http://www.zcommunications.org/capitalist-crisis-radical-renewal-by-leo-panitch
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Sasha Lilley: There was a very interesting editorial in the Financial Times by the historian of the French revolution, Simon Schama, worrying that this year may be the moment where people go to the streets. He made a parallel with the French revolution and the lag that often occurs between when people are hit by a crisis and when they respond. Just looking around us during this summer, perhaps, of our discontent, there is a crisis unfolding in Europe, which of course looms over the United States and North America, and in the Gulf of Mexico there is an absolutely horrendous oil spill, which is hard to fathom except through the the lends of the profit motive and private capital’s relation to the state. Sam, do you think that there are opportunities now, despite the weakness of institutions of the left and labor, which we might be hopeful about?
Sam Gindin: Yes and not just in terms of what’s happening now. This is going to continue. There's going to be more volatility. There's going to be more pressure on people to pay for the exit to this crisis. Insecurity isn't going away. Inequality isn't going away. People see what's happening in the Gulf, they see the kind of resources the state can mobilize when it's trying to save the banks and they can contrast it to the state's intervention in other ways. They're cynical. They're skeptical. I don't think you have to convince people that capitalism is wonderful. You just have to convince them that there is something they can do about it.
My sense is that these things explode in unpredictable ways. But then the question is always how do you sustain it. So the opportunities are there and it's encouraging whenever you see a struggle someplace that you can learn from or be inspired by. And then there are local things that are going on. In Toronto we've all been involved in the creation of something called the Greater Toronto Workers Assembly. It was really an attempt to say: let's just not have another protest against the crisis; let's actually talk about the fact that none of the things we do right now in the movements, or in the unions, or on the left actually match what we're up against. And we need to get together on a class-based way that actually speaks to capitalism, that's actually rooted in the community, in a sense of organizing here. We're focusing on a free transit of the class issue. We're focusing on how does the public sector respond in a time of austerity. And we're arguing it can't just respond by trying to get higher wages and isolating itself. It has to actually say: we have to put the level and quality of administration of public services on the agenda and lead in the transformation of public services or we're going to be killed. These things evolve and they're hard to do, but they've got people speaking and finding spaces to address these things. So I'm optimistic, but not in a sense of being ready to predict that it's about to happen. But the opportunities are there definitely.
Sasha Lilley: I want to end by asking Greg that same questionwhat do you see as the opportunities in this moment despite the obstacles that you have laid out?
Greg Albo: I think there are four. One is that the American and NATO single war across the Middle East is fracturing in many ways, from Palestine to Afghanistan, through some of the problems in Iraq. So I think some defeats and some even positive movement, particularly in Palestine, will be very positive for the global social justice movement.
Secondly, I think the continuing momentum and the breakthrough in the Andean countries as challenges to neoliberalismnot that either Bolivia or Venezuela have managed to break-through neoliberalism, but they have been combining, developing new political forces with anti-neoliberal and anti-capitalist political agendasis helping to reform the left across the continent of Latin America and it’s a very positive development globally. I would put alongside those the developments that have occurred in both Nepal and Thailand. Obviously the Thai case is very ambiguous in some senses, with the leadership of the Red Shirts, but on the other hand it was an incredibly moving display by peasants and workers in the city demanding democracy.
As Leo pointed out, the developments in Europe are still unpredictable. They can still open up from Greece to Portugal with a more radical left putting demands on what is quite clearly an unworkable solution that has so far been put forward in dealing with the Greek crisis. The political momentum developing in Europe is quite unpredictable and could start making some linkages with the fights in France and Britain and Germany as the austerity packages start moving through those countries. So I think that's very positive.
I would identify, like Sam, a lot of the developments that are occurring largely in urban cities in North America, both in Canada and the U.S., which are finding new ways to connect organizing with unions with migrant rights struggles and with community fight back initiatives, which I think are forming a different kind of left than we've had for a long time. It's forming a left that is more open for new political initiatives, is more open to longer term organization-building, and I think is breaking from the lock that has been on the left both in Canada and in the U.S. of trying to fight our politics either through the Democratic Party or the some combination of the Liberal Party and New Democratic Party in Canada. I think that's very positive for us being able to build a new left in North America over the next couple or years.
Greg Albo, Sam Gindin, and Leo Panitch all teach political economy at York University in Toronto and are the authors of In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives, published by PM Press. Panitch and Albo are co-editors of the Socialist Register, while Gindin for many years was research director of the Canadian Autoworkers Union. Sasha Lilley is the book’s editor and the author of the forthcoming Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult, out this autumn from PM Press.