If you still can't read my whole articles easily, please let me know. I can send you my home page files of my whole articles by e-mail, If you agree.
Thanks again.
Sincerely, Ju-chang He
Chris Burford wrote:
>
> Dear Mr He,
>
> What I have however done is to catch at least a summary paragraph of one of
> your articles. I am not an economist but I will try to make some comments:
>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>
> To sum up, the best way I suggest to solve unemployment is: first, let
> labourer find jobs for themselves, and let the funds and
> labour force flow freely. When labourer really can't find jobs themselves,
> the government comes forward, and offers money
> and finds jobs for them. Finally, the daily working time for every labourer
> can be cut down so as to solve unemployment. I'd
> like Professor Deng to make comments on my above-mentioned views. Thanks.
>
> <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
>
> I would be particularly interested to hear from you to what extent economic
> debate in the PRC is influenced by marxist concepts still. Your article
> does not appear to be consciously linked to these. You are writing I think
> from a special economic development zone where various economic models are
> being tried out. Granted your focus is on amending Keynesianism, but it is
> not clear to what extent you accept a premise that the economy should in
> some sense be socialist.
>
> Under capitalism, marxists would say unemployment is inevitable. From this
> point of view your first proposition is logical: "let labourers find jobs
> for themselves". In marxist terms this means let the price of labour fall
> to the point where they are on the margin of subsistence even if that means
> the average level of subsistence of the whole labour force falls. This may
> be more acceptable if there is confidence that the market is increasing the
> efficiency of production so that there is a fall in the cost of use values
> as well, even to the extent that the labourers' material standard of living
> may rise, while labour's share of the total exchange value of the society
> falls.
>
> Your proposition that funds and labour force should flow freely,
> essentially sounds like a neo-liberal argument that has worked in a very
> dynamic way in southern China. However the tide IMO is turning in the west
> in the direction of seeing the need for more control over the economy. Just
> one example, in Britain yesterday the New Labour government has introduced
> a transport policy of a very timid nature, but which essentially accepts
> the implication that in a mass democracy not everyone can have unrestricted
> access to the use of a car all the time. Its proposal for example that
> company car parking space should be taxed has not been greeted with
> denunciation by the business community as old style socialism. When Hong
> Kong, Shenzen and Canton form a giant megalopolis of 100 million people,
> civil society will itself demand social control over the free flow of
> capital and labour, I would suggest. The labour power themselves start
> demanding a better quality of life.
>
> "When labourer really can't find jobs themselves, the government comes
> forward, and offers money and finds jobs for them."
>
> I have not been able easily to read your whole article to understand the
> assumptions about how this will be done, but in the capitalist west it is
> regarded as quite complicated. The massive direction of public funds into
> uncompetitive enterprises, often old steel factories or shipyards etc, is a
> subsidy for the rate of profit of the capitalists running these enterprises
> which was ridiculed as looking after "lame ducks". That merely postponed
> the day that these industries would be defeated by competition from South
> Korea for example.
>
> The New Labour government is experimenting with tax credits allowing
> certain types of worker to work on top of their benefit without losing it,
> by treating it as a tax credit. This is a subsidy to the individual worker,
> but in Keynesian terms it may have the advantage of promoting the
> circulation of economic activity and it has the hidden benefit from a
> capitalist point of view of further adding to labour competition and
> forcing down the price of labour power. Similarly New Labour policies on
> promoting nurseries and child care look from one point of view very
> enlightened but will force down the price of labour by allowing more women
> to compete in the labour market.
>
> As you presumably understand, much of the anxiety in the west about the
> economy is fear of competition with the type of labour power flocking to
> southern China willing to work at rates perhaps 30 times less than in the
> west, (at least as translated by current exchange rates). From a point of
> view of simple worker solidarity between west and east, any downward
> pressure on your labour rates, such as you appear to support, is
> potentially bad news for western workers.
