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thanks to Shuddhabrata Sengupta

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Dubbed by the National Review as “the most dangerous political philosopher in the West” and the New York Times as “the Elvis of cultural theory,” Slovenian philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Žižek has written over fifty books on philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory. In his latest book, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Žižek analyzes how the United States has moved from the tragedy of 9/11 to what he calls the farce of the financial meltdown. [includes rush transcript]

JUAN GONZALEZ We continue on the subject of the financial crisis with a man the National Review calls “the most dangerous political philosopher in the West.” The New York Times calls him “the Elvis of cultural theory.” Slovenian philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Žižek has written over fifty books on philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory. His latest, just out from Verso, is called First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. It analyzes how the United States has moved from the tragedy of 9/11 to the farce of the financial meltdown.

Žižek’s latest offering, also excerpted in the October issue of Harper’s Magazine, opens with the words, quote, “The only truly surprising thing about the 2008 financial meltdown is how easily the idea was accepted that its happening was unpredictable.” He goes on to recall how the demonstrations against the IMF and the World Bank over the past decade all protested the ways in which banks were playing with money and warned of an impending crash. They were met with tear gas and mass arrests.

AMY GOODMAN: The message, he writes, was, quote, “loud and clear, and the police were used to literally stifle the truth.”

Well, Slavoj Žižek addressed a full house at Cooper Union here in New York City on Wednesday night and joins us now in our firehouse studio.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Thanks very much. It’s my pleasure.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Relate the protest to the—

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: You are even better than Fox News, which I usually watch. More amusing.

AMY GOODMAN: Relate the protests to the meltdown and why—how it was predictable.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: No, what interests me is, for example, Paul—sorry, Paul Krugman said basically the same thing, which tells us a lot about how ideology works today. He said, what if we make a mental experiment, and all the leading bank people, managers and so on, were to know how it would end two years ago? He said, let’s not delude ourselves; there would have been no change. They would have acted in exactly the same way.

This brings me, as a psychoanalyst, into the play, because I think this makes us aware as to what extent our everyday dealing is controlled by what in psychoanalysis we call the mechanism of fetishist disavowal. “Je sais bien, mais quand même…” “I know very well, but…” You know, we can know very well the possible catastrophic consequences, but somehow you trust the market, you think things will somehow work out, and so on and so on. It’s absolutely crucial to analyze this, not only in economy, but generally. This is the focus of my work: how beliefs function today. What do we mean when we say that someone believes?

So that I don’t get lost, let me tell you a wonderful story, which is my favorite story. I quote it also in the book. You know Niels Bohr, Copenhagen, quantum physics guy. You know, once he was visited in his country house by a friend who saw above the entrance a horseshoe, you know, in Europe, the superstitious item allegedly preventing evil spirits to enter the house. And the friend, also a scientist, asked him, “But listen, do you really believe in this?” Niels Bohr said, “Of course not. I’m not an idiot. I’m a scientist.” Then the friend asked him, “But why do you have it there?” You know what Niels Borh answered? He said, “I don’t believe in it, but I have it there, horseshoe, because I was told that it works even if you don’t believe in it.”

That’s ideology today. We don’t believe in democracy—nobody. You make fun of it and so on, but somehow we act as if it works. It’s a very strange situation, because there are—some of us old enough still remember them, old days when the public face of power was dignity, belief. And privately you mocked it, you made fun, and so on, no? Now we are, I think, approaching a very strange state, where the public face of power is becoming more and more openly indecent, obscene. Look at Sarkozy in France. Look at Berlusconi in Italy, who is systematically undermining, for over five years now, the minimum of dignity of the state power. I mean, you are again and again surprised how is this possible. You know, after those sex scandals, two weeks ago, his lawyer, Berlusconi’s lawyer, made a public official statement, where he said that the claims that Berlusconi is impotent are lies and that Mr. Berlusconi is ready to prove this in court. Now, how? How—what did he mean? You know, there is a level of obscenity, but this shouldn’t deceive us. We really live in cynical times, not just in this cheap sense they don’t take themselves seriously, but in the sense that—how should I put it?—the ironic self-undermining, making fun of yourself, is in a strange way part of the game. It’s as if the system can function even if it makes fun of itself.

JUAN GONZALEZ Well, I’d like to ask you, you say you are also critical of the progressive or the left response here. You say in your article in Harper’s, “There is a real possibility that the primary victim of the ongoing crisis will not be capitalism but the left itself, insofar as its inability to offer a viable global alternative was again made visible to everyone.” Could you elaborate?

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: I am a radical leftist. I like to call myself, in a very conditional way, a communist even. But I think one should, as a leftist, really concede the amount of the defeat of the left in the last twenty years. That’s the sine qua non condition of a possible review. So, yes, apart from very sympathetic things suggested by people like Stiglitz, Krugman, which are basically a return to Keynesian welfare state, and apart from some interesting—but I don’t think they are the solution—economic ideas, like the basic income or so-called renta básica in Brazil, basic rent, which is a utopia of its own, I think, I sometimes, apart from this, have a strange paranoiac idea that maybe this crisis was manufactured so that people will see that even if there is a crisis, the left really doesn’t have a global answer.

I see—what worries me is two things about the left. First, it’s more and more legalistic moralization. You know, it’s kind of a pure form of protest against injustice. Then the only thing you can do is legal forums and so on. In this sense, many of the ex-leftists are getting depoliticized. They no longer ask the truly basic questions. Like even now, all the outcry was, “Oh, those bank profiteers,” and so on. I totally agree with what we just heard. But don’t you think that the truth is a little bit more complex, in the sense of—you know much more about this than me, but the way I see it is that one of the roots of the present crisis is not just greed. It’s that after the digital bubble at the beginning of our millennium, the idea was how to keep prosperity, how to keep economy alive. And it was, as far as I remember, even a little bit of a really bipartisan decision: let’s make it easier in real estate, and so on, to keep it moving. So, you know, there is a structural problem beneath all this psychological topic of the greedy bankers, which is, that’s how capitalism works, my God, which is why even concerning our beloved model—Bernard Madoff, no?—I didn’t like it how they focused on him. Wait a minute. He was just the radical version of where the system is pushing you. Now, I’m not saying—I’m not crazy—“which is why we need to nationalize all banks and introduce immediately socialist dictatorship” or what. What I’m just saying is, let’s not get rid of the problem by too easily making it into a psychological problem. You know, you can be an evil guy, but there must be very precise institutional, economic, and so on, coordinates, background, which allows you to do what you do.

The second thing, I also didn’t like the cry shared by left and right-wing populists of “help the Main Street, not the Wall Street.” Well, sorry, but those bank managers who emphasized, in capitalism there is no Main Street without Wall Street. In today’s industry, because of the competition and immense investment into new inventions and so on, without large accessibility, availability of credits, there is no prosperous Main Street. So this is a false choice. So, again, with all respect for the left and so on, I think we should avoid quick moralization, if we mean it seriously.

AMY GOODMAN: You write, “Is the bailout then really a ‘socialist’ measure? If it is, it takes a peculiar form: a ‘socialist’ measure whose primary aim is to help not the poor but the rich, not those who borrow but those who lend.”

