Marv Gandall wrote: > The 19thc. capitalist solution much favoured by libertarians - to let the > markets find their bottom - was no longer an option after the extension of > the universal franchise and the development of working class organization. > No government, liberal or conservative, is today prepared to allow > depressions to run their natural course for fear of the electoral > consequences or, worse, an explosion of social unrest such as occured during > the 30's.
this is accurate. Of course, in their heart of hearts, libertarians would like to replace the universal franchise with "one dollar one vote" politics. David may disagree with this perspective and like to preserve the universal franchise. But libertarians usually don't like democracy. > There is a need to boost mass purchasing power rather than to > drive down wages in order both to to revive the economy and to contain mass > political pressure from below. I disagree: in our brave new globalized world, boosting mass purchasing power in one country does not necessarily benefit domestic capitalist operations very much, since so much of the purchases go to buy foreign goods. At the same, time it might hurt a country's international competitiveness. If a significant number of capitalist countries boost mass purchasing power power, it would be more likely to work. If China's mass purchasing power is raised, that would help a lot. Further, the capitalist powers that be don't care that much about domestic economies (e.g., that of the US) as much as they used to. Their operations are diversified all over the world. So if wages are stagnant or falling in the US, they don't worry about the domestic market there. Instead, they see it as a potential source of low-wage/high-productivity (i.e., high rate of surplus-value) labor. Perhaps the political issue is the most important: if there's mass disorder in the US, it might threaten the home base of a lot of multinational institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank, while weakening the military power of capitalism's world cop. (Of course, Dubya did a lot of that weakening, all in the name of capitalism. The globalists sneer at him.) -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
