Globalization

"Reviews of and praise for “Die USA unter Obama”:

“Solty’s studies are indispensable when it comes to understanding the United States in the early 21st century and Obama’s turn from critic to renovator of neoliberalism as well as the U.S.’s imperial politics (…) – materialist social and political analysis on the basis of Marx, Gramsci and neo-Gramscianism at the highest level of excellence (…).” – Frank Deppe

“The chapters in this volume stretch across the Great Crisis, which is now already entering its sixth year and which coincides with the first Obama presidency and Obama’s two electoral campaigns. Tightly connected to the historical material and with theoretical breath, they deal with national and international conflict fronts and relationships of forces, actors and perspectives of U.S. politics. The result is a formidable, critical, yes skeptical depiction. At the same time, they show an author who has relentlessly logged and analyzed U.S. politics on many levels. A citizen of two worlds, the German and the Canadian one where the latter rests culturally halfway between the United States, his object of study, and Europe, Ingar Solty makes a name for himself as one of the most productive, young representatives of critical research on the United States (…). Solty’s analyses boil down to the thesis that Obama ‘who (…) most observers took to be a president of transformation will be categorized by future historians as the president who, instead of overcoming neoliberalism, which had led the world’s capitalist societies into the biggest crisis since the 1930s, restored it by means of the state.’ It is irrelevant whether or not one shares this assessment, which Solty himself relativizes by inserting ‘at the current moment,’ measured by the sheer weight of abundantly gathered evidence and analyses.” – From the preface by Wolfgang Fritz Haug

“Although still at an early stage in his career, Ingar Solty has already contributed significantly to critical social research and intellectual life on both sides of the Atlantic. On that basis, and given my basic precondition for any scholarly collaboration (namely that I could learn from my co-author) I began ongoing scholarly work with Solty and I continue to learn a great deal from him: here in the form of his new book on the United States under the charismatic leadership of Barack Obama. It contains novel arguments concerning the changing world order and new forces in the USA, including Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party. It details precisely how the first Obama administration responded to the post-2007 global economic crisis, partly to reconstruct neoliberalism via state interventionism. In sum, this wide-ranging volume is an essential read for our understanding of the nature of dominant power – and its internal and external limits and contradictions – in the crisis-ridden period since the start of the 21st century.” – Stephen Gill

“It is always a daunting task to assess a political trend in mid-flight and whether Ingar Solty’s assessment of the Obama presidency in the United States has put its finger on the key issues will therefore have to be answered later. But as it stands, this incisive analysis succeeds in identifying the deeper structural causes why any change in the US political system is almost impossible to begin with. To answer the question whether Obama in his second term will be able (or even attempt at all) to wrest free from the stranglehold of the multiple layers of opposition to change, we need four more years. Solty’s careful study is a most useful companion as we follow this second installment of a presidency caught in what he calls the dialectic of internal and external blockages.” – Kees van der Pijl

“Ingar Solty takes us on a journey into a land of politics which all of us think we know: Obamaland. Just as back in the day the communist Gorbachev, today, around 150 years after the abolition of slavery, the African American Barack Obama is one of the most persistent favorites of Western Europeans. Solty, however, prefers the “cool way of thinking” (Friedrich Engels). With critical theory and political precision he navigates through already forgotten landscapes. We are reminded of memorable inhabitants: the fantasy worlds of hope & change, the risings of the tea party right-wing populists and the headspinning high plateaus of the billionaires of Richistan, the island Occupy and the sinking of the reform of capitalism, finally the new deserts of austerity in the entire American Empire and its outposts. Solty examines the changes in political leadership under Obama, social movements in the global crisis, the American Empire and the second crisis presidency. His interim balance: the declamation of a bold and swift presidency has turned into the hard slog of a long neoliberal crisis regime. His perspective: the pretty much unnoticed return of class-based electoral behavior and subjectivity is opening up new perspectives. Currently the best analysis of the Obama era.” – Rainer Rilling

"Solty is an intelligent observer of the American landscape (...). He shows with many examples that there is also much to criticize in Obama's United States (...). Solty's main thesis is that Obama has reconstructed neoliberalism in the crisis and is now about to deepen it together with the Republicans. To a Marxist, this apparently sounds like a horrific idea (...)." - Rolf Steininger (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 24 June 2013, p. 8)

