Cheers, Patrick
----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Sunday, September 05, 2004 6:45 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] spiked-essays | Zombie anti-imperialists vs the'Empire'by James Heartfield
> Patrick Bond wrote:
>
> >PB: No, it's a coalescence of the left's concern that state actions
> >generally follow national economic interests, and that oil will run out,
> >hence the US strategy for decades to come is to have Iraq play vassal.
>
> This is controversial, I know, but it's not been conclusively proved
> that the invasion of Iraq was a project of the entire U.S. ruling
> class, rather than a hyped-up portion of it. And since things haven't
> been going well in Iraq, there seem to be plenty of second thoughts
> in elite circles.
>
> We've got something like 41 years of oil left at current rates of
> use. Oil will run out someday, but it's hardly the most urgent
> problem of the moment.
>
> >PB: Harvey argues the world is awash with capital, and that uneven
> >development entails various kinds of switches in flows of capital. There
is
> >no shortage of financial capital bubbling around organically within the
US
> >(even if US T-bills are purchased by East Asians); witness the real
estate
> >and mortgage bubbling going on.
>
> Our capital imports have been used to finance consumption more than
> investment. The U.S. corporate sector has been running a surplus
> (i.e., internal funds exceed capital expenditures).
>
> >PB: Actually, the profit squeeze is seen as the squeeze that tight labour
> >markets or class struggle puts on profits. The overaccumulation thesis -
> >that profits stem from excessively productive capital and underpaid
labour
> >(unable to consume the massive output of the system) - is the opposite.
>
> U.S. profit rates rose from 1982-97, fell into 2001, and are
> substantially up over the last three years. So how does that
> empirical fact fit in with the theory?
>
> >PB: One could argue that the overall impact of overaccumulation is going
to
> >be worse, because the scale of displacement - not resolution - of the
> >problem is so much more severe. Just as one example, all the debt ratios
> >(which indicate what Harvey terms the 'temporal fix') are far higher
today
> >in most every country, especially the US, than the 1970s.
>
> True, but when does this become a problem? Is there some magic level
> of debt that becomes toxic? We could go on like this for decades, for
> all we know.
>
> > I can send anyone
> >a slide show I do on this, if interested. The other manifestations of
crisis
> >displacement - the search for relative and absolute surplus value, the
> >spatial fix through globalisation,
>
> The use of the word "fix" sounds like some underhanded trick. But
> what if you read "globalization" as a process of the capitalization
> of everything, over an increasing geographic scope, that's been going
> on for centuries? Growth in China and to a lesser extent India has
> been stunning over the last couple of decades. It looks real to me,
> not like some "fix."
>
> > amplified uneven development, worsening
> >'accumulation by dispossession' (including via superexploitation of
women)
>
> How's what's happening today all that different from, say, the mill
> girls of 19th century Lowell, or the homeworkers of the same period?
>
> >all appear far more advanced, and I'd argue that all are the result of
the
> >general overaccumulation crisis as witnessed by the persistently low
rates
> >of profit in the 1970s-90s era.
>
> Not persistently - in the U.S., there was a secular rise from 1982,
> with lots of cyclical variation. Profit rates in the EU are pretty
> high too, as far as I know.
>
> >PB: Heartfield doesn't understand that a 'speculative boom' is a
reflection
> >of deep-seated crisis tendencies let loose in the stock market. That's
Marx
> >101.
>
> So when the bubble broke, why didn't the U.S. unemployment rate rise
> to a 1932-ish 25%?
>
> >PB: Of course class struggle was the central theme in his work, but there
is
> >a vibrant literature on Marx's breakdown theory - especially a 1929 book
by
> >Heinryk Grossmann (which Heartfield's group promoted very heavily just
over
> >a decade ago).
>
> So is the breakdown coming? If so, when?
>
> >JM: In fact, both the European and American workforces grew - the EU
> >workforce by 15million and America's by 27million - between 1986 and
2001.
> >In East Asia, and especially China, millions more have been drawn into
the
> >factories. That implies an expansion of capitalist production,
> >
> >PB: Sure, but it also implies the search for absolute surplus value,
given
> >the sweatshop character of those operations. It implies a worsening of
> >uneven and combined development, which is also a classic symptom of
> >overaccumulation crisis.
>
> Sweatshops don't tell the whole story. It's an empirical fact, not
> welcome or even acknowledged by a lot of activists, that MNCs
> operating even in places like Indonesia pay more than local
> operations. I thought Marx 101 holds, aside from the usual
> immiseration and crisis bits, that capitalism can develop economies
> and create new sets of "needs," and that 101 Marxists half welcomed
> this.
