Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 20:34:48 +1100
Subject: Re: AUT: Workers' Credit
From: Thiago Oppermann <difference_3ngine-AT-yahoo.com.br>


On 12/12/2004 6:19 PM, "nik" <fragments-AT-va.com.au> wrote:

> i don't know of any specific works on the shift, but i did want to
> add that i think its as much about 'autonomy' as security. That is,
> the much valued financial independence (not only with regards as
> income but as rent: i.e., the whole 'why pay someone else's mortgage
> off?' deal) is an expression of a desire to be free of the work-place
> in some sense. obviously not entirely (or principally), but still
> definitely an expression of a desire to not be managed or bossed
> around.


That's definitely my impression, but it's kind of a crazy of way of wanting
to be free. Are wages that bad people would rather deal with banks? The
ideological effects of mass credit are very serviceable for the government.
It really bypasses the whole of democracy to plug your life directly into
the technocracy. 

I suppose that is indeed part of the answer. One thing that I am interested
in is the way 'financialization' transfers the old antagonism towards the
boss to antagonism towards (a) the bank, (b) the interest rate itself as a
measure of the banks power and therefore (c) anyone who would threaten the
interest rate. 

There is a school of capitalists who make the mirror image argument of
debt-as-autonomy. I've been digging around Australia, so I came across this
little beaut: http://www.leithner.com.au/circulars/circular21.htm  The guy
is an arch ghoul who thinks that Access Economics, ie. the conservative
government's preferred think tank, is a nest of Keynesians, but lunacy
aside, he is really the advance guard of the capitalist panic at 'financial
democracy'.  Recently the Reserve Bank has made noises of this sort;  even
the PM, who basically won the election thanks to cheap credit, has started
to say that high levels of household debt is a threat to the national
economy.





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