Re: Conference on Saving and Investment

[ECWFM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

>Furthermore,
>recent experience of economic performance certainly informs us that both
>state and market can work together in interesting ways.  Cases in point:
>Japan and the east Asian tigers, ok dragons.  This means that the
>dichotomy between the state and market (and capitalism and socialism) is
>really in the imagination of the observer and hence Paul Davidson may be
>correct that capitalists and workers are both needed.  After all it does
>take two to tango.

anthony d'costa above suggests that the state and the market can work together
in different ways and uses japan and the NICs as an example of socialism
meeting capitalism. he also suggests (lightheartedly no doubt) that the
productive relations of our modern economy are analogous to dancing a romantic
tango to a latin band with a huge brass section where love is in the air.
sounds a bit like the neoclassical view of production where inanimate factors
come together and harmoniously interact at the exchange level to produce
quality output, each leaving with their due and fair (by MPT) rewards, making
profit and wages a function of exchange and love is in the air.

the examples of japan and the NICs are particularly poor ones. both are
repressive societies whose economies create large environmental problems. if we
followed these "interesting models" the environment would die sooner than it
would under paul davidson's
keynes-inspired-return-to-bretton-woods-civilised-full-employment-economies.

take fishing for example. japan is a rapacious fisher of the southern oceans.
it is largely responsible for the whale population being threatened in our
region.

i fail to see how state capitalism has anything to do with a notion of a
collective environmentally sustainable production mode (CESPM) with equity
as the major goal. in this case the goal of life has to change from seeing each
other in terms of our relative position in the GDP share out. Just because the
government in japan, NICS or anywhere intervenes in the market does not make
this  a move to socialism. Capitalism and a CESPM are not just on different
ends of the continuum. there is no continuum. there is discontinuity when we
talk about these things. that is largely why (i think), say, paul pushes his view
of civilised capitalism achieving full employment and reasonable equity in
income distribution (a goal which unites us intrinsically) and i argue that his
type of system cannot produce those things because (despairingly) they are
anathema to the essential goals and mechanisms of a capitalist system.

so i do see it as being a matter of weights at all. and i do not see that a
developing notion of a CESPM has anything to do with the state capitalism of
the eastern europe countries. they were as disregarding of the environment and
people as western capitalism is. what is needed is a system which does not
pursue accumulation as its basic goal. then we can step back and see employment
as something creative and helpful not as  a means to surplus and wealth.


kind regards

bill

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* William F. Mitchell           Telephone: +61-49-215027                    *
* Department of Economics                  +61-49-705133                    *
* University of Newcastle       Fax:       +61-49-216919                    *
* Callaghan  NSW  2308          Email: ecwfm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx            *
* Australia                                                                 *
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