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Seminar: Randall Germain, ‘The Problem of History in IPE: An Intellectual History’
Political Economy seminar
The Problem of History in IPE: An Intellectual History
Speaker: Randall Germain, Carleton University
When: 3-4pm, Wednesday, 24 April, 2024
Where: A02 Social Sciences Building, Room 341, The University of Sydney
About the talk: The idea of history, although present throughout much of the traditional canon of political economy and its internationalized off-shoot – international political economy (IPE) – is today largely erased as a key theoretical feature of IPE research. Where it is included as a part of the research enterprise, it is most often formulated as either context for the problem under investigation, or as a linear unit of account such as t + 1. This represents a theoretical loss for the discipline of IPE, and my effort here is to recenter the idea of history as a core feature of IPE’s broad research agenda. To do this, I first revisit how the idea of history is framed in the work of Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Max Weber, to demonstrate that the idea of history was a critical element of the inspiration to political economy (and IPE). I then pick up how the idea of history informs what might be described as ‘modern’ IPE, most importantly in the work of foundational IPE scholars (Antonio Gramsci, Karl Polanyi, David Mitrany, E.H. Carr, Susan Strange and Robert Cox). This intellectual history reveals the important way in which the idea of history can frame the research enterprise of IPE as an examination of transformative change within the global political economy. In period marked by what appear to be deep and disruptive change, the idea of history is a necessary addition to the IPE conceptual and analytical toolkit.
About the speaker: Randall Germain is Professor of Political Science at Carleton University, Canada. His teaching and research examine the political economy of global finance, issues and themes associated with economic and financial governance, and theoretical debates within the field of international political economy. His scholarship has been published in journals such as the European Journal of International Relations, Global Governance, International Studies Quarterly, New Political Economy, Review of International Political Economy, and Review of International Studies. He is also the author of The International Organization of Credit (CUP, 1997) and Global Politics and Financial Governance (Palgrave, 2010). Most recently he edited Susan Strange and the Future of Global Political Economy (Routledge 2016). His current research explores how the idea of history has informed disciplinary debates in IPE.
The post Seminar: Randall Germain, ‘The Problem of History in IPE: An Intellectual History’ appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
Book Launch: Ben Spies-Butcher, ‘Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation’
UPDATE: THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED AND WILL BE RESCHEDULED. STAY TUNED!
Join Ben Spies-Butcher, Frank Stilwell and Gabrielle Meagher to launch Ben’s new book, Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation.
Where: New Britannia Hotel, 103 Cleveland St, Darlington
When: Wednesday 17th April, 5.30 for 6pm-7.30pm
About Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation by Assoc Prof Ben Spies-Butcher
Neoliberalism has made Australia less equal and our welfare system more brutal. But it has also changed the politics of inequality. Using examples from health to housing, unemployment to universities, this book identifies opportunities to make a more equal Australia. Published by Anthem Studies in Australian Politics, Economics and Society. More information and to purchase the book visit: https://anthempress.com/the-politics-of-the-australian-welfare-state-after-liberalisation-hb
Catering: Drinks and food available from the venue.
Getting there: 8 mins walk from Redfern Station, or 6 mins from Broadway. On the 352 bus route. Some timed car parking available.
The post Book Launch: Ben Spies-Butcher, ‘Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation’ appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
Seminar: Mareike Beck, Extroverted Financialisation: Banking on USD Debt
Political economy seminar
Extroverted Financialisation: Banking on USD Debt
Speaker: Mareike Beck, University of Warwick
When: Wednesday 17 April, 3-4pm, 2024
Where: A02 Social Sciences Building, Room 341, The University of Sydney, and Zoom
About the talk: I will speak about my new book, Extroverted Financialisation: Banking on USD Debt, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. The book offers a new account of the Americanisation of global finance. It advances the concept of extroverted financialisation as an original framework to explain US-led financialisation. The paradigmatic case study of German universal banks is used to demonstrate that the transformation of global banking towards US-style finance should be understood as a response to a revolution in funding practices that originated in US money markets in the 1960s. This new way of funding led to the securitisation of USD debt and rapid globalisation of USD flows, which has fundamentally reshaped the competitive dynamics of global finance as this has empowered US banks over their European counterparts. I argue that this has caused German banks to partially uproot their operations from their own home markets to institutionalise themselves into US money markets. I show that to be able to compete with US financial institutions, German banks had to fundamentally transform the core of their own banking models towards US-style finance. This transformation not only led to the German banks’ speculative investments during the 2000s subprime mortgage crisis but also to rising USD dependency and, ultimately, their contemporary decline.
