Angela Wigger - Competition, the Global Crisis and Alternatives to Neoliberal Capitalism
Channel: Inštitut za delavske študije
Date: 2012-12-21

Competition, the Global Crisis and Alternatives to Neoliberal Capitalism. A Critical Engagement with Anarchism

Since the mid-1980s, and particularly throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century, the imperative of capitalist competition has become a totalising and all-pervasive logic expanding to ever more social domains and geographical areas around the world. Sustained by neoliberal competition regulation and other regulatory provisions, excessive competition (over-competition) in the process of capital accumulation has become a major global force with highly detrimental social and environmental downsides. This lecture will address and criticise the neoliberalisation of European competition regulation since the mid-1980s, and link the phenomenon of excessive competition to the current global economic crisis, from the vantage point of a historical materialist (neo-Marxist) perspective. Employing a critical perspective implies however going beyond critique and clarifying a range of possible alternatives with the potential to change the world, as well as to be a guide to strategic action for bringing about an alternative order.

Calls for alternatives have become louder in the wake of the current global economic crisis. In order to take the emancipatory role of critical theory and analysis seriously, I will seek to outline an alternative vision to the ideas and social practices that have sustained the existing competition order thus far. In a dialogue with anarchist literature and most notably anarchist principles such as equity, cooperation, mutual aid, and social and environmental justice more generally, I will outline the contours of a vision of a post-neoliberal non-capitalist competition order, which can then be subject for a discussion with the audience.

Angela Wigger is Lecturer in Global Political Economy and International Relations at the Department of Political Science, Radboud University (Netherlands). Her current research focuses on analysing the global economic crisis and the transnational political economy of the EU, with a special focus on competition regulation and financialisation processes.
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Konkurenca, svetovna kriza in alternative neoliberalnemu kapitalizmu: kritično soočenje z anarhizmom

Od sredine osemdesetih naprej in zlasti v prvem desetletju 21. stoletja je imperativ kapitalistične konkurence postal totalizirajoča in vseobsegajoča logika, ki se širi na vse več družbenih področij in geografskih območij po svetu. Ker se lahko zanaša na neoliberalno regulacijo konkurenčnosti in druge regulacijske ugodnosti, je pretirana konkurenca (nadkonkurenca) v procesu akumulacije kapitala postala vodilna svetovna sila z izjemno škodljivimi družbenimi in okoljskimi posledicami. V tem predavanju bom obravnavala in kritizirala neoliberalizacijo evropske regulacije konkurenčnosti, kot poteka od sredine osemdesetih naprej, ter s historičnomaterialistične (neomarksistične) perspektive povezala pojav pretirane konkurence s sedanjo svetovno ekonomsko krizo. A uporaba kritične perspektive obenem pomeni, da moramo preseči golo kritiko in očrtati možne alternative, ki lahko spremenijo svet, pa tudi zamisliti si načrt strateških akcij, s katerimi lahko vzpostavimo alternativno družbeno ureditev.

V sedanji svetovni ekonomski krizi so zahteve po alternativah postale glasnejše. Ker jemljem emancipatorno vlogo teorije in analize resno, bom poskušala očrtati alternativo idejam in družbenim praksam, ki so doslej ohranjale obstoječo konkurenčno ureditev. V dialogu z anarhistično literaturo in s -- še pomembnejšimi -- anarhističnimi načeli, kot so enakost, sodelovanje, vzajemna pomoč ter splošni družbena in okoljska pravičnost, bom očrtala vizijo postneoliberalne nekapitalistične konkurenčnosti, o kateri bomo nato lahko skupaj razpravljali.

Predavanje bo potekalo v angleškem jeziku.

Angela Wigger predava svetovno politično ekonomijo in mednarodne odnose na Univerzi Radboud (Nizozemska). Trenutno raziskuje svetovno ekonomsko krizo in transnacionalno politično ekonomijo EU, posebno pozornost pa namenja regulaciji konkurenčnosti in procesom financializacije.
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