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Yeah. I mean, this is my whole thesis, that capitalism always was socialism for those who are on the top. This is the basic paradox of it, no?

AMY GOODMAN: What about healthcare?

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Oh, now you touch my favorite topic. You know why? Because I think that here we see, when people—when I write on ideology, and people laugh at me—“Haha, didn’t you know this? We live in post-ideological era.” No, here you see ideology in its material force. We can—we should distinguish here two levels. On the one hand are those ridiculous right-wing paranoias, which, incidentally, I like to listen. They amuse me, you know, like that Sarah Palin idea of death panels. Some mysterious bureaucracy will decide, does your uncle live or not. That’s funny, I hope; at least for the time being, we can laugh at it. But then—

JUAN GONZALEZ Not in a big part of America, unfortunately.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then the real problem, where the Republican critique of healthcare plan really works is by appealing to this basic gut notion of freedom of choice. And I think this is a problem; we have to confront it. The first we should make it clear is that in order to exercise the freedom of choice—one has to repeat this again and again—an extremely—to really exercise this, an extremely complex network of social, legal regulations, even, I would say, ethical rules, which are somehow accepted, and so on, has to be—have to be here. In other words, often less choice, at least less public choice, at a certain level means more choice at a different level.

Let me return precisely to healthcare. My idea is that healthcare should be at a certain level, like water and electricity. You can also say that you usually don’t choose your water supplier, no? OK, now we can play the Republican game and say, “What a horrible terror! They are depriving us of the fundamental choice to choose the water supply.” But we somehow accept that there are some things where it is much more practical that you are able to count on them. Sorry, but I gladly refuse the big freedom to choose my water supplier, the same as for electricity, although there things can get more tricky. Why not add to this series health? Europe demonstrates it can be done effectively, not to diminish our freedom, but to leave you much more space of much more greater actual freedom, and so on.

So, you see, this is the danger of this ideology of choice, because, you know, this is, in one sense, a central category today. There is an old Marxist card, which is played again and again, of we are only offered false choices, not real choices, like Pepsi or Coke, whatever, instead of the real choices. OK, there is a truth in it. But there is also another problem of ideology of choice, that often we are bombarded by choices—you really are free to choose—without being given the proper background to make a reasonable choice. John Gray, the British cynical skeptic, whom I otherwise admire, wrote very nicely that we are today more and more forced to act as if we are free. And this causes a lot of anxiety and so on. You know, one should be very specific apropos of choices. I’m all for the freedom of choice. I would just like to see the small—those, you know, in the footnote, the small print, what are the precise conditions of choice, and so on and so on.

And so, again, although I have no illusions about what Obama can do and so on, I am still proud that already before elections I supported him, although this had no great impact here, of course. But in contrast to my very more radical leftist friends whose motto was “he’s just a nice human face on the same imperialism,” “he will even serve better the interest of capitalism,” or whatever, no, I think we see now, apropos the healthcare reform, that we are fighting the central battle here.

JUAN GONZALEZ I’d like to ask you, in terms of the somewhat pessimistic view you have of how the response to the crisis has been, there seems to be, continues to be, an entire continent that is heading in a somewhat different direction, South America and Latin America, in general.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Here comes my critical leftism.

JUAN GONZALEZ Well, I’d love hear it, in terms—because there does seem to be in many of these areas, while the rest of the world is—the gap is increasing, at least there are governments throughout Latin America that are trying to decrease the gap and take a different role.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: They are trying. Are they really doing it? You know, I am—this is my skeptic. Some people already accuse me of being a covert neoconservative for what I will say now. Let’s not have any illusions. I claim that much of the attraction of the recent wave, Hugo Chavez and so on, of Latin American populism comes from this old desire of the left. Let’s be clear, many leftists today in the United States are relatively well-paid academics who fight all the dirty department career war, but they like to feel warm in their hearts. So it’s good to have as far away as possible another country where you can sympathize. “Oh, but things are really happening there.” You know, at some point in the ‘30s it was Soviet Union, Cuba, Chinese Cultural Revolution, Nicaragua. I’m afraid now that it is Venezuela a little bit. And I don’t buy the standard liberal critique, Chavez dictator and so on.

I just think Chavez started well. He did something of world historical importance. As far as I know, he was the first one of truly trying to mobilize people who were in favelas and so on, who were excluded from the public domain. He really tried to bring them into the political process. I claim if we don’t find a way to do this, we are slowly approaching a kind of a new apartheid society, where we will live in a kind of a permanent low-level civil war, where we will have some kind of irrational explosions like in France, the car burning in the Paris suburbs.

On the other hand, I’m a little bit more pessimistic as to what in the long term he will really achieve. I think he is now losing his way approaching this standard Latin American populism, where he, because of the oil wealth, is allowed to play the game of fiddle with oil, fiddle with money. I think, if you ask me, a much more interesting phenomenon is Bolivia. It’s much more authentic. They’re really being forced to invent something new. I always think that the genuinely utopian moments are not when you are doing OK and why not even better, are when you are in a deadlock. Then, in order even to survive normally, you are forced to invent something. But I thought you would say entire—so, no, I don’t see too much hope in Latin America.

But I see more hope at this moment with you in United States than with Europe. Europe is now, I think, in great decline. I had some hopes about Europe. Why? Because, to put it very simply, it still looks that we have two models now which are in competition, if I simplify the analysis very much: the Anglo-Saxon liberal market model and what we poetically call capitalism with Asian values, which means authoritarian capitalism. This is what every leftist, as I repeat it, should worry about, because let’s concede to the devil what belongs to the devil. Wasn’t it that, ’til recently—I’m sorry to tell you again, as a strange communist, you will say—there was one good argument for capitalism? After. It may have been that capitalism needed dictatorship for ten, twenty years—Chile, South Korea—but when things started to move, capitalism always engendered a push toward some kind of democracy. No longer. I claim that what is now emerging in the Far East started—it started in Singapore, this kind of so-called, again, authoritarian capitalism. I think something new is emerging: a capitalism even more dynamic—

AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: —than our own, but which, even in long term, doesn’t need democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: Slavoj Žižek, Slovenian philosopher, psychoanalyst, cultural theorist. His latest book is First as Tragedy, Then as Farce.

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17.04.2009 – Joana Gorjão Henriques
Depois desta crise com contornos de dilúvio, o que se abre à cultura? Há cenários que já podemos desenhar

Em época de crise, o melhor mesmo é ir às compras na própria casa. Desenterrem-se leituras eternamente adiadas, leia-se finalmente o “Ulisses” de James Joyce que anda por ali há séculos. Os livros podem ser caros, mas ler ainda continua a não ser assim tanto. Até porque um livro pode sempre passar por muitas mãos. E há as bibliotecas, a “forma de entretenimento mais barata de todas”, lembra John Carey, professor de Inglês em Oxford, ao “Guardian”. Por esta lógica, a leitura – não o mercado dos livros – será uma das actividades que menos sofrerá com a crise económica mundial. Mas nem tudo é lógico e nem tudo se pode prever. O podemos esperar, então, dos próximos anos?

