The Brooklyn Rail

Field Notes came into existence ten years ago this month, introduced by this first Editor’s Note:

A friend of mine worked for years as a clinical psychologist at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris—the official think tank for the top capitalist economies—managing the anger of the managers and the anxieties of the economists. She told me her clients, at best pretty disturbed, really began to flip out when the Great Recession hit in 2008. Presumably they’re calmer these days, now that the OECD has announced that “economic growth is gaining momentum in the United States, Europe, and other advanced countries despite temporary setbacks.” Or maybe not. Didn’t Larry Summers (who would have been Fed Chairman if not for his unusually bad personality), announce at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund that, to the contrary, the global economy is facing long-term or permanent stagnation?

I feel a touch of schizophrenia myself: While economic growth is unquestionably not “gaining momentum,” Brooklyn—even East New York—hardly looks like the pictures of the Great Depression we’re all familiar with. There are a lot of workers’ caps, but they’re worn by baristas and their customers, not long lines of unemployed waiting for handouts. Semi-employed 30-year-olds, not to mention immigrant extended families, may be living five in a room in Queens, but they’re not sleeping leaning against a rope for 25 cents a night, despite the rising numbers of people who have to choose between rent, heat, and food. Is this difference from our images of social disaster, drawn from the past, what explains the eerie social calm, as society’s wealth continues to flow from the 99% to the 1%?

The current depression feels different in cities like New York, Berlin, Paris, and London, where the 1% and their hangers-on congregate. Here, inequality means not doing as well as the 20%. Maybe you can’t eat at a restaurant anymore, but you can still buy beer (and it’s really, really good). What’s going on is clearer in Istanbul, Sao Paulo, Johannesburg, Mumbai, which might account for the periodic eruption of protests and riots in such places. In early February, protesters seized the central hub of Rio de Janeiro’s public transportation system, letting a city full of commuters ride for free, despite police attacks with clubs and tear gas. When they get around to raising subway fares here—the bondholders must be paid—will it occur to New Yorkers that if we all jumped the turnstiles, chained open the gates, it might make quite an impact, with not many arrests? The general air of compliance, if not complacency, suggests that we are far from that kind of mass action. But you never know, as the Lottery guy intones. I didn’t expect Occupy to happen either.

What is clear is that the hum of commerce that is still the prevailing tune in a place like New York floats above a ground bass of gathering trouble: increasing homelessness and hunger, accumulating student and consumer debt, and the elephant that’s just about to walk into the room: permanent mass youth unemployment, the college-educated included. And that’s not even mentioning climate change, with its onrushing catastrophes and the promise of more. It’s hard to really believe what we’re hearing, because it’s not a familiar refrain, and it doesn’t harmonize with the dominant music. But at the same time, it’s somewhere in everyone’s earphones. No doubt that’s why there’s a sudden fashion for Marxism, and even the once-unspeakable words “socialism” and (gasp) “communism” are in the air, if you listen carefully. Books with titles like Why Marx Was Right are cropping up, and even non-ideological writing in places like the Onion begins to sound like socialist propaganda.

The Rail has something to contribute to creating the conditions for coherent thinking about what’s happening to us. FIELD NOTES intends to gather information about life in our age of austerity, and to think about it as clearly as possible. We’re interested, to begin with, in the everyday, rather than more rarified realms of theory, without shying away from seeking conceptual tools that might help make our experience of the present—its dangers and possibilities—more comprehensible. We’re watching what happens locally, but eager to hear about the rest of the world (as this month’s offerings demonstrate).

We’re looking for writers who have something to report, and something to say about it. You can contact me at [email protected].

I’m struck by how little has changed during this decade, despite the tumultuous events that have rushed us along: the ten-year aftermath of the Great Recession; COVID-19 and the partial shutdown of the world economy; the George Floyd uprising in response to continuing police killings; non-stop warfare in Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and finally in Europe itself, reaching a horrific climax with Israel’s ongoing bloody attempt to achieve an at least temporary solution to its “Palestinian Problem”; and a renewed surge in the use of inflation to offset continuing difficulties with profitability, investment, and growth in the international economy, provoking the attempt to use interest rates to moderate inflation. Despite the constantly trumpeted success of the US economy, homelessness and hunger have increased here as elsewhere, as the soaring number of jobs are for the most part part-time and low-paid. As historian Steve Fraser observes in a recent, excellent article,

Child labor, once thought extinct, an industrial medievalism of the sweatshop era, now shows up in nearly every sector of the economy from industrial laundries and auto-parts plants to fast-food eateries and construction sites. Adult jobs, once thought secure, got converted into various forms of precarious or temporary employment. Two-wage-earner families now earn what one-wage-earner families used to. Pensions guaranteeing a retirement income have either been replaced by ones tied to the fickle oscillations of the stock market or not replaced at all. The social safety net, a metaphorical exaggeration even in its best days, has become a Dickensian embarrassment.¹

Only the continued expansion of government and private credit has offset serious difficulties for the banking system. Global climate change rushes on unchecked, with increasing production of CO2 and methane, as oil and gas production expand while changes proclaimed necessary in such sectors as agriculture and transportation are postponed for “economic reasons.” Governments find themselves unable to affect these basic trends, producing an accelerated decay of the institutions of representative democracy, with those who are still voting trying their luck with rightwing politicians in response to the evident failure of center and center-left parties. (The left parties have long gone out of business.) The United States, still the single greatest economic, political, and military power, thus finds itself the theater of a contest between a doddering leftover from the political past and a narcissistic nut preoccupied with his personal celebrity and opportunities for graft.

I urge readers to sample the responses to these tumultuous years by the authors who have written for Field Notes during this decade. I think they will be surprised and impressed by the continuing relevance of the observations and analysis represented, as well as by the breadth of the discussion. One area which has proved disappointing: there has been very little in the way of comments and discussion on ideas published in the section, so that FN has played less of a role as a place for debate than I wish. But I have nothing but thanks for the writers (and occasional illustrators and translators) who have collaborated in keeping this space for discussion alive and growing over the last ten years. I hope this anniversary inspires new writers to contribute, as well as encouraging those who have already given so much to keep going.

1. Steve Fraser, “The End of the Future,” Jacobin March 2, 2024.