Stephen Gill News

Several videos associated with  events I organized in May 2010 were made by the Columbian filmmaker Gustavo Consuegra Solórzano.

The videos are edited versions of conversations that were held with Upendra Baxi (Professor Emeritus of Law Universities of Delhi and Warwick, President Emeritus, University of Delhi), Richard A Falk (Professor Emeritus of Law and Politics, University of Princeton and Distinguished Research Professor University of California, Santa Barbara) and Teivo Teivainen (Professor of Global Politics, University of Helsinki).

The conversations took place at the Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki on 9 May 2010.

The first deals with the role and responsibilities of critical intellectuals:  ‘Critical Engagement in Dark Times’ (this is in 2 parts)

The second deals with present and future global challenges: ‘Global Capitalism and Global Crisis’.

To access the videos, see http://uni-utopia.net/

The strategies adopted to bail out Wall Street, the City of London, and banks in Frankfurt, Paris and other capitals have resulted in very high levels of public debt for a number of countries.  The costs of the planned austerity measures to pay for the bailouts in Greece, Ireland, the UK and France for example, will fall disproportionately on the backs of the poor. In the UK, the Conservative-Liberal coalition government has announced the elimination of about 500,000 public sector jobs involving deep cuts to education, welfare and policing budgets to pay for the huge bailouts of City of London firms. These job losses will also affect women the most (about 350,000 of the jobs scheduled to be terminated).

This explains why political struggles over the new austerity are intensifying, e.g. in France as of October 2010. The struggles point to questions that have been largely missing from the way that conservative and social democratic governments have defined their responses to issues of public finance. These questions include: (a) what could have been the alternative uses of these gigantic sums of public money? (b) Who will pay for these debts?

The answer given to question (b) by the International Monetary Fund, and most G20 governments is, “the people.”  The IMF has said that it will take 10 to 20 years of austerity measures, involving cuts in public sector wages, jobs and public services, raising the retirement age, and increased privatization of public assets to pay back not only the large government debts incurred in bailing out the banks but also to pay for “future” bailouts. As the Director-General of the International Labour Organisation noted in 2009, the bailout strategies involve “billions for the banks and pennies for the people”. Now the people are being made to pay for the bailouts with the new austerity measures.

The new austerity is something that has feature of the economies of the global South for much longer, at least 30 years  — in many parts of the world the austerity is not all that “new”.  More to the point, the debt crisis is therefore becoming more “global” in the sense that it is experienced in both North and South, and it operates not only at the level of the sovereign debt of countries such as Greece but also at the level of firms and workers.

In some parts of the global South – for example in Latin America – austerity has not prevented the emergence of progressive alternatives – what has come to be called “21^st century Socialism”.  However – up until recently – in much of the global North, in the absence of significant political pressures, governments have simply responded to the crisis in favour of the interests of financial capitalism – or what I call “financial orthodoxy”.

For example, in its response to the Greek debt crisis in May 2010 the European Union formed a kind of European version of the IMF, with new bailout funds of €1 trillion in an attempt to “stabilize the financial markets”.  However, hardly debated at the time was how much of the debt of countries such as Greece is owed to private banks in Germany, France and the United States, so the Greek bailout was as much a bailout of these banks as it was for the government of Greece. In response Greece has made draconian cuts in social benefits and pensions that reverse approximately 30 years of workers’ gains. Of course the Greek fiscal crisis has also been caused by poor tax collection (allowing wealthy people and middle-class professionals to evade paying taxes) as well as by previous governments manipulating statistics and using financial innovations with the help of big private banks such as Goldman Sachs in order to camouflage the true condition of government finances.

The key point however is there has been little or no public debate upon the alternative ways in which such resources could be used. A very different kind of (and indeed a much larger) European Monetary Fund should be created, linked to more socially sustainable economic development, and geared to improve education, health and the environment. This would produce a greener and more socially just form of economic growth that would in turn improve the public finances of European governments – provided that tax collection was improved and made more equitable. This fund in turn should be much more democratically governed than the present “independent” European Central Bank, which is responsive mainly to private financial interests.

What we have learned during the present crisis in Europe is that banking is much too important to be left to either to mainstream politicians or the bankers themselves. Indeed there are many gifted, critical and more democratic economists who could be recruited to help build such an institution and run it effectively.

