I'm inclined here to take Kalecki's discussion of what he called political business cycles as a starting point. In his famous 1943 article, "Political Aspects of Full Employment" (http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/kalecki220510.html), he wrote:
"This state of affairs is perhaps symptomatic of the future economic regime of capitalist democracies. In the slump, either under the pressure of the masses, or even without it, public investment financed by borrowing will be undertaken to prevent large-scale unemployment. But if attempts are made to apply this method in order to maintain the high level of employment reached in the subsequent boom, strong opposition by business leaders is likely to be encountered. As has already been argued, lasting full employment is not at all to their liking. The workers would 'get out of hand' and the 'captains of industry' would be anxious to 'teach them a lesson. Moreover, the price increase in the upswing is to the disadvantage of small and big rentiers, and makes them 'boom-tired.'
"In this situation a powerful alliance is likely to be formed between big business and rentier interests, and they would probably find more than one economist to declare that the situation was manifestly unsound. The pressure of all these forces, and in particular of big business -- as a rule influential in government departments -- would most probably induce the government to return to the orthodox policy of cutting down the budget deficit. A slump would follow in which government spending policy would again come into its own.
"This pattern of a political business cycle is not entirely conjectural; something very similar happened in the USA in 1937-8. The breakdown of the boom in the second half of 1937 was actually due to the drastic reduction of the budget deficit. On the other hand, in the acute slump that followed the government promptly reverted to a spending policy."
In that article Kalecki did not explore the roles that different political parties might play in this process. In the US, both the Democrats and the GOP have, at different times, been willing to use macroeconomic policies to promote economic expansion, and both parties have been willing to use maractoeconomic policy to slow down the economy too, but it seems to me that over the long-term, the Democrats have been more inclined to use such policy tools to promote economic expansion than the Republicans. And the GOP has been more inclined to promote restraint.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant http://www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math
---------- Original Message ---------- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> To: lbo-talk <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Republicans want recessions Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2015 21:24:59 -0500
On Feb 2, 2015, at 8:59 PM, Charles Brown <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
> They represent monopoly capital . The biggest capitalists make the most killings in recessions when failing companies can be bought on the cheap. One capitalist always kills many capitalists . So, yes they want recession for their vulture capitalist masters.
That was written more than 2 1/2 years ago by a rank Democratic apologist. The economy didn't crash. And this is just isn't true. They want growth - just growth skewed towards profits and the upper classes. Dems, by contrast, want growth skewed towards profits and the upper classes with some crumbs for everyone else. ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk ____________________________________________________________ Man, 63, Avoids Wrinkles 63 Yr Old Man Shares Simple DIY Skin Tightening Method He Uses At Home http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/54d1364a91dc2364a612fst01vuc