Re: GLOBAL KEYNESIANISM

Randy--

        I certainly hope that you are right.  It would make my children's
and my grandchildren's futures much more promising.  But I am less
confident than you are of such an outcome.  The distance between the Rich
World and the Poor World has not changed significantly in the past 50
years;  at best the Poor World is successfully treading water;  at worst
its collective head is perilously near to going under for good.  To oppose
revolution on principle because specific revolutions in Russia, China, and
elsewhere did not "open sesame!" is again to over-generalize
ahistorically.  Russia and China were not ready for a proletarian
revolution for the simple reason that they had midget proletariats and
largely rural, quasi-feudal economies.  They were like bicycles that
got off to a fast start because the Rolls-Royces on the road were briefly
stalled in a traffic jam.  

        But when the major bourgeois democracies finally push global
capitalism to its ultimate limits and the internal contradictions finally
kick in big-time, revolution will be possible and can be fruitful in those
democracies.  Will it also be necessary?  Will the megacorps and the
marionettes whose strings they pull in the various national governments
see reason and gracefully bow out?  I don't think so!  The only
imponderable, for me, is whether the leaders of revolution in the
core and semi-periphery will realize that the rest of humankind--the BULK
of humankind--must be fully integrated into the new socialist and
democratic world order, no matter what the (at least temporary) cost to
the everyday comfort of workers in the core and semi-periphery.  A house
divided against itself cannot stand.  And all of us now live, willy-nilly,
in the house of Earth.

        Warren
                

On Fri, 28 Apr 2000, The McDonald Family wrote:

> At 03:49 PM 4/28/2000 -0400, you wrote:
> >
> >Randy--
> >
> >     You may (or may not) be right, but as a historian I tend to see 
>every
> >country (and every part of every country) as more or less fated to 
>develop
> >as its past (and of course changing world conditions) dictates.  Russia 
>and
> >China were never Sweden and the Netherlands.  Their options were limited,
> >their circumstances dire.  Of course they did have options, in the 
>plural,
> >and I agree that counterfactual scenarios can uncover causal factors that
> >might go unnoticed in more conventional historiography;  but I see no
> >chance in hell that Russia or China, given their state of economic
> >development as of 1917 and 1949, respectively, and given their cultures,
> >could have made a go of Scandinavian-style social democracy.  It is also
> >true that Sweden and the Netherlands are deeply complicit in the modern
> >world-system with all its inequities.
> >
> >     Warren Wagar
> 
> Dr. Wagar:
> 
> I admit that I _was_ overreaching a bit when I suggests that Russia or 
>China
> might have become Scandinavian-style social democracies. Well, OK, not 
>just
> a bit. :-)
> 
> It seems to me that the state socialist system of the Soviet Union and
> satellites did nothing to let the Soviet Union catch up to the European 
>core
> states, at least not in the long run. The Soviet Union sought to become 
>the
> centre of a state socialist world-system, but it failed. Perhaps the 
>Soviet
> Union simply did not have command of enough of the world, but I'm inclined
> to believe that it was weaknesses in Soviet state socialism that led to 
>the
> collapse of the Soviet bloc once the Kondratieff down-cycle began. 
> 
> At the beginning of the 20th century, by western European standards the
> Russian Empire was poor and semi-industrialized, highly dependent on 
>western
> European capital exports, and run by an erratic government. At the end of
> the 20th century, the Russian Federation and the CIS states remained poor
> and semi-industrialized, highly dependent on western European (and United
> States, and soon, according to stratfor.com, Japanese) capital exports, 
>and
> run by a clutch of erratic governments. For all of the efforts of the 
>Soviet
> state to break away from the capitalist world-system, it failed, and 
>Russia
> was forced to rejoin the capitalist world system after an appalling toll 
>in
> the same position that she left it. China appears to be in relatively 
>better
> shape, but if it was not for its opening to First World investment and 
>trade
> in the past quarter-century, I think I'd be justified in predicting 
>trouble
> for China in the early 21st century, particularly once the Kondratieff
> down-cycle begins in the 2020's.
> 
> I find Russia's full circle return to the capitalist world system a 
>terrible
> tragedy. (Along with everyone else on the list.) To me, the experience of
> the Soviet bloc suggests very strongly that revolutionary attempts to opt
> out of the capitalist world system don't work, at least not in the long 
>run.
> Evolutionary methods -- such as a global Keynesian consensus -- seem to me
> the most practical way to try to expand the ranks of the First and Second
> World states, and to make conditions in the Third World that much more
> bearable. I'd like to think myself an optimist -- I think it likely that
> when the Kondratieff up-cycle kicks into full gear, that a Keynesian
> consensus common to the Triad and assorted Second World states will 
>emerge,
> if for no other reason than disillusionment with the course of the 
>1990's. 
> 
> It's unjust, I agree -- I'd also prefer a clean sweep of the board. But
> given the unlikelihood of a global revolution, given the high human and
> economic toll of the revolution, and given significant questions over the
> durability of the revolution's achievement, I think I'd be justified in
> sticking to an evolutionary approach.
> 
> Randy McDonald
> Charlottetown PE
> Canada
> 
>