About the speaker: I am an Assistant Professor in International Political Economy at the University of Warwick. Previously, I was Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at King’s College London, after having finished my PhD at the University of Sussex. My research agenda focuses on the drivers and socio-economic impacts of financialisation at the global and everyday level. My work has addresses this in three inter-related areas. First, I am interested in a social history of global finance. My book project Extroverted Financialisation: Banking on USD Debt (under contract with Cambridge University Press) develops a novel conceptualisation, extroverted financialisation, to frame the US Americanisation of global finance. I am particularly interested in the uneven nature of the USD-based global financial architecture, and how this has shaped financial globalisation, innovations in on- and offshore finance, and financial instability. Secondly, using a feminist political economy approach, I investigate how everyday asset management and global asset management interact to produce various forms of asset-based inequalities in financialised economies. My third area of interest concerns creative and performative methodologies for knowledge exchange and impact. I regularly engage with civil society groups and local communities. For example, in May 2023, I directed and performed in an aerial acrobatics circus show that performed feminist political economy theorising of homes in their dual function as (1) an everyday living space and (2) a global financial asset.
The post Seminar: Mareike Beck, Extroverted Financialisation: Banking on USD Debt appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
Clickbait capitalism – or, the return to libidinal political economy
Last year I published an edited volume called Clickbait Capitalism. The title came as a surprise, even to me. The book was meant to be called Libidinal Economies of Contemporary Capitalism. No one was interested in the volume until I changed the title. This surely tells us something about the publishing industry and how it likes to market the political-economic. A list of recently published books includes the following: Chokepoint Capitalism, Crack-up Capitalism, Cannibal Capitalism. Whatever next? One pundit on Twitter cut to the heart of the matter: “Why not ‘capitalist’ capitalism?” Anyway, I sent an email out to a few publishers: “I have a book manuscript called Clickbait Capitalism. Do you want to see it? Click here!” And just like that, they were interested. It was almost an accident. At the very least an experiment. There was no mention of clickbait whatsoever up until that point. Then suddenly it became the hook for the entire project.
In many ways, clickbait is a perfect title. It speaks directly to the intersection of money, technology, and desire. Clickbait suggests a cunning ruse to profit from unsavoury inclinations of one kind or another (FOMO, voyeurism, schadenfreude). Of course, clickbait usually ends in disappointment. The headline is a trick. The website is a con. You click away feeling cheated. I hope that is not the case with this book, which is more about the economies of desire taking shape around digital technology and finance than it is about clickbait per se. And I don’t think it will be the case, because the purpose of the trick here is to find a way of smuggling libidinal economy back into political economy discourse. And I do think there is something to be gained from putting this idea back into circulation. To give a sense of why, it is worth saying a few words about libidinal economy, about how the book is positioned in relation to the minor tradition of libidinal political economy, and about the scope of the volume in terms of the themes and approaches it covers.
First things first: What is “libidinal economy?” The phrase has its origins in Freud’s theory of psychical energy, or “libido”, and it underwent a decisive transformation during the mid-twentieth century as French intellectuals sought to stage an encounter between Freud and Marx. After this it becomes possible to speak about “libidinal political economy”. And the fundamental wager of this version of libidinal economy is that capitalism can be fruitfully engaged through the lens of desire.
To say that economy is a matter of desire means that it entails more than labour, production, or exchange; more than calculating costs and benefits. It is to say that economic life is organised by a range of unconscious processes and psychic drives. Libidinal political economy wants to bring these kinds of considerations to bear on economic analysis, to map “the flows of desire, the fears and anxieties, the loves and the despairs that traverse the social field”, as Foucault so memorably put it in the preface to Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus (p. xviii). When Lyotard published his own book on the theme, simply called Libidinal Economy, he went one step further: “Every political economy is libidinal” (p. 111). With this provocation, he meant to say not only that every mode of production is libidinal (feudalism, mercantilism, capitalism), but also that so too is any attempt to codify these theoretically (classical political economy, Marxist political economy, Keynesian economics). In other words, both the institutions and the concepts of contemporary capitalism must be read as vital aspects of its psychic life.