>
> >JM: Whatever the real movement of profits, they are not, in this
instance, a
> >consequence of the declining ratio of workers to means of production.
While
> >raging against 'over-accumulation', today's critics have failed to notice
> >that the real problem is the shortfall of investment in new technologies,
> >the perpetuation of drudgery and the squandering of labour in
unproductive
> >toil.
> >
> >PB: The 'shortfall of investment' - because most evidence is of declining
> >fixed capital investment ratios during the past three decades - itself
> >reflects overinvestment and glutted markets, and that condition hits even
> >sectors like ICT, e.g. from the late 1990s, once these overaccumulate
very
> >rapidly (witness the optic fibre gluts all over N.America).
>
> I hope that James's point is that capitalist social relations are
> frustrating the potential payoffs of new technology. Don't you agree,
> Patrick?
>
> >PB: Brenner actually titled his book 'Boom and Bubble' to show that the
boom
> >got out of control. JM should also consult the data on profitability from
> >Dumenil and Levy (Cepremap website), which strip out the interest-related
> >(rentier) profits from US non-financial corps and demonstrate that profit
> >rates have remained very low throughout the last three decades.
>
> Why strip out interest-related profits? Their source is value
> production elsewhere, and the financial relation merely changes the
> ultimate recipient. Actual firms and managers are happy or sad
> depending on the rate and mass of profit, which has been quite
> satisfactory since the bourgoisie won the latest round of the class
> war in the early 1980s.
>
> >JM: Though the old left was providing the intellectual ballast, the real
> >meaning of the 'war for oil' slogan was rather different from the
> >Marx-inspired analysis of over-mature capitalism. Behind the terminology
lay
> >the more moralistic preoccupations of the contemporary radical
> >intelligentsia with personal greed on the part of the West. According to
> >Christian Aid, 'the global economy's addiction to oil - its drug of
choice -
> >has done more than anything else to skew the world's priorities' (18).
The
> >war in Iraq was taken as a sign that the West was over-dependent on cars
and
> >fossil fuels. The real target of the criticism was not a social system
that
> >stood in the way of economic development, but of economic development
> >itself, and of the greater personal consumption it gave rise to.
>
> I don't share James's fondness for cars, but I'm entirely behind the
> general point.
>
> >PB: The critique is of the system as a whole, which does indeed create
vast
> >excess 'savings' that take the form of financial market surpluses. Just
> >consider how much of this is being invested in the real estate bubble -
The
> >Economist last year estimated that of a $70 trillion global property
> >valuation, about 2/5ths is overvaluation - and you get a sense of the
scale
> >of the problem.
>
> How important is this, really? We've had many bubbles in many asset
> classes over the centuries. They burst, periods of stagnation or
> decline follow, and then the system recovers. Why is every cycle
> taken somehow to be the working out of some final crisis?
>
> >(13) 'For some of his disciples the "law of value" . seems to assure the
> >breakdown of capitalism', chided Paul Mattick, adding: 'Marx's critique
of
> >political economy became the ideology of the inevitability of socialism.'
> >('Value Theory and Capital Accumulation', Science and Society, Winter
1959,
> >Vol XXIII, No 1, p 33)
> >
> >PB: It shouldn't have to take this form, obviously. Since Mattick was a
> >Grossmann disciple, I suspect (though haven't read the article) that he
had
> >a more nuanced take on this than we're getting in the one-liner.
>
> I think the one-liner gets to a fundamental fact: the whole point of
> FROP theory was to predict the inevitable collapse. Now that people
> have retreated from that, the whole value-theoretic enterprise looks
> empty and pointless. It's one of the problems with Shaikh & Tonak's
> wealth of nations book - what is the point of the whole exercise,
> other than some clever statistical transformations? And I say that
> with great respect for Shaikh & Tonak. But I just don't get it.
>
> >PB: I'm not sure there's time today to do more with this, or that it's a
> >healthy use of time anyhow, given JM's bizarre political standpoint and
> >trajectory. Maybe someone else wants to take up the baton.
> >
>
> Despite his allegedly "bizarre" standpoint, James asks some good
> questions, and I don't think you should dismiss them so lightly. His
> posish has a lot in common with that of Panitch and Gindin (and me)
> that powered our dinner table argument in Toronto in the spring.
>
> Doug
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