Talk by Prof A. Buzgalin, Faculty of Economics of Lomonosov Moscow State University on ‘The End of the Énd of the History:Limits and Future of the Neoliberal Project’

Cambridge Central Asia Forum in collaboration with the Centre of Development Studies and GCRF COMPASS invites you to a talk by

Prof A. Buzgalin, Faculty of Economics of Lomonosov Moscow State University,
Director of the Center for Modern Marxist Studies of the Faculty of Philosophy of Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia

on

‘The End of the Énd of the History: Limits and Future of the Neoliberal Project’

Date: 15 November 2019
Time: 11-1pm
Venue: Room S1, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DT

Abstract: The author shows that Fukuyama's prediction of the End of history failed and that the Neoliberal model has come to a dead end. The modern stage of late capitalism, when mode of production cannot develop without using to a certain extent elements of post-capitalist relations and rhetoric of freedom, require deep reforms. The author proves that modern productive forces have come very close to the point which, in the works of Marx and in subsequent Marxist studies, was justifiably discussed and are being considered as a sufficient material basis for the development of a new type of social production. It is the development of the creative content of labour and creativity as the main spaces of technological development and the corresponding changes in material production (the new technological revolution – robotics, “smart production”, nano-, bio-, etc. technologies, characteristic of the sixth technological order etc.). The existing economic relations and institutions cannot ensure an adequate realization of this potential. Market has become a system of total corporate manipulation, leading the economy into the production of simulacra; money has become a product of virtual fictitious financial capital, which generates financialization and capital accumulation is used mainly for the expanding the useless sector of the economy. This kind of market, money and capital are the enemy of socialization. Corporate financial capital is set to go in the reverse direction of new conservatism, which will integrate more authoritarian methods in politics with more liberal forms in economy and populism in ideology. At the very least, an alternative can be the profound reform of the entire system of production relations of capitalism, which increases, rather than reduces, the measure of socialization of capitalism.

Everyone is welcome.