footnotes to Barendse (fwd)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                     ANDRE GUNDER FRANK
          Visiting Professor  of  International Relations       
University of Miami           &         Florida International University  

380 Giralda Ave. Apt 704                Tel: 1-305-648 1906
Miami - Coral Gables FL                 Fax: 1-305-648 0149
USA  33134                              e-mail:agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca 

Personal/Professional Home Page> http://csf.colorado.edu/archive/agfrank/

My NATO/Kosovo Page> http://csf.colorado.edu/archive/agfrank/nato_kosovo/   
    

My professional/personal conclusion is the same as Pogo's - 
            We have met the enemy, and it is US 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

sorry, mine also got longer than intended, but still short by compariosn
to Rene's original 
agf


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As usual, I agree with the thesis and most details of Rene's postings.
This time I add a few corrective footnotes.
more or less in order of appearance of Rene's points:

0. Of course they all implemented - necessity is the mother of self
invention - 'Keyenesian' policies, under 'democratic' [US New Deal, French
Bloom gvt, Spanish Republicans], 'socialist' Soviet,  Nazi/Fascist 
[Hitler's economic zar Hjilamar Schacht, Japan,  Rumania], 'statist'
[Attaturk Turkey],
'underdeveloped' [Argentina with Raul Prebish as Economics Minister long
before he 'theorized' it at ECLA/CEPAL], Chile, Mexico] and I am sure
many othwr unamed.But a book recommendation  ETATISM & DIMPLOMACY IN
TURKEY. ECON & FOREIGN POLICIES ...  1929-1939  by Dilek Barlas,
Brill 1999. [but contrary to her title, she comparartively reviews econ
pol also in hungary,poland,rumania,yugolslavia,bulgaria,greece,
iran,middle east. - Rene you can get Brill easily, others cant since the
are so expensive. i have one cause the author kindly gave me one]
Keynbeseian import substitution wa the ORDER of the day! 

one moral of the story is that "mode of production" [even feudalism,
Rene! - sorry that refers to his on another net] or "system"  has nothing
to do with it, and just CONFUSES the real world issue

00. Stalin/colectiviztion squeezed peasants not only to invest in industry
but to mass wheat for export for foreign exchange - shades of the
1980s/90s debt crisis, but alos of colonial India's food exports when its
people were starving

1."socialist" economies ALSO imported gastarbeiter, from Vietnamese in
the GDR and Czechslovakia to Causasians [sic!] and Central Asians, not to
mention Chechenians [!!] in Russia, all of which left a legacy of terrivle
social trouble after things fell apart

2. Yes Poland and Britain borrowed from the IMF in 1976, AND as quid pro
quo - insited upon by the US Treasury - the James Callaghan Labor
Government also abanondoned Keyneseanism in 1976, and therewith 
-as i wrote in 1978 - 'welfare farewell'. In the US Jimmy Cartrer followed
suit in 1977. 

3. The price of oil began its decline in 1981 not only in 1982.
the same happend to the price of gold. The USSR depended on a
combination of both for 90 percent of its export earnings, which
then declined precipitously.

4. The world debt crisis also exploded in 1981 - in Poland! - and not in
Mexico in 1982 as is generally [mis]recalled. However it hit 
'capitalist' and 'socialist' economies/regiems alike, wkith the SAME
consequences, and the SAME POLICY RESPONSES everywhere [including inciden
tally all social democratic ones in the West from Gemany, to Soares
Poryugal, Gonzales Spain, Mitterand France - 1981 u turn from
Keyeneseanism! - Carxi Italy,, not to mention Blair UK, but also
the NDP in Britsh Columbia and Ontario, and my friend Cardoso in Brazil].
Back to EE 'commmunist' and Latam 'fascist/military' regimes in the 80s:
they all did exactly the same thing to 'handle' the debt crisis: belt
tightening 'restructuring'. the DIFERENCE was that the Lat Ams
sacrificed moire social secutiry and popular welfare to keep at least
something for produictive invetment, and the 'communist' ones sacrificed
more productive investment - as Rene points out -
 to maintain a bit more social welfare or social invetment.
But when it all came out in the wash, ti all came to much the same
everywhere. Ceaucescou turned out the lihgts so uhc for Rumanians that
they then turned them out for him. In Sandinista Nicargua a friend and  ex
student of mine whom i helped write his thesis on Last Am financial 
payments, was adviser to the ministry withc did 'Fondo sin Fondo' a play
 on words - but not funny- difficult to translate into english: pursue the 
IMFUND
policy WITHOUT the Fund [of course Reagan gave them no access, but tey did
the same as IMF policu anyway] without fondo, that is without bottom,
that is into a bottomless pit!

 
5. GDR chips and all that: the problem was not small domestic market
b ut marketing access to the world market. small 17 million population GDR
became world's 9th industrial producer, and a big exporzter of course to
the USSR but alos to third world and to Western Europe, with leadership[
in new textile technology, optics [Zeiss], etc. But marfketiong is a
problem. 
Vide little Cuba and its world class bio/genetic/medical innovations.
but the market is controled by the few multinationals from US/UK/Switz.