I raised some of these issues in a 20-minute presentation at the public event, Critical Perspectives on Global Governance, University of Helsinki, 7 May 2010; the talk was called The Greek Tragedy and the Global Debt Crisis.

This talk explains aspects of the Greek financial bailout of May 2010. It argues that we should not witness events such as those in Greece in response to austerity measures, as if we are simply the passive audience of a drama, a “Greek tragedy” as it were.  Progressive forces should press for socially just responses to the crisis and for more democratically accountable institutions of economic governance.

For the video see http://uni-utopia.net/

As a footnote, viewers of the video will note how at one point a videographer in the audience interrupts me; in case it is not clear from the narrative, what I was referring to was the way that a computer error transposed an automated market “sell” trade of $16 million dollars in shareholdings as $16 billion.  This massive sell-off of stocks immediately caused the market value of many shares on the New York Stock Exchange to drop as if the companies were going bankrupt.  The example highlights the way that the turnover time of financial capital is accelerated by computerization and 24/7 trading strategies.

Audio podcasts of all the presentations at the Critical Perspectives on Global Governance, were posted on: http://www-hotel1.it.helsinki.fi/~optek/podcast/ (Posted May 2010).

Video from the one-day public event, Critical Perspectives on Global Governance, University of Helsinki, 7 May 2010; called The Greek Tragedy and the Global Debt Crisis.

This 20-minute talk explains aspects of the Greek financial bailout of may 2010. It argues that we should not witness events such as those in Greece and now happening  across Europe in  response to austerity measures, e.g. in France as of October 2010, as if we are simply a passive audience in a drama, a “Greek tragedy” as it were, with the citizens of Europe its passive audience experiencing the cathartic emotions of terror and pity for the plight of Greek citizens.

In contrast to the dominant financial orthodoxy that has governed the European response to austerity, the talk calls for creation of a new European economic institution that is more fully democratically controlled and accountable, drawing on the advice of progressive economists.

Questions largely missing from public discussion were (a) what could have been the alternative uses of these gigantic sums of public money? and (b) who will pay to these debts and under what conditions? The answer given to (b) by the International Monetary Fund is “the people”  The Fund has said that it will take 10 to 20 years of austerity measures, involving cuts in public sector wages and public services, and increased privatization of public assets to pay for “future” bailouts, and to pay back government debts. In May 2010 the European Union — and specifically the eurozone economies created an initiative, a kind of European Monetary Fund, with new bailout funds of €1 trillion in an attempt to “stabilize the financial markets”.

Indeed the debt crisis in Europe has been a feature of the global South for much longer — at least 30 years. The debt crisis is now migrating to the global North. Many countries have spent trillions of euros on bail outs for private financial institutions since 2007.  In the absence of significant pressures from progressive forces, governments have simply responded to the crisis in favour of the interests of financial capitalism — or what I call ‘financial orthodoxy’.

The strategies adopted to bail out the likes of Wall Street and the City of London, and banks in Frankfurt, Paris and other capitals have resulted in very high levels of public debt for a number of countries, e.g. in southern Europe.  Here it is important to remember that the costs of the austerity measures in Greece and elsewhere fall disproportionately on the backs of the poor — in the UK case, the Conservative-Liberal government’s announced cuts of about 500,000 public sector jobs to save money over the coming years are justified by the need to pay for the bail outs of City of London firms.  These job losses will also affect women the most (350,000 of the jobs lost).

As the Director-General of the International Labour Organisation noted in 2009, the bailout strategies have involved “billions for the banks and pennies for the people”. Now the people are being made to pay for the bailouts with the austerity measures.

Much of the debt of countries such as Greece is owed to private banks in Germany, France and the United States, so the Greek bailout is as much a bailout of these banks as it is for Greece as a country. Greece has been forced to make draconian cuts in social benefits, public sector wages, and pensions, which reverse approximately 30 years of workers’ gains  — a continuation of the type of structural adjustment and stabilization policies favoured by the Washington-based international financial institutions.

Of course the Greek fiscal crisis has also been caused by poor tax collection (allowing wealthy people and professionals to evade paying taxes and to get their money out of the country) as well as by previous governments manipulating statistics, in effect cooking the books with the help of big private banks such as Goldman Sachs.

