Re: failing firms must be "promptly liquidated"

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 31/10/01 20:38 -0600, you wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 31, 2001 at 17:35:00 (-0800) Michael Perelman writes:
> >Chris, the economy will be stronger after liquidation -- if it survives the
> >shock -- but it will mean mass unemployment and a further concentration of
> >economic ownership.
>
>      ... liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers,
>      liquidate real estate.
>
>      ---Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, advising Herbert Hoover in
>      1930
>
>
> Bill


Yes, Prof Takagi and Andrew Mellon were perhaps right wing Marxists without
even knowing it.

Marx described this back in 1848. And of course the destruction of capital,
includes the destruction of a portion of living variable capital - the
section of the work force that are thrown out of the capitalist wage system
until hopefully at some time eventually the capitalist cycle picks up again
and they have the opportunity to leave the reserve army of labour.

I do not think there is much serious dispute about the overall pattern of
capitalist cycles, if the bourgeois can permit themselves to be really
frank (like in an article tucked away on page 12 of the Nikkei Weekly).

The progressive question is what very very little can working people do to
buck the trend? If there is any influence that can be brought to bear at
all, it would be better to update mechanisms of social control over the
production process than merely to try to mitigate cuts in the average real
wage.

Perhaps the whole apparatus of apparently responsible banking that Takagi
appears to describe should be updated by making the bidding for development
or liquidity funds more transparent and democratic and to take into account
the views of works councils, the local environment and the community.

But the brutality of the overall process is as Marx indicated.

I think leftist economists should be able to discuss all this quietly and
penetratingly with the rapidly expanding ranks of neo-Keynesians.

Chris Burford