[P2P-F] Fwd: [CommonGood] "Beyond Digital Capitalism" - new book of Socialist Register; Interview with Editors - L. Panitch & G. Albo on "Capitalist contradictions & COVID-19 crisis"

Sun Jan 3 13:21:40 CET 2021

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From: tina ebro <cgebro at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Jan 3, 2021 at 1:40 AM
Subject: [CommonGood] "Beyond Digital Capitalism" - new book of Socialist
Register; Interview with Editors - L. Panitch & G. Albo on "Capitalist
contradictions & COVID-19 crisis"
To:

'Socialist Register' editors discuss capitalist contradictions and the
COVID-19 crisis

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Following the publication of the *Socialist Register*'s 56th volume at the
end of 2019, co-editors Leo Panitch and Greg Albo of York University
reflect on their editorships of the journal and discuss how the COVID-19
pandemic is highlighting the contradictions in neoliberal capitalism.

*Panitch*, professor emeritus of politics at York University, has been
co-editing the *Socialist Register*
<https://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv> for nearly 35 years.

In a paper that appeared in the first volume he was responsible for,
Panitch argued that there is nothing automatic about the development of
socialist consciousness when the capitalist economy is not generating
material benefits or job security for the working class.

Leo Panitch

Revisiting that theme, Panitch is adamant that it remains, unfortunately,
objectively true today.

Panitch believes that mainstream social democratic parties, unable to move
beyond the welfare states they helped establish after the Second World War,
have accommodated themselves to neoliberal global capitalism.

“Part of the radical left’s critique of social democratic parties, which I
agree with,” Panitch explained, “is that the compromise with the existing
capitalist system those parties tried to make has come undone. On the other
hand, the expectation that crises in the system would produce new
revolutionary workers has simply not been born out.”

*Albo*, an associate professor in York University’s Department of Politics,
considered similar themes when he took up co-editing the *Socialist
Register* in 2011 following the global financial crisis and recession. The
preface of his first volume opened by stating that “crises have a way of
clarifying things.”

Now, as the world faces a new challenge – the COVID-19 pandemic – Albo
again sees an opportunity for clarity.

“I think there’s a certain clarity at the present moment of the problems of
neoliberalism,” Albo explained. “Everybody is seeing, for example, the
rundown conditions of our health care systems.”
[image: Greg Albo]

Greg Albo

Albo envisions new mechanisms forming within states to address the crisis –
ranging from emergency monetary policy and the socialization of wages to
the way supply chains and health care systems are being re-thought – as
important issues to monitor as this crisis, and the responses to it,
unfolds.

While, similar to Panitch, Albo doesn’t see crisis as an automatic catalyst
for change, he is interested in the types of class alliances that could
emerge following this world event, and what the global balance of power
might look like on the other side. “After we see the wreckage that has been
imposed, again, by neoliberalism, will the response be to push away from
it?” he asked.

The latest volume of the *Socialist Register*, the publication’s 56th,
titled, *Beyond Market Dystopia: New Ways of Living
<https://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv>*, captures several issues and
themes related to the impact of states’ responses to the COVID-19 outbreak
despite being published prior to the virus being declared a pandemic. “The
volume hit this moment very well, although the authors of the essays were
obviously not writing about this moment directly,” Albo said.

Although Panitch and Albo asked contributors to consider dystopia, they
don’t see the volume as necessarily pessimistic.
[image: "Beyond Market Dystopia: New Ways of Living"]

*Beyond Market Dystopia: New Ways of Living*

Panitch described the theme of “new ways of living” as “an attempt to get
us to think about the terrible new ways in which we’re living, and the
consequences of market dystopia – as seen in the appalling lack of
preparation of our health care system – but also to encourage people to be
visionary.” For Panitch, looking at new ways of living means encouraging
the *Register’s* authors and audience to retain a positive vision of the
future.

In a paper he co-authored with former York Professor and Visiting Packer
Chair in Social Justice *Sam Gindin* and York PhD graduate *Stephen Maher*,
Panitch explores both the promises and limitations of contemporary
progressive political campaigns such as those for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth
Warren and Jeremy Corbyn.

Oxford University Professor *Barbara Harriss-White* examines climate change
and the ecological crisis and considers how to make the world a better
place through restitution and restoration.

Authors contributed pieces looking at refugees and global migration, social
reproduction, the economy in the home, the corporatization of health care
and education systems and a variety of other topics related to
neoliberalism is fostering market economies in all parts of society.

*Roger Keil*, a professor at York University, wrote a paper titled
“Communism in the Suburbs?” which looks at attempts throughout the past
century to develop “utopian communities” in Los Angeles through measures
such as more egalitarian housing policies.

The volume concludes with a paper by renowned critical theorist, feminist
and philosopher *Nancy Fraser*, asking, “What should socialism mean in the
twenty-first century?”

Panitch is pleased to see York University well represented in the
*Register’s *56th volume, reflecting on a “steady stream of York
contributors” he has been thankful for since he and Albo began editing the
journal.

“I’m very proud of the place York always occupies,” Panitch said, “and I’m
very thankful to York for the kind of support it has always provided to my
editorship of the *Register*.”

Looking back at his tenure as one of the journal’s editors, Panitch is also
proud of the places the *Socialist Register* has come to occupy both in
academia and amongst left intellectuals.

