over capacity/over built

Max Sawicky sawicky at epinet.org
Mon Oct 5 10:32:54 PDT 1998



>I sure hope someone replies to this, given the flurry of advertising by the
USWA -- cosponsored with the steel bosses -- against imports. At the same time some on the left are heralding the steelworkers' union for a lawsuit against NAFTA (the details of which I admit I don't know), they're also dredging up the same old protectionist crap. This at a time when the need for and possibility of international solidarity should be clearer than ever.>

This may not be what you were hoping for, but when the boss hires people to work for less money than current employees, we call it 'scab-herding.' Alternatively, when the boss imports goods made by workers who have no rights and receive sub-standard wages, some would have us call this "free trade." Fortunately, workers don't seem to grasp the profound difference imputed by others in these two states of the world. Moreover, this curious understanding is shared by workers in the export countries. It may not include some confused left intellecutals, but there's your international solidarity.


> . . .

Although I have no quarrel with the facts he cites, for his part, Bro. Lehman is stuck on the "over-capacity" mantra. Every time this term is invoked, another little pebble is placed on the celestial scales rationalizing down-sizing. Just think, in the world today is it reasonable to say, in light of *need*, that there is anywhere an overcapacity in, say, food production? Whatever the U.S. is producing can be of use to somebody, somewhere, so one responsibility of economic policy, among others, is to make it happen.

One might also look at it this way. Suppose we buy 'over-capacity' for the sake of argument. What is the government or the business firm to do the face of this "finding"? How could any reaction not entail scaling back operations? The shortcomings of any likely transition aid to the affected workers should be obvious.

In the long run, of course, industries will rise and fall, but no meaningful imbalance of any size could spring up in the space of scant months. Clearly the gyrations of the financial system are at the root of such developments. Even if such instability is inevitable under capitalism, which I don't doubt, the cure following an overcapacity diagnosis is likely to be worse than the disease.

MBS



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