[lbo-talk] Goolsbee: subprime was pretty groovy (in 2007)

Patrick Bond pbond at mail.ngo.za
Tue Dec 2 09:50:32 PST 2008


Doug Henwood wrote:
> Not at all. But your theory seems to generalize from a sample of 1,
> the 1929-45 period of depression and war.

You're STILL not reading Louis P's FAQs? Even after being so wrong on the question of financial crisis, comrade Doug? Try it here - http://www.marxmail.org/faq/financial_crisis.htm (a piece I did 9 years ago) - and you can get the other samples of accumulation cycles under Kism: 1815-48, 1873-96, 1917-48, and 1974-99.


> ... Your notion of devalorization does that implicitly, by ignoring
> the regional and sectoral ebb and flow, which can involve significant
> devalorization without showing up in the aggregate stats.

Of course that's the case. Harvey called this a partial devalorisation. But the point is that it doesn't have the effect of preparing the ground for a new round of accumulation, it's mainly a displacement not a resolution of the crisis.


> ... Call it what you want, but speedup, outsourcing, wage cutting,
> etc., are all pretty major structural changes.

Read Das K and you'll see them as tried-and-tested *minor* responses ('absolute s.v. extraction') to crisis. Major structural changes occur with vast devalorisations and restructurings of social relations, not these adjustments at the margins.


> ... Here again, another of my problems. A "spatio-temporal fix" sounds
> a bit like three-card monte, some sort of confidence trick. But this
> has been the history of capitalism for centuries - long-term growth in
> the aggregates with a lot of regional and sectoral volatility under
> the surface. If I weren't sick to death of the phrase, I'd say the
> "s-t f" is just another way of saying "creative destruction."

No, sometimes the 'fix' involves destruction, but often it doesn't. Often it entails a renewed source of bubbling (instead of surplus value extraction) as a source of profit-taking. These are quite basic aspects of Marxian poli econ that I hope you can become more acquainted with, comrade. Seriously.


>> Indeed, because Keynesian capitalism failed to transform and instead
>> adopted neoliberal fixes, the crisis tendencies were never properly
>> resolved during the business cycle downturns, and instead the crises
>> were managed and displaced... temporarily (as I've been trying to
>> persuade you for about 20 years - and this year should have been
>> persuasive, comrade!)
> We still don't know how this is going to turn out, do we? And what if
> it is a long, deep recession? You think the system will never recover
> and grow again?

When did I ever say that? Why would you assume such nonsense? The only reason 'the system never recover and grow again' is if a socialist revolution supplants it. And that doesn't seem likely in our lifetimes, does it. (Though it shouldn't stop us from working on it.)


> ... The entire system of production and distribution has been
> revolutionized by high tech. You may remember that I was once a
> skeptic on the contribution of ICT to the productivity acceleration,
> but I renounced my skepticism in the early 2000s. The evidence was
> just too strong - Gordon, Jorgenson, Stiroh, Oliner, Sichel, etc. Or
> ask Sam Gindin about what tech has done to the labor process in auto.

If so, why do we have such extreme overaccumulation in the auto sector? I've talked lots with Sam about techo-fetishes ranging from informal sector calculators to financial instruments. But what, really, is qualitatively different? How did the high techery change the dynamic of accumulation and overaccumulation? Sam told me that financial sector activity added incredible amounts of efficiency - but it's all burning down now. I just don't see how you'd read the ICT investments as anything more than an amplification of our old friend the STF!


> I'm glad you're turning to the valorisation/devalorisation framework.
> But as you know, these were partial, not the kind of full-fledged
> 1929-45 devalorisation required to clear away all the economic
> deadwood and restart capital accumulation.
> n=1

4


>> Yes, in addition to financial profiteering, the amplification of
>> uneven development has been a major contributing force to the
>> problems caused ultimately by overaccumulation.
> Again, history of capitalism. Was English development a displacement
> of a Dutch problem? Of the U.S. a displacement of an English problem?
> Etc.

Yes, quite right. History of capitalism: uneven/combined development. Geographical shifts in sites of valorisation/devalorisation. A strong case for historical-geographical materialism. Join us...


>> Malaysia’s ambiguous capital controls.
> Not socialist revolution, but a lot better than what happened to South
> Korea.

Finally we agree, com. (Though Korean workers are lots more ideologically advanced than Malaysian nationalists, you'd also admit.)


>



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