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Getting back to
the last chapter of Robert Biel's The New Imperialism (pp.300-302), and apropos
of this thread, I note this, written five years ago:
Along with
empowerment, there have already been signs, within the 1980s long cycle, of a
new statism, and this is likely to form the basis of the new political
economy.
snip
Chile is
interesting as an example because it indicates the direction the new statism
might take; empowerment has lost any humanistic content
it originally had, leaving a framework for self-exploitation, where
industries spontaneously seek their niches in the system of global capital
accumulation and individual workers spontaneously seek employment within these
industries. The main objective of the current phase of capitalism is to make the
system self-managing, but there has to be a transitional period of brutal
repression, euphemistically known as "adjustment" during which the old form of
labour organization is smashed. However, what is interesting about the new
theory is that the state does not lose its role in the more tranquil
post-'adjustment' phase. Instead, it continues in a new form, so as
to provide the necessary conditions for ensuring that labour of the right
kind remains available. According to apologists of these models, the labour
market then begins to follow the business (macroeconomic) cycle. Whereas during
'adjustment' it was skilled male workers who lost their jobs, in the more recent
phase it has been the more marginal, flexible workforce of young people and
women, which is just as one would expect during the down phase of a business
cycle. But this, it seems, is not the full story. Using an index of 1980=100,
wages in Chile fell from 112.4 in 1970 to 76.0 in 1990, but since then they have
apparently stabilized at this low level, irrespective of the phase in the
business cycle. [f.n.18, Paredes and Riveres 1994, 'Chile', in Paredes,
Ricardo and Luis Riveres (eds.), Human Resources and the Adjustment
Process, Washington D.C., Inter-American Development Bank, p.71; the authors are
typical apologists of the Chilean model]. What this signifies in practice is
that, with the state acting to provide a framework guaranteeing the provision of
flexible, low cost labour, the latter's price is not affected by the fluctuation
of demand associated with the business cycle.
This paradoxical
situation was already beginning to emerge during the Reagan-Thatcher years, when
theorists began 'to argue simultaneously for a radical laissez-faire
experiment and for greater intervention. [f.n. 19, Hall, Peter 1983 Enterprise
Zones Revisited, University College London, Development Planning Unit,
Occasional Paper no. 3, p. 8] In practice, this meant using a strong degree of
statism to force resources, including human ones, into the mould required by
capital accumulation. The difference is that once this is transferred to an
international scene and imposed on the South, the accumulation which this
statism serves, and the business cycle to which it supplies a plentiful supply
of labour at static cost, in the last analysis serve the needs of external
capitalism.
And Biel in his
note to me on Monday said, 'This is partly about the new phase in
international politics; I have been trying to work out the significance of this,
particularly the question of why there is a phase which seems so *overtly*
repressive and therefore seems to sacrifice the more concealed forms of
repression. This part of the analysis draws partly upon an article I wrote
in the Review of African Political Economy, no. 95, 2003,
which gave me an opportunity to research some data about US foreign policy', ----- Original
Message -----
From: Ralph
Johansen
Sent: Saturday, September 25,
2004 9:51 AM
Subject: Re: The Mind of Paul
Krugman: Mahathir, Pinochet, bad men, good policies - and the 'job of economic
analysts' I have read Krugman in the paper of record
for years, and I realize perfectly well that he would not assess and prescribe
policy like, for instance, Kissinger or Robert Rubin or Eagleburger or other
realpolitik wonks; all I wanted to point out was that his words, as I read them,
seemed overbroad and suggested that he could be interpreted to mean what he
said: that prescription and analysis of policy are not to be governed by
"who makes them", which was a criticism of those who object to praise of
Pinochet's results because of the method by which they were accomplished.
And I certainly understand that a "policy
analyst", whether Brzezinski on Afghanistan or Krugman more benignly on capital
controls in Malaysia or Kissinger on Chile, or let's say Wolfowitz on the Middle
East, is called on to make an assessment that is circumscribed by the job
description that defines what he was hired to do, to analyze no more than the
present picture, or at least if to go beyond that, to keep in mind heh! heh!
homilies about breaking eggs to make an omelet or the odious nature of sausage
making.
People on this list, unlike me presumably
mostly academics, have a profound influence on countless people who are
likely to go forth and practice their preachments. What Krugman's digression
called to mind was the kind of analysis I got in econ and other "social
science" courses in college - a static, snapshot, discrete-frame view of the
world, blip-blip-blip series of unconnected events, absent of relevant history,
causative chains or any of the kind of analysis which sees the skein of
contradictory phenomena implicit in all policy prescription, consequent
implementation or assessment of results, and which pulls those pieces
apart and illuminates more than just how to get a leg up in a cruel world, by
any means necessary - how to engender a relatively stable environment for the
accumulation of capital.
But this is the sort of statement, as
I read it, that is consistent with that, and that was all I meant to suggest.
Not to bash every good left economist's icon, who no doubt despite his statement
does assess consequences in making recommendations - but who may also have a
liberal blind spot which leads to the sort of claim he made in the column I
quote from.
And as to "self-expansion of capital",
that was an imprecise _expression_ for Marx's reproduction schema M - C - M'. It
shouldn't present a problem unless it distorts in some way. I would
be sorry if your lecture implied that I come across to you as a
person who is not aware that "Marx never believed that capital could
'expand itself by itself' or could automatically realise itself in the market,
but rather that living human labor was essential for this expansion and
realisation".
Ralph
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- [PEN-L] The Mind of Paul Krugman: Mahathir, Pinochet, bad m... Ralph Johansen
- [PEN-L] The Mind of Paul Krugman: Mahathir, Pinochet, ... Charles Brown
- Re: [PEN-L] The Mind of Paul Krugman: Mahathir, Pinoch... Ralph Johansen
- [PEN-L] The Mind of Paul Krugman: Mahathir, Pinochet, ... Charles Brown