Já temos algumas luzes. Diariamente encontramos notícias a apontar no mesmo sentido: cortes em todas as áreas da cultura. Grandes fundações na Europa reduzem orçamentos em 20 a 25 por cento; sólidos festivais de teatro (como o de Edimburgo) enfrentam problemas financeiros; museus, como o Getty Museum de Los Angeles, deixam de ser “luxuosos”; leilões de arte voltam a entrar em baixa, depois de anos incólumes às flutuações do mercado; cadeias de vendas de discos, como a Virgin, fecham as últimas lojas nos EUA…

“Toda a gente com memória das recessões dos anos 1970 e 1980 sabe que já estivemos aqui, embora não exactamente aqui”, escreveu o crítico de artes plásticas Holland Cotter no “New York Times”, num artigo com o título “O ‘boom’ acabou. Longa vida à arte!”. “Mas há razões para acreditar que a actual crise é de uma magnitude diferente: maior e mais profunda, um buraco negro global.”

Os apoios e o lado artístico

Serão os próximos anos um “buraco negro global”? Vamos voltar a considerar a cultura um luxo?, questionava Jonathan Jones, crítico de artes plásticas do “Guardian”. “O que vai acabar, e muito rapidamente, é este sentimento de exuberância cultural que floresceu nos últimos 15 anos”, defendia. Será?

Há indicadores, tendo em conta as tendências dos últimos anos, diz o Lab for Culture da European Cultural Foundation, em Amesterdão, no seu relatório sobre a forma como a arte e a cultura vão responder à crise. Por exemplo: maior procura de bens e serviços culturais mas menos apoios estatais, modelos competitivos de outras áreas a serem aplicados às artes ou a procura de novos modelos de negócios. Partindo do pressuposto de que as crises podem trazer novas oportunidades, este “think tank” prevê o aparecimento de novas instituições, lideranças, modelos de apoio e formas de organização.

“São tempos difíceis e a cultura é a primeira a ser reduzida”, diz-nos ao telefone Yudhishthir Raj Isar, sociólogo e especialista em Economia da Cultura, co-autor, com Helmut K. Anheier, de “Cultures and Globalization: The Cultural Economy”. “Mas é preciso distinguir entre os apoios e o lado artístico, as indústrias criativas que são negócio. Sabemos que na sociedade contemporânea a cultura se tornou essencial.”

Argumento, aliás, cada vez mais usado por vários países numa economia da cultura globalizada onde, como lembra James English, em “The Global Economy Prestige”, a decisão dos júris dos festivais de Cannes ou de Sundance “não apenas influencia a selecção de filmes em outros festivais de todo o mundo como pode alterar, em minutos”, as decisões dos Óscares.

Mas a mudança mais decisiva será nos apoios financeiros, que vão sofrer cortes e “uma grande pressão para que [os projectos subsidiados] sejam mais lucrativos”, lembra Isar.

Grandes projectos que, nos últimos anos, foram um “boom” – espaços como a Ópera de Sydney, do arquitecto dinamarquês Jørn Utzon, prémio Pritzker, ou museus, como o Guggenheim de Bilbau – “vão estar sob escrutínio”. “As pessoas vão querer saber por que é que este tipo de investimento é feito. É uma tendência: os grandes projectos vão ter que ser muito bem justificados.”

Paralelamente, Yudhishthir Raj Isar prevê que a profissionalização da cultura vai aumentar e que se vai passar a agir de forma mais empresarial. Algo, aliás, que os americanos não percebem bem, diz o professor na Universidade Americana em Paris, porque “para eles a cultura foi sempre negócio” – e há americanos, como Bill Ivey, conselheiro do Presidente Obama, que defendem que os subsídios devem “estar onde a cultura acontece”, seja na televisão ou na Internet (perspectiva que representa uma mudança na política americana de apoio à cultura, sublinha o “The Art Newspaper”). “Na Europa, por causa do Estado-providência, sempre considerámos que o valor artístico era superior ao bom negócio. Esta pressão vai encorajar as instituições não lucrativas a terem mais criatividade”, diz Isar.

O que não se aplica a todas as áreas: por exemplo, em espectáculos, os lugares são limitados, logo “há áreas que nunca terão lucro”. Nesse caso, a pressão maior é para reduzir de custos, angariar “sponsors”, usar os espaços para exploração comercial.

A melhor resposta que estas instituições podem dar? “Serem inventivas, fazerem poupanças, venderem mais lugares, diversificarem a oferta. Há muitas situações em que o que está a ser apresentado é elitista ou em que o espaço não está a ser rentabilizado – por exemplo, quando têm espectáculos apenas em alguns dias da semana e estão fechados nos outros. Em Sydney, não havia tradição de ópera, era difícil ter ópera todos os dias – depois, até bingo se fez lá.”

Por mais ou menos criativas que as instituições sejam, a realidade vai ser esta: “o consumo artístico vai baixar”, sobretudo em áreas como a chamada alta cultura, por exemplo, a ópera, que tem investimento e consumo caros. Mas áreas como a música pop não serão tão afectadas, prevê.

Samuel Jones responsável pela cultura do Demos, “think tank” britânico, concorda com Yudhishthir Raj Isar quanto aos apoios: diminuirão, mas talvez já não este ano porque muitos contratos foram assinados antes. No entanto, é mais optimista. Defende que a cultura se destacou internacionalmente e que, com a Internet, se tem vindo a tornar mais importante. “Há uma abrangência social e uma intensidade que nunca tivemos. As pessoas vão estar mais conscientes dos preços dos bilhetes, sim. Mas, por outro lado, a cultura tornou-se um bem de que precisam.”

No Ocidente, sobretudo nos EUA, vai assistir-se a uma discussão em que se defende cada vez mais que a cultura contribui para a economia, defende Yudhishthir Raj Isar. Vai assistir-se não, já se está a assistir. Nos EUA, grupos ligados às artes fizeram “lobby” para que a Administração Obama aprovasse um reforço de 50 milhões de dólares para o National Endowment for the Arts, instituição que apoia as artes – e conseguiram. O argumento? Que nos EUA há 100 mil grupos de arte não lucrativos que empregam seis milhões de pessoas e contribuem anualmente com 167 mil milhões de dólares para a economia.
O reforço é um dos sinais de que a política cultural regressa nos EUA no século XXI, ao fim de longos anos, com programas de estímulo económico a iniciativas de diplomacia “soft”, defendia o “The Arts Newspaper”.

Nómadas

A política cultural regressa nos EUA, retrai-se na Europa. E para lá do Ocidente? Nas artes plásticas, por exemplo, na Ásia, o consumo “tem sido feito no contexto de espaços de prestígio, projectados por arquitectos estrela – Xangai, Singapura, Pequim, Japão estão a construir centros para uma classe média que é um novo público para estes sítios”. Mas também aqui o consumo vai diminuir, acredita Isar.
A crise vai, de certeza, ter impacto na circulação global de pessoas, lembra a curadora e historiadora da arte sul-africana Ruth Simbao, e isto, “por seu lado, vai afectar a forma como as exposições são organizadas e programadas”.

