Re: Re: Democratic Party Fiscal Conservatism

[Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rakesh Bhandari wrote:

> ah what's a reasonable position for a left keynesian on trade? let's say the
> tax cut suffers leakage and bush and greenspan and the fucking bond traders (as
> clinton described them) are not willing to allow deficits the size of reagan's.
> consumers are also maxed out, and interest rate reductions are now ineffective.
>
> now the keynesian is left with the mercantilists whom keynes so admired.

I agree with you here, except that protection by way of intellectual property is
far more decisive than keeping some clothing and steel out of the economy.

> so keynesianism will prove in practice to be the ideology of big nation
> chauvinism (which now goes under the name of Seattle and anti corporate
> globalization and paternalistic anti sweatshop movements) just as keynesianism
> has already proven in practice to be none other than the ideology of rearmament
> since unlike other investments arms do not adversely affect the values of
> existing capital assets.

Whoah.  I would think that the Keynesians would be more likely to be linked with
the forces in favor of globalization.

> add to this the duplicitous manner in which keynes attempted to reduce real
> wages--no wonder he was rushed into translation by the publishing houses owned by
> the big german industrialists!

Keynes was only duplicitous if you identify him as a person of the left.

>

>
> devoted to full employment on a national scale above all else, the keynesian
> framework does in fact go beyond the classical teaching but it points not to a
> better but to a more gloomy future--militarism, big nation chauvinism and wage
> repression. This is the price of attempting to mediate the contradictions of
> capitalism through reliance on the state, the capitalist state.
>
> of course while entangling the working class in nationalist mythology through
> their partipation in rituals against world trading bodies (even those which do
> not have a weighted voting formula) and free trade agreements unless loaded
> with protectionist measures such as the deals with Africa, Cambodia and Jordan,
> the push for net exports will not in itself  prove sufficient for full
> employment... leaving the state to deal with unemployment equilibrium with
> incarceration and restrictive immigration policy.
>
> Rosa Luxemburg was right about the basic choice which this social system
> presents to the working class.
>
> Rakesh

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx