Robert Meister / Professor of Social Thought and History of Consciousness / UC Santa Cruz
What do I hope will come out of our 2012 conference in collaboration with the Cultures of Finance Group at NYU? First, I hope to be surprised and stimulated by the work coming out of the brilliant, and highly international, group of graduate student researchers we have identified as Conference Fellows. I hope that they, too, will be encouraged (and maybe a little surprised) by what comes of a three-day opportunity to engage with each other and with the group of more senior scholars and practitioners whom we have put on the program and/or invited to attend. If all goes as planned, we should all come away with a heightened sense of the im- portance of doing our work now, and of emphasizing its public significance, not merely how it fits into this or that disciplinary framework. Let me say something just briefly about what I think has changed since the last Bruce Initiative for Rethinking Capitalism Conference held in April 2011 in Santa Cruz. It can be summed up in one word: “Occupy.” At the University of California, some of us have been occupying buildings since 2009. But our tactics were being improvised as we went along and even strong supporters of our movement believed that it would only be a matter of time before a disabling backlash occurred. That was before Tahrir Square, before the Euro Crisis, and before there was an occupy movement in which students joined the jobless and the homeless in parks and other places. In other words, it was before we understood that there was the possibility of a “we” who could articulate the fear of proletarianization that had driven stu- dents to take on massive, unpayable debt as stemming from the same sources as the fear of homelessness (living in those parks) that drove workers to take on loans that reached 145% of income in 2008. Who could have imagined, just two years
Let me say something just briefly about what I think has changed since the last Bruce Initiative for Rethinking Capitalism Conference held in April 2011 in Santa Cruz. It can be summed up in one word: “Occupy.” At the University of California, some of us have been occupying buildings since 2009. But our tactics were being improvised as we went along and even strong supporters of our movement believed that it would only be a matter of time before a disabling backlash occurred. That was before Tahrir Square, before the Euro Crisis, and before there was an oc- cupy movement in which students joined the jobless and the homeless in parks and other places. In other words, it was before we understood that there was the possibility of a “we” who could articulate the fear of proletarianization that had driven students to take on massive, unpayable debt as stemming from the same sources as the fear of homelessness (living in those parks) that drove workers to take on loans that reached 145% of income in 2008. Who could have imagined, just two years ago, that we would have the first student movement in memory that has (so far) not produced a serious backlash and that may even have widespread and broadly based political support? When we planned this conference in NYC in order to be closer to financial practitioners, we had no idea that we would also be at an epicenter of a political struggle that understands itself to can see justice on its horizon, our scholar- ship demonstrating finance’s weakness and contingency will simply make people more afraid it will collapse and more willing to hold on to what they now have at all costs. (In polite, policy language this is called “austerity.”) I believe we need to help this movement get past the point where it begins to scare people.
But that’s a big hope for a small conference, so let me close by stating an immediate question that we might productively address: As critical finance scholars, we need to help the activist political movement respond to the events it creates by becoming more democrat- ic (perhaps even in the ways that old- style demonstrations and mobilizations were). But it is also important to help the movement to become more effective in the way that strikes once were when they could shut down the economy by occupying chokepoints in the flows of raw materials and energy supplies that the capitalist mode of production has already placed in their hands. My question is: What levers of power have the financial system created that could be pulled (or repossessed) by popular collective action? Are these the same levers of power that “the suicide bombers” who currently control Wall Street threatened to pull if they did not get everything they demanded? Those “leaders” have certainly shown us the way in 2007-2008. But would a movement that threatened to become more effective lose democratic support? Would people fear that the system really could be shut down by activists who are answerable to no one and can sell out everyone but themselves? Have the political elites currently in charge been losing dem- ocratic support for much the same reason? Can we be ready for what happens when the next financial meltdown occurs?
I look forward to our discussions.
