On Mon, 1 Feb 2010 10:16:17 +0900 CeJ <jann...@gmail.com> writes:
> JF: >>I don't think that it is any great mystery what
> happened in the 1970s.  In the mid-1970s,
> we had the greatest economic crisis since
> the Great Depression.  It became clear that
> the institutional framework which modern
> capitalism had been working under since
> the 1930s and 1940s was no longer
> politically viable.  It, therefore, came
> under challenge both from the left
> and the right. <<
> 
> 
> Yes, but RD said that the secret to all our mysteries now lies in
> understanding the 1970s. We can't even currently explain unintended
> acceleration in Toyotas now. Or how Abba would get a major musical
> based on their songs! Perhaps we don't understand the 1970s as well 
> as
> we think we do.
> 
> 
> I think the sense of crisis was over the future of American 
> domination
> of the rest of the world. Consider, Japan and W. Germany were
> surpassing the US in terms of industrial production, most visible 
> with
> the automobiles and electronics. 

That was certainly one part of it.  The Second
World War had devastated industry in
western Europe and Japan, leaving the
US without significant competition.
But by the 1970s, both western Europe
(especially Germany) and Japan had
completed their recoveries from the
war and were now able to compete with
the US.

> The threat of certain countries 
> using
> OPEC to control the price of oil and even the supply of it, although 
> a
> crisis for global capitalism (think of Japan with its total 
> dependency
> on imported oil), in the US it was seen as a threat to American 
> power.
> And then there was the humiliation of the Vietnam War, where global
> perceptions were that the US had lost or at least had met the 
> limits
> of its own power. 

Also, the US by the mid-1970s was being
perceived as starting to lose the cold
war.  Soviet-backed national liberation
movements were making progress in
Africa, Latin America and elsewhere.
The Vietnam War itself, had left the
US exhausted with the American
public less than eager to see US
military intervention in other countries
(what the US ruling class called
"Vietnam syndrome").

Also, we shouldn't leave out the
impact of the great social movements
of the 1960, including especially the
civil rights movement, the antiwar
movement, the student movement,
and the women's movement.  All of
which weakened the legitimacy of
the state, forced through significant
social reforms.  Labor insurgencies
of various sorts became increasingly
frequent at the time, and we have the
case of France, where the student
movement, at least for a while,
was able to join forces with labor
insurgents to shake the political
foundations of that country.  That
sort of thing put the fear of God into
the hearts of the US ruling class who
was fearful of a similar occurence
on this side of the Atlantic.

By the early 1970s, the ruling
classes of the US and UK were
eager to find ways of rolling back
the social gains of the 1960s
which were seen as directly
threatening the profits, social
status, and political power of
the ruling classes.  Bourgeois
economists were already openly
talking about the need to tolerate
higher rates of unemployment in
order to dampen down wage
demands.  And within a few
years this sort of talk began to
be translated into policy, involving
a tightening of monetary policy
to force up interest rates,
deregulation of industries
(starting with transportation
under the Carter Administration),
the shift by the Federal government
to an openly anti-labor stance,
starting with Reagan's response
to the PATCO strike (by a
conservative union that had
actually endorsed Reagan
in 1980.

> And then there were the 'big bang' financial 
> reforms
> of Thatcher, which threatened to make London the top center of
> financial activity, over NYC.
> 
> What is ironic is that militarist Demoncrats and Repugnicans (who 
> had
> been around a long time and hadn't just emerged in the 1970s) used
> rationales like 'deficits' to justify agendas against 'liberalism' 
> (in
> terms of the government being involved in social agendas and 
> spending)
> and then, from late Carter onwards, proceeded to drive up government
> deficits and trade deficits to unprecedented levels, much of which 
> can
> be attributed to the military spending and their willingness to use
> Japan's and W. Germany's industrial capacity to meet American 
> consumer
> needs as they did so.
> 
> About the same time, American elites, under a supposedly 'free 
> trade'
> and 'liberalization' regime (rhetorical regime), moved strongly,
> nationalistically and unilaterally to hem in Japan in terms of (1) 
> the
> value of the yen (which has pretty much been appreciating since the
> 1970s and is the real cause of 'deflation' in Japan) and (2) in
> locking Japan out of processor chip-OS development for desktop and
> server computing (giving us American cartels in control of most of 
> our
> computing). They also imposed import quotas on Japanese cars and
> automobile parts under Reagan and Bush I (GHWB). Clinton largely
> continued the unilateral 'trade and currency agenda' against Japan.
> 
> You can see the result. Wintel duopoly. Or, for example, Toyota 
> became
> a dominant player but auto makers like Mitsubishi found themselves
> pretty much eliminated from the North American market because they
> didn't have a dealership network in place before the 1980s. And 
> even
> Toyota was forced to move production to the US while buying
> American-made automobile parts. They seem to be blaming their 
> current
> recall issue on an American maker of the accelerator assembly, but
> elsewhere others have said that the 'sticky accelerator' is a 
> separate
> issue from 'unintended acceleration' or at best only one partial
> explanation of the phenomenon (which is so statistically 
> insignificant
> and small one would be forced to explain the actual cause of each
> separate incident before one could come to any conclusions).
> 
> CJ
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Marxism-Thaxis mailing list
> Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu
> To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
> 
> 
 
____________________________________________________________
Love Spell
Click here to light up your life with a love spell!
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=GKlet5hUjq23SErpft19nAAAJ1AP8ttsZd_TbiVxkZxsC3mBAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARwAAAAA=

_______________________________________________
Marxism-Thaxis mailing list
Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis

Reply via email to