The aim with Clickbait Capitalism was to take Lyotard at his word and undertake just such a reading. To trace the psychological currents that underwrite the political and economic order of our times, even if libidinal-economic thinking is part of that order. I address this meta-theoretical level in my introduction to the volume, where I develop a preliminary account of the relations between libidinal economy and capitalism in three ways. First, by positioning libidinal economy at the intersection of economic and psychological thought. Second, by relating the development of libidinal-economic thought to the historical development of capitalism. And third, by emphasising the role of libidinal dynamics in the social reproduction of contemporary capitalism.
This is not the place to unpack each of these points in detail, but here are the headlines.
- Libidinal economy can be understood in scientific terms as marking out an intermediary space between psychoanalysis and political economy (or psychology and economics). But the story of libidinal economy stretches further back than Freud, entailing a circulation of metaphors between a much wider range of discourses. For this reason, a fully-fledged discipline of libidinal political economy is elusive, and perhaps not even desirable anyway.
- Libidinal economy is implicated in the story of how capitalism puts desire to work. The development of consumer capitalism was decisively shaped by psychoanalysis, which provided practical tools for the mass production of subjectivity alongside the mass production of commodities. It also, in its more radical form after 1968, helped to produce a form of economy that thrived on doing away with many of the repressive characteristics of industrial capitalism. Liberation from the family, from the factory, from lifelong careers and fixed identities; these legacies of libidinal economy also fuel the so-called desiring-machines of contemporary capitalism.
- Contemporary thought in this tradition revisits and replays many prior aspects of libidinal economy, including the signal moods attached to these. From Mark Fisher’s depressive libidinal economy to the manic revamped accelerationism now popular amongst tech bros; from the idea of a “world without desire” (Pettman 2020) to the idea of a “world without capital” (Fisher 2021). These are all familiar refrains and there are plenty of people out there ready and willing to continue cycling through these. And that is not a pursuit entirely devoid of value. But what if there was something to be gained by reformulating the underlying coordinates of libidinal economy too?
Consider again, then, the suggestion that “every political economy is libidinal”. Libidinal political economy wants to grapple with the libidinal dynamics of capitalism, yet it remains beholden to a very specific concept of economy derived from Marx. Why? There is simply no good reason to limit the economic concepts of libidinal economy to those associated with the rise of industrial capitalism. What is wanted, then, is a libidinal political economy fit for the analysis of contemporary capitalism, ready to engage its latest logics and symptoms, even if remains ensnared within them.
There have been some such attempts already, mostly scattered across the fringes of the social sciences. In International Political Economy, a sustained effort has been made to articulate a version of libidinal economy that draws on the ideas of heterodox institutionalists like Veblen and Commons (Amin and Palan 2001; Gammon and Palan 2006; Gammon and Wigan 2013). Meanwhile, a small but growing body of research has emerged that brings questions of libidinal economy to bear on contemporary issues, providing psychoanalytically-informed accounts of financial crisis, globalisation, and international development (Bennett 2012; Kapoor 2018, 2020; Kapoor et al. 2023). Clickbait Capitalism builds on and contributes toward the further development of a libidinal political economy along both these lines – the theoretical and the empirical – by focusing attention on the role played by desire in capitalism’s ongoing social reproduction.
In order to do this, the book brings together a motley crew of thinkers: recovering economists, geographers and development theorists, a clinical psychiatrist, political economy scholars of various stripes. The commentary is informed throughout by psychoanalytic theories of desire and the unconscious, but the broader approach adopted is one of theoretical pluralism. The book therefore mobilises a range of perspectives on desire, but also on economy, and on their relation to and interplay with one another through social institutions. Along the way, contributors draw on the ideas of Freud and Marx, Lacan and Veblen, Deleuze and Minsky, and others too. In empirical terms, the book aims to open such perspectives out onto a broader set of economic categories and themes than has normally been the case, and especially those that seem to be emerging as the calling cards of twenty-first-century capitalism. In particular, those linked to digital technology and finance.
