On 2013-06-21, at 12:49 PM, Julio Huato wrote: > Doug wrote: > >> Carrol, what I meant was that if the bourgeoisie were so weakened that it >> could accept unlimited central bank financing of budget deficits, 0% >> interest rates, and full employment, the political environment would be so >> different from the present one that we could be contemplating a whole >> different agenda - i.e., socialism of some sort. So if you're imagining that >> sort of political environment, why limit your imagination to monetary >> manipulations and leave questions of ownership and power out of the picture? > > Amen.
In fact, that is close to what did transpire during the Great Depression in a different political environment. But even in that heightened environment, most workers and intellectuals - Keynes and his followers preeminent among them - chose to fight for reforms rather than accept invitations to engage in a more risky and frightening struggle to wrest power and ownership from the capitalists and their state. If we've learned anything, it's that a favourable political environment and an economic crisis don't result in socialist conclusions until successively ambitious reform measures have been tried in desperation and found wanting. The modern monetary theorists are latter day Keynesians, reformists. They're not revolutionaries. They make no pretence of wanting to do other than save capitalism. It's as fanciful to hold them to a higher standard of account and berate them for "not contemplating a whole different agenda, ie. socialism", as it is for them to berate the ruling cla! ss for not understanding how the system works and for failing to respond to the power of their ideas. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
