The Polish Marxist economist Michal Kalecki in his 1943 article, "Political Aspects of Full Employment," ( https://mronline.org/2010/05/22/political-aspects-of-full-employment/ ) long ago made the point that rentiers and capitalists would tend to be resistant to the use of Keynesian-style fiscal and monetary stimulus policies to reduce unemployment. In the case of the rentiers, such opposition would stem from the fact that the resulting dropping of interest rates from such policies would directly reduce their incomes. In the case of capitalists, the reasons were a bit more complex. Very often such policies, in Kalecki's view, would boost business profits, but they would also also make the working class more truculent, since workers would now become less fearful of becoming unemployed. Kalecki believed that generally speaking capitalists were more fearful of the loss of political power and social status to the working class than they were of the loss of profits. Capitalists have usually only been accepting of Keynesian policies during periods of severe economic crises when capitalists are fearful of possible revolution.
In that same article, Kalecki pointed out that in Germany, the Nazis were able to gain the acquiescence of the capitalists to such policies because the Nazis had already smashed the trade unions and the working class political parties, thus eliminating the capitalists' fear that such policies would make the working class more truculent. And both in Germany and later, the other major capitalist powers, Keynesian economic policies gained acceptance from the capitalists because during the Second World War, much of the increase in government spending was channeled into military spending which was quite profitable to capital and was viewed by capitalists as much less threatening. Military Keynesianism became a permanent fixture of the US economy during the war and the US economy has ever since remained on a war footing, with the cold war, followed by the War on Terror. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#5781): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/5781 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/79921817/21656 -=-=- 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. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