The organisation of the volume as a whole reflects this scope and ambition. Perennial questions of death, sex, aggression, enjoyment, despair, hope, and revenge are followed onto the terrain of the contemporary, with chapters devoted to social media, online dating apps, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and meme stocks. The book unfolds in three phases. The first returns to the primal scenes of libidinal economy, connecting these to fundamental concerns in heterodox institutional economics. The second phase of the book puts libidinal-economic concepts into dialogue with structural features of contemporary capitalism, understood through the broad categories of technological change and social stratification. The book’s third phase engages contemporary forms of politics through the lens of hope and despair, offering a series of reflections on everyday responses to financial domination.
There are points of conflict between some of the chapters, which veer between different conceptions of the social and the psychic, not to mention different conceptions of economy and of capital. But the point is not to somehow resolve these differences into a unified perspective. Capitalism’s libidinal economies are unpredictable and unlikely to be mastered by systemic theorising. Instead, I like to think of the book as offering a modernist portrait of sorts; a portrait of the latest institutions to channel and reconfigure the psychic energies of political and economic life.
The book is obscenely expensive and quietly seductive. Could there be a better way to stage this return to libidinal political economy? You tell me.
The post Clickbait capitalism – or, the return to libidinal political economy appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
The Geopolitics of Global Capitalism and Ukraine
In our latest essay in Socialist Register 2024 we deliver a contribution to understanding contemporary geopolitics without shying away from placing our concerns within an analysis of capitalism.
Spotlighting contributions across the social sciences we demonstrate a common tendency to avoid any reference to capitalism as a totality. Instead, mainstream approaches commonly strive for an emphasis on a multiplicity of contingent social factors shaping geopolitics that results in mystifying economic development. We therefore argue that there is a common allergy to capitalist totality as well as historical materialism that grips the international theory of (1) the science-envy of structural realism; (2) constructivist ideas-centred accounts of geopolitical change based on contingency; and (3) approaches that focus on the discursive production and indeterminacy of geopolitics.
Ideology is always inscribed in method. Therefore, our argument is that contemporary approaches to geopolitics are trapped within a binary opposition between the form of ideology and the content of materiality. One can repeatedly witness a dualist opposition between the form of geopolitics (the states-system) and its contemporary socio-historical content (capitalism) in theorising on the international. Instead, making our own ideology explicit and drawing from Fredric Jameson, among others, we propose a rejuvenation of historical materialist dialectics to overcome this dualist opposition to offer fresh insights on competition and confrontation within the present-day conditions of capital accumulation. The reframing we propose rejects the binary dilemma of form and content.
In one table we represent these distinctions between form and content and link them to contending approaches to understanding contemporary geopolitics. Hence there is a dismissal of structural realism because of its material capabilities overemphasis on the content of the content in the historical process. Second, social constructivists are rejected for holding on to the dualism of form and content by emphasising the form of the content in an ideas-centred account of history. Finally, the approach that most focuses on the production of form, is the discursive approach to the form of form in poststructuralism. The result is a focus on a shapeless and contingent world of fetishised self/other differences that constructs the modern state and geopolitics.
As an alternative, our reframing asserts a focus on the content of the form as a historical materialist dialectical departure point for understanding the internal relation of the geopolitics of the states-system and global capitalism. Is there something peculiar in terms of the content of the capital relation that means that the states-system contingently came into being but has become the necessary form of geopolitics? How is the internal relation of the content of form represented most starkly in the modern condition of the geopolitics of global capitalism?
We pose these questions as a historical materialist move away from the separation or binary dualism of form and content to appreciate their internality, thus developing our work on internal relations as set out in an early article in International Studies Quarterly and then expanded in Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis.
