Financialization of the economy since the 1970s is not a process resulting from the autonomous logic of economic expansion. Harry Cleaver argues that it was the answer by capitalism to the growing strength of workers’ protests. Policies imposed by the financiers (belt-tightening, privatization of public services and social security systems, precarization of labour) trigger new forms of resistance of the workforce. Movements such as indignados, Occupy, or new parties such as Podemos and Syriza, in a different way and to a different degree represent opposition to work in the era of financial capital. Are they capable of developing an effective strategy of resistance to the complex of financial authorities and the state supporting it?
The lecture was part of the Atlas of Planetary Violence programme, organised by Biennale Warszawa at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, and the Counter-Labour project curated by Przemysław Wielgosz. Moderation: Krzysztof Król.
Harry Cleaver is professor emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of publications addressing current social struggles and critique of political economy. He has been involved for years in social movements fighting for autonomy from state and capitalist institutions, including the Zapatista movement in Mexico. His two books, Reading Capital Politically and Rupturing the Dialectic. The Struggle against Work, Money, and Financialization have been published in Poland.
