The Connecticut Civil Liberties Defense Committee, a coalition of unions, rank-and-file workers, faith leaders and community members formed in April, held a daylong conference in Hartford on Nov. 8 titled, “Our Power: A Working People’s Conference on Civil Liberties and Resistance.”
Conference workshops led by local and national activists discusses issues including: building an intersectional movement against police brutality; defending due process and immigrant rights; protecting academic freedom and the Palestine Solidarity Movement.
The event’s keynote speaker was William I. Robinson, professor of sociology and global and international studies, Latin American and Iberian studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Robinson is an authority on what’s driving the world’s elites toward ever-greater austerity and repression. His talk focused on the political economic context in which neoliberal governments are losing authority and the far right is gaining ground, as well as the relationship between the crises of global capitalism and strategies needed to resist. Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus attended the conference and presents this excerpt of Robinson’s talk.
WILLIAM I. ROBINSON: But then this globalization boom comes to an end with the global financial collapse of 2008 and the transnational capitalist class is what happens here. They accumulate up until 2008 and since then even more, they accumulate more money than they can spend, much less reinvest. This is what we call technically “surplus capital.” These vast quantities of capital that have nowhere to go. And the thing is that means it’s idle capital and capital has to continue to accumulate. It cannot be idle. If there is capital that is idle, that is a state of crisis and it brings us all down with it. Capital has to expand. It’s like riding a bicycle. You stop pedaling the bicycle, it slows down and it falls over. Capitalism stops expanding outward. It stops conquering new territories and new peoples and new markets and seizing new resources. It goes into crisis. And we are in the precipice of another giant crisis, something which may go beyond the financial collapse of 2008.
And for me, it’s not a question of if that crisis will take place, it’s when. And it may be a lot sooner than we think. So the great challenge that the ruling classes face right now is how to expand, how to continue accumulating capital, how to unload this enormous surplus profits that it is just sitting on—how to continue making profits.
And so they’ve been pursuing, especially since 2008, but before also, three ways of continuing to expand and make profit and keep the global economy going that are unsustainable. One is debt. Debt is at an all time high. It’s at $300 trillion worldwide, whereas the whole global economy is only worth a $100 trillion. And consumer debt. We are maxed out, not just here in the United States—worldwide. The working class can’t assume any more debt. And then there’s state debt. The state has been going into all of this debt, but not for us, not to help us workers.
And then there is all of this speculation. It boggles the mind, the levels of speculation, and that’s producing multiple bubbles. One bubble is cryptocurrency. That’s nothing but a speculative instrument. It has nothing to do with real wealth and real people like us. But the biggest bubble right now is artificial intelligence and it’s going to bust. And that might be the trigger to bring about this next crisis and collapse.
So these outlets to continue having the global economy move forward at a time of profound over accumulation and stagnation, they’re becoming exhausted. They’re not doing the trick anymore. So the transnational capitalist class is in this desperate search for outlets to unload surplus capital. That means it is seeking to and doing it—violently cracking open new spaces for global accumulation all around the world—in the United States and all around the world. And so right now, the ruling classes, the capitalist estates that are the instruments of the transnational capitalist class, they’re engaged in this vast, digitally driven restructuring and transformation of global capitalism.
We’re seeing right now this worldwide round of predatory expansion of extractivist seizure of resources. The expansion of wars and conflicts, displacement of millions and repression. This is what’s taking place behind the headlines, this imminent war with Venezuela, the war against immigrants and ICE terrorism and so forth. And above all, what these ruling classes and the transnational capitalist class here—but also I’m speaking about the whole world—what they’re seeking to do now is to transfer the costs of the crisis onto the working and popular classes.
And we need to be clear about this, that global Trumpisms is an all out attack on the working classes as capitalist states assume authoritarian, dictatorial and fascist forms as instruments. These capitalist states, assuming those forms as instruments for capitalist class warfare. They are seeking as we know very well, to smash whatever remains of the regulatory state. To smash and eliminate whatever remains of the social welfare state. Total privatization, the polarization of wages, the repression of unions, the containment and really the extermination of surplus humanity—to lock us all into permanent precarity and vulnerability.
And also to counter stagnation and also to counter the actual rebellion underway amongst us, the masses of people in the world, but also the potential rebellion. They are deepening what I call militarized accumulation and accumulation by repression. Meaning that repression and wars and so forth are a way of making profit and getting out of stagnation in and of themselves. And they are also an instrument for smashing resistance to this system. So we’re seeing the rapid militarization of the whole economy and society and the expansion of what I refer to as the global police state.
Listen to the full recording of William I. Robinson’s keynote speech (34:29) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. For periodic updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter to get updates to our “Hey AmeriKKKa, It’s Not Normal” compilation.
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