PROKLA. Journal of Critical Social Science
PROKLA - Journal of Critical Social Science is a German peer-reviewed journal that has been working on topics from the fields of political economy, political science, social history and sociology since 1971. The focus is on social power relations, polarizations in the international system and the social relations with nature. The issues are put together according to thematic focuses.
Can the German Party THE LEFT Survive as a Political Force?
The existential crisis of THE LEFT has many causes, of which the following are examined here in particular: the lack of a strategic center, the parliamentarization of the party, the role of the parliamentary group and especially of Sahra Wagenknecht. Why has the party not succeeded in anchoring itself stably in the party system as an alternative social force and as a social-ecological justice party? The central shortcomings are: the dwindling identity of the East, the insufficient development in the West German states, the lack of strategic orientation, and infighting. At present, it remains an open question to what extent these deficits can successfully be addressed. Nevertheless the party’s potential must also be pointed out.
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Feminist Economics analyzes the different realities of all people’s lives and proposes wellbeing-oriented economic policies. It therefore offers useful social and economic policies even in today’s polycrises that are often neglected in mainstream economics. Despite its unique perspective, Feminist Economics has encountered limited recognition at universities or in political consultancy. In this article we first offer a brief definition of Feminist Economics. We then shed light on the persistent undercurrents of misogyny in the field of economics, explore the evolution of Feminist Economics in Austria, and show how a feminist approach to economic policy can succeed.
Copyright (c) 2024 PROKLA. Journal of Critical Social Science
What Future Do the Energy-Intensive Industries Have?
The steel, chemical and cement industries are the sectors with the highest energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in Germany. They state that they want to produce climate-neutrally in the future. Estimates show that Germany will not produce enough green electricity and green hydrogen for a decarbonised industry. Hydrogen imports are technically difficult and expensive. Cheap solar and wind power from countries in the Global South could also lead to production relocations. In contrast to this scenario, the article focuses on a degrowth approach in which the ecologically transformed industrial core remains within the country.
On the Contradiction Between Accumulation and the Reproduction of Life
Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) is one of the virulent materialist-feminist currents. Against the background of a primarily critical reception in Germany, we discuss three assumptions of SRT to show that it is a promising unitary theory of capitalistic societies: Firstly, SRT does not set »women’s work«, but »social reproduction« as its analytical starting point. Secondly, SRT conceptualises reproductive labour which does not directly contribute to the production of surplus value, as unproductive. Thirdly, oppression is viewed as structurally linked to capitalist production. These assumptions come with strategic consequences, which we discuss in the context of class struggles.
While most models of democratic planning are based on wage labour, I argue that the central lesson of the 20th century planned economy must be the abolition of wage labour. I show how the persistence of wage labour explains the inefficiency and irrationality of real socialism and how it undermines planning in the models of Cockshott and Cottrell’s cybersocialism and Devine’s negotiated coordination. Finally, an ecological society is not compatible with a wage labour fixation on consumption and that feminism is not compatible with the devaluation of care work inherent in wage labour.
A planned economy is often criticized as restricting freedom and is at best justified based on efficiency considerations. However, it can be shown that a planned economy realizes the important collective freedom of being able to consciously shape the economy. This overcomes the constraints of the market as a source of lack of freedom. A major challenge now lies in shaping the collective freedom of the planned economy in such a way that individual freedoms can be optimally realized at the same time. However, it will be unavoidable to weigh up the realization of individual and collective freedoms.
The neoliberal model established in Chile under Augusto Pinochet following the military coup against socialist President Salvador Allende in 1973 has proven stable even after the large mass protests of the 2010s. Again and again, it was politically challenged. But the political right has been able to defend and, in some cases, even expand its basic structures against all protests and political opponents. This article argues that the military dictatorship in 1973 initiated a process of »permanent counter-revolution« against the social and political participation of the »marginal masses« that continues to this day, thus maintaining the neoliberal model established at that time.
