Quote of the day

Economists Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy recently discussed the relationship between the various economicclasses, neoliberalism and the still tepid reindustrialization efforts seen in the West:

The processes of deindustrialization and reindustrialization should be seen as part of the neoliberal mechanism. Deindustrialization (the relocation of production) is the expression of a divergence between the interests of the dominant classes of a country, who benefit from the profits made by multinational corporations, and of the territorial economy of their country. The dominant classes care less about where their income is generated than about how much they make. In this respect, things have apparently been better managed in Germany but, as in the US, workers have paid a considerable price — except for the senior management of companies, whose complicity with business owners is a pillar of neoliberalism.

As long as the general neoliberal framework, with all its elements — the hegemony of the capitalist classes and financial institutions, the complicity of senior management, financialization and globalization — remains unchallenged by “financial repression”, of the kind that took place in the US during the postwar period, all attempts to fight the process of deindustrialization, no matter how successful, will continue to be retrograde. They undermine what remains of the social gains made in the preceding decades, without making any clear contribution to the re-establishment of growth and the rebuilding of employment.

Thus the inherent reasonableness of 99% claims made by the Occupy Movement.