Table Of ContentC~PITALISM
· Crisis and .Alternatives
A Collection of Contributions by
Sandra Ezquerra
Michel Husson
Claudio Katz
Andy Kilmister
Ozlem Onaran
Susan Pashkoff
John Rees
Sean Thompson
Eric Toussaint
. Catherine Samar7
JeanSanuk
Edited By
Fred Leplat and Ozlem Onaran
Capitalism
Crises and Alternatives
Acknowledgements
Resistance Books and the International Institute for Research are
grateful to all those who helped in the production of this book, in
particular Jay Blackwood, Iain Bruce, Terry Conway, Peter Cooper,
Steph Grant, Geoff Ryan, Susan Pashkoff and Richard Willsem
The individual articles in this book are copyright © of the authors
and/or the original publishers.
Published February 2012 by Resistance Books and the International
Institute for Research and Education as Issue 52 of Notebooks for
Study and Research.
Edited by Ozlem Onaran and Fred Leplat
Cover design by Lauren Plum
ISBN: 978-0-902869-63-9
Printed in Britain by Lightning Source
Capitalism
Crises and Alternatives
Michel Husson, Andy Kilmister,
Susan Pashkoff, Sean Thompson, John Rees,
Ozlem Onaran , Eric Toussaint,
Sandra Ezquerra, Catherine Samary,
Jean Sanuk, and Claudio Katz
Edited by Ozlem Onaran and Fred Leplat
Resistance Books
London
'
International Institute for Research & Education
Amsterdam, Islamabad ft Manila
Contents
Preface, Ozlem Ona ran ............................................................. 9
WHERE IS THE CRISIS GOING?
Michel Husson ........................................................................... 11
THE CRISIS IN BRITAIN
Andy Kilmister ......................................................................... 41
AUSTERITY AND THE LIES THAT IMPOVERISH
Susan Pashkoff ........................................................................ 59
A GREEN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
Sean Thompson ....................................................................... 77
MARXISM AND THE CRISIS
JohnRees ................................................................................ 101
A FISCAL CRISIS OR A CRISIS OF DISTRIBUTION?
Ozlem Ona ran ....................................................................... 113
THE DEBT IN THE NORTH: SOME ALTERNATIVE PATHS,
Eric Toussaint ........................................................................ 149
WOMEN'S CRISES
Sandra Ezquerra .................................................................... 179
EASTERN EUROPE FACED WITH THE CRISIS OF THE
SYSTEM, Catherine Samary ................................................. 189
CHINA'S RISE AMIDST THE CRISIS
Jean Sanuk ............................................................................ 219
LATIN AMERICA'S CRISIS
Claudio Katz .......................................................................... 233
IN THE EYE OF THE STORM: THE DEBT CRISIS IN THE
EUROPEAN UNION, Eric Toussaint .................................... 249
About Resistance Books and the IIRE ................................... 275
Contributors
Michel Husson is an economist at IRES (a trade union-linked
institute) in Paris. He is member of the Fondation Copernic, a left
wing think tank, and of the Scientific Council of ATIAC. He has
published Un pur capitalisme, Lausanne 2008, Editions Page Deux.
You can consult his writings on http://hussonet.free.fr
Andy Kilmister teaches economics at Oxford Brookes University
and is a member of Socialist Resistance. He is the editor of Debatte:
Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe and the co
author (with Gary Browning) of Critical and Post-Critical Political
Economy (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006).
Susan Pashkoff has an MA and PhD in Economics from the New
School for Social Research, Graduate Faculty, NY. A former senior
lecturer in Economics, she is a regular blogger and lifelong political
activist.
Sean Thompson is a Marxist and has been concerned with
ecosocialist ideas since the late nineteen seventies. He is a member of
the Green Party (and of Green Left, its ecosocialist wing) and a
contributor to Socialist Resistance.
John Rees books include The Algebra of Revolution, Imperialism
and Resistance, Strategy and Tactics and, most recently, The People
Demand - a Short History of the Arab Revolutions (with Joseph
Daher). He is on the editorial board of Counterfire and is co-founder
of the Stop the War Coalition.
Ozlem Onaran is a lecturer in Economics. She has published
extensively in the areas of globalization, crisis, employment, wages,
and inequality.
Eric Toussaint teaches at the University of Liege. He is President of
the Committee for Cancellation of Third World Debt and is a member
of the International Committee of Fourth International. His books
include The World Bank - A Critical Primer (Pluto Press, London,
2008) and Your Money or your Life - The Tyranny of the Global
Finance, (Haymarket, Chicago, 2005).
Sandra Ezquerra is a doctor in sociology as well as an anticapitalist
and feminist activist. She currently conducts a research project on
informal economic relations at Universitat de Barcelona and teaches
social science methodology at Universitat de Vic. She is also an active
member in the feminist and 15M social movements in Spain.
Catherine Samary teaches economics in Paris-Dauphine and is
associated with the Institute of European Studies at the University
Paris 8 St Denis. She is involved with editing the Monde
Diplomatique Atlas. She is a member of the scientific council of the
French Attac, of the New Anticapitalist Party and of the Fourth
International. She has written extensively on Eastern Europe and in
particular, Yugoslavia.
Jean Sanuk is an economist, a specialist on Asia. He coordinated
the recent URE economists' seminar.
Claudio Katz is an economist and researcher. He lectures at the
University of Buenos Aires and is a Fellow at the International
Institute for Research and Education. He is a member of the in the
Argentine network 'Economistas de Izquierda' (Economists of the
Left). You can consult his writings at www.lahaine.org/katz.
Prefa ce
Ozlem Onaran
This edited volume is a follow-up to our previous book 'Socialists and
the Capitalist Recession' published in 2009. Four years after the onset
of the crisis, our analysis of the systemic, multiple nature of the crisis
combining economic, food, energy and ecological crises is even more
pronounced. The policy reaction of the ruling elite, shaped by the
existing pro-capital power structures, have been mere efforts to
preserve the high profits via massive state intervention with an aim of
going back to the 'business as usual' strategy of neoliberalism. The
plans to rescue capitalism from itself have so far not only failed to
address these multiple dimensions but also have been incapable of
promoting the return to a stable economy as the rescue packages
unleashed a so-called public debt crisis. The neoliberal policies as well
as the power of the financial markets have remained unchanged.
We are also facing a multi-speed world economy with a
stronger recovery in Latin America and Asia, especially China, while
advanced capitalist countries are trapped in a weak recovery or even a
deepening of the crisis, particularly in Europe with important
repercussions for global capitalism. In particular China has been the
main driver of growth since 2010 for the other developing countries
and even for advanced capitalist countries like Germany; however this
process has its limits. It is yet to be seen whether this will lead to a
change in the international balance of power relations.
The book's main aim is to present a comparative analysis of the
crisis in different regions and to contribute to the debates about
alternatives with an emphasis on the multiple dimensions of the
crisis.
In Chapter one, Michel Husson presents an outline of the
reasons behind the crisis and the stages of the crisis. Chapter two by
Andy Kilmister focuses on the particular intensity of the crisis in
Britain and the deep rooted contradictions behind the crisis in the
British economy. In Chapter three, Susan Pashkoff analyses the
discourse and political economy of austerity with a focus on the latest
evidence about distribution and unemployment in Britain. In Chapter
