Staying One Step Ahead
In a great piece for Foreign Policy in Focus (use my blog link and help support them), the always forward thinking Walden Bellow warns us to resist The Coming Capitalist Consensus. Starting from the premise that neo-liberalism is dead (sorry CB, I think this is a reality), he argues that a consensus is building towards a new regime of global social democracy. Perhaps best articulated by Gordon Brown but promoted daily by the likes of Jeffrey Sachs, George Soros, Joseph Stiglitz Paul Krugman, even Bill Gates, (though to varying degrees), GSD would be an "alliance capitalism..securing the benefits of the market while taming it's excesses." From CNN to the NewsHour, pundits have reached agreement on the need to "minimize the risk of disruptions, maximize opportunity for all" blah blah. Bad old Casino Capitalism, with its rogues and pirates, is suddenly chastised and calls for a reformed social order embraced. It is in essence a re-invigorated ideological consensus for global capitalism of which Bellow insists we must beware . Rather than settle for social management we must strive for social liberation.
Bellow points to the fallacy that "simply by adding the dimension of 'global social integration'( reducing inequality) ,an inherently socially and ecologically destructive and disruptive process can be made palatable and acceptable." I have written recently on the possibilities and limits of what might open up in this historical moment and have called for a deepening of the pension state as a way to re-awaken the public sphere. Perhaps these goals are to modest? What about the element of timing?
Bellow rejects such a compromising approach:
Fourth, GSD, while critical of neoliberalism, accepts the framework of monopoly capitalism, which rests fundamentally on deriving profit from the exploitative extraction of surplus value from labor, is driven from crisis to crisis by inherent tendencies toward overproduction, and tends to push the environment to its limits in its search for profitability. Like traditional Keynesianism in the national arena, GSD seeks in the global arena a new class compromise that is accompanied by new methods to contain or minimize capitalism’s tendency toward crisis. Just as the old Social Democracy and the New Deal stabilized national capitalism, the historical function of Global Social Democracy is to iron out the contradictions of contemporary global capitalism and to relegitimize it after the crisis and chaos left by neoliberalism. GSD is, at root, about social management.
Bellow is correct, our program must not be about a "settlement" but on consolidating gains and advancing the realm of the possible.
posted by troutsky @ 10:56 AM
10 comments
10 Comments:
I think this is an excellent post. I believe are fire should be against Krugman, Soros, Rubin etc.
The main problem in their analysis, is that capitalism is an unplanned and competitive system. If company A wants to raise workers wages, cut emissions, and build windmills, there is company B that will do for less money nd more emissions.
This is from Marxist.com from the global warming debates: Recently, we have heard and read news about western governments taking steps to ban these bulbs and replace them by others that are more energy efficient, like compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs, which are between 3 and 6 times more energy efficient and have a life span 10 times longer.
On January 31, the State of California, USA, announced its plans to ban incandescent lights by 2012. A few weeks later, Australia followed suit and now the UK government has promised that by 2011 there will be no incandescent bulbs on British territory.
The attention attracted by these timid measures greatly contrasts with the media's silence about how in just one year Cuba has successfully replaced its incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, thus reducing the island's energy consumption spent on lighting by 2/3.
Venezuela has reproduced Cuba's experience with Misión Energía (Mission Energy), which intends to replace 52 million incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent lights; something that will be extended to Nicaragua through the ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas), but about this you will read not a word or hear anything. Even with Cuba's bureaucracy, the planned economy aspect, can work.
I meant Reich not Rubin.
Ren,
I actually agree with you. Krugman, Soros, Reich, et al are preaching half measures toward the elimination of market orientation. It is worse than unabashed advocacy of collectivist remedies. The logic they use is so terribly flawed and unsupported by history.
Amity Shlaes, Jim Powell, Lee Ohanian and others have exposed the myths that FDR stabilized capitalism. In fact, they point out the complete fraud that is Keynesianism and how FDR made things not just worse but much worse. After all, if government intervention were the answer, why not let government redistribute 100% of wealth and earnings? It is foolishness.
Can we just call the climate thing what it is, an anti-capitalist scheme having no basis in science whatsoever? This thing has gone from global cooling, to mathematical models that didn't include the sun, suggesting that there is global warming. When the models were exposed to be flawed then it morphed into global climate change and now that the data don't support the corrected model (because the planet has been cooling for more than a decade and we're likely entering another ice age, the IPCC is now calling it climate crisis so whether it warms, cools or stays the same, they can't lose the argument. I mean the first attempt, Kyoto, exempted the world's two biggest polluters, China and India. What is that?
trout,
I think what has died is the ability to articulate classical liberalism and cogently express in sound bites the concept of free exchange. It is wrapped up in electoral politics and the indoctrination we talked briefly about in the prior post. People have accepted narratives without examination and understanding - the moon is self-evidently made of green cheese.
There is no question that we're at a critical juncture in the debate and if you guys don't screw up, the whole shooting match is ripe for the taking.
Starting from the premise that neo-liberalism is dead
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I hope we can but there seems to be some life left. I don't think the Obama team is an improvement over Bush and Clinton (a serious culprit in all this).
Larry Summers doesn't make my leg tingle and Rubin is still hanging around. Volcker isn't much comfort and won't do much but curb some of their worst shananigans, not that it's a valueless role.
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Can we just call the climate thing what it is, an anti-capitalist scheme having no basis in science whatsoever?
cb, I fail to see how it is anti-capitalist. If human activity is causing serious damage is the idea of managing the planet anti-capitalist?
