Nathan Newman wrote:
>By bracketing major fights supporting everyone from minimum wage home health
>care workers in Los Angeles to Boeing engineers, the AFL-CIO is hopefully
>outlining a range of solidarity across sectors of the working class. Yeah,
>lots of people on these lists disagree with what Sweeney et al are doing
>with that solidarity at times, but anyone should admit that building a
>broader unified conception of the "working class" in America is an important
>gain, especially given the incessant stratification and oppositions between
>workers promoted in the media.
If this keeps up it's going to make Alan Greenspan really really mad.
Time for the periodic citation of Kalecki's "Political Aspects of
Full Employment":
>In the slump, either under the pressure of the masses, or even
>without it, public investment financed by borrowing will be
>undertaken to prevent large-scale unemployment. But if attempts are
>made to apply this method in order to maintain the high level of
>employment reached in the subsequent boom, strong opposition by
>business leaders is likely to be encountered. As has already been
>argued, lasting full employment is not at all to their liking. The
>workers would 'get out of hand' and the 'captains of industry' would
>be anxious to 'teach them a lesson.' Moreover, the price increase in
>the upswing is to the disadvantage of small and big rentiers, and
>makes them 'boom-tired.'
>
>In this situation a powerful alliance is likely to be formed between
>big business and rentier interests, and they would probably find
>more than one economist to declare that the situation was manifestly
>unsound. The pressure of all these forces, and in particular of big
>business-as a rule influential in government departments-would most
>probably induce the government to return to the orthodox policy of
>cutting down the budget deficit. A slump would follow in which
>government spending policy would again come into its own.
>
>This pattern of a political business cycle is not entirely
>conjectural; something very similar happened in the USA in 1937-8.
>The breakdown of the boom in the second half of 1937 was actually
>due to the drastic reduction of the budget deficit. On the other
>hand, in the acute slump that followed the government promptly
>reverted to a spending policy.
>
>The regime of the political business cycle would be an artificial
>restoration of the position as it existed in nineteenth-century
>capitalism. Full employment would be reached only at the top of the
>boom, but slumps would be relatively mild and short-lived.
--
Doug Henwood
Left Business Observer
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New York NY 10024-3217 USA
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