6.USSR and all that. Rene is right of course, but the world economy and
Reaganomics demand more attention and emphasis, vide my "what Went Wrong
in the "socialsit' East?' published in RIPE and other places.
While the USSR and perestroika were being squeezed by the world econ
crisis, it was the US 'anti-crisis' policy that was doing much of the
squeezing in Africa Latin America, Eastern Europe and the USSR. Ina word,
the Reagnomic military keynseanism was propping up not ony the US
economy after 1982 [after the 1979-82 recession that I DID predict, and
in 1986 again the 1989-92 one]but the entire Western/Japanese economies.
Of course at the cost of the twin deficits in the US budget and trade
deficits, which bnakupted the US almost as much as the USSR. the diference
weas that as Rene says nobody poured money into the USSR, everybody
else poured money into the US, the debtors involuntarily with interst
payments, and the Euroepans and Japanse with capital flow, eg buying
Rockefeller Center, but mostly treasury bonds that made the budget deficit
sustainable. 

And the US already began- what it is doing massively now -
printing 100 dollar bills for the cost of the paper and ink [plus now
a facelift to make them less counterfeitable - ie only we are allowed to
get soemthing for nothing others are not! and usung them to buy up the
resdt of the world for free, where far more 100 bills circulate than in
the US itself -- this means of course also exporting inflation from here
to there, except that the inflation there is only in terms of local
currency, and really in dollar terms the world is in a massive deflation,
greater than that of the 1930s. indeed this whole crisis is more severe
than that of the 1930s, as i have been arguing since the 1980s]
-- how else can the US maintain such a massive and ever growing trade
deficit? well there are other ways, all derived from the real function of
the real world economy, which to my knowledge nobody has yet troubled even
to examine, let alone explain, or reform. Rene is right again: even at/on
WORLD S N, hardly anybody troubles to study the WORLD system or how it
works. [In my old age after countless demos, i did not go tom the Seattle
and Wash DC ones, but i did watch them,, the slogans, the interviews,
etc. IU saw lots of good sense ones sauying the WTO/IMF/WB do all these
bad things to the TW,poor,envirnoment, etc. and i did see a couple of
references to that they answer to and serve the rich. But How? Nobody
said. they did not even say the obvious - so obvious that nobody says
it? - that these institutions serve -- or are institutionalizations of --
the channeling of massive goods and capital into the USA, first by
bankrupting everybody else, permitting US to buy them up at bankruptcy
prices, and either forcing [debt service etc] or enticing
[capital flight etc= wall street boom] everybody else to ship their
goodies and capital to the US, without which the present prosperity and 
standard of living in the US would be impossible. [Shades of the 19th
century when the gold standard and the multilateral payments system 
resting finally on India permitted
Britain to maintain a masive and ever growing  - from 1816 to 1913! - 
balance of trade deficit and to invest in the US etc  to boot, meaning
that US development a century ago also was financed by the sacrifice of
the Thrid World [vide my DEPENDENT ACCUMUATION AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT 1978,
chpt 5] through how the WORLD economic system works.

 7. so to come full circle - how come no necessity
is the mother of invention import substitution keynseanism [yet?] in 
this crisis?
Global keynseanism? THAT is the question,please wake me up when it
- the keynseanism or at least a good answer - arrives. Putin might start
it!! The Japanese and Chinese too.

8. Mandel and me? permit me to quote from my

" IN MEMORIAM TRIBUTE TO ERNEST MANDEL

We have lost not only a most humane human being, but the world's
greatest optimist. I don't know which is the greater loss, but
perhaps there was an intimate connection of humane optimism
and/or optimistic humanism; and, if so,  the world's loss is
multiplied and all the greater. Not only shall we miss him; we
still NEED him!
.......

Also in 1979, we co-taught a summer school course on the world
economic crisis together at Boston University. As I have
recounted many times, Ernest and I agreed on everything with each
other [and very little with almost everybody else], and we
disagreed in class and in private on only two issues: Ernest said
the revolution is arond the corner in several countries, and I
said that it is not. I claimed that the same capitalist economic
law of value also operates in the "socialist" economies,
including the Soviet Union, which really exist as part and parcel
of the [capitalist] world economy; and Ernest Mandel denied the
same. On several occasions both before -- and all the more so
after -- 1989-91, I found it increasingly difficult to avoid
saying and writing to  Ernest that "I told you so."

I also recall standing on a street corner with him in Brussles
waiting for his first wife Gisela to get some film she had left
for developing at a photo shop. Ernest asked me "don't you agree
that we Trotskyists do the best analysis of what is going on in
the world?" and I answered, yes I do. Well, "then you have to
also agree that we have the best political practice," Ernest
continued. NO, I answered, I do NOT agree; and I do not have to,
because what you say is a complete non-sequitur, which was born,
perhaps, more from his own great optimism and humanity than from
his analysis of the evidence, which has hardly supported his
aspiration. "

Well, a lot of people - at least of the recently most active ones -
on this net seem to be in good Mandelian company.

I'm tired and will sign off - no doubt to readers' relief - and
if i get the strength, i might add a few more footnotes to the
second half of Rene's posting later.

cheers - not really
gunder frank
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                     ANDRE GUNDER FRANK
          Visiting Professor  of  International Relations       
University of Miami           &         Florida International University  

380 Giralda Ave. Apt 704                Tel: 1-305-648 1906
Miami - Coral Gables FL                 Fax: 1-305-648 0149
USA  33134                              e-mail:agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca 

Personal/Professional Home Page> http://csf.colorado.edu/archive/agfrank/

My NATO/Kosovo Page> http://csf.colorado.edu/archive/agfrank/nato_kosovo/   
    

My professional/personal conclusion is the same as Pogo's - 
            We have met the enemy, and it is US 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~