Bill Burgess wrote,
> . . . I don't see the *significant*
>difference implied by a position that replaces a traditional
>committment to internationalism with a position where nationalist measures
>are now seen as central to protecting working class interests (which I
>understand to be your opinion).
I won't speak for Sid, but the above isn't how I understand Sid's position.
At any rate, I think it's too easy to confuse terms like "internationalism"
and "nationalism" as if they were opposites or alternatives. I don't see any
inconsistency in strategically pursuing a "commitment to internationalism"
by acting within the context of national policies and national
organizations. Specifically, on the issue of the regulating trade and
investment, I don't see any alternative at the present time. This is how it
was under "good old capitalism" and it's really no different now.
What I see Sid as arguing against is the kind of doomsday/pollyanna scenario
that tells everyone to abandon hope of seeking more progressive (or less
regressive) policies from national governments because, after all, "their
hands are tied, all the power is now global". The complement is a kind of
wishful thinking that the emerging supra-national institutions of capitalism
can somehow be made more responsive to working class needs, if only we'd
stop diddling around at the national level. And that's such an abstract
position, I can't even imagine what it could mean practically -- meditation?
levitation?
I'm not saying the supra-national institutions are impervious to pressure,
just that the _main_ way to put pressure on them is to put pressure on the
national governments that accede to them. By the way, remember the good old
days when we could use the word "imperialism" and even "U.S. imperialism"
with impunity?" I remember tortured debates on the left about what the
nature of the Canadian state was -- whether Canada was a "sub-imperialist
power" or a "colonized nation", whether or not to lend comfort to "petit
bourgeois nationalism", etc. As an American draft dodger, the arguments
seemed sort of academic to me, mainly because I couldn't see any point to
answering such questions "decisively". Even the "nation-state" is to some
degree an abstraction.
Bill Burgess also asked,
>What do you see as the main difference? Is it not that in the golden age
>Capital could afford some concessions whereas since about the mid 1970s
>labour productivity growth and real profitability have been stagnant, and
>so Capital has had to become more aggressive ("brutal", as Bill R. put
>it)?
This is a provocative way of putting the question -- that capital can no
longer "afford" keynesian welfare state concessions. I suspect that long
waves are lurking somewhere in the background of this question and that the
stagnant labour productivity growth and real profitability have as much to
do with Ernest Mandel as they do with time series data (Doug Henwood are you
there?).
On Monday, May 12, Jim Devine posted an analysis from Dean Baker of the
Economic Policy Institute talking about the profit boom and I quote the
first two paragraphs:
>Corporate profit rates reached a new peak in 1996 and are now at their
>highest level since these data were first collected in 1959. The Bureau of
>Economic Analysis reports that the before-tax profit rate rose to 11.39%
>last year, up from 10.78% in 1995, and the after-tax rate rose to 7.57%, up
>from 7.01%. The previous peak rate for before-tax profits was 11.29% in
>1966, and the previous peak for after-tax profits was 7.03% in 1994.
>
>The rise in profit rates is even more dramatic when compared to the
>profit peak of the last business cycle in 1988. In that year, the
>before-tax profit rate was just 7.29% and the after-tax rate 4.96%. Thus,
>the 1996 numbers imply increases of more than 50% in both rates in just an
>eight-year period. In no previous period in U.S. history have profit rates
>experienced such a rapid sustained rise, although other countries in the
>Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have
>experienced a similar increase in profit rates over this period.
Granted, a swallow does not a summer make. But capital does seem to be on a
bit of a roll these days. Does that mean the aggression is working? And if
so, does its success imply that some day capital will again be able to
"afford" concessions? I think not. Does it mean that we have entered the
upswing of a long wave -- a new "golden age"? I doubt it.
My skepticism arises from the fact that "productivity" has become as
politicized and manipulated a term as "economic growth" already was in the
1960s. As for capital's "aggression", it seems to me that in North America,
at least, the aggression has been of a singularly flaccid variety. If a
strong movement of working class resistance to neo-liberalism were to
emerge, neo-liberalism would flee like Mobutu from Kinshasa.
