Re: [Marxism] Did Keynesianism save Japan? Will it save the US?

["Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Abu Hartal writes in a polemic against keynesianism and monetarism citing
Japan as an example: "Overworked and underpaid vis a vis the real value of
labor power (i.e. the money wages needed to reproduce the working class),
the new working poor are seeing their birth rates at well below
replacement."

I'm not going to take up whether and how capitalism can overcome its current
difficulties. Que será será. 

I want to take up what I view as a more important, or at least interesting,
question raised in the passage I quote, that birth rates are below
replacement levels, and the implications of this.

This has been true of the dominant nationalities of ALL major imperialist
countries for quite some time now, including and most notably the U.S.A.,
not just Japan since the bubble burst there.

That capitalism right now may be unable to allow regular working people to
engage in as much wasteful consumption as had been the case is the problem
that the Abu Hartal post focuses on, but I think on a deeper level, the
problem that capitalist society can't find another way to exist than by
transforming the population of imperialist metropolis into insatiable
mindless consumers is a social disease that deserves far closer attention. 

For the bulimic consumption of the population of the imperialist countries
(and not just its bourgeoisie or war industries and so on) is built on the
misery of the majority of humanity and even at current levels is
fundamentally unsustainable. We are drawing down the natural accumulated
wealth of the biosphere, and at an increasing rate (even if there is a
downward blip for a few months or a year due to a recession, or a few years
due to a depression).

I think that before presenting socialism as the only answer to raising the
standard of living so high that even people among highly privileged
compulsive-consumption populations will want to reproduce at a high enough
rate to maintain their numbers stable or growing, we should think more
deeply and broadly about what has been happening in the consumer societies
of the "West" in the past half century. I would submit that, to maintain a
gradually rising average standard of living, above all for the bulk of the
working adult population, society has created tremendous pressure to drive
down the dependency ratio, or viewed another way, the social pressure
created by capitalism, above all through its mass media, for narcissistic,
bulimic consumption has been so great that the only way it could be
satisfied was for the dependency ratio to decrease. 

What is "socially necessary" for the maintenance and reproduction of labor
power in these countries now has no upper bound or limit. 

Thus I question how meaningful it is in *these* societies to talk about
"real value of labor power (i.e. the money wages needed to reproduce the
working class)" given that driven by socially-induced pathological
consumption, many among this population would feel compelled to buy a new
SUV, home theater system, and house+garage to put them in because the ones
they bought a year ago didn't have the blinking blue LED or some other
"feature" that media hacks are saturation bombing the population with
messages like that if you don't have it, you're not a real man, you're a bad
parent for depriving your children of this, watching movies without a
blinking blue led means living in the dark ages, you work hard and DESERVE
the bloody blue LED, it's irresponsible to drive your children to school
without a blue LED because you could be in a wreck, or worse, internet
pedophile al Qaeda terrorists will kidnap your children, rape them, and eat
them for dinner.

We can discuss tactics, strikes, economic demands, and all sorts of other
things PROVIDED that we are clear in our heads that the strategic task of
socialism in creating new human beings will not be to fulfill the
consumerist cravings of the proletariat of the imperialist countries, but to
cure them of that addiction.

Joaquin


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