Political Choices Undermined the Workers’ Movement, Not Deindustrialization
Aaron Benanav argues that deindustrialization and the growth of services are key to the instability of global capitalism and the decline of working-class living standards. But neoliberal assaults on the bargaining power of workers are the real culprit.
Workers picketing in Spring Hill, Tennessee, on October 30, 2023. (Kevin Wurm / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Ever since Robert Brenner published his essay “The Economics of Global Turbulence” in 1998, there has been a wide-ranging debate about his understanding of the period since the 1970s as a “long downturn.” Seth Ackerman and Aaron Benanav have recently been extending this debate in Jacobin.
Some of the claims that Benanav puts forward in his reply to Ackerman, largely based on his book Automation and the Future of Work, are worth engaging with critically in their own right.
I’ve learned a lot from engaging with Benanav’s work and agree with his contention that capitalism “is good at economic growth but does a lousy job at serving people’s needs.”
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