“Em termos de arte africana, por exemplo, as exposições apresentadas nos EUA e na Europa vão assentar mais em artistas africanos da diáspora – isto já é uma moda e irá aumentar à medida que os apoios baixam. Os artistas africanos que vivem na Europa e EUA vão cada vez mais ser olhados como representantes africanos, o que é um problema.”

Mas a verdade é que “todos somos cada vez mais nómadas”, diz Isabel Carlos, a nova directora do Centro de Arte Moderna da Fundação Gulbenkian, que foi este ano curadora da Bienal de Sharjah, no Dubai. “Do meu conhecimento da diáspora do Médio Oriente, a maior parte dos artistas que têm possibilidade de viver do que fazem vivem nos EUA, em Londres e em Paris, saem dos seus países para terem uma carreira artística. Até podem continuar a viver no seu país, mas sempre com pontos de saída.”

O que a crise pode trazer de positivo é criar “cada vez mais parcerias entre as instituições, união de esforços”, considera Isabel Carlos. “É a continuação de uma globalização. Cada vez menos uma instituição isolada poderá produzir eventos culturais grandes. Há a possibilidade de cada vez mais ficarmos dependentes uns dos outros.” O que para um país como Portugal “é bom” porque “nunca tivemos grandes parcerias com os estrangeiros a este nível, o que é inevitável, não só do nosso ponto de vista mas também do internacional”. A curadora da Bienal Sydney de 2004 acha mesmo que isto é o que “a cultura em países pequenos poderá receber de bom desta crise” porque até os “grandes estão em crise” e precisam dos pequenos.

Por outro lado, acrescenta Ruth Simbao, “esta pode ser uma oportunidade para artistas e curadores africanos desenvolverem os pontos fortes locais e para se concentrarem no seu próprio carácter local, assim como na sua relação com os outros países africanos e com o ‘Sul global’”.

O que já aconteceu, conta, com a bienal da Cidade do Cabo, que começou em 2007. Inicialmente concebida como exposição internacional de arte africana contemporânea, teve que baixar o número de “grandes nomes”, focando-se no público local e na necessidade de criar uma arte pública sul-africana. “Vejo isto como uma oportunidade para os artistas locais, curadores locais e público local. Desde que os bons críticos continuem a falar e a divulgar projectos locais, estes podem competir a uma escala internacional sem ter que ser proibitivo em termos de custo.”

Ruth Simbao acredita que, mais do que nunca, o aparecimento de excelentes pensadores e críticos de arte “é crucial”. “Porque podem relacionar os projectos produzidos localmente a uma escala global – essa ligação faz-se através da palavra digital e com isso é possível partilhar com o mundo uma versão da arte africana social e economicamente muito mais diversa do que a que tem sido mostrada nas megaexposições homogeneizadas do mundo rico.”

Experiência, comunidade e Internet

Que a crise pode ser um cenário de oportunidade parece ser o tom geral. Também Samuel Jones defende a ideia de que em época de decadência a cultura floresce e a arte pode ser um espaço para as pessoas discutirem. Resumindo: são tempos difíceis mas “muito interessantes”. Que fazem com que as instituições procurem novas formas de comunicação com os seus públicos, criando espaços onde as pessoas não vão apenas fruir qualquer coisa, deixam a sua contribuição. No fundo, assiste-se a uma mudança de paradigma, com a óbvia mediação da Internet, em que a voz de quem “consome” se torna tão relevante quanto a de quem produz. “Há museus em que não se fazem apenas ‘downloads’ de ‘podcasts’ com as explicações sobre as obras; fazem-se ‘uploads’ com os nossos olhares sobre elas. É preciso criar espaços com símbolos em que as pessoas se revejam. Não se trata apenas de informar as pessoas, trata-se de proporcionar contactos, relações de proximidade”, exemplifica.

O teatro é, por isso, um exemplo do que os espaços culturais podem vir a ser porque sempre proporcionou a noção de comunidade ao ter, lado a lado, um grupo de pessoas que partilha a experiência de ver um espectáculo. Hoje, companhias como a Royal Shakespeare Company, diz, não estão interessadas em apenas mostrar espectáculos, estão interessadas em que as pessoas participem, não apenas através das conversas a propósito dos espectáculos. “A forma como os ‘sites’ na Internet estão a ser usados, a abrirem-se aos comentários, a facilidade com que se cria uma conversa intergeracional é uma nova era e uma oportunidade muito maior para as pessoas se expressarem. E quanto mais as pessoas se expressarem, mais essa vontade cresce.”

Mais arriscada é a experiência da Symphony Space, em Nova Iorque, que vai levar os telemóveis para dentro do teatro: convida o público a votar no intervalo, através de SMS, nas personagens que devem casar em “Così Fan Tutte: Defining Women”, a partir de Mozart.

Holland Cotter, no “New York Times”, lembra que no século XXI o acesso digital ao conhecimento vai provocar uma mudança na forma de pensar e na produção da cultura visual. “O que é que os artistas vão fazer com isso? Irão as indústrias culturais agarrar-se ao formato analógico tradicional, para continuarem a insistir que o material, os objectos compráveis são a única forma legítima de arte – que é, na verdade, do que realmente se trata o revivalismo da pintura dos últimos anos?”
A mudança não está para acontecer, já aconteceu, mostra Don Tapscott, no livro “Grown up Digital” sobre a geração “pós-baby boomers”, que se define por ter sido a primeira a crescer na era digital e que agora tem no máximo 32 anos e no mínimo 11. Porque em todo o mundo a geração digital, “a primeira verdadeiramente global”, “já está no mercado de trabalho, em todos os nichos da sociedade”. “Está a trazer ao mundo o seu músculo demográfico, a sua agilidade nos media, o seu poder de compra e político, novos modelos de colaboração e familiares, empresariais” – e muitos deles envolveram-se na política pela primeira vez com a campanha presidencial de Barack Obama.

Basicamente, o futuro vai depender desta geração e, segundo Tapscott, ela define-se por oito características: os seus elementos “prezam a liberdade e a liberdade de escolha. Querem personalizar as coisas, torná-las deles. São colaboradores naturais, que gostam de uma conversa, não de conferências. Vão escrutiná-lo e à sua empresa. Insistem na integridade. Querem divertir-se, mesmo no trabalho e na escola. A velocidade é normal. A inovação faz parte da vida”.
Ao longo de todo o livro, destacam-se algumas ideias: organização em rede, participação-colaboração e experiência. Ou seja, em todas as esferas da sua vida, esta geração procura participar e ter experiências. Um exemplo, vindo do cinema: querem fazer críticas aos filmes mas também contribuir para os conteúdos com os seus vídeos no YouTube.

A Internet poderá ajudar a dar a volta à crise ou agravá-la? “A ‘avant-garde’ floresceu numa época de recessão”, lembra Samuel Jones. “Não existia Internet. Isso é a grande diferença. Como seria se tivessem tanta liberdade de criar e consumir como hoje, se tivessem o YouTube? Este é um momento em que muitas certezas estão a ser postas em causa.”

