Mark,
>Capitalist growth absolutely does depend on a growing
>"reserve army of labour".
How do you explain that this "reserve army" usually diminishes when the
GDP/GNP grows the much? And why do you want to equate a growth of this
"reserve army" with a growth of population?
>If you look at the figures for immigration into
>the US/Canada, and compare them to growth figures, you see they are in
>lockstep, and a lot of research has been done on this.
This is your only argument in the whole post. This "experimental proof" relies
on "growth". I guess this means real GDP growth. Am I right? If yes, a change in
how the deflator is computed (Gordon talked about one in the piece we've
dicussed a few monthes ago, for example) would make those figures diverge.
What meaning is in that GDP statistic anyway?
>So growing populations of domesticated, urban workers, to be consumers
>and producers are strictly necessary if capitalism is to grow. One of the
>factors behind deflationary processes outside America is a marked slowing
>in demographic growth trends.
Now it seems that growth is not growth in real GDP anymore. Deflation is a rise
in value of a currency, right?
>Capitalist growth
>is basically about the growth in production of material goods, commodities,
>and about growth in population. It is obvious, absolutely self-evident, that
>there are indeed 'natural barriers' to economic growth without any limits.
Now it seems that you're talking about a third kind of growth, physical growth.
It's different than real GDP which is more or less a measure of monetary
transactions happening in an economy irrespective of whether these
transactions are about something physical or not and of course irrespective of
the weight of the exchanged goods if they are physical.
Could you please come up with a meaningful definition of this word you use
(growth) and stick to it?
>But my argument is simply that capitalism
>cannot do this. It does not have the institutions, ideologies, politics to
>do this, and it cannot motivate its rulers and owners, the
>socially-powerful, to do this.
Definitely. But why could these things which currently exist not change without
the end of capitalism?
>There are no profits in declining populations
>(there is plunder, Russia q.v., but no profit).
Why? Russia's case is very special case and you can have plunder with
growing populations.
>look at the figures for oil consumption, 25% higher than 1979
But per capita?
>>But all Capitalism ,in its very best planned-socdem form, can
>>do is a declining ratio of poor to rich yet an increase in the absolute
>>number of poor.
>
>But who is disagreeing with any of this!
Me! Depending on how you define "poor", declines in the absolute number of
poor have happend in many places, notably after WWII. With a popular way of
defining "poor" (the people under a fraction of the average wealth), this is the
same as saying that inequalities can only increase under capitalism. Of
course, inequalities can and have decreased under capitalism and probably
will decrease again sooner than later after this long period where they have
increased.
>Falling populations are not compatible with capitalism.
Then Ken is right. Then an end to immigration would end capitalism. This is of
course nonsense.
>This is
>why, after 150 years of relative demographic declines, starting in the
>first-industrialised states (Britain, etc) and spreading around the world,
>and despite the effects of rising living standards and public health
>standards, with more literacy and social justice, all helping reduce birth
>rates: despite all this, the population has grown from 500m in Malthus'
>lifetime to 6 billion today.
Is that not because of the age pyramid effect on population growth, because of
the drop in infant death rate, and because of higher life expectancies, and of
course because of the slowness of fertility rates to react to the former things?
This is obviously only a part of the story but still a crucial part.
>Think about it. *As long as capitalism
>persists, the population will tend to rise, barring disasters created by
>capitalism itself*.
*Saying it is not enough to convince anyone but those who were already
convinced*.
In another post on this thread, Mark says:
>We must oppose anti-immigration laws. We must oppose all controls on free
>movement across borders. This is surely fundamental. Otherwise you are
>defending the worst kinds of chauvinism and racism and practically
>guaranteeing the emergence of mass right-wing movements ready to take
>up arms to defend 'their' capitalism, 'their' state etc, in times of deep
>crisis.
Idn't the mass right-wing movement already with us. Aren't many people
already ready to take arms to defend "their" nation? This is obvious in the
support people give to wars and the result of elections and votations on that
subject. In deep crisis it's likely to be worse. If you want to oppose that, I don't
think that preaching the opposite values to those of most people will be
efficient. I think that the left-nationalist approach (exposing the unnationalist
deeds of right-nationalists and coming up with nationalist alternatives to wars
and intolerance) and the alliances of nationalisms internationally against
common ennemies would yield better results.
>I don't think there us much that is new here. The Nazis easily equated
>Bolshevism + International Finance Capital + International Jewry in one big,
>cosmopolitan conspiracy against the native German working class. The left
>and finance capital do share similar concerns, don't they, at least
>superficially, on many important issues?
How do you go from the nazis beign anti-communist, nationalist and racist to
the left sharing concerns with capital? BTW, did not German and even foreign
finance capital (whatever that means, the opposition between financial and
manufacturing capital beign a social feature of XIXth century England)
embrace the nazis?
>The
>calculus of profit, which is all the finance capital knows, is exactly what
>breeds social desperation, mass panics and atavistic hysterias.
The calculus of profit has different outcome depending on the conditions since
all that matters is profit and not political considerations.
>Capital
>deepening in one place mirrors capital-thinning elsewhere ...
Yet capital has deepend globally on a historical timescale isn't it?
>If you want to avoid having the tired and huddled masses
>clamouring at your door, don't hog 50% of the world's resources, don't make
>them tired and hungry to begin with. It's the unevenness of capitalist
>accumulation, its spectacular inequalities, which create the problem in the
>first place.
You are absolutely right, Mark. But the problem is that the unevenness has
been created. Amercians can and should hog less of the world's ressources
(as should Europeans and others, but American's consumption is clearly the
most obscene by a wide margin) but that will not stop the clamour at the door
before a very long time (again barring a total ecological collapse). The
question is what is to be done now. The people responsible for the situation
are old or dead and it's not very moral to blame most Americans for it.
Julien
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