>Enveloped in car culture, our yachting-addicted, computer-dependent,
>frequent-flying comrade Doug must really not delay a trip to reality
>any longer.
Right, that's me. I've just dumped my Lexus for a Lamborghini.
> As to your earlier point that Patrick loves jet-setting
>from Belfast to Alabama to Philadelphia/Baltimore/Washington to
>Harare to Jo'burg (my initinerary these last 39 years), what's the
>big deal? We've always said, internationalism of people, not
>globalisation of capital, right?
I'm all for the internationalization of people. I'm confused but fascinated by the fact that some of the strongest defenders of nationalism/localism on this list are people living in lands far from their birth. Is this some fantastic longing for rootedness playing itself out through politics?
> You're with us on that distinction
>(made eloquently by JMK in the Yale Review, 1933), eh Doug?
He said finance, not capital, didn't he? Keynes had no problem with the capital relation in general, just the specific manifestation of finance, which as far as I'm concerned, is a distinction with not much of a difference.
>Instead, on to the technical question of whether
>Zimbabwe can produce what's needed for a decent
>way of life. Rich folk could, the argument below
>demonstrates. The multitudes could go even further,
>if the politics come right (I mean, left).
I'm not so sure you can separate out the "technical questions" so easily. As I keep saying, Rhodesia was a racist state - and one built on the repression of labor, as you concede:
> Also during this time, the balance of power in
>the industrial class struggle swung heavily towards
>capital, and a lowly 8% of gross industrial revenues
>were spent on black workers' wages in 1969. Even
>in the mid 1970s with a liberation war underway,
>Handford (1976, 145) could brag, "At present,
>possibly the biggest advantage enjoyed by Rhodesia
>in regard to the more developed nations is its
>absence of labour troubles." There were, interprets
>Lloyd Sachikonye (1986, 251), no fewer than 68
>trade union leaders in detention in 1973:
>
> It is scarcely surprising that in the 1960s and
> 1970s a dark cloud hovered over trade
> unionism in Zimbabwe. A decimation of the
> leadership of unions through its incarceration
> in detention or exile, the onerous labour
> laws, in addition to the dubious role of
> international labour institutions such as the
> Brussels-based International Confederation of
> Free Trade Unions--all had a generally
> weakening impact on the unions.
Keynes, recall, celebrated the economic miracle of the Nazi state, in the preface to the German edition of The General Theory - a system where full employment depended on the (very Kaleckian) repression of labor, not to mention (again) nationalist mobilization. Are these mere "technical details"?
Later, you quote:
> "The overall model chosen to integrate the
> economy into the international markets...
> These measures should aim at avoiding the
> appropriation of rents by suppliers of
> nontradables and workers. That is, they
> should maintain the real wage low, so that
> excess profits accrue to capital... In carrying
> out all these activities, a close alliance
> between government and private agents must
> be developed."
> Manuel Hinds, World Bank Economist
> Outwards vs. Inwards Development Strategy:
> Implications for the Financial Sector,
> Washington, DC, World Bank, 1990, pp.15-17.
How Keynesian of Hinds! There are some passages in the 140s of the first volume of Keynes's Treatise on Money that celebrate the beauties of the 16th century profit inflation, which produced great literature (Keynes suggested that a profit inflation was great for the arts), and a halving of the real wage between 1500 and 1600. As he said, "[T]he working class may benefit far more in the long run from the forced abstinence which a profit inflation imposes on them than they lose in the first instance in the shape of diminished consumption." As long as the fruits are invested, not consumed, "the evils of an unjust distribution may not be so great as they appear."
You pointed out on the Debate list that when Aristide took office, he faced the "constraints faced by Third World progressives once they take the state... and find that's not where the power lies!" And hasn't something gone badly wrong since the ANC - surely one of the most admirable revolutionary forces ever, no? - took power in SA? Isn't this a serious problem with a state-centered strategy? Should we be trying to think beyond all these inherited structures of the nation-state?
Doug