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Helmut K. Anheier (Ph.D. Yale University, 1986) is Professor of Sociology at Heidelberg University and the academic Director of the Heidelberg Centre for Social Investment. He is also Professor and Director of the Center for Civil Society and the Center for Globalization and Policy Research at UCLA’s School of Public Affairs. Anheier’s work covers the civil society, the nonprofit sector, philanthropy, organisational studies, policy analysis and comparative methodology. In 2008, he published Cultures and Globalization: The Cultural Economy.

It is clear to everyone who follows daily reports about the cancellation of cultural events and the closure of opera houses and theatres, or learns about economic troubles at one cultural institution or another, that the global financial crisis is already having a significant impact on philanthropic giving and non-profit organisations. [1]
It is also clear that the crisis’ impact is going to get deeper and wider for some time to come. It is less clear how long the fallout will last; and it is especially unclear what the crisis ultimately means for policy-makers, leaders and managers in the cultural sector. This article examines how the arts and culture sector is responding to growing uncertainty in the global economy – and how the sector can weather the gathering storm.

How is the arts and culture sector responding to the crisis?

The current economic downturn, triggered by the financial crisis, is closely related to the inability of governments and international institutions to address what experts call the ‘global governance problem’ – the growing mismatch between the forces of globalisation (largely financial), and the capacity of governments to steer and regulate. Illustrative of this problem is not only the crisis itself but also the often hapless responses in political capitals: no national government and no international institution, including the European Union, is able to deal with weaknesses in the global economy. Unless the systemic failures of governance are fixed through policies and institutions that adequately consider the challenges of a globalised economy and global financial markets, the governmental response will remain focused on managing their political image at worst and ‘doctoring with the syndrome’ at best.

Image: Financial Crisis Mural in SoHo by bbusby

At another level, much more can be done, not in the sense of the global or macro issues mentioned above, but in terms of proactive policy and management responses for, and on behalf of, philanthropic giving and cultural non-profit organisations. This level, and what it means for non-profits, is the primary focus of this article. However, before delving into the options, two preliminary points are worth raising:

Firstly, in the arts and cultural field – and in the non-profit sector overall – there is very little interest in the origins of the current crisis (i.e., financial markets that were beyond the control of policy-makers and business leaders). Rather, the field is focused almost entirely on dealing with the immediate fallout, with some energy placed on developing strategies for surviving in the medium to long term.

Secondly, it is equally important to separate what would have happened anyway and what has happened additionally, sooner than later, or more dramatically, because of the crisis.

Of course, while we cannot predict the future, we can reasonably extrapolate a number of trends from developments in the field of arts and culture over the last ten years. Among them are:

• Greater demand for cultural goods and services combined with less public funding that is more competitive
• Competition models developed elsewhere (in the health, social services and education sectors) being applied to arts and culture, with an emphasis on cost control rather than outcome quality
• Search for new business models for non-profits in many fields, including arts and culture, to compensate for lower levels of government support
• Professionalisation of finance, management and service delivery, often combined with a certain timidity in terms of advocacy
• Policy emphasis on greater civic engagement and fiscal transparency for legitimacy reasons
• Private philanthropic support that can be fickle, resulting in fluctuating levels of support
• Overly optimistic expectations about what foundations can do for arts and culture (e.g., substitute for reduced government spending).

What these developments mean is more than a rhetorical question, for the simple reason that these trends are continuing, albeit in the context of a crisis. For a start, transferring models between non-profits and businesses would have become more frequent in regulated quasi markets (health, social services), as would conversions of public to private institutions (education, culture). In other words, many organisations would have changed, and many non-profits would have become more like businesses, while many public institutions would have become more private.

In turn, this would have brought about fierce and long drawn-out debates: about the right revenue structure for cultural non-profits and the optimal mix of earned income, public funds and private donations, including foundation grants; about asset management and acquisition policies; about barriers of exit and (re)entry for donors and recipients alike; about stakeholder involvement (artist, consumer, client, member, funder, staff, the general public etc.); and, about professional control over mission and operations, and the role of the board.

How should non-profits rise to new challenges?

Image: Credit cruncher by earnest70six

What the economic crisis adds now is a potent mix of new challenges to what was an already complex set of issues:

• At the societal level, there is a loss of trust in the ‘system’, a general sense of insecurity among the general public, and opportunism among some political actors on the left and the right.
• European governments, many more fiscally secure than the United States and with more room to maneuver, rediscover Keynesianism. They interpret it to their own political advantage, typically resulting in massive public spending programmes (of which only a rather small portion will reach arts and culture). Increases in public investments are combined with reductions in current budgets, and create shortfalls, of which some, often indirectly, are passed on to non-profits.
• Businesses engage in short-termism while trying to calm shareholders. They are eliminating programmes for corporate social responsibility and giving, including arts and culture funding. At the same time, they are looking for government handouts and subsidies in return for some guarantees, typically related to employment and performance.
• Philanthropic foundations see continuing drops in asset values of a scale not seen in decades, with expected reductions in grant payouts, concerns about the sustainability of current programmes and commitments, and a growing emphasis on asset protection.
• Many households face both greater financial uncertainty and declining net worth, which could lead to drops in donations and a decline in volunteering.

For arts and culture non-profits, the current crises undoubtedly mean fewer resources for current expenditures; however, depending on public spending priorities, it may also yield some additional funding for investment programmes. First and foremost, it means greater financial instability, more uncertainty for management and staff, possibilities of unfulfilled contracts and obligations, and unmet demand. The reaction of boards and management could easily fall victim to common extremes: on the one hand, to a ‘do nothing approach’, because of denial or fatalism; and on the other, to different forms of over-reaction and blind activism. There are, however, other options that reveal themselves only when appreciating what sets non-profits apart from other organisations.

Three features are central:

• The presence of deeply embedded values (religious, political, humanitarian, moral, artistic) is a distinct feature of many non-profits. How far these values influence organisational behaviour varies, but the significant presence of values implies at the very least a more complex means-goal relationship between operational and ultimate objectives. These values can be enabling or restraining; protecting or stifling; leading or misleading; invigorating or distracting.
• The presence of multiple stakeholders (trustees, staff, volunteers, users/clients, state agencies, etc.) makes non-profits inherently political organisations, and turns managing them into a complex task of creating and coordinating coalitions around a common purpose.
• The presence of multiple revenue sources (markets, quasi-markets, membership, various forms of transfers from government, various forms of donations and sponsorship, contracts, etc.); at the same time price mechanisms (the best indicators of performance) are frequently absent. This means that non-profit leaders manage multiple revenue streams when performance is uncertain.

