On 23 June 2009 I gave a lecture “Global Organic Crisis and Political Agency in the 21st Century” to the conference: \u201cShaping Europe in a Globalized World? Protest Movements and the Rise of a Transnational Civil Society\u201d at the Universit\u00e4t Z\u00fcrich in Switzerland.<\/p>\n
The lecture defines two concepts \u2013 \u201corganic crisis\u201d and \u201cPost-Modern Prince\u201d \u2013 that may be useful in interpreting some of the political and broader social and ecological aspects of the present global political conjuncture.<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 in all its reality, its violence, and its political potentials.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cpost-modern\u201d contemporary political and social conditions form part of the global organic crisis.<\/p>\n
In this crisis many progressive forces are coalescing to produce a new form of political agency. Drawing on Machiavelli\u2019s The Prince and Gramsci\u2019s, The Modern Prince, I call this multiple and complex set of forces and movements the \u201cPost-Modern Prince.\u201d The \u201cPost-Modern Prince.\u201d draws on a lineage of progressive traditions, networks, forums and organizations that have developed over decades.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cPost-Modern Prince\u201d signals emerging challenges to the forms of knowledge and dominant political frameworks of neo-liberal globalization and capitalist market civilization.<\/p>\n