Re: Marx and Keynes on Unemployment

[BILL MITCHELL <ECWFM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

JJG asks three questions b/c he appears to be bewildered:

>		In more than 20 postings on this subject,
>		the questions each of the many writers were
>		trying to answer remained hidden from view
>		-- I wonder what they were:
>
>			1. Is the full employment experience
>		of Germany and Japan during a ten year stretch
>		in their "miracle years" but after 1960, in
>		which unemployment was lowest, an appropriate
>		standard for industrial nations over the next
>		ten years from today?

definately not!! this was capitalist expansion. it was also done
with little regard for the impoverished satellite economies. but
moreso, it was not in harmony with the natural world. the japanese
have pumped billions of dollars of useless rubbish onto the world and
caused irrepairable damage to the world's environment (their fishing
practices in the southern oceans are rapacious to say the least).

the model for the future has to be very different to that of the last 35
years. we have to have full employment without a labour force framework
and without material production being the benchmark for growth and gainful
activity.

i know you hate this sort of academic posturing, john, but dare i say
the only hope is a non-capitalist system of environmental and human
balance where the goals of the system are not the goals of the capitalist
class.

>      			2. Is the 1944 US proposed economic
>		bill of rights, in which the right to a job and
>		wage high enough for what was then a lower
>		middle class living standard ($24,000/year today)
>		was to be a civil right on a par with freedom
>		of speech, the standard we are looking for?
>
you cannot legislate full employment in a capitalist system. have
a read of Kalecki on the political business cycle. it is very clear
on this point.

i note you also have civil rights to have private right wing armies
which breed hate and intolerance.

>			3. Is there no standard with respect
>		to employment and wages that any writer would
>		use to judge the wisdom found in Marx/Keynes
>		literature?

marx and keynes are not comparable in the way your / implies. keynes
was a bourgois theorist who had a few ideas, mostly purloined from others
like kalecki and hahn. he did not write about the capitalist system and as
we have seen in this topic in the last week, he had a limited view of
unemployment. this is not to deny his place in the scheme of things, but
it is a pretty limited place. he allowed important notions to be
hijacked back into orthodox theory b/c he did not model the economy
we lived in. Kalecki did a much better thing for PKT i believe by
adopting imperfect competition as the meaningful, the only meaningful
benchmark for analysis.

i just don't agree that we should give any merits to a theoretical
framework that can embrace perfect competition and then say it is a
GT. A GT of nothing i reckon, if one is interested in understanding the
dynamics of capitalism.

the wisdom from marx and kalecki is that there is an internal contradiction
in attempting to satisfy the needs of people via real income and jobs within
a capitalist system. but there i go again.  but it is true. why be
surprised about declining living standards for the workers, for persistent
unemployment, for increasing inequalities? it just goes to show that
despite all the humdrum about the collapse of socialist thought given
that a few corrupt slavic regimes finally hit the wall, the critical analysis
of marx and later in the same spirit Kalecki and Sraffa and on is still
relevant and vital.

Jesus, Doug should ring me up right now for a word on Marxism Today - i am
just revving up to the theme. get on the phone doug and i will give you
a blast from an unrepentant, unapologetic, totally secure marxist. and
of-course, as paul says, it will be in my own individual way!

its been a hard day of bike racing over here in OZ and my body hurts.

kind regards
bill
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