[lbo-talk] Capital strike business

[SA]

shag wrote:
> At 04:22 PM 10/9/2008, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>
>> The capital strike is not for wages, but for working conditions.
>
> OK. so i read around about capital strikes: Kalecki, Dan Clawson, even 
> Erik Olin Wright. The latter two take me back as I've not read them in 
> years.
>
> Supposedly, a capital strike occurs when capital objects to certain 
> government policies, and kinda does a "I'm going to hold my breath 
> until you do what I want" routine. The example is usually Venezuela. 
> Others nod at Kalecki's "The Political Economy of Full Employment." (I 
> found the original text somewhere and now can no longer find it, but i 
> found a secondary source *describing* what Kalecki said.)
>

I've always thought this was a really bad metaphor. It's usually left 
unspecified whether the "strike" is a concerted action explicitly 
coordinated by capitalists or just the outcome of individual investment 
decisions based on expected profitability for individual firms. If it's 
the latter then it's not a "strike."

SA