neo-gramscian school. Firstly, while Klein does not relates her theory of rise of disaster capitalism -and the articulation of the Shock doctrine- historically to the systemic crises that the capitalist system has been facing since the 70s, Gill’s approach does so. Secondly, Gill’s work provides a more concrete perspective on the main actors of the rising model, while Klein’s fails to do so. The importance of Klein’s work then is that it is very well documented and shows in detail how shock therapy through utilization of mass torture techniques has served to deepen the capitalist relations into rough states. Then we will think of this in the context of Kees van der Pijl’s theory of expansion of transnational Lockean Heartland (van der Pijl, 2006), and we will argue that Klein’s work actually presents us the strategy of the transnational capitalist class (TCC) over the peripheral rough states. We will discuss this point after demonstrating two other strategies the TCC pursue: the first one is disciplinary neoliberalism which according to us aims to control social forces and states within the ultra capitalist transnational core -or Lockean Heartland. The second one is ‘the transnationalization of the state through governance mechanisms’ to open up secondary contender states to establish the hegemony of the transnational historic bloc in those state/society complexes. We will finally argue that these are three distinguishable strategies that the TCC follows today to expand the transnational social space in which it is the only true sovereign, in order to establish its global hegemony. To establish these strategies of the TCC in our opinion is crucial to developing any counter hegemonic front.

*Irina Ceric Osgoode Hall Law School, York University

Rule of Law Imperialism and the Political Economy of Post-Socialist Transition

Recent legal imperialism scholarship has tended to converge on violations of public international law by the US and its allies in Iraq, Afghanistan and other sites of the “War on Terror”. In contrast, this paper will attempt to theorize the reproduction of the rule of law in domestic legal orders as an imperialist project. Weaving together literature on the political economy of transition, the neo-liberal state and legal imperialism, this study proceeds from a recognition that the ‘rule of law’, however ill-defined, is central to the dominant post-socialist transition paradigm. In broad terms, a theory of ‘rule of law imperialism’ in the specific context of post-socialist transition elaborates on “the legal indicators of the ‘induced reproduction’ of imperialism in our time” as reflected in the transformation and development of rule of law norms, particularly those related to property and contract law and court reform, in states establishing the mechanisms of market economies. By exploring the function of law in constitutionalizing neo-liberalism through a focus on international intervention in the evolution of the legal and constitutional regulation of socio-economic relations, I aim to address one potential dimension of an imperialist rule of law, examining it as a disciplinary mechanism impacting the construction and maintenance of particular modes of transition. As this study is on-going, this conference paper will utilize a casestudy of Serbia and offer a preliminary analysis of this process, through which a distinct form of governance is facilitated by rule of law exports and other law and development initiatives that may be termed imperial.


*Andrew Dawe Department of Geography, Carleton University

Producing Vulnerability and Accumulating Exposure under Empire: The
Political Economy of Disaster Vulnerability in Guatemala

This paper examines three particular forms and understandings of empire and how they have resulted in the increased vulnerability and exposure of Guatemala and its people to risks in environmental, economic, political, social and cultural spheres. The country’s integration into the global political economy, the proliferation of capitalist relations of production and the effects of US hegemony – each a distinct issue of empire, but with definite points of coincidence and interconnection – have served to increase various dimensions of human vulnerability to disaster in Guatemala. By examining the history of these three imperial movements as they concern the sustainability of development, this paper highlights the political economic aspects that must be considered in any effort to mitigate, reduce or prevent disaster risk.


*Sahar T. Rad Department of Economics, SOAS, University of London

Aid in Conflict or Conflict in Aid?

