Doug (responding to Charlie): I doubt that you really know what you mean by this. Are you talking about vulgar countercyclical deficit spending? Or the state guidance of investment, which Keynes wrote about, though not in enough detail? He advocated that in the midst of an economic crisis far worse than the present, so I don't get the critique that I frequently hear that somehow this is the wrong time for that sort of thing, because, why? The economy is structurally troubled? That's the whole point of getting the state involved in investment - especially since big corporations have vast amounts of cash on their balance sheets that they're not investing. It's not like profits are hard to come by, FROPpers to the contrary. A Green New Deal may be uninspiring compared to Full Communism Now, but it looks like a pretty decent second best to me.
----------- I'm still not following this. (1) You say Keynes did not provide enough detail: That is, we are talking about a policy that has not yet been formulated, even in theory. (2) "State guidance of investment": Could you specify some details. And what does "guidance" mean? That is a fairly weak term. How does "the state" arrange that its "guidance" is followed? (3) Do you suppose that Germany or France or the UK or the U.S. state will adopt this policy (a policy which Keynes failed to describe in detail)? (4) How does this work out for a small state such as Greece? Is anyone in the U.S. in a position to guide the Greeks? (5) Lou claims that these political doubts on my part are equivalent to TINA? But Margaret Thatcher was offering a theoretical defense of a policy already adopted by the government (hers) in power; she was not proposing that a hostile state (e.g., the U.S. or Germany) adopt a policy which only existed in (incomplete) theory. (6) Are we talking about Greece or the U.S.: The reference to " corporations [which] have vast amounts of cash" seems to refer to the U.S., not Greece. (7) Returning to my original point: Though a few big capitalists are expressing worry, on the whole it seems capitalists and capitalist institutions (the U.S. government, the German government, the IMF) are quite happy with things as they are: leaving Greece aside, there is no serious Social-Democratic or revolutionary left anywhere in the world even remotely threatening capitalist power. Doesn't that make this discussion pretty much an academic affair, with little relevance to political action? Carrol _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
