There's an interesting article in the NY Times today about the financial
crisis in East Asia. It offers best-case and worst-case scenarios:
"So far, though, none of that has compensated for a series of huge
miscalculations that has mired Tokyo in economic trouble since 1991. A
sudden collapse of the kind that afflicted the smaller Asian economies
seems highly unlikely.
"Nonetheless, with every bit of economic evidence suggesting things in
Japan could worsen before they improve, Washington and the markets are
awash in gloomy visions in which a panic in Japan -- or even Japanese
efforts to quell one -- could leap the Pacific."
Reading this, it suggests that the capitalist class is not omniscient. It
can, as the article admits, "miscalculate." When it comes to matters of war
and economic crisis, it is wrong to assume that it will always make the
right decision. The two World Wars and the Great Depression are the best
examples of how miscalculations can escalate out of control when the
bourgeoisie is operating in difficult times.
We are used to second-guessing our own miscalculations as socialists and
progressives. How we screwed up in the USSR, Cuba, Nicaragua, etc. Perhaps
it would be useful to keep in mind that the bourgeoisie has its own
"vanguard party", namely the economists and politicians who try to
coordinate and defend the class interests of global capital. When global
capital has plenty of room to maneuver, such as it did in the period from
1945 to 1970, it tends to look wise and omniscient. When times get tough,
there will be more and more miscalculations that can spin out of control.
Trotsky's "History of the Russian Revolution" has an interesting passage
which delves into the miscalculations of the Czarist court. Looking back in
retrospect, you can observe all the mistakes that it made that led to its
being booted from power. What was the explanation? Stupidity brought on by
in-breeding, like the British royalty? No, the explanation is that in a
pre-revolutionary crisis, there will be qualitatively more opportunities
for a ruling class to make the wrong decision.
This leads me to an observation on the running squabble between Rakesh and
Jerry Levy with Doug Henwood about the appropriateness of value theorists
as a guide to the immanent collapse of the capitalist system, or conversely
its permanent stability. The problem is that this literature seems to
bracket politics out in a way that is entirely inappropriate to
understanding the capitalist system. One of the problems of trying to
extrapolate a crystal ball from Marx's Capital is that the subject matter
of the book is the capitalist system in its pure form. If you view this
work as having the capability of predicting general economic collapse, you
are misusing it. Perhaps the obsession with mathematics on the part of
value theorists is an expression of the desire to find a "scientific"
method of predicting depressions, like the meteorologists who predict
tornadoes or the seismologists who predict earthquakes.
Depressions and wars are not like earthquakes or tornadoes. They are not
natural disasters. They are the result of underlying economic
contradictions that can have multiple variant outcomes. An important factor
in the outcome is psychology of the ruling classes, the fighting mood of
the working class and its organizations, etc. Nobody can predict the
outcome of the current economic woes. I tend to discount "catastrophism"
because I have been hearing worse-case scenarios for the past 20 years or
so and capitalism always seems to end up on its feet.
The only thing that I am inclined to believe at this point is that
"globalization" theorists are starting to look as dated as postmodernism,
analytical Marxism and all the other intellectual fads of recent years.
When Robert Rubin tells the Japanese what they should do about their
economy, what is it that gives him this authority? Clearly it is the
economic leverage of America's financial reserves. But behind this is armed
might of the American state, "bodies of armed men" as Lenin would put it.
The United States has a military presence in East Asia that is a constant
reminder of who can give orders to who.
Economic nationalism based on a pecking order of capitalist states is as
real as it was a century ago.
Louis Proyect
