First, the rising equity wealth on which taxes and even a surplus are being
presently collected has put a halt on the deterioration of the debt/GDP
ratio, thereby allowing the govt better terms of credit on which to finance
further expenditures. But this equity boom is built on catastrophic capital
flight from all over the world. The world's great misfortune is the social
imperialist's opportunity.
>>
Nothing new here, as far as the fact of imperialism enriching a nation and making greater social expenditures possible. But you can hardly blame advocates of social spending for that. We'd be advocating in any case. Also, your segue from social democrat to social imperialist is weird. S-I was Mao's term for Soviet revisionism.
>>
Moreover, it seems to me that given the need the whole world has for our
greenbacks since it is the intl reserve currency and oil is priced in
dollars, perhaps the US govt can get away with lower interest rates on the
money borrowed to finance govt expenditures than its indebted position
would otherwise justify. But are these lower interest rates then in effect
a subsidy by the rest of the world to the US state?
>>
Sounds fair.
>>
Of course a good social imperialist best not probe the material foundations
that make his reformist big government politics possible (debt financing on
the basis of the low interest rates that the US govt can enjoy despite its
already heavily indebted position). Indeed it is to be expected that he
will rush to defend imperialist projection or at best keep quiet about its
horrors (esp if involves control to ensure the pricing of that special
commodity in dollars).
>>
Now we're impugning the morals of anonymous persons.
>>
So perhaps in addition to taxation of the liquidated equity wealth that has
burgeoned due to catastrophic worldwide capital flight, there is this other
reason why the running up of the US govt debt would be sustainable
presently. If US public finances seem in good shape at last, this is only
due to a pure gift from the rest of the world, much of which has been
enduring a silent depression even in Doug's strict terms.
>>
Debt is sustainable in conventional economic models entirely w/o reference to the malign forces to which you allude. It has nothing to do with the level of GDP. If GDP grows slowly, debt can grow, albeit just as slowly.
>>
The social democrats want to fashion a reformist agenda on that imperialist
basis,
>>
More mind-reading.
>> but this is not only to put the interests of a narrow section of the
global proletariat above the rest, >>
The logical implication of not dealing with a nation's political economy in a practical way is to have no politics at all. Trotskyism on a bender.
>>
it is to preach false solutions because
there is no compelling evidence that massive deficits have indeed
stimulated the economy as predicted in Keynesian theory.
>>
Oh really?
>>
There is another aspect to imperialism. if the whole world needs dollars,
efforts to acquire them must keep the value of the dollar high, making it
easier for the US to grow through cheap imports while enjoying higher
prices for the capital goods it exports.
The position of the dollar, buttressed by the pricing of oil in dollars and
the US monopoly over advanced weapons systems, seems to me to give the US
a subsidy in the form of unequal exchange at the expense of the rest of the
world, a subsidy on which social imperialists are trying to make a claim
for the benefit of the working class (though of course the govt technocrats
will get the lion's share of the booty that they are distributing to the
working class and poor).
>>
You're repeating your earlier point. Also rehashing the right-wing line that a liberal program will feed bureaucrats rather than ordinary people.
>>
There is every danger that representatives of the US working class will
seek the same solution of world domination as the US bourgeoisie to its
problems and build social imperialism on that basis; there is even greater
risk that the working class will not sharpen its wits for a direct
confrontation but attempt instead to find the kind of third way politics
that seem possible on the unspoken basis of imperialist economic power.
>>
Funny coming from a marxist. I would have thought that third way politics were not capable of resolving the capitalist crisis.
It's hard to disprove a prediction of would happen in a hypothetical situation, and thus equally worthless to make such predictions.
This have been cases of laborite governments sliding into third way politics. I don't have an explanation for it. It is often ascribed to moral degeneration of individuals, but this seems superficial to me. By contrast, ultra-leftists just go raging into the night, or simply fade away. Or like the FARC, meet with the head of the NYSE.
>>
To me this blindness to the imperialism that makes reformist politics prima
facie plausible has always been the most disturbing feature of the American
left. Oh time to crawl back into my cave before I'm told that I raining on
the party to achieve our country.
>>
More like a schpritz, or at best a light drizzle.
I don't know that the U.S. left is much different from the Brits or the Continental lefts in this regard.
Your post presumes a present, great economic benefit to imperialism. It also implies a link between the spate of U.S. military interventions over the past forty years -- many of which the left and liberals did not support from the jump -- and the aforementioned economic benefits. The benefits are highly problematic as to magnitudes. Also the necessity of many of the interventions in sustaining any such benefits. You seem to be reducing U.S. foreign policy to a narrow economism.
One could argue the other way -- that preoccupation with foreign adventures is more of an obstacle to the social democratic project than not. For lack of foreign enemies, politics would default to a greater focus on domestic issues. There would also be more money to deal with them.
In your own odd way, your position dovetails with the third worldist/eco-doom/overproductionist/anti-honkie mindset of a number of our colleagues. In other words, it is a politics of anti-politics. I understand why you're in this cave, since a positive evolution of class forces in the U.S./EU/Japan is hard to envision these days. I'd rather be out in the open, taking my chances against the mastodons.
Cheers, mbs