@e_flux wrote:
Writing in the February 2018 issue of the Brooklyn Rail, Jamie Merchant offers a trenchant and detailed critique of "left economic nationalism," an emerging current of left-wing thought that advocates for strong states that can de-link individual national economies from the global economic system. This current, which is associated with socialist and social-democratic thinkers and organizations in the US and Europe, envisions the state appropriation of predator finance for egalitarian ends. But as Merchant argues, it is too late in the world history of capitalism for individual states to simply decouple themselves from the larger capitalist system. Trying to do so would not only bring economic ruin; it would stoke the kind of nationalist sentiment that is all too useful to the extreme right. Here's an excerpt from the article:
Financial nationalization is a particular strain of a general virus, what I will refer to as left economic nationalism. In a nutshell: left economic nationalism is the idea of subordinating financial institutions to the national state by withdrawing or sheltering them from the world market. Whatever form it takes, its claims are typically drawn from illusory premises in the service of a central myth: that national social democracy, or democratic socialism in one country, could be achieved by rolling back economic globalization. An integral plank in what has come to be labeled the “democratic socialist strategy,” left economic nationalism is a futile attempt to rewind history that stems from a basic misrecognition of the nature of capitalism.
In a snapshot: the question of modern financial power calls for an irreducibly transnational level of analysis, and thus of politics. But the schemes for nationalization re-impose narrowly local solutions on worldwide problems, scrambling any link between theory and practice. This amounts to simply wishing away the forces of global financialized production. Because these forces form a transnational whole that is larger than the sum of its parts, demands to nationalize or collectivize the commanding heights of finance would not bring forth the egalitarian world they aim at. Rather, they would more likely accelerate current trends toward world economic breakdown and geopolitical belligerence. This means that socialists, progressives, communists, democratic socialists, social democrats—in short, the various tendencies within what is usually called “the left”—need to start taking internationalism seriously as both a theoretical and strategic premise, rather than merely paying lip service to it.
Image of John Maynard Keynes via The Independent.
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