[was: Re: [PEN-L:6973] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Re: 'Anti-globalization activists have their facts wrong.' Really?]
I wrote:
>>BTW, it's not the decline of real wages that matters, as much as the
>>decline of real wages _relative to labor productivity_.
quoth Doug:
>That's an old story.
So what? old stories can be valid. Just because something is old doesn't
mean it's wrong. the key point is a theoretical one, i.e., that it's wages
relative to productivity that matter in the course of macroeconomic events.
Real wages alone don't mean much.
>In the heart of the 1960s (1962-67, to be precise), U.S. real compensation
>in the nonfarm business sector rose 2.5% a year, while productivity rose
>3.3%. In the 1970s, it was 1.3% and 2.0%, respectively. Just how much of
>this is the result of capital mobility, and how much is union-busting, the
>erosion of the minimum wage, deregulation, paring back the welfare state
>(such as it was), etc.?
I'd say that during the 1960s, the extraordinarily high profit rate was
partly the result of the slow growth of real wages relative to labor
productivity (along with a ballooning of overhead salaries). This was due
to other factors besides capital mobility, though the latter began after
WW2, setting the stage for the current era. The erosion of the minimum
wage, deregulation, paring back the welfare state, etc., didn't begin in
the US with full force until the 1970s and especially the 1980s, in
response to the falling profit rate after the mid-1960s.
I think that the high profit rate of the mid-1960s was a result of the fact
that the US had unquestioned industrial, financial, and military hegemony
in the capitalist world, which allowed the exertion of oligopoly power in
crucial sectors. The description put forth by Baran & Sweezy in MONOPOLY
CAPITAL applied roughly, between the 1950s and the late 1960s, though I
think their theory is deeply flawed. A key part of the crisis of the 1970s
was that that B&S's picture stopped being a very good description.
>>Doug, you know that I am familiar with these facts, so it feels like
>>you're talking down to me.
>
>Sorry if it sounded that way; that wasn't what I wanted to do. I was a bit
>surprised, though, that the IMF earned no mention, while capital mobility
>dominated the post.
I was quoting unidentified leftists as saying that "globalization was more
than just trade" or something like that, in order to refer to opinions that
are commonplace on the left. I didn't feel that it was necessary to present
a complete analysis. I put the quotation in quotation marks.
>> I am _not_ blaming everything on mobile capital. The IMF and its SAPs
>> are part of a broad political-economic process that includes capital
>> mobility as one aspect. That process is hard to summarize (so that you
>> can find lots of things to quibble about). It could be summarized as a
>> "neo-liberal revolution" or as a process of "competitive austerity and
>> export promotion." (do you want me to post long essays so that there's
>> nothing left to snipe at, since all questions have been answered?)
>
>Doesn't take long essays to make these points; you just did it in a short
>paragraph. It's way too easy to blame "globalization" or "capital
>mobility." Among other things, this removes human agency from the picture.
I was quoting unidentified leftists as saying that "globalization was more
than just trade" or something like that, in order to refer to opinions that
are commonplace on the left. I didn't feel that it was necessary to present
a complete analysis. I put the quotation in quotation marks.
why is "human agency" so important to an analysis of what the ruling class
does? what it does represents a balance of different forces within the
ruling class, all struggling for their own profit goals, often affected by
not-exactly-capitalist forces like the religious Right and limited by
non-capitalist forces such as the working class when it's militant. Sure
the IMF does bad things (and I rail against them regularly), but if it
hadn't existed as the vanguard party of the neoliberal revolution, it
probably would have been invented. (Similarly, if Lawrence Summers didn't
exist, someone like him would have been appointed.) As a first
approximation over long periods of time, a reference to capital's laws of
motion seems enough.
Human agency is important when we talk about resisting the capitalists.
Unlike with capital, there is no unconscious set of laws of motion that can
describe the process of the liberation of the oppressed. Rather, the whole
process involves a collective conscious collaboration to control history,
to transcend "Invisible Hands."
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine "Segui il
tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.)
-- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
