Massimo De Angelis

Social Revolution and the Commons

What does it mean to say no to a capitalist social system that has the power to put life to work for its own development and, in so doing, shapes subjectivities, horizons, architectures, urban and rural spaces, life rhythms, ecologies, and polities in its own image? This question arises with particular urgency in the midst of one of the deepest capitalist crises, with its catastrophic social and ecological consequences. This article argues that the answer to our question resides ultimately in a particular type of social power, one that recomposes the social practice of the commons to achieve autonomy from capital, especially and initially in matters of social reproduction (food, health, care, housing, knowledge, and education).

Social relations and the Keynesian multiplier

This paper offers a reading of the simple Keynesian multiplier through Marxs lenses. The objective is to make explicit, for the Keynesian multiplier, what from a Marxian perspective should be made explicit in any discourse about the capitalist economy, namely the role of the social relations of production. Since within given historical periods social relations are expressed in institutional forms, my analysis also gives some general insights about the basic institutional requirements assumed within the general Keynesian framework, requirements without which the Keynesian multiplier could not be operational. Finally, the paper also briefly outlines some important policy implications by comparing the main tenets of a Keynesian, neoliberal, and radical agenda for employment creation.This paper offers a reading of the simple Keynesian multiplier through Marxs lenses. The objective is to make explicit, for the Keynesian multiplier, what from a Marxian perspective should be made explicit in any discourse about the capitalist economy, namely the role of the social relations of production. Since within given historical periods social relations are expressed in institutional forms, my analysis also gives some general insights about the basic institutional requirements assumed within the general Keynesian framework, requirements without which the Keynesian multiplier could not be operational. Finally, the paper also briefly outlines some important policy implications by comparing the main tenets of a Keynesian, neoliberal, and radical agenda for employment creation.

Anthropocene: Victims, Narrators, and Revolutionaries

The absence of a reflection on revolutionary practices and subjects is the main weakness of the radical critique of the Anthropocene. The risk is to envision the Anthropocene as a space for villains and victims but not for revolutionaries. In this respect we believe that it is crucial to challenge the (in)visibility and (un)knowability of the Anthropocene beyond geological strata and planetary boundaries. We argue that as the Capitalocene, the Anthropocene has left its traces in the bodies of people upon which the new epoch has been created. The traces of the Capitalocene are not only in geological strata but also in the biological and genetic strata of human bodies; exploitation, subordination, and inequalities are inscribed into the human body and experienced, visible and knowable by subalterns without the mediation of – many times actually in opposition to – mainstream scientific knowledge. We inflect the concept of Capitalocene with our own Wasteocene, which serves to stress the contaminating nature of capitalism and its perdurance within the socio-biological fabric, its accumulation of externali-ties inside both the human and the Earths body. We envision the Wasteocene as one of the features of the Capitalocene, especially adapted to demystify the mainstream narratives of the Anthropocene. In order to enhance our arguments we build upon the findings of the global Environmental Justice atlas (hereafter EJOLT atlas) of environmental conflicts and on our own in-depth research on the struggles against toxic contamination in Campania, Italy.

Conclusion: Looking Ahead

This book has studied the relation between social conflict and the rise, establishment, and collapse of an economic paradigm. We have seen not only that the economic strategies proposed by this paradigm have a political meaning, but also that its own theoretical categories and analytical framework can be interpreted in a way that reveals the strategic character of the economic discourse vis-a-vis social movements. Indeed, a logically coherent link between theory and policy seems to have been a necessary requirement for the spread of the Keynesian orthodoxy since, as indicated, pre-Keynesian economists reached Keynes’ same policy conclusions in the midst of the Great Depression, thus contradicting their own theoretical framework. However, consistency between theory and policy is not a sufficient condition for the establishment of an economic paradigm. To serve as a consistent strategic tool and to be operational, Keynesianism required an institutional arrangement able to guarantee a relationship between classes that was stable, predictable, and under control. I have argued that, so far as the analytical apparatus of post-war Keynesianism was concerned, this stability was a given, an assumption that reflected the post-war institutionalization of trade unions and the recuperation of social conflict into a mechanism of accumulation.