There has been little debate upon the alternative ways in which such resources could be used. A very different kind of (and much larger) European monetary fund could be created, linked to more socially sustainable economic development, to improve education, health and the environment. This fund could be much more democratically governed than the present “independent” European Central Bank, which is responsive mainly to financial interests. What we have learned during the present crisis in Europe is that banking is much too important to be left to either to mainstream politicians or the bankers themselves. Indeed there are many gifted, critical and more democratic economists who could be recruited to help build such an institution and run it effectively.

As a footnote, viewers of the video will note how at one point a videographer in the audience interrupts; in case it is not clear from the narrative what I was referring to was the way that a computer error transposed an automated market “sell” trade of $16 million dollars in shareholdings as $16 billion.  This massive sell-off of stocks immediately caused the market value of many shares on the New York Stock Exchange to drop as if the companies were going bankrupt.  The example highlights the way that the turnover time of financial capital is accelerated by computerization and 24/7 trading strategies.

For the video see see http://uni-utopia.net/

The powerpoint of the presentation is here  [see attached & insert]

Audio podcasts of all the presentations at the Critical Perspectives on Global Governance, were posted on: http://www-hotel1.it.helsinki.fi/~optek/podcast/ (Posted May 2010).

This is a short presentation highlighting issues concerned with the emerging global debt crisis and some of the specifics of the situation in Greece in May of that year.  Viewers will note how at one point a videographer interrupts; in case it is not clear from the narrative what I was referring to was the way that a computer error transposed an automated market trade of $16 million dollars as $16 billion, causing the value of many shares on the New York Stock Exchange to drop as if the companies were going bankrupt. The example highlights the way that the turnover time of financial capital is accelerated by computerization and 24/7 trading strategies.

See http://uni-utopia.net/

Audio podcasts of all the presentations at the Critical Perspectives on Global Governance were posted on: http://www-hotel1.it.helsinki.fi/~optek/podcast/ (Posted May 2010).

The following 45-minute sound recording contains some thoughts that anticipate the upcoming G20/G8 meetings in Toronto. It debates the likely G8/G20 responses to the present phase of the global crisis as well as the security measures surrounding the summits which are estimated to cost over $1 billion Canadian dollars. The interview and discussion was held with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Economics and Business Correspondent, Mike Hornbrook, for CBC News. The interview took place on 18 June 2010.

CBC interview (44MB MP3 file)

University of Helsinki, Friday 7 May 2010, 10:00-17:00
Venue: Small Assembly Hall, Fabianinkatu 33, University of Helsinki

There will be a landmark one-day event, open to the public, in Helsinki organized in conjunction with my Visiting Chair at the Collegium for Advanced Studies. It is devoted to critical reflections on the current global crises, the question of political leadership and the nature and future of global governance. The event includes some of the world’s leading critical thinkers on global political economy, law and international relations. They will address the challenges of achieving sustainable and democratic global governance in the 21st century.

For full details please follow this link: http://www.helsinki.fi/collegium/events/critical_perspectives.htm

In aphabetical order, the participants are:

ISABELLA BAKKER, Professor of Political Economy and former Chair of Political Science at York University, Toronto.

UPENDRA BAXI, Emeritus Professor of Law in Development, University of Warwick. He was previously Professor of Law, University of Delhi (1973-1996) and was its Vice Chancellor (1990-1994).

SOLOMON (SOLLY) BENATAR, Emeritus Professor of Medicine, University of Cape Town and Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto.

CLAIRE CUTLER, Professor of International Relations and International Law in the Political Science Department at the University of Victoria, Canada.

HILAL ELVER, Visiting Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara.

RICHARD FALK, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

ADAM HARMES, Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.

MUSTAPHA KAMAL PASHA, Professor and Chair of the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Aberdeen, UK.

NICOLA SHORT, Associate Professor of Political Science at York University, Toronto.

TEIVO TEIVAINEN, Professor of World Politics at the University of Helsinki as well as Director of the Program on Democracy and Global Transformation at the San Marcos University in Lima, Peru.

THEMES OF THE DISCUSSIONS

Participants will develop a dual perspective on the nature, and future of global leadership and governance.