Sustainability Assessment and Cybernetic Planned Economy
Many previous approaches to a democratic planned economy fall short of the scientific and technical possibilities. This concept of a democratic centralized-decentralized planned economy therefore integrates cybernetic approaches and methods from sustainability and environmental systems research. The goal of this combination of central planning elements and decentralized regulation and networking of relatively autonomously operating enterprises is to satisfy societal needs within planetary boundaries.
The Mysterious Rise of the »Messiah« Milei
This article examines the meteoric rise of the Argentinian president and libertarian »anarcho-capitalist« Javier Milei. Starting with the question of the special features of the world’s »first libertarian president«, we trace the socio-economic as well as the political and mentality-specific conditions for Milei’s electoral success and charismatisation. In addition, we examine facets of a comparison with current trends of the new, populist right international and discuss, finally, the question of the extent to which Milei’s government may become an international experimental laboratory for libertarian authoritarianism.
The Structural Underfinancing of the Periphery
The character and intensity of the current debt crisis are linked to the debt crisis of the Global South, which already emerged in the 1970s and eventually escalated in the early 1980s. The manner in which the creditor states dealt with the crisis is a major factor in shaping the current debt dynamics. The political strategies in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s show that the form of crisis management intensified the »passive extraversion« of peripheral states and thus their dependence on external development financing.
Considering the challenges that companies are facing in the context of the socio-ecological transformation, the question arises how the strategic capacity of works councils can be strengthened. This article asks, what impulses the industrial alternative movement of the 1970s can deliver to extended co-determination in Germany. The discussion focuses on the potentials and limits of a greater politicization of workplace conflicts, an anticipatory engagement in strategic co-determination, and the usage of employee knowledge as a power resource.
From Socialisation to Planning and Back Again
We discuss the connections between historical and current debates on socialisation and democratic economic planning. Based on the historical debate on socialisation, it argues that both economic planning and the democratisation of the economy were central goals of various socialisation proposals. While the socialisation debate focuses more on the prospect of transformation, the debate on democratic economic planning concretises the goal, i.e. the creation of a radically democratic mode of production oriented towards the common good.
There is ongoing dissatisfaction among many people in East Germany regarding the long-term effects of German unification. This article primarily investigates the economic reasons for this dissatisfaction, which are primarily attributed to the hasty transfer of outdated or crumbling East German companies into the highly competitive markets of the West with inadequate resources. The subjective adjustment to the new circumstances was additionally hindered by the challenging integration of a society lacking resources into a society that is affluent and equally under constant pressure to innovate.
The article emphasizes the transnational perspective in the political economy thinking of Maria Mies, Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen and Claudia von Werlhof. Mies and colleagues, the so called »Bielefeld scholars«, conceptualise the economic first and foremost as the practice of work, of being active. From here, they argue against the prevailing North-South divisions and in favour of the decentration of the North. In their subsistence-oriented alternative, however, they themselves produce socio-spatial essentialism. They are concerned with leaving wage labour, not overcoming it. Like many in the ecology movement, Mies and colleagues are thus undercutting the debate about the social whole of work.
Global (Re-)Production Networks from a Feminist Labour Geography Perspective
To understand the everyday realities and struggles of workers in global production processes such as the garment industry, the theoretical framework must fully grasp the capitalist totality in which workers exist. Global Production Networks (GPNs) such as the garment industry need to be reconceptualized as Global (Re-)Production Networks (GRPNs) in order to systematically incorporate the gendered and racialized side of social reproduction processes into an analysis of global productions. Following a feminist Labour Geography of GRPNs, a participatory research project with women workers in Cambodian garment factories shows that workers are embedded in highly interwoven spatial processes of (re-)production that has to be considered in relation to each other.