"With his book Ingar Solty attempts to capture 'snapshots in time' (12) which contribute to 'a better understanding of the social relationships of forces in the United States' (11) under President Obama. Revealing its political orientation, the book opens with the thesis that 'a president, who came into office as - or was at least considered by many observers to be - a president of transformation will, as affairs stand, be interpreted by  future historians as that particular president who did not transform the kind of neoliberalism which led the capitalist societies of the world into their greatest crisis since the 1930 but instead reconstructed and deepened it.' (12f) Solty's analysis thus is a critique of Obama in particular and the (capitalist) USA in general. However, it is by no means a superficial and broad-brush analysis. Instead, it contains multiple statistical evidence and recapitulates the recent historical developments and political events interpreting them from a Marxist perspective." - Ines Weber (Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft [Online], pw-portal.de, 26 June 2013)

"This book was long overdue. While the attentive reader is already familiar with Solty's texts (...), only being able to read them alongside the 70-page introduction and in the shape of a book provides a comprehensive depiction of the 'USA under Obama' from a critical-materialist perspective (...). The reader of this book is asked to put in some 'work'. Yet, he or she is widely remunerated with many recognitions and inspiring thoughts - something which cannot be said to the same degree of the rest of the publications out there devoted to the same topic." - Fabian Westhoven (Z. Zeitschrift Marxistische Erneuerung, No. 94, June 2013, pp. 215-6)

"Ingar Solty, political scientist and renowned USA expert, takes Obama's reelection (...) as an opportunity for a critical balance-sheet of Obama's [first] presidency (...); and he collects a vast amount of data and empirical facts which - in this concentrated form - are hard to find anywhere else." - Gerd Bedszent (junge Welt, 15 July 2013, p. 15)



Inhaltsverzeichnis

Geleitwort von Wolfgang Fritz Haug
Vorwort und Danksagung
Einleitung: Die Innen-Außen-Dialektik des American Empire in der globalen Krise

Teil I: Aufstieg einer charismatischen Führungsgestalt in der globalen Krise
1. Das Obama-Projekt: Krise und charismatische Herrschaft
2. Neoliberalismus und Evangelikalismus in den USA: Desintegration der Christlichen Rechten, Aufstieg einer evangelikalen Linken?
3. Barack Obama: Neuer Roosevelt oder neuer Clinton?
4. Obamas Gesundheitsreform: Ein Lehrstück in Zentrismus

Teil II: Die sozialen Bewegungen in der globalen Krise
5. Die Tea Party und der hilflose Antifaschismus des Blocks an der Macht
6. Die Tea-Party-Quittung: Das Scheitern des Obama-Projekts und die Zwischenwahlen 2010
7. Arbeiterbewegung Reloaded?: Der Anti-Austeritäts-Aufstand von Wisconsin
8. Sieg der Tea-Party-Bewegung über die Gewerkschaften im öffentlichen Dienst?: Wasserstandsmeldung aus Wisconsin, September 2011
9. Occupy Wall Street
10. Interregnum sozialer Protestbewegung: Thesen zur politischen Artikulation der Krise vom neuen Rechtspopulismus zur Occupy-Bewegung

Teil III: Obamas Empire
11. »Krieg gegen den Terror«, Islamfeindlichkeit und Bürgerrechte zehn Jahre nach 9/11
12. Krieg gegen einen Integrationsunwilligen? Die politische Ökonomie des libyschen Bürgerkriegs und der westlichen Intervention im Kontext der Großen Krise
13. Die US-China-Politik zwischen Einbindung und Eindämmung

Teil IV: Die Wiederwahl des Krisenpräsidenten und die zweite Amtszeit im Zeichen des globalen Austeritätszeitalters
14. Fear and Loathing statt Hope and Change: Die Genealogie der republikanischen Vorwahlen und des Präsidentschaftswahlkampfes 2012
15. Die politische Soziologie der Wiederwahl von Obama und die Perspektiven der zweiten Amtszeit"

"The Journal on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (JSCI) is a peer-reviewed open-access international publication in the areas of Systems Philosophy, System Sciences and Engineering (Systemics), Communication and Control concepts, systems and technologies (Cybernetics,) and Information Systems and Technologies (Informatics), as well as on, and especially on, the relationships among these areas and their Engineering applications.

the main purpose of the Journal is to collaborate in the systemization of knowledge and experience generated in the areas of Systemics, Cybernetics (communication and control) and Informatics. This systemization process necessarily implies a progressive development and expansion of the relatedness among the associated areas, as well as among their respective disciplines. Since improvement in interdisciplinary communication would provide a very good support for the sought systemization process, the journal is a multi-disciplinary one oriented 1) to support inter-disciplinary communication, and 2) to offer a venue for publishing inter-, trans-, and cross-disciplinary research, enquiry, case studies, and reflections.

We are trying to support the process of interdisciplinary communication among, and in, the areas included in Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, by means of:

1. providing a multidisciplinary forum in the related areas,
2. fostering interdisciplinary research in them,
3.  publishing papers related to transdisciplinary concepts, allowing different disciplinary perspectives on the same concept, and
4. encouraging communication a) among disciplines by means of interdisciplinary tutorials, and b) among the academic, the public and the private sectors by means of publishing information related multi- and inter-disciplinary projects which involve at least two of these sectors.

