[lbo-talk] overaccumulation in Japan

Patrick Bond pbond at mail.ngo.za
Sat Dec 20 08:21:35 PST 2008


Doug Henwood wrote:
> By the way, Patrick - is Japan your strongest example of
> overaccumulation? They've had some trouble over the last 15 years, but
> it's still a rich country very far from collapse. If that's
> overaccumulation, what exactly is so bad about it? And on whom did
> they displace their crisis, if anyone?

My 'strongest' example is the one I know best, South Africa. But the theory relates to the uneven/combined development of the world economy, of course. As for Japan specifically, yes, it's a good case ("Japan" and "overaccumulation of capital" gives you 1000 google hits, and that's not even accessing the excellent work of Marty Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett, e.g. 9/96 MR where I see you also have an article). What's 'bad' about the Japanese alleviation of overaccumulation (instead of a genuine resolution of the problem, via socialism) should be evident, but if not, here's David Harvey (2003 Socialist Register):

"Japanese trade surpluses during the 1990s were largely absorbed by lending to the United States to support the consumerism that purchased Japanese goods. Plainly, market and credit transactions of this sort can alleviate problems of overaccumulation at least in the short term. They function very well under conditions of uneven geographical development in which surpluses available in one territory are matched by lack of supply elsewhere. But resort to the credit system simultaneously makes territories vulnerable to flows of speculative and fictitious capitals that can both stimulate and undermine capitalist development and even, as in recent years, be used to impose savage devaluations upon vulnerable territories. "

Or, a longer riff (2002) that draws on a parallel school of thought: Monthly Review's underconsumptionist/stagnation theory:

Japan’s Stagnationist Crises by Joseph Halevi and Bill Lucarelli

The severe economic stagnation in Japan over the 1990s and into the present decade, is one of the most portentous developments in the recent history of world capitalism. In this article, Joseph Halevi and Bill Lucarelli account for the Japanese stagnation in terms inspired by the work of Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy, and Harry Magdoff. MR readers will find this article, which deals with the complicated issue of exchange rate fluctuations and their effect on national economies, more difficult than most articles that we publish on economics in the magazine. Yet we include it here because of its obvious importance and its clarity in describing a very complex set of global economic changes.—the Editors

Introduction

In this article we will argue that the Japanese economic crisis is connected to a process of oligopolistic accumulation and to Japan’s role as the regional economic hegemon in East Asia. The combination of these two factors generates a classic Baran-Sweezy-Magdoff perspective on the crisis in Japan.

FULL ARTICLE: http://monthlyreview.org/0202halevi.htm



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