Six tips for weathering the storm

Against a backdrop of mounting problems and special features, there is still quite a lot that can be done. Here are six short-term options:

• Revisit the value base of your organisation. If values are the foundation of your mission, reinvigorate their meaning and make them relevant by basing all major decisions on values rather than economic rationale alone; if values are less central, make economic sustainability a priority.
• Consolidate resources around mission critical, resource attractive programmes, and prune activities that are less mission critical and less resource attractive. Align stakeholders accordingly and build appropriate coalitions.
• Cooperate only around mission central programmes, and consider merger and franchise models.
• Cross subsidise only if less mission critical programmes have a proven and significant capacity to generate revenue. Rededicate assets and reserves accordingly, and divest cross subsidising programmes.
• Spread risk in revenue streams by avoiding dependencies on government, donors etc. and by diversifying earned income options (sliding fees, charging above marginal costs, using assets, cross subsidising etc).
• Run an active information campaign about what your plans are and how you seek to achieve them. Transparency and public awareness with all stakeholders is important for any short-term reorganisations to find legitimacy and success.

The “Six tips for weathering the storm” are also available in Czech on ProCulture.
Click here: Šest tipů kulturnímu sektoru jak proplout úskalími finanční krize

Asking tough questions for long-term survival

For many, the result will be a smaller and leaner non-profit, one shaped by short-term reactions to a crisis to sustain operations. It may not yet be a non-profit forged as a strategic response to a changed environment, and with long-term sustainability in mind. Therefore, non-profits can engage in strategic planning and visioning by asking tough questions about their very existence, functioning and impact. Options include:

• Specialisation versus generalisation of programmes, target groups, fields etc.
• Considering achieving a scale of operations adequate to both mission and resources
• Building partnerships and networks along economies of scale
• Exploring multi-site and franchise models for scale economies
• Engaging members and users more by activating value base, to reduce costs and create buy-in
• Reinvigorating advocacy and lobbying campaigns; be heard and raise concerns; demand government funding when appropriate.

Preparing for the future

The main point is that non-profits have to be proactive and inventive when responding in the medium term to the fallout of the current crises. Yet what can be done to prepare for future crises? Such measures include:

• Exploring institutional innovations for the non-profit field as a whole: e.g., dedicated financial institutions for non-profits including insurance funds, forms of capital markets etc., as well as smart public private partnerships with profit/reserve options.
• Establishing a Public Trust Fund for non-profits to smooth eligible organisations through a period of fiscal uncertainties, budget shortfalls etc. Of course, there are different ways to build and run such a trust fund (tax-based, community foundation model).
• Developing a membership base that can be mobilised politically for advocacy purposes as well as economically for resource generation.
• Seeking non-profit liaison or focal points in key government areas for arts and culture, and creating ‘cultural listening posts’ as an early warning system.
• Investing in more and more effective non-profit advocacy in the field of arts and culture, and strengthening the watchdog function of non-profits.

Sociologists and economists have long argued that crises are the necessary correctives, part of an ongoing process of the ‘creative destruction’ that has shaped much of the modern world, with globalisation as the latest development. If this is the case, the crisis offers perhaps as much in terms of opportunities as it does in terms of challenges. It will lead to the demise of some institutions and the rise of others. Some non-profits will flourish while others become moribund. Old leadership and elites will be replaced, at least partially. New funding patterns and ways of organising are likely to emerge.

Responding to a crisis requires both a reduction of uncertainties and capitalising on opportunities. Above all, mastering the crisis demands a proactive stance on the part of Europe’s cultural leadership – not by asking for old wine to be served in new bottles (as the American car giants or European banks and manufacturers have been doing), but by embracing what cultural policy stands for: making space for creativity and innovation and preserving past achievements for the benefit of all.

Footnotes
[1] In Southern California, for example, the Orange County Opera Pacific cancelled its season and may shut down entirely. They said that a “limited number of donors who had funded the company no longer could come up with the necessary gifts in the wake of drastic hits to their investment portfolios” (Los Angeles Times, 6 November, 2008). Also caught in the budget crisis, the Orchestra of Pasadena cancelled two concerts and issued emergency fundraising appeals to save the remaining schedule.

[2] All images sourced from Flickr through a search for financial crisis and credit crunch.

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El autor pasó por Madrid para hablar en un ciclo sobre la crisis del capitalismo organizado por la Universidad Nómada y el Museo Reina Sofía

Wallerstein es una de las mayores autoridades mundiales en el estudio de sistemas económicos.
CARLOS PRIETO – MADRID – 31/01/2009

Cuando Immanuel Wallerstein (Nueva York, 1930) predijo, en plena apoteosis de la Guerra Fría, que el bloque soviético se iba a derrumbar, algunos pensaron que estaba metiendo la pata hasta el fondo. Obviamente, eran ellos los que estaban equivocados. Y es que el sociólogo estadounidense lleva toda su vida académica estudiando las tendencias a largo plazo de los sistemas económicos mundiales desde el Centro Fernand Braudel (Universidad Estatal de Nueva York).
“La crisis económica actual es similar a otras crisis históricas”

Wallerstein, autor de libros como El moderno sistema mundial (Nueva York, 1930) o Capitalismo histórico y movimientos antisistémicos (Akal, Cuestiones de Antagonismo, 2004), pasó por Madrid para hablar en un ciclo sobre la crisis del capitalismo organizado por la Universidad Nómada y el Museo Reina Sofía. Durante su charla, celebrada en un abarrotado salón de actos del museo madrileño, lo que da idea de la expectación que despiertan últimamente las voces críticas con el sistema económico, Wallerstein dejó toda una serie de titulares para la historia: “¿Obama? Por favor, no hemos elegido al Che Guevara; en EEUU, no se puede votar al Che Guevara” o “A día de hoy, se ven las cosas mucho más claras en Porto Alegre que en Davos”.

Usted se ha especializado en el análisis a largo plazo del capitalismo y en su división, siguiendo los estudios de economistas como Kondratieff, en ciclos coyunturales. Según sus estudios, en la primera parte del ciclo actual (1945-1975), el beneficio lo generó la producción industrial. Ahora estamos en la segunda parte de ese ciclo. ¿Cómo situaría la crisis económica actual en ese contexto?

Lo que está ocurriendo ahora no es nada más que la fase final de un ciclo que se ha repetido muchas veces en los 500 años de historia del sistema capitalista. Ahora nos encontramos, en efecto, en la fase final de un ciclo de Kondratieff.En este sentido, la crisis que estamos viviendo no tiene nada de novedoso. La actual crisis, sobre la que todo el mundo discute como si fuera lo nunca visto, es similar a las ocurridas en otros momentos históricos, como la Gran Depresión o el periodo transcurrido entre 1893 y 1896. Es decir, se trata de un periodo que empieza con un endeudamiento masivo de las economías, sigue con una explosión de burbujas y acaba con una sucesión de quiebras. Así las cosas, lo que estamos viendo ahora es el colapso del periodo especulativo que arrancó en los años setenta. Hasta aquí, todo normal. Ahora bien, hay que saber distinguir entre los fenómenos cíclicos que se repiten y los cambios extraordinarios que ocurren sólo una vez, entre lo que es normal y lo que es extraordinario.
“Las posibilidades de acumulación del capitalismo han tocado techo”

De hecho, usted sí cree que el capitalismo está viviendo un momento nunca visto hasta ahora ¿Qué tiene de extraordinario lo que le está ocurriendo al sistema desde hace unos años?