Editorial: Democratic Planned Economy in the Age of Digitalisation and the Climate Crisis
The debate on democratic (economic) planning has been gaining momentum in recent years. The numerous crises of the last long decade have led to a wide variety of searches for alternatives. In the meantime, these search processes have intensified into new approaches and a debate on the question of how economic planning could represent an alternative to market-based allocation. However, one of the open questions is whether it should be a corrective within the capitalist mode of production or whether it points beyond it or can only be realised in a post-capitalist society. Linked to this is the question of its democratic character. Is a planned economy the economic counterpart to the »association of free people« or is it a means of realising a technically optimised society?
Feminist debates on the connection between patriarchy and capitalism have significantly shifted in recent years. Ten years ago we diagnosed the contradiction that, on the one hand, feminist and anti-feminist struggles and debates were intensifying, but at the same time the social theory tools used to analyse them were predominantly characterised by more culturalist or post-structuralist approaches and liberal feminisms. At the time, we criticised that the connection between gender and the capitalist mode of production was often overlooked. Today, the situation is different. It was not only in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic that it became clear that the critical social inequality in the distribution of reproductive and care work must be understood as an integral part of social crisis dynamics. In this context, PROKLA 214 aims to contribute to clarifying the understanding and critique of economics within feminist thought.
The construction industry is responsible for eight per cent of global CO2 emissions. The article discusses a bottom-up transformation of the construction industry in relation to activist strategies and concrete actions that are understood as driving forces for a socio-ecological transformation of the construction industry and point beyond »green« capitalism. Fundamental to this are insights that emerged from militant research during the two squats of the Dondorf-Druckerei 2023 in Frankfurt on the Main.
Editorial: How Much 1973 is in 2023? 50 Years of Discontinuities and Continuities
The crises in the global structure are increasing. Different developments are combining to form a dynamic that reinforces the contemporary diagnostic impression of a coming rupture: the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, the most recent escalation of the Middle East conflict, the intensification of competition between the USA and China, record inflation and discussions about a phase of deglobalisation, signs of crisis in liberal democracies and the increase in the importance of authoritarian statehood, and last but not least, the dramatic escalation of the ecological crisis. The orientation of the world economy and the geopolitical order associated with it, which has been enforced since 1973 with the end of the Bretton Woods system, seem to have begun to falter. Are we in a phase of upheaval today, similar to 1973? How much of 1973 is in our present? Which of the fundamental changes since 1973 need to be understood in order to be able to manage future conflicts?
In this article, I discuss the role of boundary politics, the gendered division of labour and cultural misrecognition in the new planning debate. To this end, I first examine current models of democratic planning in terms of their perspectives on these issues. Building on this, and following the theoretical work of Nancy Fraser, various ways in which a transformation of the separation of spheres can be conceived will be discussed. Finally, the relationship between potential goals for care work, the strategies for achieving them and potential conflicts between goals and value incommensurabilities that cannot be resolved objectively but must be negotiated politically, will be considered.
The Political Economy of Asset and Consumer Price Inflation
Consumer and asset price inflation are treated very differently in terms of economic policy. While rising stock prices are usually welcomed, rising prices for consumer goods are responded to with drastic monetary and fiscal policy measures. We explain this different treatment with a class-analytical perspective, which is, however, sensitive to cultural policy explanations due to the comparison between the USA and Germany. We discuss the drivers of inflation, the influence of financialization on asset price inflation, the differentiation of social classes along asset ownership and the respective distributional effects of both types of inflation.
From the Illusion of Ponderability to Imponderable Deliberation
The current debate on economic planning prematurely assumes democratic and social processes and does not sufficiently integrate them theoretically. Firstly, Ulrike Herrmann’s post-capitalist transformation theory is criticised for reducing democracy to consent to state regulation. Secondly, the extent to which Daniel Saros’ planned economy exhibits rationalist assumptions that conceptualise needs as measurable and individualistic is discussed. In contrast to solutionist thinking, the construction of socialist deliberative practices and institutions remains an uncertain and necessary task.