“It was always resolutely international, and it still is,” Panitch said.
“Someone once said to me, ‘if you want to be read in Alexandria, Egypt,
publish in the *Register*, and if you want to be read in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, don’t.’”

Panitch recalled how founding editor Ralph Miliband told him, “the
*Register* needs to be hard to read and hard to write for,” in the sense of
being intellectually challenging yet always very clearly written. Nearly
all of the journal’s essays are commissioned, with hardly anyone ever
declining to write for the publication when asked.
[image: "Searching for Socialism: The Project of the Labour New Left from
Benn to Corbyn"]

*Searching for Socialism: The Project of the Labour New Left from Benn to
Corbyn*

*Beyond Market Dystopia* is the first of two volumes based on the theme of
new ways of living. Panitch and Albo are already working on a companion
edition, *Beyond Digital Capitalism*, to be published in fall 2020.

Albo, who coordinates the Toronto Socialist Project’s
<https://socialistproject.ca/> daily e-magazine, *The Bullet*
<https://socialistproject.ca/bullet/>, and supports the work of the Centre
for Social Justice <https://www.socialjustice.org/>, is finding more time
for writing – and editing the work of others who have more time for writing
– while in isolation.

Panitch, whose formal role at York as a retired senior scholar mainly sees
him giving talks and wrapping up a handful of remaining PhD supervisions,
is looking forward to the upcoming launch of his new book, *Searching for
Socialism: The Project of the Labour New Left from Benn to Corbyn*
<https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/635952/searching-for-socialism-by-leo-panitch/9781788738347>
*, *co-authored with *Colin Leyes*, which will likely take place in a
virtual format later this month.

“Maybe we’ll call it ‘Zooming for Socialism,’” Panitch joked.
*Do you have a story to share about how you are coping, or what you are
doing differently, during the COVID-19 pandemic? Email us at *
*yfile at yorku.ca* <yfile at yorku.ca>*.*

____________________________________________________________________
[image: image.png]
As digital technology became integral to the capitalist market dystopia of
the first decades the 21st century, it not only refashioned our ways of
communicating but of working and consuming, indeed ways of living. Even as
the COVID-19 pandemic revealed not only the lack of investment, planning
and preparation that underlay the scandalous slowness of the responses by
states around the world, but also grotesque class and racial inequalities
as it coursed its way through the population, the owners of high-tech
corporations were enriched by tens of billions of dollars. Rejecting both
technological determinism and facile ‘cyber-utopian’ thinking, the 57th annual
volume of the Socialist Register addresses how to imagine, struggle for,
and plan for, new democratic socialist ways of living after the pandemic.
Beyond Digital Capitalism: New Ways of Living
<https://monthlyreview.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=36ce609ae68971b4f060ad9c7&id=0e59a3a7ca&e=d1eef27fbc>
*Socialist Register 2021*

*edited by Leo Panitch and Greg Albo*
“The *Socialist Register* has been the intellectual lodestar for the
international left since 1964.”
—*Mike Davis*, author, *Monster at Our Door* and *Planet of Slums*
“I know the *Register* very well and have found it extremely stimulating,
often invaluable.”
—*Noam Chomsky*, Laureate Professor, University of Arizona; writer and
activist

As digital technology became integral to the capitalist market dystopia of
the first decades of the 21st century, it refashioned both our ways of
working and our ways of consuming, as well as our ways of communicating.
And as the Covid-19 pandemic coursed through the world’s population, adding
tens of billions of dollars to the profits of high-tech corporations, its
impact revealed grotesque class and racial inequalities and the gross lack
of public investment, planning and preparation which lay behind the
scandalously slow and inadequate responses of so many states.

------------------------------

*Contents:*

   - Ursula Huws: Reaping the whirlwind: Digitalization, restructuring, and
   mobilization in the Covid crisis
   - Bryan D. Palmer: The time of our lives: Reflections on work and
   capitalist temporality
   - Larry Lohmann: Interpretation machines: Contradictions of ‘artificial
   intelligence’ in 21st century capitalism
   - Matthew Cole, Hugo Radice & Charles Umney: The political economy of
   datafication and work: A new digital Taylorism?
   - Grace Blakeley: The big tech monopolies and the state
   - Tanner Mirrlees: Socialists on social media platforms: Communicating
   within and against digital capitalism
   - Derek Hrynyshyn: Imagining platform socialism
   - Massimiliano Mollona: Working-class cinema in the age of digital
   capitalism
   - Joan Sangster: The surveillance of service labour: Conditions and
   possibilities of resistance
   - Jerónimo Montero Bressán: From neoliberal fashion to new ways of
   clothing
   - Sean Sweeney & John Treat: Shifting gears: Labour strategies for
   low-carbon public transit mobility
   - Benjamin Selwyn: Community restaurants: Decommodifying food as
   socialist strategy
   - Pat Armstrong & Huw Armstrong: Start early, stay late: Planning for
   care in old age
   - Pritha Chandra & Pratyush Chandra: Health care, technology, and
   socialized medicine
   - Christoph Hermann: Life after the pandemic: From production for profit
   to provision for need
   - Robin Hahnel: Democratic socialist planning: Back to the future
   - Greg Albo: Postcapitalism: Alternatives or detours?
   - ____________________________________________________________

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