Part III: Crisis Politics

The capitalist crisis since 2007 was so deep, global, and long-lasting that it threatened to prevent “politics as usual.” It suggested to some that we might need to relearn political lessons from the last major capitalist crash, the Great Depression of the 1930s. To others it brought ominous suggestions and signs of “class war.” Major political parties and groups berated one another using poorly understood economic concepts (e.g., deficits, debts, debt ceilings, federal budgets, Keynesianism). Countries moved toward the breakup of their constituent regions, dangerous migrations and wars proliferated, and old political loyalties frayed or vanished. What politicians and events left unspoken was often more important than what was said. The basic issue was how to cope politically with a crisis far deeper and more difficult to end than any major political formation had foreseen.

The essays in Part III aim to show the economic goals pursued by major political forces as they contended for power and to manage the crisis in their differently preferred ways. The essays also seek to expose goals pursued by these same forces as they avoided and kept silent about key political dimensions of the crisis. In the midst of the crisis (autumn 2011), the explosive emergence of Occupy Wall Street altered political conditions above all by successfully inserting the “1 percent versus 99 percent” into world discussions of the crisis and the capitalism it reflected. One result was to open a much wider space for criticism of capitalism—and for conceptualizing the deepening crisis as a symptom of capitalism’s flaws and inadequacies.

The essays in Part III work within and further develop that space. They also begin to engage the diverse tendencies and targets among those whose criticisms of the crisis have broadened into criticisms of capitalism as a system. Different positions have begun to emerge on the roles and powers of the Federal Reserve, the relevance of the New Deal political realities to current conditions, and whether austerity as a government policy or capitalism itself is or should be the main issue now.