then Max Sawicky wrote: >>> So why does the U.S. tolerate it now at all, with all the current, pervasive weakness of the working class? What's to be afraid of?<<<
>>> Because of the weak organization of the US working class, I think the
ruling class will tolerate a lower rate of U than it would if the w.c. were
stronger.<<<
>So the r.c. tolerates low UE when it is afraid of the w.c., and also when
it isn't?<
There are two things going on here, only one of which Kalecki was talking about.
Kalecki's theory is that labor must be kept weak to preserve profits and the class dictatorship of capital. That means that if labor is _organizationally_ strong, a greater reserve army of labor is needed. So there's a "trade off" -- weaker labor organization -- such as we've seen increasingly over recent decades -- means less of a reserve army is needed to preserve profits and capital's power.
This only talks about the "supply" of unemployment by capital, by the quasi-natural workings of the capitalist system and its political/policy layer. What about the "demand" for low unemployment by labor?
As labor's organizational strength rises, it is able to successfully demand lower and lower unemployment rates.
This of course, could lead to a conflict where the unemployment rate needed by capital is higher than the unemployment rate successfully demanded by labor. In this case, capital's efforts to smash labor are redoubled, since it lowers the threat to capital's rule by unemployment _and_ reduces labor's ability to insist on policies that hurt capital.
This is a _very_ abstract analysis (as with all "supply & demand' type analyses) and needs to be complemented by historical and institutional analysis. But I don't have the time here. My son wants to build a circus.
Instead, I want to repeat my point: the official unemployment rate puts more terror in the hearts of labor than a similar rate did 30 or 40 years ago. So that makes empirical discussion of the above very difficult.
I was disappointed by the winner of the Ig Nobel prizes in Economics this year. It would have been perfect to give it to Merton and Scholes. Here's the complete listing, from http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/ig_nobel/#igs :
SAFETY ENGINEERING. Troy Hurtubise, of North Bay, Ontario, for developing, and personally testing a suit of armor that is impervious to grizzly bears.
BIOLOGY. Peter Fong of Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for contributing to the happiness of clams by giving them Prozac. REFERENCE: "Induction and Potentiation of Parturition in Fingernail Clams (Sphaerium striatinum) by Selective Serotonin Re- Uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs)," Peter F. Fong, Peter T. Huminski, and Lynette M. D'urso, "Journal of Experimental Zoology, vol. 280, 1998, pp. 260-64.
PEACE. Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan for their aggressively peaceful explosions of atomic bombs.
CHEMISTRY. Jacques Benveniste of France for his homeopathic discovery that not only does water have memory, but that the information can be transmitted over telephone lines and the Internet. [NOTE: Benveniste also won the 1991 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize.] REFERENCE:"Transatlantic Transfer of Digitized Antigen Signal by Telephone Link," J. Benveniste, P. Jurgens, W. Hsueh and J. Aissa, "Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology - Program and abstracts of papers to be presented during scientific sessions AAAAI/AAI.CIS Joint Meeting February 21-26, 1997."
SCIENCE EDUCATION. Dolores Krieger, Professor Emerita, New York University, "for demonstrating the merits of therapeutic touch, a method by which nurses manipulate the energy fields of ailing patients by carefully avoiding physical contact with those patients."
STATISTICS. Jerald Bain of Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto and Kerry Siminoski of the University of Alberta for their carefully measured report, "The Relationship Among Height, Penile Length, and Foot Size." REFERENCE: The paper was published in "Annals of Sex Research," vol. 6, no. 3, 1993, pp. 231-5.
PHYSICS. Deepak Chopra of The Chopra Center for Well Being, La Jolla, California, for his unique interpretation of quantum physics as it applies to life, liberty, and the pursuit of economic happiness. REFERENCE: Deepak Chopra's books " "Quantum Healing," "Ageless Body, Timeless Mind," etc. and www.chopra.com
ECONOMICS. Richard Seed of Chicago for his efforts to stoke up the world economy by cloning himself and other human beings. CONTACT: Richard Seed, 708-442-0500, FAX 708-442-1500 <ljseed at pol.net>
MEDICINE. To Patient Y and to his doctors, Caroline Mills, Meirion Llewelyn, David Kelly, and Peter Holt, of Royal Gwent Hospital, in Newport, Wales, for the cautionary medical report, "A Man Who Pricked His Finger and Smelled Putrid for 5 Years." REFERENCE: The paper was published in "The Lancet," vol. 348, November 9, 1996, p. 1282.
LITERATURE. Dr. Mara Sidoli of Washington, DC, for her illuminating report, "Farting as a Defence Against Unspeakable Dread." REFERENCE: "Farting as a Defence Against Unspeakable Dread," Mara Sidoli, "Journal of Analytical Psychology," vol. 41, no. 2, 1996, pp. 165-78.
Jim Devine jdevine at popmail.lmu.edu & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html