First, they will consider global governance as the practices associated with enduring forms of international rule beyond the purview of individual nations – that is as it has been normally understood in politics and diplomacy since ancient times. Thus global governance involves consideration of the main mechanisms that have emerged to stabilize, modify and legitimate the global status quo, such as the G8 or the G20. Thus global governance is mainly evaluated from the perspective of the most powerful states and economic interests. In this sense global governance today involves devising durable methods, mechanisms, and institutions – including those of peace and war – to help sustain an international order that is premised on the primacy of capitalism and the world market as the key governing forces of world politics.

Second, participants will also develop critical perspectives on global governance – involving not only a demystification of the power relations between leaders and led, but also assessment of the potential for changes in those relations. Participants will analyze global governance not just from the vantage point of dominant power but from the perspectives of subaltern forces. Participants will question the necessity, desirability and sustainability of existing institutional arrangements in light of global economic, social and ecological crises and challenges.

Thus a central question to give political focus to our considerations is encapsulated in this quotation:

“In the formation of leaders, one premise is fundamental: is it the intention that there should always be rulers and ruled, or is the objective to create the conditions in which this division … of the human race … is no longer necessary?” (Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1971).

The speakers in Helsinki will therefore engage with contested political issues such as: the legitimacy of global institutions; social justice, taxation and redistribution; privatized security governance; gender, race and equitable development; environmental issues and climate change; global health; the rights of subordinated peoples in an era of globalization: Islamic conceptions of justice and leadership; corporate social responsibility and public-private partnerships; and various mechanisms of regulation in finance, the workplace and in trade and investment.

The following are my remarks delivered at the Panel in Honour of Richard Falk in New Orleans on 18 February 2010 at the International Studies Association’s 51st Annual Convention. The remarks review the theoretical and practical contributions of one of the world’s leading scholars of international studies and international law, and reflect on Falk’s conception of the role of the intellectual in American and global political life.

The full text (102KB PDF) can be downloaded here

Photographs of the event can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ipeguy/sets/72157623464282694/

The capitalist world has experienced its deepest economic meltdown since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Paradoxically, whereas the earlier period saw the breakdown of liberal capitalism, the rise of fascism and Nazism, and the Soviet alternative to liberal capitalism (the Soviet Union), today neo-liberalism and capitalist globalization still remain powerful, and apparently supreme, on the stage of world history. Despite the financial implosion on Wall Street and its “near-death experience” for financial capitalism and the G8’s somnambulant political leaders, few coherent left alternative programs have commanded sufficient political organization or popular support to mount a serious challenge or to pose credible alternatives.

So what arguments can progressive political forces use to begin to mobilize transformative resistance in ways that can give credibility to new forms of politics and society? We start with the simple observation that appearances can be deceptive and indeed this is to be expected in the present politically paradoxical global conjuncture. This conjuncture corresponds, in part, the Chinese character for crisis, a character that combines moments of danger and opportunity. It is linked to the fact that the current global political situation involves far more than a crisis of capitalist accumulation since it is pregnant with the following paradox: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

The full version of this article has been published online by Monthly Review. To access the full text, click here.

The first of two meetings of the North Atlantic Left Dialogue was held in Berlin, November 2008 and the second is scheduled for New York in December 2009. They concern the global crisis and strategies for transatlantic co-operation between the lefts in Western Europe and North America. The organizers — Eric Canepa and Rainer Rilling — wrote the following in their invitation to the dialogue:

This seminar is an attempt to develop a continuous working relationship between left and socialist intellectuals and academics in Europe … and North America … for the purpose of discussing the distinctive challenges to the political, social and cultural left working and struggling in the highly developed northern capitalist countries. One of the results we hope to achieve is to establish reform demands which are feasible and appropriate for countries at a comparable stage of development… expanding this cooperation as part of the renewal of the global left in the 21st century.

I made two sets of brief written contributions which should be read in conjunction with each other. The context is explained below.