Historical materialism provides a dialectical rudder to guide us though the binary dilemma of separating out content and form as external relations and we deploy that dialectical rudder in a geopolitical analysis of the war in Ukraine. In doing so, we distance ourselves from those analyses of geopolitics that, through the Ukraine War, make the case for expanding the permanent arms economy of military spending (such as Paul Mason). Equally, we reject those arguments that hold China as offering some form of multipolar alternative to U.S. geopolitics (such as Vijay Prasad). Additionally, those treatments of the war in Ukraine that elevate the conflict as foremost a war of self-determination and independence that must be supported with militarisation are scrutinised (such as Yuliya Yurchenko). The war in Ukraine may well be regarded as a war of independence but it is nested within wider inter-imperialist rivalries as well as the deep crisis in global capitalism. The Russo-Ukrainian War has been transformed into a proxy war between the US and its allies against Russia, fought with Ukrainian personnel on Ukrainian soil. It would be limiting to view the conflict as a war of self-determination given that Ukraine will most likely be treated post-conflict as another growth opportunity for transnational capital. Is not Ukraine part of a latest ‘bomb-and-build’ spatial fix strategy for capital accumulation? It would not be the first time in history that after a successful struggle for “self-determination” such concerns become pushed aside by the empire of capital. The geopolitical significance of Ukraine, then, is that it is one of the keystones in an arc of inter-imperialist competition that stretches across the Eurasian landmass.
In 2010, G. John Ikenberry perhaps represented most strikingly the liberal ideology of constructivism and its focus on what we call in Table 1 the form of the content. In an attempt to capture the discontents of the liberal international order, Ikenberry declared:
In the decades ahead, the United States and Europe and rising states—many of which are in Asia—will have more reasons and not fewer reasons to cooperate in open and rule-based ways.
His view was that the future would still belong to a liberal international order and that ‘the violent forces that have overthrown international orders in the past do not seem to operate today’. The contemporary geopolitics of the Russo-Ukrainian War clearly reveals how moribund such liberal internationalism and the ideology of an ideas-centred conception of political economic change actually is.
In contrast, although a historical materialist dialectical rudder does not provide finality on such issues it does offer a guiding red thread on the primacy of the category of capitalism as a totality, rather than separate parts, and how to internally relate the form of geopolitics (the states-system) and its contemporary socio-historical content (global capitalism) as moments of a whole. As a result, we argue that war in Ukraine is an inter-imperialist conflict between the US and its Western allies against Russia, which also needs to be understood as a warning signal for war against China.
Resistance against capitalism and its permanent arms economy is the only hope for a more peaceful world order. Opposition to all types of capitalist imperialism is a fundamental starting-point in this respect.
The post The Geopolitics of Global Capitalism and Ukraine appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
Time Enough at Last
In honor of my #Pintopia campaign, I thought it was time to visit these dodo friends again, since they are the subject of one of the pins!
They originated in comic #729 (with a brief cameo in #730 as well).
For each of my book collections, I have colored a handful of strips to make them special for the book. Occasionally I have then run the colorful versions later on the site, but I never reposted this one, until now!
I’ve shared it online a bunch this week – such as on Reddit – and I’m pleased to say that, despite being 13 years old, it still hits.
I rounded up some of my favorite comments and reactions here.
Our dodo friend is also the subject of a brand new pin design, which is available now as part of…
#Pintopia!
As I mentioned last week, I am launching ten brand-new pin designs!
It’s a crowdfunding campaign that is live RIGHT NOW through APRIL 18. You can get:
- Any (or all!) of the nine new pins above;
- Any (or all!) of my existing pin designs:
(which are also already available individually in my store)
- AND the delightful tenth pin below, which is NOT available for purchase, but instead comes FREE when you back both my campaign and that of my “cross-collaborator,” Peter Chiykowski! (And you get HIS pin free, too.)
Peter’s offering 25 (!!!) different tabletop-RPG-themed pins, celebrating his 25 years playing D&D.
You can read more about all different my pin designs over on the campaign page.
AND…if you’ve backed any of my Kickstarter campaigns before (and you use the same BackerKit account for this project), you will automatically get a free sticker set added to your order. A computer will figure this out!!
Launch Livestream
Peter hosted a livestream on our launch day, and I joined him for the first hour or so. We discussed my work, his work, the travails of both, and all kinds of interesting topics.
You can watch us here! Should you want to!!
