In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives [Paperback]

Throughout the counter-globalization movement and into the era of the Bush Administration, I tried to wrap my head around a way to simply explain what is meant by the term "Neoliberalism". I would say to classes, friends, and fellow activists that my take was that "Neoliberalism is characterized by privatization, deregulation of labor and trade and the commodification of more intimate and complex aspects of life than previous eras of capitalism had produced." But then there was the hassle of explaining the "Neo" part, the confused definitions of "liberal" popularly used in the U.S.,the difference between its theory and its practice (often involving a much deeper and more integral role for government than my simple summary could capture). And then comes the "Great Recession", also known as the financial crisis of 2007-2010, and everything changes.

It is no longer difficult to plainly see the contradictions of the Neoliberal policies of the last thirty years. Especially the role of the United States government in facilitating the maintenance and consolidation of industrial and financial power despite rhetoric of "deregulation and privatization." The bail-out plan alone makes it hard to deny and easy to understand that the U.S. State is integral and necessary to the recovery and perpetuation of this global financial mess. Canadian political economists Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin, and Greg Albo explain this in wonderfully clear terms in their latest book In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives out last spring on PM Press/Spectre Imprint (the imprint is coordinated by Sasha Lilley of the wonderfully insightful podcast Against the Grain).

This short book compiles several essays, many of which were developed for or inspired by the work of the Socialist Project, an independent socialist network based in Ontario. It is easy to tell that all three authors are educators (they all teach at York University in Toronto) because of their methodical approach to communicating their ideas. Key passages from the book are broken down in the final chapter as "Ten Thesis on the Crisis" which reviews and simplifies the history and analysis presented in chapters like "Surveying the Crisis: Is Neoliberalism Over?"; "Crisis Management from Bush to Obama"; and "Labor's Impasse and the Left" to name a few. It was written as an educational and organizing tool.

What makes this book stand out besides it's post-crisis analysis of Neoliberalism is its belief in the renewal of the Left and its deep connection to actually existing social movements. So many Marxist historians and philosophers write as if there is no social movement worth engaging or if there is a shout-out to an organizing effort, it reads as if it was pulled from a hat. These authors have put time and energy through the years in supporting organized labor throughout North America, particularly with the Canadian Auto Workers Union where Gindin was research director. The book presents the clearest explanation of the "Defeat of Labor" which has occurred in recent decades, going beyond simplistic descriptions of deindustrialization to elaborate on the interconnectedness between off-shoring, automation, free-trade policies like NAFTA, stagnant wages, and the integration of workers into the financial sector through pensions and real-estate investments. The trio's focus is not limited to an exclusively Union way forward, and they repeatedly call for the need to connect organized labor to other social movements to renew working class culture and politics as a step towards creating Left political alternatives to capitalism.

The short 129 pages of In and Out of the Crisis make it a useful tool that could be directed towards busy organizers and activists who literally don't have the time to dig into anything else. And it's clearly articulated descriptions of the crisis and possible ways forward make it the most generally useful book to come out of this economic crisis. I hope that it can get used to its fullest potential.

- Daniel Tucker, Chicago 7/19/2010

Other than David Harvey's wonderful The Enigma of Capital: and the Crises of Capitalism, this is the best book I have read on the economic crisis. Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin deserve to be more widely known. Check out the great interviews they did on the KPFA program Against the Grain, published in Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult (Spectre). This is a rather brief introduction to their ideas written with fellow York political scientist Greg Albo. A more substantial work is due out in 2012 from Verso). Panitch and Gindin don't buy the long downturn theory, that argues that capitalism has been struggling with declining profit margins since the early 1970s, that we get from Robert Brenner, The Economics of Global Turbulence, and John Bellamy Foster, The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences. They argue, with convincing evidence, that capitalism was able to successfully restructure itself in the 1980s, mainly at the expense of labor. Another interesting argument they put forward is that finance was enmeshed with the American State since at least the era of the New Deal, and that financial deregulation "was more a consequence than the main cause of the intense competition in financial markets and its attendant effects." Thus it is wrong headed to believe that if only Glass-Steagall hadn't been repealed we wouldn't be in the mess were in. The authors note how the major economic victory for the left in the Carter years was the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, which in the end simply served to place a larger section of the working class under the discipline of finance. The book closes with a penetrating analysis of the weakness of the American labor movement and the American left, followed by a chapter with suggested priorities for a revitalized left that goes far beyond the usual Keynesian solutions constantly proposed in places like The Nation magazine.

The authors of this book are some of the most innovative thinkers on the North American left. They can also write rather well. This combination makes this book a must read for people interested in moving beyond the austerity consensus currently supported by the Democratic and Republican parties.