Neoliberal monstrosities

[TexasTowelie]

David McNally is a Canadian socialist and activist, and the author of numerous books, including Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance and Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires and Global Capitalism. In late June, he was interviewed by Andrew Sernatinger and Tessa Echeverria for their Black Sheep Socialist Podcast. The interview transcript was first published in two parts at New Politics. Below is part two of the interview; click here to go back to part one.

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Tessa: It's of course important to understand how capitalism works and how the current crisis came to be in order to use that information to mobilize our social movements in a forward trajectory, and not just see it as crazy people instituting this plan that's not good for the economy.

I was hoping we could transition into talking about Monsters of the Market. In the introduction, you talk about how people say capitalism is a monstrous system, and that's what we're up against, but we need to recognize the real monstrosities that capitalism has brought about and the way it forces us to live under the system every day. I was wondering if you could go into why you wrote the book--tell us why you thought this was an important book and what was your process?

It's interesting because we've been starting, I think appropriately, from the economic side of the equation in terms of the most basic thing that people talk about in their lives: paying the bills, paying the rent, paying the mortgage, can they find a few more hours of work and so on.

But there's a danger in that, and I say that as somebody who writes a lot in the area of political economy. There's a danger that we don't pay attention to so many other dimensions of experience in a capitalist society. Here I think the image of monsters and monstrosity is really important.

More at http://socialistworker.org/2014/07/09/neoliberal-monstrosities .

[TBF]

1. Zombie capitalism!

Sorry - I couldn't resist! It's a good article from a great publication.

[daleanime]

2. K&R....