What is the Factory Farm? Notes from Animals and Capital
Factory farms are horrific places. Globally, labor conditions in animal agriculture are appalling, with many workers facing unsafe conditions, low pay or no pay. The massive expansion of animal populations globally contributes to global warming, including through disproportionate land use and deforestation. Intensification of animal agriculture is a breeding ground for zoonotic disease. And of course, we know that factory farms are a nightmare for animals: these facilities rely on industrial scale forced reproduction, animals are routinely close confined, subject to deep controls over movement, sociality, diet and lighting, and experience pain, injuries and premature death as part and parcel of production and transport.
Yet the factory farm is increasingly the norm for meat and dairy production. Globally there has been a systematic global expansion of intensive animal agriculture , including through the industrialisation of aquaculture or ‘fish farms’. This has enabled hugely expanded production and consumption of animal based foods: the factory farm is one important reason for the massive expansion in world per capita meat and dairy consumption that has occurred over the last century.
In my new book Animals and Capital, I follow through the implications of Marx’s value theory for thinking about capitalist animal agriculture. One important argument of the book is that animal labour power can be understood from the perspective of value, and this provides a fresh way to look at the factory farm.
Marx’s understanding of the production process can be broken down into a number of simple components. In many production systems, the product is the outcome of labour power (measured in time), raw materials, and tools and machines coming together. For example, a chef in a kitchen might start with some raw ingredients (circulating capital), then use appliances, a stove and kitchenware (fixed capital) to work for a definite period of time (labour time) to produce a meal (the product).
We could illustrate this production process with the following simple formula:
Product (P) = Fixed Capital (FC) + Circulating Capital (CC) + Human Labour Time (LT)
or
P = FC + CC + LT
For Marx, intensification of production usually signals a changing technical composition of capital, with an increasing proportion of machines and raw materials deployed in production. Generally, this means that the ‘factory’ represents the arrival of both large quantities of fixed capital (machines, technologies), increased circulating capital (raw materials) and the relative reduction in in the number of human workers (or more particularly, human labour time).
In fully automated forms of production, human labour time might seem to completely disappear from the scene of production as machines arrive. We could amend our formula to account for this fully automated from of production as follows:
P = FC + CC
Here we imagine that human labour time has been completely removed from production, and products emerge from this fully automated factory purely through the interaction of fixed capital and raw materials. Note of course that in Marx’s view, machines embody the value of past human labour time, and this is expended during the production process. Further, the arrival of fixed capital does not actually mean that human workers get to rest; as Marx points out, this labour is redeployed or intensified. As such, in Marx’s story, human labour time is always present in production, including embodied in fixed capital.
To an extent the above usefully describes the tendency of the factory farm to reduce or eliminate human labour time. In many animal agriculture systems globally, human labour time is an important part of this production process. But as animal agriculture is increasingly automated, such as in the development of ‘smart’ fish farms, human labour time appears to be almost completely removed from the scene of production.
For Marx, only humans labour in a way that is valuable. Traditional Marxist theory would imagine that in the factory farm animals are merely the raw materials of production: in other words they are circulating capital, which is worked on in order to produce a product (meat).
But what happens to this picture if we assume animals not just raw materials, but also labour time?
In a previous PPE blog post, I have argued that we can conceptually makes sense of animal labour by reference to contemporary feminist labour theory – such as the work of Amrita Pande on commercial surrogacy – which theorizes how metabolic processes can be subsumed within capitalist production processes. In the case of animals, I argue that capitalist agriculture relies on living beings to be both a raw material that is worked on, and simultaneously life whose metabolic processes are relied upon as value creating labour to generate a new product. Conceptualising animal labour in this way means that animals arrive at production as a hybrid of raw material and labour, or alternatively, a combination of constant and variable capital.
We could represent this using an amended version of Marx’s production process, where animals are represented as both circulating capital (CCA) and animal labour time (LTA):
P = FC + (CC + CCA) + (LT + LTA)
In the above there is circulating capital (CC) in the form of animal feed, water, pharmaceuticals etc; however, simultaneously, animals are deployed as a form of circulating capital (CCA). Similarly, we can split labour time between human labour time (LT) and animal labour time (LTA), both representing together the combined labour time within production.
