Re: GLOBAL KEYNESIANISM

On Sat, 29 Apr 2000, Paul Riesz wrote:

>Considerable economic progress was achieved by some countries of the Soviet
>bloc during forced industrialization

Forced industrialization as opposed to what? Voluntary industrialization?
Was industrialization in the United States and Great Britain something
that was democratically agreed upon? I think if you look at the history of
capitalism, Paul, you will find that workers are continually forced into
labor regimes and industrialization is forced on them. You are making a
false distinction. (Not exactly, because industrialization in the Soviet
Unions was meant to raise the level of development for the people, whereas
under capitalism it was for private gain.)

>when technology brought in from outside

The Soviet Union was self-sufficient and advanced technologically. NASA
continues to rely on Soviet ingenuity in space-based technology, for
example. Soviet scientists have accomplished things that US scientists
have long struggled with (for example, water recovery systems), hence the
US decision to adopt much of the Soviet Union's technology in their latest
projects. A country does not become the second most advanced technological
state in world history (to that point) without indigenous technological
development. Surprise, Russians have the intellectual capacity to design
and implement complex technology.

>was no longer sufficient and when central planning failed to be
>competitive with the ingenuity and supervision of market based
>economies.

The assumption of enhanced ingenuity in capitalist markets, as well as the
assumption of efficiency, are not sustained by the facts. If anything,
market economies are the most inefficient, wasteful, and unreasonable
systems in operation. Redundancy, pollution, and inability to rationally
allocate resources/labor and distribute the social product even remotely
equitably are features that make capitalism unsustainable in the
long-run.

>On the other hand the enormous power wielded by such governments, plus the
>lack of checks and balances led to tremendous abuses towards minorities
>(Gulag, Cambodia)

Capitalist societies, like the United States and Germany, because of the
lack of democracy (which checks and balances are designed to thwart) have
governments that wield "enormous power" that have produced "tremendous
abuses" of minorities. The United States history of extermination of
native populations, enslavement of Africans, oppression of Latinos and
Chinese immigrants, mass murder of people in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and
dozens of other countries puts the infamous gulags and the murder of
people under the Khmer Rouge to shame. (The United States in the period
before Pol Pot probably killed more Cambodians than the Khmer Rouge did.)
In Germany, under the Nazis, millions of people - Jews, homosexuals,
Gypsies, mentally and physically handicapped, etc. - were systematically
murdered, all financed by capitalists and accomplished using their factory
system. Are all capitalist countries dictatorships like Nazi German? No.
But that's the point. (And when has the United States been a
dictatorship?)

>Such considerations brought a degree of general unhappiness, which led to
>the final downfall of the Soviet empire.

Interesting analysis. The Soviet Union was dissolved because the people
were unhappy.

>But these considerations are really beside the point: 

Really? You have presented an ideological argument, one in which you seek
to compare the core capitalist countries to state socialist societies and,
after reluctantly giving the latter their due in a rhetoric designed to
neutralize their accomplishments (e.g., there was no indigenous
technological development, etc.), you whitewash the brutality of
capitalism by suggesting that (a) state socialism = qulags and genocide
and (b) that capitalists have never done such things. 

>People like Andrew Austin are violently opposed to this Global
>Keynesianism, because they want us to wait for a democratic version of
>true Socialism.

What is "true socialism"? I oppose (not violently) global Keynesianism
because it would require the development of a global state. You seem (at
least rhetorically) concerned about concentrated power, yet appear
unconcerned about the construction of a world state that would administer
global capitalism. I am opposed to capitalism, and therefore I am opposed
to the construction of a single capitalist state as a matter of principle.
Such a state would inevitably reflect the needs of the dominant classes
and ethnic groups in the world-economy (namely, white capitalists).

What I support is social welfare strategies in the nation-state context
that (a) help people live beyond poverty and sickness, (b) increase
democratic participation, and (c) curtail corporate power. I support all
this in the context of a long-term program to dismantle capitalism and
replace it with democracy, to abolish gender, ethnic-race and (to some
extent) age hierarchies, and to protect the environment. What is required
for our future survival as a species is the building of a counterhegemonic
bloc that can carry out this program, one that respects cultural
differences at the same time protects human rights, and above all puts
productive capital in the hands of the people who produce social surplus.  
In short, we should work towards a multicultural democracy. 

What is not desirable is a centralized global state that, to reproduce
itself, must raise aggregate levels of consumption, burning up the earth
at a vaster place, all to strengthen the circuit of capital and increase
profit levels. This is what Keynesian schemes are designed to
do, after all.

Andrew Austin 
Knoxville, TN