[lbo-talk] Firesale of the Empire

[Alan Rudy]

Um, having listened to Harvey's lectures on Capital - and seen him give
presentations in a number of places over the last decade - my interpretation
of the accumulation-by-dispossession position was that it was by no means
intended to suggest a reduction in the emphasis on the labor theory of
value.  As I read it, and have taught it, as a term accumulation by
dispossession is intended to address very specific elements of
neoliberalism, elements that are tied to shifts in political power relations
which privatize public property/space/resources/institutions, which
facilitate the redistribution of wealth upwards by liberalizing financial
markets and instruments, which induce and manage political, economic and
ecological crises so as to facilitate privatization and financialization and
which reorient state policies to both foster these other moments in
neoliberalization and directly serve the interests of capital and the top 1%
of the salariat.

It is assumed that these processes build on, intensify and exacerbate the
extraction of surplis value while simultaneously making sure that that
extraction is remunerated, regulated and redistributed in trajectories
closer to the 1870s than the 1970s.

Am/was I wrong?  It feels to me that some here are taking very specific
discourses focused on the politics of neoliberalization and extending them
farther than Harvey would if asked.

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 5:47 PM, Eric Beck <ersatzdog at gmail.com> wrote:


> I thought maybe my comment was too oblique, but you got it exactly.
> Though "minimizes" is probably generous; I would say "disappears
> completely" is closer. Critiques like Taibbi's seem to assume that
> value just appears, is not produced by labor. We're all
> citizen-taxpayers, and none of us are workers. This wouldn't be that
> remarkable if it were just Taibbi and progressive types thinking this,
> but that it also infects Marxists like Harvey is kind of alarming.
>
>