the class struggle

christian a. gregory chrisgregory11 at email.msn.com
Wed Feb 16 18:03:49 PST 2000



> Most importantly from the argument of Mattick's I am advancing here: With
> the limits on the mixed economy already reached (fiscal impotence in Japan
> and fiscal austerity in the EU and the US), there will be no easy way out
> of a general crisis in social reproduction. The fiscal card has simply
> already been played.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keynesianism is dead. Long live Keynesianism.

Japan isn't a case of fiscal impotence, but stop-start fiscal austerity.
>From 1993-96, the %age changes in central government spending have been .2%,
1.0%,-2.9%, 5.8%, respectively. Surprisingly, the year of 5.8% central gov't expenditure increase, GDP in Japan rose by 3.6%. That's not to say that Japanese fiscal policy is necessarily good, but it certainly hasn't exhausted itself. "The fiscal card has been played" sounds like American neo-liberal triumphalism--or the Financial Times op-ed page. Besides, how much do you want to bet that, come next recession, US discretionary spending caps go out the window?

And besides all that, since when has the arsenal of tactics of the bourgeoisie been comprised by fiscal spending? What was Greenspan's post-Asian crisis interest rate policy? (As I recall, Daniel Davies called it "interest-rate Keynesianism.")

This means the next depression won't simply be a cold
> douche. It will scald the working class. Or the working class will
> overthrow bourgeois society. The only real options remain:
> barbarism or socialism.

I wouldn't have thought you bought this kind of messianic eschatology. What gives?

All best, Christian



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