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Thanks Richard, reading the full Green Left article led me to a long Doug Henwood article from February 2019: Modern Monetary Theory Isn’t Helping https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/02/modern-monetary-theory-isnt-helping which includes this pungent paragraph: "And if we had a political movement strong enough to force full-employment policies on the state, then why stop with a mere JG [jobs guarantee]? What about democratizing the workplace, reorganizing production to be ecologically sustainable, socializing property via taxation and public spending, and eventually expropriating the capitalist class? If you’re going to challenge ruling-class power, as a JG would do, why stop there?" Although readers of just the brief excerpt Richard quoted wouldn't realize it, the Green Left author Neville Spencer is basically defending Modern Monetary THEORY. I agree with Spencer's concluding sentence "When the COVID-19 crisis is over and we are told we can no longer afford the increased unemployment payments, and that someone now has to pay for the all debt that has accumulated, MMT provides valuable arguments to draw on." On Sat, May 2, 2020 at 9:17 AM Richard Fidler via Marxism <[email protected]> wrote: > > ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > ***************************************************************** > > <https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/covid-19-debt-crisis-modern-monetary-theor > y-solution> > > "While MMT proposes a solution to the problem of unemployment, it is often put > forward without sufficient cognisance of the fact that, for capitalism, > unemployment is not necessarily a problem to be solved, but rather a valuable > tool to maintain profits. > > Having a pool of workers who are poor and unemployed keeps up competition for > jobs, which helps keep wages down. Economists even tend to define full > employment as being when 4-5% of people are unemployed. Anything lower than > that > is viewed as undesirable, because it strengthens workers' bargaining power. > > This doesn't mean that MMT should not be used to try to eliminate > unemployment. > But, as long as capitalism exists, measures to eliminate unemployment will be > met with a war and not a thank you. > > All the money and power of capital and its media and politicians will be > brought > to fight against measures that would have all workers benefiting from decent > standards of living. > > There are likewise problems if MMT were to be used as a solution to the > environmental crisis, if the capitalist sector left to its own devices. If an > army of job guarantee workers were enlisted to help save the planet while a > capitalist sector is left to destroy it, the climate catastrophe would merely > be > postponed. > > Also, on the environmental front, while MMT provides a means to solve > unemployment by using the economy to capacity, the environmental crisis means > that we may not want to use the economy to capacity." > > > _________________________________________________________ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/daynegoodwin%40gmail.com _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