As I discussed above, intensification – the arrival of fixed capital – usually means a relative reduction in human labour time required per unit of production. If we could imagine a fully automated factory farm, with no human labour time involved, it could be represented as follows:
P = FC + (CC + CCA) + LTA
The above represents the complete elimination of human labour time. But what about animal labour time? Perversely, this cannot be eliminated, because animals represent both raw materials and they must become the product (meat). Indeed, intensification will see a massive expansion in animals used as raw materials (CCA) in order to produce more and more animal-based foods, and thus it is unavoidable that the animal labour force will continue to expand (as indeed it has globally). Machines cannot replace this labour that animals perform. Circulating capital in the form of feed will also need to expand in order for animals to reproduce their own labour (on themselves).
The inevitable expansion of animal labour time represents a cost of production that capitalist animal agriculture must continually seek to contain. Since animal labour cannot be removed, the solution for capital has been to use a variety of different strategies to make animal labour time more efficient, including shortening the lives of animals, standardising animal bodies to make them quicker to process, and increasing ‘yield’, including by enhanced control over feed.
In summary, then, what is the factory farm?
- The factory farm can be understood as a system of production where relative human labour time is minimised or eliminated; large quantities of fixed capital are deployed; animal lives must be expanded through forced breeding and thus the mass of animal labour time is also expanded; and other forms of circulating capital – such as feed – must be expanded to reproduce this animal labour force. These processes enable the over-production of consumption commodities as an output. The success of this model of the factory farm – as a modality of capitalist agriculture – can be measured by the radical way in which human diets have changed over the last century as a result of this overproduction, including through the unprecedented, in planetary terms, growth in chicken consumption.
- The factory farm, as I have described it, is a tendency towards intensification that continues apace across the planet, including through a recent push for ‘sustainable’ intensification. While there are certainly many forms of small scale and non-intensive animal agriculture globally, and human labour – particularly low wage, dangerous labour – is endemic to many intensive forms of production, the factory farm represents the generalized global trajectory of animal agriculture systems. China, for example, which traditionally had a massive backyard pig production industry, is now developing some of the largest intensive facilities in the world.
- The tendency everywhere in animal agriculture is to make all labour time efficient – for both human and non human workers. This perspective forces us to think of the factory farm as an ecology comprising a conglomerate of fixed capital, circulating capital and human and animal labour. Different strategies are used for the two different workforces – human and non human – within this ecology. Humans are progressively removed from production as it intensifies, making human labour time more efficient by its absence. The mass of animal labourers, on the other hand, are not reduced but expanded; but their labour is made more efficient through other strategies, including through continuing research to expand yield and reduce the lifespan.
- In the factory farm production becomes increasingly a process of interaction between animals and fixed capital to produce value. Here, animals have a different relationship to fixed capital. For Marx, the machine appeared in a relation of antagonism to the human worker: it was ‘a competitor who gets the better of the workman, and is constantly on the point of making him superfluous’. However, for animals, machines do not replace their labour. Instead, fixed capital – machines, enclosures and technologies – confront animals as ever-present and horrific adversaries, forcing them to produce value, taking their lives at the end of the process. This of course perfectly describes the factory farm and its particular horror – today we are bearing witness to the brutal confrontation between animal life and fixed capital within the capitalist production process.
The aim of my book is to push Marxist and left thinking towards a new understanding of the relationship between capitalism and animal life. The challenge before us is to work towards a future that liberates all workers from the painful, unfulfilling and deadly drudgery of work under capitalism.
*Animals and Capital could not have been written without the intellectual engagement and provocation of the Past & Present Reading Group at the University of Sydney. My thanks also to a Alex Blanchette for engagement which helped sharpen the ideas in this post.
The post What is the Factory Farm? Notes from Animals and Capital appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
“Everything is Exhausting” bag now available!
My friends at TopatoCo (who make my T-shirts and lots of other fine things) are making an “Everything is Exhausting” bag!
This slogan is one of my faux-warning-labels, which have proved to be very popular as stickers.
There’s a wee li’l preorder running right now where you can claim one of the new bags:
It’s a smallish bag about the size of an iPad, with some hidden pockets and other cool stuff. They call it a “Tech Bag,” which sounds very futuristic.
You can also bundle the bag (optionally) with an enamel pin of the same design!
Or, I do already make this design as a pin and a sticker that are available by themselves (no bag necessary).
[ Here’s that bag link a second time ]
Note: If you are an enamel pin fan, do stay tuned for another big announcement later this month. (Tease tease!)