>
> "Finally, the daily working time for every labourer can be cut down so as
> to solve unemployment."
>
> Such ideas surface in the left and the trade union movement at times of
> recession in western Europe as an apparently socialised way of dealing with
> the crisis. But they leave out of account that the workers must accept a
> proportionate reduction in pay, otherwise it will hit the profits of the
> capitalists and they will go out of busines, which will not exactly help
> the employment position.
>
> Some sections of society in the west are consciously competing less and
> accepting a lower standard of living as a result, by part time work and by
> adopting alternative life styles, for example consciously going back to a
> vegeterian diet. But there is no social way of promoting this, at present
> in use. I am in favour of "Basic Income", a tax credit for *all*, whether
> they work or do not, which would facilitate this on a case by case basis
> which would allow the state to guide the economy but avoid the attacks on
> socialism of being commandist. But it will have an uphill struggle to catch
> on because it looks like an additional tax expense when the neo-liberal
> tide against government expenditure is running strong, and because the left
> can see that whenever a government wants to hit the workers it could delay
> raising the basic income in line with inflation. If it was used everywhere
> as an open way the advanced capitalist countries subsidised their work
> force from the benefits of unequal global exchange, it would facilitate the
> gradual comparative sinking of wage rates in the privileged western
> countries to those of the east. A proposition that IMHO could not be ruled
> out by democrats in the west.
>
> Overall your position does not seem to see any explicit relevance for the
> marxist theory of value (exchange value). You are prepared to see the
> exchange value of wages fall for the sake you see of fuller employment and
> fuller productivity. But the catch in any capitalist system is that capital
> accumulates to the point where it can no longer maintain the same rate of
> profit out of the finite overall total social value of the society. A
> crunch comes between the need for capital to go on accumulating surplus
> value, and the restricted purchasing power of the masses. This takes the
> form of a glut of overproduction. Your proposals do not help this, indeed
> in terms of exchange value the workers would become poorer. Yet the crisis
> of the east at present is a crisis of overproduction. Who is going to buy
> all your goods?
>
> The catch is that under a capitalist system, and I suspect a
> semi-capitalist one, capital must itself periodically be destroyed before
> economic activity can pick up again. There are various ways this happens,
> cataclysmic or hidden, but it must happen. I am not an expert on Keynes,
> certainly in comparison to others on this list, but I suspect to the extent
> that his ideas seemed to work, they were because his proposals allowed a
> gradual comparative devaluation of capital relative to the total social
> capital at a time when the total value of western economies was rising
> through unequal exchange with the rest of the world.
>
> Your interest in Keynes now is not an abstract one but is in a number of
> contexts. One is clearly the acceleration of market forces in the PRC.
> Another is whether the unequal global relations between for example your
> country and mine will continue.
>
> I suspect where Keynes has any currency, it is now applicable only on a
> global level, for example by the printing and distribution of IMF special
> drawing rights, hopefully for a better purpose than shoring up the Russian
> economy while they try again hopelessly to introduce neo-liberal measures,
> merely because they have still got an alarming number of nuclear missiles
> and are rather unpredictable.
>
> I hope these comments allow some sort of dialogue to bridge different
> circumstances and perspectives.
>
> Chris Burford
>
> London
>
> At 05:10 AM 7/21/98 +0800, you wrote:
> >The final result of the development of social economy:
> >the stage of time-decreasing in work.
> >
> >My article (1)"ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL ECONOMY"
> ><http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet/Exchange/3058/> taking
> >unemployment as a clue, explains in detail the four stages of social
> >economy and points out the final result of the development of social
> >economy "The fourth stage: the stage of time-decreasing in work". Do
> >you think whether there is some other final result? If any, please
> >point it out.
> >
-- Sincerely, Ju-chang He
SHENZHEN, P.R. CHINA E-mail address: <chang at public.shenzhen.cngb.com> Welcome to visit My Home Page at <http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet/Exchange/3058/> (Please disable your Java and Java script.)