Towards a Revolutionary Anti-Capitalism
PHILLIP LOGAN
As the irrationality of the neoliberal political economy takes its toll on America, the masses have begun to stir for something new. From the Tea Party to the newly created Occupy Wall Street movement, there is a foreboding sense amongst the American people that something is fundamentally wrong with the dominant social-economic order. Yet, why is it that after three years of suffering and austerity that only a critique of reactionary anti-capitalism has emerged as the dominant dialogue among the American people? While “reactionary anti-capitalism” is a term that may seem off-putting, I think it is the proper framework to analyze this new emerging narrative and its parochial analysis of what is wrong in our society.
In America, most people would agree that the current “regime of accumulation” in place has failed and the government-state nexus’ recent actions are not fulfilling the general will of society. However, understand, while this general attitude is shared by many Americans, it is not necessarily expressed uniformly across the board...
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While I feel the anti-capitalist idealist and materialist designations respectively define the emerging ideology in the current social movements in America, I feel that they are not dichotomous and are two sides of the same ideology. While idealists might oppose the current regime of accumulation, their devotion to the ideal of the free market creates a contradiction that sees the current order as a problem of state intervention and not a systemic failure, which makes them materialist in this sense. On the other hand, materialists, while rejecting the pure ‘laissez-faire’ vision of the idealist, still remain ardent defenders of the free market. Elizabeth Warren’s progressive defense of the free market reveals a desire to construct a free market capitalism with a human face, often reaching back to a romantic portrayal of the Keynesian/Fordist regime of accumulation and arguing for effective state intervention. While these two terms demonstrate a plurality within this narrative, this plurality I have designated is problematic because of the continuities between them. Thus, I have created a new term that I feel is more adequate to describe the new politics that is emerging in the current dialogue, reactionary anti-capitalism...
Much more here: http://theactivist.org/blog/towards-a-revolutionary-anti-capitalism
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