The Crisis Paradigm: Description and Prescription in Social and Political Theory

252 Pages·2019·2.603 MB·English

by  Andrew Simon Gilbert

The Crisis Paradigm
Description and Prescription
in Social and Political Theory
Andrew Simon Gilbert
The Crisis Paradigm
Andrew Simon Gilbert
The Crisis Paradigm
Description and Prescription in Social
and Political Theory
Andrew SimonGilbert
Department ofSocial Inquiry
La Trobe University
Bundoora, VIC,Australia
ISBN978-3-030-11059-8 ISBN978-3-030-11060-4 (eBook)
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For Gemma, with love and many thanks.
Preface
“ ”
This book is an examination of the idea of crisis in the work of four
twentieth century thinkers. Crisis is a term that has become almost
ubiquitous in contemporary language. Reading newspapers and online
news, it is not unusual to be inundated with reports of a bewildering
’
variety ofdifferent crisesunfolding intoday s world.Yetbehindtheclear
dramatic effect of the word, there is a great deal of ambiguity about what
crisis actually means. Several questions can be posed: What is a crisis?
What does a crisis entail? How is it deployed? Why has it become so
prevalent?
Like much of the burgeoning literature on crisis being published
“
today, this book emerged out of the aftermath of the Global Financial
”
Crisis of late last decade. There were two determining factors in my
fi
decision to take up crisis as a Ph.D. project. The rst was the advice of
my academic supervisor, Peter Beilharz, who suggested it to me as a
possible project after I watched him deliver a public lecture on the topic.
The second was my history of involvement in socialist politics, and the
“ ”
effect that the crisis had on my political outlook.
Like many socialists at the time, I looked at the events of 2008 with
future anticipation. As stock markets crashed, homes were foreclosed,
vii
viii Preface
and banks were bailed out, I busied myself reading articles, pamphlets,
books which would explain to me why capitalism had failed, why such
failure was a systemic inevitability, and what kind of society was needed
to prevent such failures in the future. The assumption was that the crisis
waslayingbarethepathologiesandcontradictions ofcapitalism,andthat
the role of socialists was to educate themselves about the root causes of
crisis in order to prepare, build and lead a movement which could
eventually transition humanity out of a crisis-prone economic system.
fi
One of the rst texts I engaged with, which positioned itself as ful-
fi
lling precisely that task, was a book on Marxist economics called
Explaining the Crisis by the late British socialist Chris Harman (1984).
’
What struck me about this book s title was that it was not immediately
“ ”
clear which or what sort of crisis was being referred to. It was rather
presumed that both author and reader were already agreed that a
“ ”
long-term crisis ofcapitalismwasself-evident,andthatthebookwould
be an exercise in explaining it. What struck me even more was that the
fi
book itself was rst published in the early 1980s, and that it was pre-
mised on a claim that the capitalist system was in the midst of a terminal
crisis at that time. The Thatcherist assault on the labour movement and
welfare state was presumed to be an effort aimed at saving a sinking ship,
’ fi
symptomatic of capitalism s long-term decline. To my early twenty- rst
’
century eyes, this was a questionable interpretation. Harman s most
fundamental presuppositions seemed to be at odds with many of the
crisis narratives emerging out of 2008, which cast the GFC as an
unravelling of established neo-liberal economic orthodoxies and prac-
tices. As the contemporary narratives went, neo-liberalism had cemented
itself into place through its remarkable political and theoretical successes
during the 1980s, to the catastrophic detriment of the organized left,
who had remained demoralized and disoriented ever since. The reces-
“ ”
sions of the 1980s never manifested in a crisis of capitalism. Rather
they were used as an excuse to consolidate neo-liberal and monetarist
reforms. The crisis of 2008, on the other hand, was being articulated as
theopportunemomentfortheanti-capitalistlefttoregroupandbeginto
’
recoverfromcapitalism speriodofoverwhelmingideologicalsuccess.My
initialreactionwasorthodox:IassumedthatHarmanhadsimplyjumped
the gun, and that the crisis he was explaining to us in the 1980s was
