On Feb 24, 2009, at 3:03 PM, Patrick Bond wrote:
> You think that because you are resident in the USA, where the
> working-class collapse also contributed to higher profit rates
> alongside the rise of financial rates of return (the new Foster/
> Magdoff lays this out very nicely). Capital is a global relation,
> and if you spent a bit of time with us in the southern hemisphere,
> or the FSU, where we think of the 1980s-90s as the lost decades,
> Doug, then you wouldn't talk of a crisis being 'solved'. Capitalism
> is uneven and combined development, comrade.
Your argument boils down to saying that capitalism can't have solved it crisis because the working class was still poor and insecure. The crisis of the 1970s was in profitability and the political environment for profit-making. The Volcker shock - and it sure is funny to see all these lefties now quoting Volcker as something of a prophet - and its sequelae like structural adjustment cured both the economic and political problems, and gave the system a spectacular 25-year run. Do you think anyone at the pinnacle of the system gives a shit that Africa's a wreck?
> My point in this longstanding debate with you, comrade, is that by
> failing to invoke the tendency of capitalism to crisis, we're
> throwing away one of socialism's most important selling points.
And how do you sell socialism in this context? Risk everything on an untried system! Or, if you don't want to reject the Soviet model, then say risk everything on doing the Soviet system better!
>> ... even socialism would have problems that it would have to solve
>> (starting with its introduction), and no doubt serious ones
>> (starting with its introduction).
>
> Yes, but the kind of crisis-generating problems we see with
> capitalism are not internally hardwired into the underlying dynamics
> of socialism, the way they are with capitalism.
Hayek and Friedman were in many ways repulsive characters, but their critiques of socialism - like coordination and knowledge problems - aren't completely bonkers. You could - and I do - point to things like Wal-Mart's logistical innovations as suggesting a path for socialization of the economy, but if you think there aren't "hardwired" problems in socialism, you're just not taking your enemies seriously enough.
Doug