Conflict-affected countries are the largest recipients of bilateral and multilateral aid in the world, yet aid in these countries has been least effective in achieving any of the 'developmental' objectives set by its advocates. This paper will analyse the reasons behind such an observation by focusing, among other things, on the inability of neoliberal economics to understand the dynamic interactions between conflict and economic development (through concepts such as primitive accumulation, dispossession, asymmetric containment, etc.); its inability to estimate the true costs of conflict; and donors' willingness to apply a uniform approach to development in conflict countries. The Palestinian economy will be used as an example, where, despite receiving the highest per capita aid allocation in the world, its economy has deteriorated sharply since Oslo, reaching a point of collapse in 2006-7. Lack of donor attention to the needs of the 'war-torn' Palestinian economy, and the real conflict-related obstacles to its revival and activity, are stated as the main reasons behind the failure of aid to achieve any valuable goals in the territories. Donors' inability and unwillingness to deal with conflict-related issues, and hence the failure of their projects in these countries, are due to two main factors: 1) at the macro-level: the political nature of donors assistance to conflict countries (often a tool of contemporary imperialism) implies that what determines donors' allocation decisions is not the economic needs of the recipient country, but instead their own political interests and priorities, 2) at the micro-level: the neo-liberal economic framework used by the donors is far too limited to incorporate an effective analysis of conflict and its interaction with economic development, and is therefore bound to fail. What emerges is that aid is not and cannot be a tool of economic development, since it is a highly political instrument and one which is confined to the limits of a neoliberal framework.


SESSION: “The Nation State in the 21st Century”

CHAIR: *Hannes Lacher Department of Political Science, York University

*Carlo Fanelli Department of Sociology, York University

‘Roll with It or Get Rolled Over’: The Relevance of the Nation-State in the 21st Century and American Military Supremacy

Taking as its starting point the position that capitalism is inherently expansionary and imperialistic, and secondly, that economic relations are embedded in social contexts, this paper strives to expand upon the growing debate as to the relevance of the nation-state in the 21st century. Furthermore, this paper critiques and examines the role of US foreign military policy, as well as the domestic and international roles of the CIA, NSA, and NRO. This paper will address the question: To what extent has the ability of the nation-state to influence political and economic policies been eroded and/or enlarged in the context of the current state of neoliberal-centered political and economic globalization? And secondly, how has the US—as the sole world superpower, hegemon, and imperialist—taken advantage of its superior technological advancements in military weaponry in order to dictate the domestic and international ebb and flow of capitalist accumulation in the name of neoliberal ‘development’? The hypothesis is twofold: first, although supra-governmental agencies, organizations and agreements largely affect the abilities of domestic governments to enact domestic policies, sovereign states continue to possess a considerable amount of political and economic influence and control; although some nations are better suited than others to resist US authority. And secondly, that aside from the US’s relative economic and political strengths the most obvious display of American internationalism remains its eagerness to impose its objectives on other nations via direct military intervention, and in the process continue it’s quest to rule with an iron fist.


*Brad Bauerley York University, Department of Political Science

The Nation-State, Identity and Capitalism: Late Development, Organic Crisis and Imperialism

There have been many attempts to theorize the link between the nation-state international system, capitalist social property relations and imperialism but few have stood the test of historical enquiry. I will aim to address this deficiency by examining the more robust theories regarding this relationship and then applying them to a few case studies to judge the validity of their theoretical propositions. First, I will engage with Gramsci’s theory of organic crisis, which offers a way to conceptualize and understand the relationship between ideas and materiality in the constitution of a given social order. Capitalist development since its inception has sought to meld socio-cultural inter-subjective understandings with the logic of the capitalist property relations, leading to repeated moments of crises of social identities. These crises render naked the normally obfuscated oppressions of capitalist social relations; by historicising and unpacking these moments one can uncover the processes at work in the reproduction of capitalism. Next, I will engage with theories of late development and its impact on capitalism, imperialism and the nation-state; I outline how late development enhances the social dislocation and organic crisis processes which are mediated by the nation-state and imperialism. To make this point, I examine two historic cases of late development to uncover the dialectical relationship between the social dislocating tendencies of capitalism, national identity and imperialism. Explicating how capitalism uses the territorial separation of the nation-state sovereign system to expand, I argue that this further dislocates people from their former identity-forming social ontology and initiates organic crises that are incorporated into the further expansion of capitalism through imperialism and the nationalist myth.


