Week 4 Economic Crises and Imperial Wars 1 CAPITAL BONDAGE To - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Week 4 Economic Crises and Imperial Wars 1

CAPITAL BONDAGE � To prevent excess capital from losing value, profitable ways need to be found to absorb capital surpluses � geographic expansion, creative destruction � The relationship of capitalists to states; the problem of cultural myths about capitalist heroes � Strategic locations, strategic resources: vital to monopoly � How to employ excess capital, generate new demand for goods in oversupply? Loans & Aid � “New dynamic spaces of capital accumulation will ultimately generate surpluses and will seek ways to absorb them through geographical expansions” (Harvey, 2003, p. 120) � “The turn to a liberal form of imperialism (and one that had attached to it an ideology of progress and of a civilizing mission) resulted not from absolute economic imperatives but from the political unwillingness of the bourgeoisie to give up any of its privileges and thereby absorb overaccumulation internally through social reform at home” (Harvey, 2003, p. 126) � Centralizing global financial activity in the US 2

� “Imperialism, in this domain, amounts to foisting institutional arrangements and conditions upon others, usually in the name of universal well-being” (Harvey, 2003, p. 133) ACCUMULATION BY DISPOSSESSION � Rosa Luxemburg, the two sides of capitalism � Capitalism must always have something outside of itself, in order to stabilize itself (Harvey, 2003, p. 140) � Primitive accumulation � Privatization, liberalization, deregulation � neo-liberalism: Thatcher and Reagan, then IMF and World Bank, to address problem of overaccumulation of capital 3

CONSENT TO COERCION � “Imperialisms, like empires, come in many different shapes and forms” (Harvey, 2003, p. 184) � Current phase: financialization, deindustrialization, inflation, credit crunches � U.S. lost dominance in production, apart from military weaponry, R&D (losing dominance there too—see Harvey, 2003, p. 222) � recurrent crises of overaccumulation � Capitalists would rather overaccumulate profits � Debt-financed consumerism, debt-financed wars, debt-dependency (Harvey, 2003, p. 226) � On oppositional movements: some NGOs coopted, appropriated, controlled, channeled protest toward alignment with the regime of neoliberalism (Harvey, 2003, p. 189) � “Military activity abroad requires military-like discipline at home” (Harvey, 2003, p. 193) � p. 205 & p. 207: debt and declining empire � p. 214: Paul Bremer, looting Iraq 4