New Left Review

Apart from Robert Brenner's barnstorming lead article, the issue is relatively academic, plodding and dull - with the additional exception of Monique Sicard's short, fun and informative piece on the architecture of the EU in Brussels. It is a pity, because normally I am a big fan of Wolfgang Streeck. He just didn't really take me anywhere this time. And yet, I am giving the issue 4 stars because Robert Brenner is a rockstar. Seriously. Just the facts, ma'am - no ideology or melodrama, and yet the facts are so shocking that he still manages to bring the house down with a calm retelling of what has been going on this year in the US congress. His impact is all the more heightened for being a lone voice actually informing us of what has been going on. The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, the Guardian, Globe and Mail - I do not recall seeing any of these details in any mainstream media whatsoever. The times are indeed rough when we start turning to the bimonthly academic New Left Review for news. Yet here we are. Everyone should read Brenner's article, and any newspaper worth its salt should syndicate it in their weekend magazines.… (meer)

Marc D'Eramo on the insufficient US economic response to the pandemic is short and powerful:

"...the pettiness of these legislative tricks—too localized and limited to rescue an ailing neoliberal order—shows that the pandemic has caught the ruling classes off guard: they have not yet grasped the recession that awaits us, and its capacity to upend economic orthodoxies. Just as Agamben views all emergencies as anti-terrorist, our rulers see this systemic crisis as a mere financial one: they respond to the pandemic as if it were a new 2008, imitating Bernanke and prescribing Friedmanite monetary expansion. Prisoners of monetarist orthodoxy, they do not understand that this time the demand shock will entail more than a simple liquidity crisis.

"Soon enough, entire fortunes will be lost as capitalists watch their business ventures (airlines, construction companies, car factories, tourist circuits, film productions) go down the drain. But in this context, Friedman’s ‘helicopter drop of money’—the injection of astronomic amounts of liquidity into the economy—will initiate a large-scale destruction of capital, since this newly issued currency does not correspond to any real value. During wartime, both financial and material capital is demolished: infrastructures, factories, bridges, ports, stations, airports, buildings. But once the war is over a period of reconstruction begins, and it is this reconstruction that triggers an economic rebound. However, the current epidemic looks more like a neutrino bomb, which kills humans and leaves buildings, roads and factories intact (if empty). So, when the epidemic is over, there will be nothing to rebuild—and no consequent recovery."

Shaohua Zhan on the Land Question in China is equally direct, concise and informative.

The rest of the edition is over-academic and thus inaccessible, inconclusive and irrelevant.… (meer)