Lo extraordinario es que el ciclo coyuntural se agrava al enmarcarse dentro de otra crisis de mucho más largo recorrido que arrancó hace 30 años. Me refiero al fin del actual sistema-mundo capitalista y la consiguiente transición hacia otro sistema. Todavía no sabemos qué va a ocupar el lugar del capitalismo porque dependerá del resultado de una lucha política que aún se está dirimiendo.

¿No podemos estar ante el enésimo ciclo de caída y auge del sistema capitalista?
“La lucha entre Davos y Porto Alegre determinará el futuro sistema”

Definitivamente, no. Las posibilidades de acumulación del sistema han tocado techo. Podemos estar seguros de que en 30 años ya no viviremos bajo el sistema-mundo capitalista. Pero, ¿en qué sistema viviremos entonces? Podría ser un sistema mucho mejor o mucho peor. Todas las posibilidades están abiertas. La solución la encontraremos cuando se resuelva el conflicto entre lo que yo denomino el espíritu de Davos y el espíritu de Porto Alegre. Ahora bien, si no se afronta políticamente la cuestión del fin del capitalismo, es posible que lo que surja sea aún más extremo que el sistema actual, que en mi opinión es tremendamente injusto.

¿Qué papel puede jugar Obama en el actual contexto de crisis económica?

Todo el mundo ha recibido a Obama con los brazos abiertos. El mandato de Bush fue tan terrible que la gente aprecia la llegada de un hombre joven e inteligente al poder. Además, la llegada de un afroamericano a la presidencia es importante desde un punto de vista simbólico. Todo esto es positivo. Creo que es bueno que Obama haya llegado a la presidencia, pero no creo que vaya a ser capaz de cambiar fundamentalmente la situación. Y, aunque quisiera, tampoco tiene el poder para hacerlo. ¿Actuará Obama más inteligentemente que Bush? Por supuesto, pero eso tampoco significa gran cosa: el gobierno de Bush fue muy derechista. Su Administración actuó de un modo tan poco inteligente que aceleró el declive definitivo de EEUU como sistema dominante. Pero, ojo, Obama no puede revertir esa situación.

Al hilo de esto, también ha asegurado que la crisis se corresponde con el fin de un ciclo político, el de la hegemonía estadounidense. ¿Se trata de una decadencia irreversible?

Estados Unidos seguirá teniendo un peso importante, pero dudo de que pueda reconquistar su posición dominante debido a la multiplicación de centros de poder como China, Brasil, Europa, etc.

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Hace unos años, Luc Boltansky y Eve Chiapello publicaron en Francia un ambicioso libro, titulado El nuevo espíritu del capitalismo (Ediciones Akal), en el que, tras los pasos de Max Weber^W y su lectura del protestantismo, querían poner de relieve la capacidad del capitalismo de utilizar las críticas culturales e ideológicas a sus lógicas de funcionamiento, para refundarse continuamente. Tras la estela de Weber, quién con su célebre conexión entre protestantismo y capitalismo ayudó a entender mejor los mecanismos individuales de acumulación e innovación, los dos autores franceses conectan la revitalización del sistema capitalista de los últimos decenios, con su capacidad para asumir el mensaje romántico y de exaltación de la autonomía individual que surge de la crisis de legitimidad que impacta en el viejo capitalismo fordista a finales de los sesenta. De esta manera, entienden que los problemas con que se enfrentan muchos de los críticos del capitalismo contemporáneo, no derivan de la falta de consecuencias negativas del funcionamiento de un sistema que sigue condenando a sectores muy significativos de la población a la exclusión y al desamparo, sino de seguir basando esas críticas en argumentos obsoletos, defensivos y poco capaces de recoger las nuevas coordenadas de la explotación y la alienación capitalista. Interpretan la crisis del 68 como una crítica básicamente cultural y artística a un sistema económico de matriz homogeneizadora y rutinaria, que ahogaba la creatividad y la innovación. El nuevo espíritu capitalista parte de la superación de la lógica jerárquica, taylorista y tecnocrática, para fundarse en formas aparentemente más autónomas, relacionales y flexibles, que buscan aprovechar a fondo la creatividad de los asalariados, a costa de cuestionar su estabilidad y su seguridad, tanto material como psicológica.

El Foro Social Mundial tiene la oportunidad de ir cristalizando la labor movilizadora de estos últimos años

Ese capitalismo recauchutado insufló nuevas maneras de encarar la producción, y a caballo de la revolución tecnológica, abrió las puertas a una forma de entender la empresa, más horizontal, premiando la colaboración de los empleados en la mejora de los procesos, con un funcionamiento basado en proyectos, de tal manera que se fortaleció la idea de la discontinuidad y la temporalidad como sinónimo de creatividad y flexibilidad. Un capitalismo convivencial, aparentemente participativo, que invitaba e invita a compartir, a trabajar en red, a saltarse rigideces y jerarquías. De tal manera que consigue adhesiones y deja obsoletas las críticas basadas en los viejos esquemas industrialistas que hablaban de sumisión y explotación sin participación. Camuflado en todo ese envoltorio de creatividad, viaja la precarización galopante del empleo, la constante desaparición de los empleos considerados excesivamente estables (por tanto poco creativos), la reducción de la protección de los trabajadores, el aumento de la intensidad y la duración de las jornadas de trabajo (con amplias facilidades para trabajar en red, a distancia o en cualquier estación o aeropuerto, siempre conectados). Cualquier crítica a esas nuevas maneras de operar puede caer fácilmente en argumentos que parecen reclamar una vuelta atrás, a tiempos más seguros, pero, al mismo tiempo, más oscuros, grises y alienantes.

Lo cierto es que, en los momentos actuales de confusión, esa renovación fundamentada aparentemente en la creatividad y la autonomía individual encuentra sus límites concretos en las personas que ven chocar su reforzada personalidad con estructuras productivas que llaman ahora a sacrificios y restricciones en aras de la supervivencia de las estructuras del sistema. Y es ahora cuando los envoltorios muestran su fragilidad y su inautenticidad, cuando la precariedad-flexibilidad deviene simplemente en paro, o cuando la autonomía individual, la movilidad y la conectividad total como sinónimo de modernidad sigue siendo sólo posible y rentable para algunos, mientras la cotidianidad se vuelve más difícil para la mayoría. En vez de cumplir la promesa de liberar todas las potencialidades creativas de cada individuo, lo que encontramos son las fronteras restrictivas e instrumentalizadoras de la racionalidad mercantil y consumista. Frente a la promesa (a lo {Thatcher}^W) de convertirnos todos en accionistas del gran negocio financiero universal, nos encontramos al final con meras amoralidades especulativas de las que se aprovechan unos pocos con los ahorros de otros muchos. Pero de nada sirven esas constataciones, si no se es capaz de buscar y profundizar en nuevas críticas que no sólo denuncien la engañosa transformación, sino que busquen enfrentarse a las raíces injustas y opresoras del sistema. Y sin duda, para ello, es muy importante fundamentar adecuadamente la crítica cultural y social al capitalismo realmente existente en estos inicios del siglo XXI, tanto a escala local como a escala global. Crítica cultural, ya que es sustancialmente cierto que la base de producción de valor es crecientemente cultural, y también que el capitalismo contemporáneo es una forma de vida, un conjunto de prácticas y de instituciones que no pueden ser separadas de sus fundamentos estructurales. Y crítica social, ya que sigue siendo también cierto a escala global y local, que afloran y se consolidan viejas y nuevas formas de explotación y desigualdad. Ésa es la labor que entiendo puede ejercer de nuevo el Foro Social Mundial, que en pocos días volverá a reunirse en Brasil, y que tiene ahora la oportunidad de ir cristalizando la labor movilizadora y sensibilizadora de estos últimos años. Quizá el foco no deba ser la estricta crítica al capitalismo como fundamento de la acción alternativa, sino la capacidad de implicar intelectual y emotivamente a un conjunto de personas y grupos para construir conjuntamente una sociedad más habitable y justa, con nuevas estructuras comunes, compartidas, radicalmente democráticas.

