[PEN-L:6264] Re: Why Nato needs to destroy Serbia

["J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>]

Louis,
     Minor detail.  A deceleration of growth, that is a
slowdown in a positive growth rate is not the same
thing as "economic decline."  That is currently happening
in Japan and would be a negative growth rate.
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Friday, April 30, 1999 10:38 AM
>Subject: [PEN-L:6222] Why Nato needs to destroy Serbia


>>In general I find the whole piece being more in the tone of an after
dinner
>>talk for foundation liberals than a serious institutional analysis.
>>
>>Wojtek
>
>You have to read between the lines and you also have to read the entire
>article. It makes these basic points, which are interconnected:
>
>1) Agreeing with Robert Brenner and Harry Shutt, the authors, who are
>military-economic strategic thinkers on the Pentagon payroll, state that
>the European economy is in decline:
>
>"In the past, Western Europe used economic growth to finance expansions and
>extensions of a variety of social protection programs. Economic growth is,
>by far, the most effective antidote to most economic problems. But economic
>growth is no longer what it used to be. During the 1960s, Western Europe's
>real gross domestic product grew at rates approaching 5 percent annually.
>In the 1970s, rates were closer to 3 percent per year. During the 1980s,
>real growth fell below 3 percent. Since 1990, economic growth has been
>around 1 percent."
>
>2) If this economic decline is not reversed, there will be challenges to
>the system since European citizens of industrialised nations have a sense
>of "entitlements":
>
>"So long as the new sociopolitical framework of Europe guaranteed unlimited
>prosperity, the end of ideology seemed a blessing. Unlike the 1930s, the
>crisis of the last decades has been a slow, incremental process. The rub
>was that once the system began to sputter, there was no real policy
>alternative presented by mainstream parties. The resulting crisis of
>political systems was a slow one, and this slowness and the tenacity of
>existing political institutions are as noteworthy as the existence of the
>crisis. Popular discontent with governments in a democratic regime usually
>leads to alternation of power, but alternation of power will not produce
>relief if the new government follows policies similar to those of the old.
>When that happens, citizens increasingly tend to abstain from the political
>process, look to extremist parties or support new or nonestablishment
>political parties and movements, and may even go to the street. Ideology,
>which appeared to depart from politics through the front door, returns
>through the back door. In the last analysis, established parties can
>founder and the system can even collapse."
>
>and
>
>"A truly apocalyptic scenario for Europe could unfold as a result of
>failure to arrest the processes described so far in this study. The
>implications of each of these crises would be sufficiently adverse to
>warrant action, but taken together, they could produce a negative synergy
>with overwhelming consequences. At some point, cumulative quantitative
>change could become qualitative and visible. The pressure to cut welfare
>state programs at a time of increasing unemployment would certainly
>undermine social stability, intensifying the impact of joblessness. A
>conflict of "haves" and "have-nots" could result, either along new, perhaps
>unpredictable, dividing lines or taking the old forms of class conflict.
>Massive labor unrest not witnessed for decades could reappear; the
>resulting economic and social friction might spread to several of Europe's
>regions, especially those burdened by persistent, long-term unemployment
>and continuous flows of political and economic refugees. The failure of
>mainstream political parties to manage problems of such magnitude could
>eventually lead to elections of extremist leaders as heads of government
>with unpredictable consequences for Europe, both internally and
externally."
>
>When you consider that this analysis is coming from the intellectual
>servants of the ruling class, it is remarkable that there has been so
>little effort among Marxists or "progressive economists" to understand
>things in the same sort of systematic fashion. As I have stated, Sean
>Gervasi and Michel Chussodovsky have put forward excellent analyses that
>tie together economics, politics and history. That should be our point of
>departure.
>
>Louis Proyect
>
>(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
>
>