Well yes, it is if you define capitalist in its basest most damaging form, the market economy for disposable consumer goods that is clearly running out of steam at the moment. Because that's what the great laissez-faire market does best, pump out disposable consumer items. Production of more durable benefits is much tougher and the capitalist market is NOT up to it.
Free exchange? It requires that both sides be informed about the cost and risk of the exchange. Housing anyone?
It determines which short term itch you want scratched. It has little long term intelligence and that is exactly why environmental issues are downgraded. They get in the way of us scratching trivial short term itches.
Ren described the need for government, preferably not one stuffed with Robert Rubin's, in changing consumption patterns more quickly and effectively than the "free" market.
cb, the last time I heard Amity Shlaes she was on the tube talking about wanting everyone to have a home and how that was good but the government can't afford backing it.
She was very close to the "blame the community reinvestment act" silliness that has infected so many of the conservative mind set.
I haven't heard an admission that the economic model proposed by Alan "Mr. Bubble" Greenspan is stone cold dead. It failed.
I'm afraid that Obama isn't even going to undertake half measures but try the Clinton (number two culprit after Bubbles Greenspan) method again.
As far as FDR goes, my understanding is that he did aggravate things greatly in the mid 30's ... by trying to balance the budget and contravening Keynesian theory.
This desire for the death of neo liberalism reminds me of an unruly child who wishes his parent would just leave them alone, having nothing to do with the reality of their need of discipline nor the parent's role in their life. It's just wishful thinking.
This struggle, in some respects, is being played out in the middle, where it's frustrating to true believers on either side, neither of which are seeing much of what we want.
Ducky, without going into the science, the proposed remedies are to redistribute income to government and away from the private sector, which will neither mitigate any damage nor assuage the faithful.
As far as Greenspan and the fed in general, I've said that the concept of a federal reserve is nuts and for Nixon to abrogate the Bretton Woods agreement was lunacy. Because people didn't understand what it meant, they went along and several years later we paid with stagflation that was blamed on Carter (although he did respond poorly). The artificial bubble created by the fed along with poor government policy is to blame for this mess.
With capitalism, we'd get normal messes like the disruptions brought about by technology advances, i.e., no more manufacturing jobs for rotary phones or vacuum tube televisions but the whole shooting match doesn't go up in flames unless acted upon by an outside force like government intervention in the credit markets together with unsound money practices.
Ren, I think the "new", chastised Rubin does now fit in this company. (perhaps chameleon-like would be a better description)
Unlike CB, who I admire for being principled.And unafraid of the wilderness!
Ducky,It seems to me global warmers and environmentalists in general have run from being branded "left" but CB is correct about being honest about capitalism. As for science, I think your claim is hypebole CB. the science might be mixed, as is the nature of science,but weight is given to one hypothesis or the other based on a procedure. You can take exception to empirical sources, you can question the process, but questioning the motives is a poor form of argumentation.
the neo-liberalism-parent analogy is pop psychology at it's worst. "Poor articulation" would be more plausible except it has been the dominant narrative since Kennedy, taught in every economics class, promoted by every pundit,reinforced by mass culture at every turn.We have drowned in a sea of market fundamentalism and you say we only need one more sip.
How about the great Depression? Was that government interference or just a "normal disruption" of capitalism?
The idea that global warming theory, is an anti-capitalist scheme, or as some like Beatroot's Spiked Online who call it a capitalist scheme, are dealing in straight conspiracy theory.
I reject personally both the deniers, and enviromentalists who tell the working class they own too much.
Because of competition and cost, an unplanned system like capitalism, can't solve it.
Alright,
The parent child analogy was lazy. The point is that classical liberalism had it's best implementation in America, spotty though it was (slavery) prior to 1913 and again before 1932. But after that, socialism has been as much in practice as capitalism. We liberals are nearly as relegated to the theoretical realm as revolutionary collectivists.
Jefferson was right and Hamilton was wrong. All of our economic calamities have been the result of government manipulation of currency, money supply or intervention in the markets. Going back to the railroad collapse of the 1870s and the depression of the 1890s, government made loans to the railroads, those that got them failed because they were playing with other people's money, those that didn't get them like the Great Northwest thrived.
The 1929 crash was the result of a bubble caused by the federal reserve bank manipulating money supply, failing to maintain liquidity in crisis and then government making things worse with government programs that sucked money out of the economy into make work programs and then imposing tariffs, yet Hoover was supposed to be conservative? FDR doubled down and dragged us through a nightmare, he almost single handedly brought down America.
Keynes was a brilliant theoretical economist and entirely, wholly wrong. He never accounted for government sucking money out of the productive economy, he only saw government input (but he was very convincing talking about that). He reminds me a lot of Gramsci, except Gramsci's infiltration of the academy and media have worked, whereas Keynes ideas never did and can't.
There was a good article in the Telegraph about 2008 being the year that climate myths were finally and fully debunked, but that is a debate I don't want to fight with you.
Troutsky, I wonder if the labor theory of value has much currency.
I think we are in a period of the Law of One Price. The technology is widely available, energy costs are uniform and the only variable is wages. So wages will be depressed for profit.
Right now the world is awash with surplus labor and they are going to have to organize before there are major changes. Capitalism will continue to do what it does best, produce high profit low utility consumer goods and luxury for a few. That's all it can do
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