*Yavuz Tuyloglu Department of International Relations, Istanbul Bilgi University

Rhythms of (Inter)Nationalism and Imperialism: Explaining the Role of Nation-States

Notwithstanding the euphoria of a globalised world, the trail of recent world politics seems to have brought us full circle to the disturbing memories of the imperialist geopolitics of a century ago. It is, then, no surprise to find a renewal of interest among Marxist scholars in the notion of imperialism. Addressing this renewal, the central question of this paper is whether nationalism will be the medium of imperialism, as it was a century ago. The ongoing reluctance among Marxists to give theoretical attention to nationalism is a traditional peculiarity. Influenced by Hegel, Marx and much of the Marxist tradition took the modern state as an abstract form without, however, problematising its national characteristic. This is a hitherto unexplored issue of the “new imperialism” debate, which revolves around the contentious question of the revival vs. obsolescence of inter-imperialist/geopolitical rivalry. The analytical categories employed within this debate (territorial/capitalist logics, capitalism/inter-state system, economic/political), while effectively dealing with the historical relationship between the modern inter-state system and capitalism, and striving to overcome the deficiencies of the orthodox base-superstructure model, need to address the constitutive role of nationalism in capitalist modernity in order to come to terms with the persistence of the modern nation-state. This requires an historical reading of the rhythms of nationalism and imperialism. It is imperative to study the “left-liberal” defence of (inter)nationalism during the 1990s, followed by an imperialist geopolitics, in historical comparison with the liberal Mazzinian era of (inter)nationalist optimism of the 19th century, which was followed by the catastrophic first half of the 20th century.



SESSION: “Neoliberalism: Theory and Practice”

CHAIR: TBA; LOCATION: TBA

*David Calnitsky and *Asher Dupuy-Spencer Department of Economics, New School

The Economic Consequences of Homo Economicus: Neoclassical Economic Theory and the Fallacy of Market Optimality


A seemingly incalculable number of articles in the Economist begin with analysis of a given country, sector, or policy and conclude with the advocacy of liberalized markets. The advocacy is almost always reducible to an assurance that markets beget an increased efficiency that maximizes all potential gains. It was an Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto who most famously expounded the microeconomic theory behind the claim. Accordingly, markets allow for the optimization of any initial endowment of goods and income between economic actors; working incessantly on behalf of the community, they continually make some actors better off without making anyone worse off. This process continues until an optimum is reached and the greatest total good for the greatest amount of people is realized. It is then claimed that while inequalities may still result, they can be more than compensated for given the achievement of an optimal output. The high theory of microeconomics has had the effect of defining the neoclassical economist’s research program: safeguarding the magic of the market by minimizing the external effects, information asymmetries, and power asymmetries that interfere with its elegant mechanism. More importantly, it is this theory which has armed scholars and pundits alike with a formidable ideological weapon deployed against any disruption of the ostensibly smooth operation of the market. However, underlying the aggregate result of the market sits the much-maligned hypothetical subject of neoclassical economics: homo economicus. The ideologically imperative result of the optimal market depends in the last instance on the ability of this representative agent to consistently make gain-maximizing choices. For if the choices of the individual actor are not rational, and hence do not maximize her personal utility, then the scaled model of herself, the market, cannot be said to be efficient. Homo economicus has suffered years of prolonged assault, but has managed to emerge more or less unscathed. The critique of the assumptions of the homo economicus models by the likes of Thorstein Veblen, Joan Robinson, Karl Polanyi, and J.M. Keynes has been met by Milton Friedman’s critique of the critique of assumptions in economic models discussed herein. Consequently, the aim of this essay is to submit an immanent critique of the ascension from the individual actor to the optimal market, which I believe undermines the basic ideological conclusion of neoclassical economics.


