• pillow [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I like this comment on the blogpost:

    I would think those who have a grasp of Marx’s critique wouldn’t be arguing about mitigation, but rather the necessity of crisis, mitigated or not, to the accumulation of capital, and the greater power of the bourgeoisie over the working class — as in the New Deal with its support of the “giant step” of the CIO disciplined the working class for the blood sacrifice of WW2.

    Now if there are no longer any prospects for socialist revolution; if Marx’s conflict between forces and relations of production no longer comes to social life in a struggle for and against the emancipation of labor from the wage system… well go right ahead and plunk the magic twanger of behalf of higher wages and fuller employment, but that ain’t socialism and isn’t even an intermediate or transitional moment to the struggle for socialism.

    I meant to add before that I first ran into mmt in my phase years ago of being fascinated by the market and listening to every hour of every bloomberg podcast for like 18 months. I remember that joe weisenthal and tracy alloway kept having mmt people on their podcast over and over and over to critique the fed and talk about mmt, and that really goes to show how comfortable that section of the bourgeoisie is with accommodating this whole idea. as long as you only address circulation, finance capital keeps benefiting in distribution, and nothing shakes its foundation in production. if you flip it on its head and start talking about changing relations of production you end up in a black plastic bag behind bloomberg’s mansion on long island

    • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I remember that joe weisenthal and tracy alloway kept having mmt people on their podcast over and over and over to critique the fed and talk about mmt, and that really goes to show how comfortable that section of the bourgeoisie is with accommodating this whole idea.

      Yeah and the critiques amount to “austerity politics is stupid, causes recessions, is simply capital inflicting wounds on itself, the government should spend money and it would be better for everyone”, without thinking about why austerity makes sense to capital. Keynesianism rebranded for the 21st century

      Were the policies of so-called austerity the cause of the Great Recession? If there had been no austerity would there have been no ensuing depression or stagnation in the major capitalist economies? If so, does that mean the policies of ‘Austerian’ governments were just madness, entirely based on ideology and bad economics?

      For Keynesians, the answer is ‘yes’ to all these questions. And it is the Keynesians who dominate the thinking of the left and the labour movement as the alternative to pro-capitalist policies. If the Keynesians are right, then the Great Recession and the ensuing Long Depression could have been avoided with sufficient ‘fiscal stimulus’ to the capitalist economy through more government spending and running budget deficits (i.e. not balancing the government books and not worrying about rising public debt levels).

      But is it right that austerity economics is just absurd and ideological? Would Keynesian-style fiscal stimulus have avoided the Long Depression experienced by most capitalist economies since 2009?

      It (austerity) is an ideology that makes sense from the point of view of capital. The Keynesian analysis denies or ignores the class nature of the capitalist economy and the law of value under which it operates by creating profits from the exploitation of labour. If government spending goes into social transfers and welfare, that will cut profitability as it is a cost to the capitalist sector and adds no new value to the economy. If it goes into public services like education and health (human capital), it may help to raise the productivity of labour over time, but it won’t help profitability. If it goes into government investment in infrastructure that may boost profitability for those capitalist sectors getting the contracts, but if it is paid for by higher taxes on profits, there is no gain overall. If it is financed by borrowing, profitability will be constrained eventually by a rising cost of capital and higher debt.

      https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/will-reversing-austerity-end-the-depression/