Based on comprehensive interviews, this article examines the environmental orientations of Swiss construction workers with regard to climate change. On the one hand, the interviewees articulate a rather negative attitude towards the climate movement and state climate policy, on the other hand, they develop a pronounced ecological critique of their own industry. This is based on an embodied environmental knowledge, in which the experience of the expansive utilization of nature and work are conjoined. In view of this, the concept of environmental concern should be expanded so that not only scientific but also embodied environmental knowledge is taken seriously.
Social Reproduction Beyond Productivity Functionalism
As the social conditions of social reproduction change, Marxist-feminist Theories of Social Reproduction are also called upon to update and expand their theoretical tools. This is even more important as central concepts and perspectives of reproduction theory are strongly influenced by the context of the Fordist reproduction model of the 1970s. In doing so, it is important to hold on to old strengths on the one hand and, on the other, to reconsider and abandon conceptual and analytical narrow-mindedness. The article criticises productivity functionalism and the absence of the category of space, thus addressing two current gaps in Theories of Social Reproduction and makes suggestions on how to deal with them.
The article proposes the inclusion of the concepts of the metabolism of social reproduction and the metabolic rift, as well as a materialist conception of the laboring body, into social reproduction theory. In concrete terms, the temporal and spatial conflicts of workers in the Brazilian and Portuguese aviation industry over labour protection and physical integrity are looked at. This empirically-led analysis is intended to expand the concept of exploitation, which does not reduce exploitation to the theory of value, but does not separate it from it either.
Germany aims to be climate-neutral by 2045. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a central component of the related scenarios for achieving climate neutrality. CCS now enjoys broad support from various branches of industry and is set to become a key building block of Germany’s climate policy according to the plan of the traffic light coalition. We use historical-materialist policy analysis (HMPA) to analyse the debates surrounding the establishment of this technology and its renaissance. We argue that the approach to CCS and hard-to-abate emissions constitutes a key conflict in the transformation towards climate neutrality. This also addresses the questions to which extent CCS takes forms of dominating nature to a new level in order to make economic growth compatible with the envisaged climate neutrality.
The article addresses the current debate on democratic economic planning and the question of how and by which instruments a post-capitalist planning system, embedded in a broader agenda of macroeconomic transformation, can be developed. To this end, the article discusses the general framework and conceptual considerations of a theory of post-capitalist transformation and, building on this, systematizes macroeconomic instruments. It develops the distinction between general public planning and political economic planning under capitalism and highlights the contradictory and dynamic character of post-capitalist transformation.
The article combines current debates about social reproduction with discussion around the concept of »surplus labor«. While Social Reproduction Theories largely assumes that capitalist production and reproduction is functionally mediated through wage labor, publications on the »surplus society« state that large parts of the world's population are still hardly integrated into global capitalism through wage labor. This article substantiates the diagnosis of the surplus society using data on global labor relations and argues that in order to understand the conflicts over social reproduction in the global South, we must take into account the role of the need economy, public goods and social infrastructure.
This article investigates the present dynamics of the conflict between »green« and »grey« hegemonic projects against the backdrop of geopolitical and geoeconomic developments which have recently favoured a paradigm shift towards a more active industrial policy in core economies. The effects are ambivalent: On the one hand, increased state activity – partially motivated by security rationales – contributes to the financing of new infrastructures and can thus raise the level of »green« forces of production. On the other hand, securitization and intensified competition reinforce the persistence of the fossil regime and block the realization of technical decoupling potential.
Against the hope to overcome scarcity, I argue to center any speculation about the functioning of a postcapitalist economy on approaches of how society might administer scarcity. Beginning the analysis from Lionel Robbins’ concept of relative scarcity, four fundamental allocative mechanisms are presented as an alternative to the market mechanism. Yet, in light of their evident inadequacy to efficiently coordinate the material flows of the world economy, I conclude that others might also have to get to terms with a socialist interpretation of markets, which restricts planning ambitions to the commanding heights of the economy.