Songwriting Track Breakdown: "Rainy day friction" Ardour/Github Recording Sessions
Listen to the song "Rainy day friction" here.
In this video, we take you behind the scenes of creating our song "Rainy Day Friction".
The song began as a simple piano riff, a variation of the song "Slippery Friction," which is part of a larger movie soundtrack project. We walk you through the song's evolution, showing how a piece of music can develop and change over time.
Using GitHub as an unconventional tool for musical collaboration, we were able to create and store different iterations of the song, allowing us to track its progression and refine each part. From the original piano track laid down in Ardour, a digital audio workstation, to the addition of a breathy saxophone line and a simple bass guitar, each element fits the mood of the movie scene.
The turning point came when our bass player, Cliff, questioned what vocals could be added. This sparked a new branch of creativity, leading to the development of a vocal line that would become the heart of the song.
The video goes through this creative process, showing how the initial loop was expanded into a full arrangement with a chorus, a contrabassoon part, and a violin melody.
But what really brought "Rainy Day Friction" to life was the inclusion of a saxophone part. We describe how we recorded multiple sessions with the saxophonist, Bryan, allowing him to freestyle and explore different riffs. These sessions were then meticulously chopped up and arranged to fit the song.
Forum: The Eternal Return of the Rentier? How Our Past Weighs on Our Future
In April, the School of Social and Political Sciences, in collaboration with the Justice and Inequality research priority of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, will be hosting Mike Savage, Martin White Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. He has a longstanding interest in the social and historical sources of inequality, within and across nations. From 2015 to 2020 Mike was Director of the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, and his most recent book is The Return of Inequality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past (Harvard University Press, 2021), praised by Thomas Piketty as a “major sociological contribution to the ongoing global debate on inequality and the return of social class”.
During Mike’s visit, we will be holding two public events: a public lecture on ‘The Racial Wealth Divide’ and a forum on ‘The Eternal Return of the Rentier? How Our Past Weighs on Our Future’ (details below). In addition, we will be holding two closed workshops: one on the hold of finance on public policy (and how to loosen or break it) (April 4-5) and another on the methodological and theoretical challenges facing inequality researchers at a time of escalating inequality (April 16). These events are invitation-only, but spaces are available – please contact martijn.konings@sydney.edu.au for further information.
Forum: The Eternal Return of the Rentier? How Our Past Weighs on Our Future
Wednesday 3 April, 3:30-5 pm
A02 Social Sciences Building, Room 650, The University of Sydney
Over the past decade, a certain strain of intellectual pessimism has migrated from social theory to popular culture. Our ability to make better futures, it advises, is hamstrung by the sheer weight of the past, resulting in economic stagnation, escalating inequality, generational rifts, and political instability. In political economy, that weight of the past has often been identified with the figure of the rentier, and Piketty’s work has documented the return of this morally questionable character, living off the return on property. But today’s rentiers are no longer top-hatted financiers, and whether owning a second home represents moral turpitude or a middle-class survival strategy is actively debated in the op-ed pages of Australian newspapers. Nor is it clear that we can account for the full extent of inequity in contemporary society by continuing to rely on existing definitions of wealth. As suggested by the current popularity of concepts such as “technofeudalism”, the production of speculative claims on imagined futures shape what appear to be anachronistically exploitative forms of work.
The disorienting ways in which old and new combine to produce unfamiliar forms of inequality demands that we open up our concepts and reconsider our methods. One of the most ambitious and compelling attempts to do so has been advanced by Mike Savage in his recent book The Return of Inequality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past (Harvard University Press, 2021). Professor Savage will be visiting the University of Sydney in April, and, taking its cue from the subtitle of his book, this panel invites leading scholars to reflect on how the past weighs on our future-making, and how we can acknowledge this without falling prey to pessimism of either will or intellect. Four panellists – Janet Roitman (RMIT), Mareike Beck (Warwick), Amin Samman (City), and Gareth Bryant (Sydney) – will provide punchy takes on the problem, and Mike will conclude with his own reflections on the post-pandemic future of the past.
Immediately after the event is Sophie Webber and Gareth Bryant’s book launch for Climate Finance at Gleebooks (from 6pm)
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