America’s Tipping Point? Between Trumpism and a New Left

‘Liberal democracy is crumbling.’ A Harvard Law Professor opened a recent talk with this matter-of-fact statement, and the audience readily murmured its assent – as if the existence of a deep political crisis in the United States were a foregone conclusion. While this sentiment has become increasingly commonplace since the 2016 presidential election, it has not come entirely out of the blue. Talk of systemic crisis has lingered in the air since the 2008 financial meltdown sparked predictions of the end of financialization, globalization, and even capitalism. Yet, following the US and European bank bailouts and quantitative easing programmes, corporate profits resumed and unemployment declined. For a time the establishment’s fears seemed to have been put to bed. Then came Donald Trump – on the heels of Britain’s surprise referendum vote to leave the European Union. In what follows, a schema for interpreting the present crisis is provided by revisiting another crisis. The 1970s was a decade fraught with simultaneous and intersecting economic, social, and political crises. It was a multidimensional crisis that catalyzed a new phase of capitalism, both in the US and globally. Returning to that earlier crisis helps us parse the present landscape. Today’s crisis of neoliberalism is global and tied to the contradictions of US-led global capitalism; mapping its contours is beyond the scope of this brief inquiry. Here the analysis is situated within the borders of the United States so as to get our bearings, and locate potential points of intervention for the American Left moving forward

A tale of two crises: labour, capital and restructuring in the US auto industry

Much of the global auto industry went into a well-documented free fall following the 2007 financial meltdown. The US market was hit particularly hard. The collapse in credit for dealers and consumers combined with skyrocketing fuel prices and wary consumers led to an evaporation of demand. US assemblers saw sales drop 50 per cent and foreign assemblers 40 per cent in 2009 to settle at an almost 30 year low of 10.4 million vehicles in the US. Chrysler and General Motor’s (GM) bankruptcy filing that year seemed to signal the long prophesied downfall of Detroit. Citing the negative economic repercussions of the industry’s collapse, the US state threw the assemblers a lifeline, trading financial assistance for reorganization. GM and Chrysler emerged from bankruptcy with fewer plants, dealerships and brands, a new ownership structure, and a mandate to produce smaller ‘greener’ vehicles. In the process unionized autoworkers became partial ‘owners’ of the ‘new’ automakers and agreed to sweeping concessions in wages and benefits that put them on par with non-union assembly workers in the US. While the financial crisis and ensuing auto crisis did force significant change upon the industry, these changes do not represent a fundamental break from the past. Instead, the primary consequence of the crisis has been to accelerate and reinforce ongoing processes of capitalist restructuring, largely at the expense of autoworkers. The Detroit Three in partnership with the US government exploited the doomsday atmosphere surrounding the crisis to push through concessions that fundamentally undermine the power of the United Auto Workers (UAW) to protect and improve the working lives of its members. Hence, the crisis has had divergent consequences for capital and labour. For capital it has triggered a rapid restructuring and the restoration of profits, while for workers it has compounded the precarious position of unionized autoworkers by reversing decades of hard-won gains. To better understand the crisis and its differing consequences for capital and labour, it is necessary to situate it within an historical context. Doing so allows us to gain a clearer perspective on the nature of the crisis and, importantly, explore possible avenues for workers to regroup and fight back

Combinations of caudal myxopapillary ependymoma and dermal sinus: A single shared embryologic lesion?

A female child presenting with acute flaccid paraparesis at 18 months was found to have a dermal sinus in combination with a dermoid cyst and a myxopapillary ependymoma of the cauda equina and conus medullaris. A possible embryologic relation between these lesions is discussed