Berlin

In the first North Atlantic Left Dialogue – November 9, 2008 – Berlin, the participants were initially asked to address the following questions:

1. What are the chief strengths and weaknesses of the European and north-American lefts now (please be sure to locate their strengths!)? What are the major opportunities for strengthening the lefts in both regions now?
2. How do we deal with the contradictions between the socialist left, centrist social democracy and the civil-society movements?
3. What are the key new programmatic components of a left strategy that might enable a revived left to avoid the previous decline of the traditional left?
4. How exactly can and should the left in each region help the left in the other regions? And, regarding the specific project at hand – the present seminar – where does it go from here? What is its potential?

Here is my written contribution to Berlin, which, like those of others, was circulated in advance: 136KB PDF file

Other participants in Berlin included:

Stanley Aronowitz, Marco Berlinguer, Robert Brenner, Michael Brie, Alex Demirovic, Frank Deppe, Barbara Epstein, Rainer Fischbach, Georg Fülberth, Jörg Huffschmid, Hans Jürgen Krysmanski, Peter Marcuse, Harold Meyerson, Andrea Montagni, Gian Paolo Patta, Rainer Schultz, Thomas Seibert, Neil Smith, Ingar Solty, Christoph Spehr, Bill Tabb, Rick Wolff.

New York, December 2009

The 10-11 December 2009 seminar on left strategy for the capitalist core countries of Europe, the US and Canada will focus on where the current crisis is heading, what kind of state projects will and/or should be developed in response, the question of “green” capitalism and what this all means for the transformational left in terms of strategy.

Participants were asked to address in written form, circulated to the other participants before the seminar, three questions:

1. Where is the crisis heading?
2. Is “green capitalism” a solution or part of the problem?
3. What is the most important concrete problem to which left strategy should develop a response in 2010?

My contribution to New York is here: 99KB PDF file

Other participants will include: Frieder Otto Wolf, David Harvey, Harold Meyerson, Bill Tabb, Rick Wolff, Mimmo Porcaro, Stanley Aronowitz, Bill Fletcher Jr., Leo Panitch, Barbara Epstein, Peter Marcuse, Alex Demirovic, Frank Deppe, Thomas Seibert, Christoph Spehr, Rainer Fischbach, Robert Brenner, Mario Candeias, Rainer Rilling, Michael Brie, Christina Kaindl, Margit Mayer, Michael Krätke, Catharina Schmalstieg, Ingar Solty, Jan Rehmann.

On 23 June 2009 I gave a lecture “Global Organic Crisis and Political Agency in the 21st Century” to the conference: “Shaping Europe in a Globalized World? Protest Movements and the Rise of a Transnational Civil Society” at the Universität Zürich in Switzerland.

The lecture defines two concepts – “organic crisis” and “Post-Modern Prince” – that may be useful in interpreting some of the political and broader social and ecological aspects of the present global political conjuncture.

My lecture argued that we can use these concepts to help look beyond the present crisis of global capitalist accumulation (which has resulted in a much steeper collapse of world trade, industrial production and world stock markets than in the Great Depression of the 1930s) and to probe more deeply the nature of present global situation – in all its reality, its violence, and its political potentials.

Indeed, a wide-ranging combination of economic, social and ecological crises characterizes the present global conjuncture. Its crisis is far more deep-seated than an economic depression or a cyclical crisis of capitalist economic growth. This crisis involves emerging challenges to the knowledge forms and political dominance of neo-liberal market civilization & capitalist globalization. Together what might be called these “post-modern” contemporary political and social conditions form part of the global organic crisis.

In this crisis many progressive forces are coalescing to produce a new form of political agency. Drawing on Machiavelli’s The Prince and Gramsci’s, The Modern Prince, I call this multiple and complex set of forces and movements the “Post-Modern Prince.” The “Post-Modern Prince.” draws on a lineage of progressive traditions, networks, forums and organizations that have developed over decades.

The term post-modern used here therefore both refers to some of the specific social and political conditions that characterize key aspects of the early 21st century as well as denoting some of the progressive political forces and movements which are forming to confront the organic crisis.

Indeed, despite the tendency in orthodox political discourse and the media to represent the present realities as if there is no alternative to the mainstream parties, political leaders and government regimes, the “Post-Modern Prince” signals emerging challenges to the forms of knowledge and dominant political frameworks of neo-liberal globalization and capitalist market civilization.

The PowerPoint presentation for this lecture can be downloaded here.