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Re: Can capitalism be reformed?
by Alan Spector
22 April 2001 00:51 UTC
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I don't feel like getting into the whole debate about reform and revolution again, right now, but I have to comment on this remark by Paul Riesz:
 
After World War II, the principles of Lord Keynes were applied in most
Western  societies with excellent results, softening the business cycle and
resulting in vastly  improved living standards for their people. It was not paradise on
earth, but the regulatory intervention of governments in the economy prevented
excesses and  promised a better future for everybody.
 
----------------------------------------
My comment:
 
How someone could be knowledgeable about World Systems and make the above comment is beyond me. What is at stake is not simply the (limited, temporary, relative) prosperity of the USA & Western Europe during the 1950's-1960's; we also have to consider what was happening in the rest of the world.
 
Part of the reason for "prosperity in the West"  after WWII is because capitalism again had room to expand (unfortunately, on the dead bodies of a hundred or so million people). Capitalism's "crisis of overproduction" is not simply caused by "underconsumption" as Keynes said. The working class can NEVER have enough money to buy what is produced, by definition, and the anarchistic economy will continue to cause increasingly intense "boom/bust" cycles, which eventually get resolved by war. After lots of stuff, and people, are destroyed, capitalism again has room to "expand."  Of course we can dream about voting those policies out of power, but ruling capitalist elites have a nasty habit of mass murdering their opposition when they believe a threat is getting out of control.
 
Furthermore, "After World War II" the prosperity was not shared by the working classes of the world. It was imperialism, from the bloody overthrow of governments in Iran, Indonesia, Chile and a hundred other places, to the enforced mass disease/death, kept in place by authoritarian/fascist governments armed by the U.S. and other imperialist powers. (Sorry if the word "imperialist" sounds like "jargon" but it is particularly accurate here.)
 
 
So hang onto your reformist illusions if you choose, but please, don't "forget" about the needless deaths of hundreds of millions caused by the relatively prosperous governments of Western Europe and the U.S. when you tally up the equation of reform versus revolution.
 
 
Alan Spector
============================================
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Riesz" <priesz@itn.cl>
To: <cj@cyberjournal.org>
Cc: "Fair Trade" <fair-trade@riseup.net>; "Gelles John" <jjgelles@rain.org>; "Haritatos Petros" <haritatos@athenian.net>; "Kohler Gernot" <gkohler@accglobal.net>; <stephen.hay@theseus.fr>; "WSN" <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2001 9:06 PM
Subject: Can capitalism be reformed?

> Dear Richard:
>   The fact that your views are shared by others and can be found in
> books does not
>   constitute logical proof.
>   On the other hand my views have proved their validity during the very
> long time in
>   which Capitalism has existed WITHOUT reaching the harmful extremes,
> that can
>   be observed at present.
>   After World War II, the principles of Lord Keynes were applied in most
> Western
>   societies with excellent results, softening the business cycle and
> resulting in vastly
>   improved living standards for their people. It was not paradise on
> earth, but the
>   regulatory intervention of governments in the economy prevented
> excesses and
>   promised a better future for everybody.
>   Even great corporations benefited from such policies and produced
> quite
>   satisfactory profits for their shareholders without interruptions.
>
>   These principles have not lost their efficiency, but could again be
> used to
>   REFORM our society, if we succeed in guiding the energy of the
> millions of
>   protesters and unsatisfied citizens into a more positive attitude of
> fighting not only
>   AGAINST corporate domination but FOR a better alternative.
>
>   Regards               Paul
>
>
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