In the context of this main purpose, a basic immediate objective of the Journal is to provide a multidisciplinary vehicle for disseminating information about diverse but highly interrelated areas through a single medium. It covers a wide range of areas, sub-areas and topics related to Systems Science, Engineering and Philosophy (Systemics), Communications and Control of Mechanisms and Organisms (Cybernetics) and Computer Science and Engineering, along with Information Technologies (Informatics).

These three major areas are continuously evolving into integrative means of diverse disciplines.

• Informatics provides instrumental means for many disciplines and support processes of inter-disciplinary collaborative research.

• Cybernetics showed to be fruitful in providing conceptual means for inter-disciplinarity as well as for analogy generation and cross-fertilization between mechanisms and organisms, in order

  o to improve our understanding of organic systems,
  o to enhance our designs of mechanical systems, and
  o to inspire the conceptualizations and the production of hybrid  systems, as it is the case of cyborgs.

• Systemics has been viewed by an increasing number of authors as one of the most fundamental trans-disciplines.

Consequently, each one of these three major areas has been providing an increasing support for multidisciplinary problem solving research as well as for interdisciplinary communications and integrations among different academic disciplines and among academic, industrial and governmental organizations.

Therefore, the basic aims of this Journal are

    To support multidisciplinary information dissemination related to different disciplines in the major areas of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (SC&I).

    To foster interdisciplinary communication based on the integrative potential of these three major areas. Accordingly, the journal will include not just areas from SC&I, but also from the relationships among them, among their areas and sub-areas and between them and disciplines from other areas, especially in the form of applications of SC&I disciplines in other disciplines, and vice versa. Consequently, a strong emphasis is made on relationship areas and on what has been named as hyphened sciences, engineering and technologies, in order to refer to the inter-disciplines that are emerging as a consequence of multi- and inter-disciplinary real-life-problem-centered research.

    To foster and support inter-organizational R&D and enquiry among academy, industry and government; especially in the context of real life problems requiring multi- and/or interdisciplinary teams.

The Journal will initially have a multidisciplinary orientation. Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary sections will gradually grow. The multidisciplinary part of the Journal will be nourished, basically, from the best papers presented in conferences in the Journal’s areas, basically from the conferences or workshops organized by The International Institute of Informatics and Systemics (IIIS, www.iiis.org) which is also the sponsor of the Journal. The best 20%-25% of the papers presented at IIIS’s conferences (roughly equivalent to the 10%-15% of the articles submitted to the respective conference) will be published in the journal, after their respective authors had made the respective modifications and extensions pertinent to archiving and journals. The journal will also publish invited papers and papers submitted directly to the journal which will be reviewed by the journal reviewing methodology.

Consequently, with this approach, we are hoping to produce a very high quality journal, because its basic content will be related to the best 20-25% of the papers presented in related conferences, which is the equivalent, though not exactly the same, at a rate of 75-80% of refusal. This way of achieving a high quality Journal, will not be based on a high number of actual refusals. With this strategy we will be avoiding being the cause of the hidden psychological and economical costs caused to the authors of refused papers. The greater the refusal rate, the greater the hidden costs caused, by the editors, to potential authors of refused papers by the editors. We are hoping, with our editorial strategy to minimize the hidden costs we might be causing by means of our editorial decision, while not compromising the journal high quality.

Our methodological strategy will be an evolutionary and a systemic, not a systematic one. To organize the editorial process and to manage the publishing operational activities will be done with an open, elastic, adaptable and evolutionary methodological system. It will have the flexibility required to adapt the Journal, its editorial policy, its organizational process and its management to the dynamics of its related areas and disciplines, to changes produced by the inherent learning process involved, and to the uncertainty of the environment.

The Peer Review Methodology Used in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics is Based on two-tier reviews: open (or non-blind) and the traditional double-blind reviews. Final acceptance depends of the two kinds of reviews but a paper should be recommended by non-blind AND double-blind reviewing in order to be accepted for publication. A recommendation to accept made by reviewers in the non-blind method is a necessary condition, but it is not a sufficient one. A submission, to be accepted, should also have a majority of the reviewers in its double-blind method recommending its acceptance. This double necessary conditions generate a more reliable and rigorous review than those reviewing processes based on just one of the indicated methods, or  just on the traditional double-blind reviewing method.
"

Is news production a process in which human beings and technological architecture are best understood as distinct? In Cyberfactories, Barbara Czarniawska gives an indirect negative answer to this question by revealing the picture of a complex network extending to the non-human world.