raghu wrote: > This seems like the traditional complaint of Marxists against > Keynesians: "you cannot reform capitalism, you need to replace it".
I can't speak for Mike Yates, but I see capitalism as quite reformable (in the abstract). After all, it was reformed in the aftermath of World War II, with social democracy in W. Europe and "soft social democracy" (the warfare/welfare state) in the US. This led to a decade or two of prosperity, financial stability, and even gave a big segment of the working class in the rich countries a "piece of the action." However, you can't just have reforms like that by pointing out that capitalism works better when they're in place. Only social movements -- like maybe OWS? -- can force capitalism to institute such reforms because there are large numbers of capitalists who benefit from the unreformed version of capitalism (and think that if the system has a financial melt-down or whatever, they'll do fine). These latter folks will fight to the death (or rather, the death of their hired hands) to preserve the unreformed capitalism. It was only the rise of organized labor and middle-class disgust with unfettered capitalism -- plus the demoralization and demobilization of capitalists after 1929 -- that allowed New Deal reforms. While capitalism has been reformed in the past, history shows that it doesn't stay reformed forever. The forces pushing for reform fall apart, get tired, or are hijacked by their own bureaucratic leaderships or by organizations such as the Democratic Party, while individual capitalists find loopholes and other ways to profit (such as capital flight) that undermine the effectiveness of the reforms. As Luxemburg said, the left's job is like that of Sisyphus: we push for reforms and if we don't keep pushing, the big rock rolls down the hill again. (She was actually talking about labor unions, but the point remains.) -- Jim Devine / "In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness." -- George Bernard Shaw _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
