the profitrate & recession

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 the profitrate & recession
by Rakesh Bhandari
15 January 2002 18:28 UTC

michael, social forms that domesticate the class struggle are
obviously to the advantage of the capitalist class. whether the
capitalist class can afford to do so by allowing wages to increase to
maintain or lessen the rate of exploitation and by allowing the govt
to issue debt (fictitious capital) for the purposes of full
employment policy--and this is what I understand by social
democracy--is another question.

Jim D's demand side theory leads him (and I quoted him here) to the
belief that such social democracy would not only be in the interests
of the working class but also the capitalist class as well! For Jim D
it is presumably just a matter of the working class imposing on the
capitalist class a social democratic political regime from which
unbeknowst to itself it would benefit as well.

Marxian theory suggests that class contradictions cannot be so
attenuated by a political regime that keeps private property and wage
labor in tact.

Marxian theory may be wrong!  Revisionism may be correct. And it
would be a much more pleasant world indeed if this were so.

^^^^^^^^^

CB: Marx struggled for and wrote about a number of reformist demands, demands every bit as reformist as Keynesian fiscal policy demands. The program Marx and Engels put forth in _The Manifesto of the Communist Party_ has many reformist elements. Marx struggled for and wrote in _Capital_ about the shorter work day, a reformist demand. Marx's _Critique of the Gotha Programme_ is not that its reformist character should be disgarded. Marx and Engels struggled for English working class support for the North in the U.S. Civil War. They did not consider a victory in that war a revolutionary over throw of capitalism. Marx and Engels supported the development of trade unions, which are reformist , not revolutionary organizations.

The demand for Keynesian type reforms is not revisionist Marxism, based alone on the fact that they reformist demands. Neither Jim D. nor other Marxists with approaches like his claim that Keynesian or New Deal reforms will end the business cycle. This is an argument against strawpeople.  I'm still waiting to hear what type of working class demands the Rakesh-Fred,-Mattick's  analysis ( that recession is caused by falling profits and investment) imply. Or is it that they consider all reform demands revisionist Marxism ?