Dominic Fox: What is / to be done

This is fantastic. I recommend you follow the link and read the rest of it.

"My main observation is that we have two crises to contend with. The first is the fundamental crisis affecting not only the financial markets as they now stand (or totter), but the entire modus of “financialisation” as it was developed during the Reagan/Thatcher years and subsequently elaborated to its current pitch of sophistication. The markets may recover, to a greater or lesser degree, but it’s widely accepted that such a recovery cannot readily be secured against a likely future catastrophe: the conditions for such a catastrophe are endemic to the global financial system as it currently operates. This system, therefore, is acknowledged to be in crisis, and whatever happens next (on a grand scale, e.g. “to capitalism”) will happen in response to this crisis. “Regulation” is unlikely to turn out to be the preferred answer.

"The second crisis is “the crisis” as it is instrumentalised by the ruling class in their efforts to impose “reform” and restructuring on institutions. Here the stage is set for a series of confrontations, between workers – faced with job losses, pay cuts, casualisation, increased hours and workload and the general evisceration of any service ethic covertly developed on the job in favour of an endless carousel of stupid and insulting cost-cutting shenanigans – and the management bureaucracy which will seek to enforce these losses as a matter of (regrettable, but non-negotiable) necessity. These confrontations will keep “the left” busy for quite some time. There may be some real gains to be won, and certainly some real losses to be resisted, but in an important sense the conflict over “the crisis” will be a kind of phoney war, a war in defence of an old covenant with exploitation against the privations and indignities of the new."