Introduction: The Social Meaning of Economics

The conventional wisdom that has informed the economic policies of governments around the world over the last two decades is rooted in neoliberal ideology. This is the old laissez-faire idea that markets operate for the better when left on their own, now set in the context of increasingly integrated global markets (the result of the deregulation of financial markets and trade liberalization), and combined with modern political discourses that recognize a government role in promoting competition and facilitating standards of market deregulation. Basic old-style Keynesianism — the idea that government should intervene through manipulation of aggregate demand in order to reach “full employment” — seems a closed chapter in the history of economics.1

The Making of the Keynesianism of Keynes

The basic tenets of economic liberalism is that free enterprise and the free wheeling of the market are the solutions to all the economic problems of society. Laissez-faire, since its establishment as economic doctrine of the state starting from the beginning of the nineteenth century, took many forms, with different degrees of state involvement to provide a buffer for those social problems that the operation of free markets were originating. In Great Britain, for example, during the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the state intervened to set a limit to the working day, regulate the work of children and women, to provide or regulate a minimum social security that, although miserly in comparison with the one established after 1945, was generous in comparison to the social provisions of earlier phases of industrialization (Checkland 1983). Also, as Karl Polanyi (1944) noted, markets did not grow out of a spontaneous process, but were the result of conscious policies and institutions set in place by states. Still, in the conventional wisdom of the time, state interventions represented detours from the main highway leading to prosperity, detours that even the father of economic liberalism, Adam Smith, was willing to acknowledge as an occasional necessity.1 The hard core of the doctrine of economic liberalism preached that in the main highway towards prosperity there ought to be no speed limits, no government regulation, the market had to be sovereign.

Economic Modeling and Social Conflict: 2 — Inflation and the Phillips Curve

The basic assumption of the Neo-classical Synthesis in its simplest form was fixed wages and prices. This assumption allowed a simple method of aggregation and put emphasis on government policies to manage the level of accumulation for a given balance between necessary and surplus labor. However “the consequences of doing it were serious” (Hicks 1974: 60). The consequences Hicks is referring to are those related to the lack of a proper theory of inflation, or the relation between wages and inflation: For when Keynes’ theory is set out in this text-book manner (as I shall call it) it is bound to give the impression that there are just two “states” of the economy: a “state of unemployment” in which money wages are constant, and a “state of full employment” in which pressure of demand causes wages to rise. So “full employment” is an “inflation barrier.” As long as employment is less than full, even if it is only marginally less than full, there should be no wage-inflation. So all we need do, in order to have “full employment without inflation,” is suitably to control demand. (Hicks 1974: 60–1)

War, Class War, and the Making of the Social Microfoundations of Keynesianism

The Second World War provided the framework within which the social institutions of Keynesianism were shaped, together with state planning. This period also witnessed the development of working-class autonomy vis-a-vis the union (this development continued the wave of wild cat strikes of the late 1930s);1 the legitimization of unions by the state aimed at an active use of their apparatus for the control of working-class autonomy; the implementation of systematic growth strategies for the satisfaction of war needs; and the development of economics as discipline for macroeconomic planning together with the strengthening of its empirical counterpart via the development of national accounting techniques and statistical methods. In this chapter, I explore these developments.

The Institutional Features of Post-war Keynesianism

It is now a matter of common sense to recognize a shift in the object, finalities, and tools of orthodox economic discourse after the Second World War. On a formal level, it is widely recognized that this shift has occurred in different areas, as is schematically illustrated in Table 7.1. In Chapter 6 it was shown that the war gave momentum to and legitimized the practices of state planning in the economy, especially demand management policies. After the war the “Keynesian Revolution” acquired a formal recognition through the official acknowledgment of government responsibility for a policy of full employment. This came in Britain with the publication of the White Paper on Employment policy in 1944 by the coalition government and in the United States with the Employment Act of 1946. These two pieces of legislation, although criticized by both the left- and right- wing,1 represented the state’s formal acceptance of a new era of economic policy.

Keynes’ Scientific System

In a 1937 article published in the Quarterly Review of Economics, after having summarized the content of The General Theory, Keynes concluded by defining two major areas in which his approach differs radically from the classical one. These two elements are, first, the introduction of expectations into economic discourse and, second, the use of aggregate variables. In Keynes’ opinion, classical economics lacks a “theory of the supply and demand of output as a whole,” and this also explains its failure to discuss expectations (Keynes 1937b: 223, my emphasis). The centrality of these two elements, aggregation and expectations, define the strategic terrain of modern macroeconomics.