*Jordan Brennan Department of Political Science, York University

The Errors of Neoliberalism: Hayek, Spontaneous Order and the Emergence of Capitalism

By the time of his death in 1992, Friedrich von Hayek was widely hailed as the father of neoliberalism. It was his ideas, perhaps more than any other 20th century thinker that inspired the restructuring of capitalism from a Keynesian-welfare model to a market-liberalism model. Accordingly, it is to his thought that we must direct our energies when trying to penetrate the logic of neoliberalism. This paper will interrogate and challenge one of Hayek’s most important and influential ideas – the idea of a spontaneous social order. As Hayek understands it, the pattern and regularity associated with human activity in capitalist societies can only be explained through the idea of a spontaneous social order. In this view, the institutions of the market were originally adopted for reasons that were unknown or accidental, but ended up being chosen by society and became preserved in traditions because they effectively enabled the group to survive and reproduce itself. The historical narrative from which Hayek draws is the familiar ‘subtraction’ narrative, though with a Darwinian twist; with the removal of feudal shackles, people’s natural proclivities for trade and commerce were freed, thus giving rise to liberal political institutions and the market economy. For Hayek, market-liberalism (capitalism) cannot be understood or defended without the concept of a spontaneous order. This paper will argue that Hayek fundamentally misunderstands the processes that gave birth to capitalism, and it is this misunderstanding that guides neoliberal thinking in its politico-economic prescriptions. If the neoliberal political project is to be subverted, its intellectual foundations must first be uprooted.


*Xavier Lafrance Department of Political Science, York University

To explain the 1970s economic downturn Robert Brenner highlights the horizontal relations between capitals as well as the competitiveness and unplanned character of capitalist economies. He rejects supply side explanations which point to workers’ resistance as the main culprit. Brenner is right to present vertical competition between capitals, leading to global productive overcapacity, as the main cause of the downturn. Nevertheless, to explain the neoliberal turn, it must be recognized that the effect of western working class struggles on the economic performance of this period was real and direct, forcing the ruling class to bear most of the cost of overcapacity. Workers were sustained in their struggle by an institutional framework that supported low unemployment, higher living standards and rising expectations. Their economic impact was largely derived from the political challenge that they posed to capital’s control, emerging from shop-floors and streets. At a time of severe economic turbulence, this challenge created panic in the ruling class. Their reaction did not take on a fascist form, as was the case during the 1920s and 1930s in some western countries. Indeed, the institutionalized compromise that sustained working class resistance after World War II had also allowed for rapid expansion and deepening of commodity relations, with a majority of direct producers becoming dependent on the market to reproduce themselves. Accordingly, the reaffirmation of capital’s control since the late 1970s, which is at the core of neoliberalism, was realized above all by “economic” tools. Facing a market-dependent work force, the state intervened to restructure political and economic institutions in a way that would allow firms to smash the workers themselves, with market discipline as their weapon.


FINAL plenary session:

“Another Politics: Left Possibilities and Strategies Today”

*Chris Dixon History of Consciousness, University of California- Santa Cruz

"Another Politics" Rising: Anti-Authoritarian Currents
in Contemporary Movements in the US and Canada