Preface ix
fi
actually only now genuinely unfolding in the twenty- rst century, an
argument he himself was also making at the time.
However, by 2012, and the beginning of my Ph.D. candidature, it
had become clear to me that the crisis of capitalism had not occured as
expected.TheWesternleftwasjustasmuchinthewildernessaseverand
fi
banks, businesses, and nancial markets had largely consolidated a
recovery. The Arab Spring,Occupy Wall Street, andthe electoral success
fl
of the Greek left had allowed some to see brief ickers of resistance, but
these either petered out or were (sometimes violently) curtailed by the
state. There was little evidence that the contradictions of capitalism were
laid bare, and least not in the ways that were expected in 2008. And
those still searching for alternatives seemed to be rehashing the same
’
orthodoxy I had seen in Harman s work. Consequently, this book is
partlytheresultofaself-examinationofownassumptions.Iposedmyself
the following questions: What were my expectations about crisis? Why
fi
have they not been ful lled?
I do not now believe such questions can be answered through eco-
“ ”
nomic explanations or developing yet another crisis theory as it has
becomeknown.AsInowseeit, such anapproach tends to eitherassume
the reality of crisis as a starting point, or it attempts to operationalize or
fi
de ne crisis into something which can then be observed as existing. Nor
fi
can they be answered by attempting to rede ne or reconceptualize crisis
inawaythatsuccessfullydescribesourtime.Rather,formethequestions
fi
have become: What meaning does crisis carry in the rst place? Why
would we want to observe it? What presuppositions does it require and
fl
enable? How can we re ect upon these presuppositions? Or to sum-
marize: How can we be more self-aware about our use and reception of
crisis language? The four thinkers addressed in this book have been
chosenbecausetheyspeaktothesequestionsinonewayoranother.This
moves the book across several disciplinary boundaries, from sociology
into philosophy, politics, history and political economy. This may strike
some readers as lacking a clearly established methodology or focus. Yet
fi
the aim is not to nd the method by which crisis can be understood.
Rather,thepointistodrawfromthesethinkersanunderstandingofhow
crisis operates as a conceptual mode for observing and describing our
“ ”
world. I call this conceptual mode the crisis paradigm , and I have
x Preface
chosen these social and political theorists as my foil because I believe the
way they think both with and against the crisis paradigm provides
valuable insights into its conceptual mechanics.
There are too many people who have helped make this book a reality
tobeallmentionedhere.However,specialthanksgotomyfamily,tomy
parents and to my sister, who have supported me over the years. The
people at La Trobe university, both staff and students, for the sense of
scholarly camaraderie,butalsothe friendly community.Tomyacademic
supervisors, Peter Beilharz, Trevor Hogan, John Carroll for your excel-
lent advice and keen eyes for detail. To those who patiently read various
draftsofthistextandwhoseadviceprovedinvaluable,HarryPaternoster,
Tim Andrews, John Gannon and Daniel Lopez. To my fellow La
Trobrians, Alex Pavlotski, Marby Villaceran, Adeel Hamza, Alonso
Casanueva Baptista, Gary Devilles,Julian Potter and Alexia Cameronfor
themanyoftheideasandinspirationforthisthesisfoundtheirgenesisin
our conversations over the years. To María Pía Lara and Niklas
Kompridis who examined my dissertation and provided valuable feed-
back, as well as the anonymous reviewer for Palgrave Macmillan. Finally,
to my partner Gemma, for her enduring patience and generosity
throughout this project.
Melbourne, Australia Andrew Simon Gilbert
October 2018
Reference
Harman,C.(1984).ExplainingtheCrisis:AMarxistRe-appraisal.London,
UK: Bookmarks.
Contents
1 Introduction: The Crisis Paradigm 1
References 25
2 Georg Lukács: Rationality and Crisis 31
2.1 Lukács and the First World War 33
2.2 Capitalism as a Permanent Crisis 37
References 57
3 Reinhart Koselleck: Demoralizing Crisis 61
3.1 The Crisis Generations 63
3.2 The Crisis of Absolutism and the Pathology
of Enlightenment 73
’
3.3 Koselleck s Critics 91
References 100
’
4 Hannah Arendt: Crisis as Modernity s Choice 105
4.1 Crisis as Worldlessness 106
4.2 Totalitarianism and General Crisis 119
xi