Right now we’re seeing a crisis of both circulation and labor power, as well as a crisis of the accumulation of difference that scaffolds capitalist production.
I think we’re in a labor power crisis they’re not letting on to directly. I’ve gotten like 5 different recruitment emails, I’m seeing “no one wants to work” articles all over the place, everyone I know’s been able to find a better job, and I’m hearing stories of mass quitting in response to the end of telecommuting.
I think that people aren’t working for a couple reasons. One is that a lot of our economy was held up by elderly people who couldn’t afford to retire, and chronically stressed poor people who are now dead.
The other is that the people who can afford not to work are quitting to look for jobs that let them telecommute or won’t have the same crunch conditions a lot of jobs imposed in response to covid.
The last is that eviction moratoriums have a lot of poor people quitting their jobs because they have guaranteed housing.
The result is a crisis of capital’s reproduction from lack of labor power. If you were ever thinking about going on strike, asking for a raise or finding a new job, now’s the time. They’re keeping this on the DL because workers who know their power use it.
This is also a circulation crisis because just in time production relies on every part of the supply chain working as intended. If any one part breaks from increased demand or reduced labor power, the whole thing works less well. It’s also a circulation crisis because unemployed people have time to riot, and we’ve seen another round of BLM protests, and what do they do? They block traffic, loot stores, and prevent policemen from enforcing the commodity form, all of which contribute to a circulation crisis.
We’re also seeing a crisis of the reproduction of difference. BLM is challenging the racial order, the proliferation of queer teens are challenging the gender and sexual order, and poverty induced group housing is challenging the nuclear family. There are still significant heirarchies of difference scaffolding capitalism, but they’re seeing significant attacks.
I think the emphasis Biden’s placing on policing and security is a preparation of counter revolution in the event that the dispossessed classes should take advantage of this triple crisis to implement social change as they did in the 14th, 19th and 20th centuries. The media’s focus on the circulation crisis over the labor power crisis is so they don’t encourage worker action. When they do cover the labor power crisis, it’s “people don’t want to work” and not “labor is growing in power comparative to capital.”
This will most likely be the case. Current events will continue to convince some people to join the burgeoning left in the US, but the reason I wrote about crisis specifically was that these things tend to produce more seismic shifts in society. Something like climate change will, initially at least, effect everyone unlike something like State violence which is almost exclusively focused on a specific segment of society.
One thing I am not sure about is the statement “The Liberals will never abandon the institutions” as an absolute. The issues you brought up, in my opinion, have a discursive effect of what amounts to capturing and controlling dissent. In this sense there is never an expression of fundamental issues of the institution, but it is always transformed into something like: “Oh if only we could repeal Citizens United–then things would function correctly!”, etc. This is why Trump was so interesting because it pulled back the curtain a bit to expose just how artificial all these governmental norms, and unwritten rules really were. Following that train of thought will inevitably lead to discovering the true nature of politics: naked power. “I’m going to do whatever I want and there is nothing you can do to stop me.” When reform is precluded that is when it becomes delegitimatized. However, recognizing this fact does not necessarily make oneself non-liberal as you can still be subservient to an idealized form of institution. Sudan could be an example of this.
Ya’know after writing this I’m pretty sure we are saying the same thing.
