[lbo-talk] Crunch time for US capitalism?

[Seth Ackerman]

From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>

> That masks important regional differences. Asia has been anything but 
> stagnant. Capitalism hadn't ever seen anything like the Japan-Korea-China 
> serial booms before 1950, had it?

There's another way of looking at it. Maybe the success of Japan-Korea-China 
is one of the main symptoms of the problem the system is facing. The system 
"wants" a free flow of goods and therefore an international division of 
labor. But nationalists in Japan-Korea-China wanted to build a full 
production set of their own. The "system" was unable or unwilling to block 
Asia from building their own production capacity during the Cold War. But 
meanwhile, the US and Europe didn't want to give up their own production of 
lucrative high-end products. The result is too much capacity in the world. 
The only possible outcomes are (1) an end to the free flow of goods; Asia 
produces for the Asians, America for Americans, etc; or (2) a nasty shakeout 
where one side or the other is forced to shut down its production capacity.

Seth