Even as summit-oriented protests have waned in the US and Canada in recent years, many of the core organizers of the so-called "anti-globalization movement" have been busy. We, in cooperation with many others, have been building "another politics," to borrow an expression from the Zapatistas translated into the US context by a visionary grassroots delegation to last year's US Social Forum. Radical organizers across North America - from anti-poverty organizers in Toronto to prison abolitionists in Oakland, from grassroots reconstruction organizers in New Orleans to "no border" activists in Vancouver - have been building pieces of what might be best described as both a politics and a sensibility. Broadly conceived, this "other politics" involves struggling against all forms of exploitation and oppression; valuing grassroots organizing, coalition-building, participatory democracy, direct action, and solidarity; linking struggles for improvements in the lives of ordinary people to long-term radical visions; and developing new social relations here and now in our communities, organizations, and movements. This approach, inspired by anarchism yet critical of it, draws on continuities of anti-capitalist struggle while addressing some of the unique challenges of the current political moment. It thus suggests some new contours to anti-capitalism in the US and Canada and important prospects for struggles against what Retort aptly calls "military neoliberalism." Based on in-depth interviews with fellow organizers in six North American cities, this paper describes some of the defining features of this "other politics" with examples drawn from a range of contemporary grassroots initiatives.


*Gabrielle Gérin Department of Political Science, York University

From Quebec solidaire to the Quebec Social Forum – towards a ‘party of the
streets’?

In the wake of the 2001 mass demonstrations against the Summit of the Americas
in Quebec City, the creation of the left-wing political party Quebec solidaire
in 2005 and the holding of the first Quebec social Forum in 2007 seem to
indicate that a wind of renewal is blowing upon the Quebec left. While the
possibilities opened by this particular context can give us reasons for hope,
they also call for thorough strategic reflection, notably in terms of the
relationship to be developed between political organization and social
movements and struggles. Quebec solidaire claims to be a ‘party of the streets
and the ballot boxes’ – but what is meant by a ‘party of the streets’? What
role could such a form of organization play in helping social struggles
resisting neoliberalism in Quebec realize their emancipatory potential? Is
Quebec solidaire anywhere near taking on such a role?



*Ingar Solty Department of Political Science, York University

From Right-Wing Populist to Socialist Articulations of the Contradictions of
Neoliberalism: The Relevance of the German Case in the Wider European Context

The European Central Bank's austerity politics and resulting stagnation and mass unemployment, the neoliberal transformation of European social democratic parties, the decreasing integration capacities of European cross-class parties and the legitimacy crisis of neoliberal policies both at the European level as well as the EU member states level have formed the fertile subsoil for modern right-wing populist parties. As an almost universal byproduct of neoliberal restructuring they have gained parliamentary representation in almost all proportional representation electoral systems in Europe. In Germany, the emergence of the new all-German Left Party marks a political shift. Its historic rise embodies the only exclusively leftist political articulation of the contradictions of neoliberalism in the EU and in the Northern core capitalist countries as a whole; and with its 75,000 members, 5-6 million voters and 53 MPs in the Bundestag it has shifted the political discourse significantly towards the left. My paper will analyze the origins of the rise of the new German Left Party in the context of neoliberal restructuring as well as the challenge of right-wing populism and will discuss lessons to be learned for post-neoliberal and anti-capitalist political strategies in the Northern core capitalist countries in general.

*Greg Sharzer Department of Political Science, York University

The limits of localism: why we need political economy to resist neoliberalism

Popular thinking on the left suggests that ‘the local’ is the best site of resistance to neoliberalism, by: creating livable public spaces, shopping at locally owned businesses and forming and supporting cooperatives. According to some post-structuralist economists, the local focuses our attention on the spaces that classical political economy – and many Marxists – ignore. However, the concept of the local has many problems. Theoretically, the local is not solely an oppositional space to neoliberalism: rather, it has been constructed and promoted by neoliberal forces, at national and international levels, as a space to manage the social reproduction of labour. Strategically, any movement attempting to create local change that impedes the property rights of capital immediately confronts capital flight and inter-urban competition for investment. To construct new anti-capitalist movements, we must understand firstly how local, regional and national economies are moments of a global political economy operating according to the law of value and the market discipline it demands. Micro-entrepeneurial strategies, collective or not, do not impede the power of capital to buy labour power. Secondly, all activism may begin at the local level, but political change rests on making demands on the capitalist state at all levels, organizing economic resistance within capitalist firms and creating independent political organizations of the working class to challenge capital’s rule.