Joan Subirats es catedrático de Ciencia Política de la UAB.

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The crisis today has taken the form of a financial crisis, while the prospect of a full-blown economic crisis looms ever larger. These two crises do not merely stand in a relation of cause and effect, however (whichever way one were to posit the relation). Rather they are the different manifestations of the same underlying crisis – the crisis of accumulation of capital, which is at the same time the crisis in the relation of exploitation between capital and proletariat.

Finance capital is the form of capital which most closely corresponds to its pure concept, in that the plethora of byzantine forms of finance capital can be reduced to the process whereby money begets more money or value begets more value. The relation between finance capital and productive capital, or between finance and the real economy, is marked, on the one hand, by the discipline which finance capital imposes on productive capital, and on the other, by the possibility and indeed tendency for finance capital to “run away with itself” – to run too far ahead of the possibilities of valorisation which are ultimately given by the profitable exploitation of labour-power in production.

This relation between finance and productive capital, or between finance and the real economy, while it has always existed in some form in the capitalist mode of production, has not remained unaltered. Since the global crisis of profitability of capital, or looked at another way since the crisis in the capitalist class relation in the late 60s and early 70s (marked by a wave of class struggle, industrial and social unrest), financialisation has been an integral element of the capitalist restructuring and counter-offensive – i.e. of the global restructuring of the relation between capital and proletariat. On the one hand, financialisation has been a vehicle by which the exploitation of labour-power has been integrated on a global scale (with the emergence and integration into the world economy of new poles of accumulation in the emerging “BRICS” economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa etc); on the other, it has been a means by which the entrenched position of the high-wage proletariat in the advanced capitalist economies could be weakened. These two aspects of financialisation together correspond to the integration of the circuit of reproduction of labour-power with the circuit of reproduction of capital. With the increasing financialisation of the relation between capital and proletariat, workers’ wages in the advanced economies have stagnated, and the reproduction of their labour-power has been increasingly mediated through finance (mortgages, loans, credit cards, and the investment of pension funds in the stock and money markets). This new configuration of the class relation has offered to many, but not all, strata of the proletariat in the advanced economies rising living standards, tied to asset-price inflation. The capitalist counter-attack and restructuring has involved fundamental alterations in the class relation through the defeat of the old workers’ movement and the obsolescence of its institutions (trade unions and parties) which promoted the rising power of the proletariat within capitalist society; the new shape of the class relation and the financialisation of this relation depend ultimately on the ability of capital to extract sufficient surplus-value in the global economy (by increasing productivity and by the intensification of labour).

The present financial crisis has its roots partly in the subprime loans and mortgages which were predicated on the continual upward trend of the housing market, and the inflation of asset prices (after the collapse of the previous asset bubble – the dot.com boom), with vast amounts of fictitious capital being generated by the leveraging practised by financial institutions (banks, investment funds, private equity funds etc). The finance-led boom ultimately outran the ability of the real economy – i.e. productive capital – to extract surplus value through the exploitation of workers in production (whether this production is ‘material’ or ‘immaterial’). As a consequence we are witnessing a massive ‘correction’ – the falling stock markets, housing market – in Marxian terms the devalorisation of capital (expressed in write-downs, defaults, bankruptcies, mergers and fire-sales of financial institutions, and now their part-nationalisation by capitalist states across the board).

Thus the pre-existing tendency towards the overaccumulation of capital (whether this tendency is to be understood as cyclical or secular), such that the productive investment of capital can no longer meet its valorisation requirements, is exacerbated by finance capital’s penchant for generating fictitious capital (through leveraging, debt financing, futures, options, derivatives and an increasing plethora of complex and arcane financial instruments). Even though finance capital disciplines productive capital (and productive capital is increasingly financialised), the extraction of surplus value through the exploitation of the proletariat can not keep pace with the demands for valorisation which are made by finance capital.

Capital is in crisis. The crisis asserts itself as devalorisation. Devalorisation is the only way that capital can lay for itself the basis of a new round of accumulation, and involves the disciplining of the working-class to accept new terms of exploitation; however, this means that it also places the very reproduction of the capital-labour relation at stake. To avert the crisis, the nationalisation of the banks is not sufficient. The economy is facing recession or depression, and the spectre of deflation. The state managers of capital are caught in a double bind: with huge budget deficits increased by the financing of the bail-out of the financial system (through the purchase of toxic securities, the recapitalisation of banks and the guaranteeing of new loans), the deficit-spending that capitalist states would need to engage in to maintain levels of effective demand in the economy will be increasingly difficult to finance. The question of the credit-worthiness of banks now asserts itself at a higher level as the dubious credit-worthiness of capitalist states (central banks and state treasuries).

Capital might find a way out of the crisis: it will seek to maintain or increase profitability in the real economy through pressure on wages (although this will perversely have a deflationary effect) and the intensification of labour (the increased exploitation of workers) – i.e. strategies to increase both relative and absolute surplus value. The way out of the financial and economic crisis involves the intensification of exploitation on a planetary scale and a crisis of the relation between capital and proletariat. In the 19th and 20th centuries up to the capitalist restructuring of the 1970s and 80s, the proletariat could assert itself as a positive pole in the relation of exploitation. Now, as the reproduction of the proletariat is increasingly mediated through finance, and is thus immediately entwined with the reproduction of capital (with the effect that the reproduction of growing swathes of the proletariat is increasingly precarious, as shown by the current wave of foreclosures and repossessions), and financialisation enables the integration of the capitalist exploitation of labour-power on a planetary scale, the very means which on one level enable capital to fight its way out of crisis threaten crisis on a higher level – the level of the reproduction of the class relation itself.

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Will the current economic meltdown, and worker reaction to it, be a reenactment of the Great Depression? Could the politics of racist resentment on the US-Mexico border explode into (more) violence? Are global elites truly motivated to combat climate change? Mike Davis, author of In Praise of Barbarians, tackles these and other issues.

Mike Davis, “Can Obama See the Grand Canyon? On Presidential Blindness and Economic Catastrophe” TomDispatch

Mike Davis, “Living On the Ice Shelf: Humanity’s Meltdown” TomDispatch

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Also, Michael Perelman’s blog:

http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com

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