----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
But doesn't this version of inflation emerge like this: Some sector (economic or social) raises their price (or wage) shifting income in their favor; the others resist by raising their price (wage) in turn; and on and on. Ongoing inflation (rather than a one-shot) is a distributional struggle. At some point in this game of "hot potato" it is the turn of wage earners and eventually they are left with the burnt hands (often creditors as well). But this game of "hot potato" can take several rounds (if the wage earners are strong in defending their standard of living). How many rounds the wage earners last is usually the principal factor determining the duration and degree of inflation.
Would you not be right to instead consider this form of what you consider 'distributional' inflation - unrelated, really, to (non-wage) cost-push factors - as a component of the devalorisation of (financial) capital, in the same spirit you'd probably agree that deindustrialisation is the equivalent devalorisation of productive capital? In which case, it's not merely a class-struggle question, is it. Perhaps you could say that, in the context of persistent overaccumuation, the last inflationary round was squelched by the Fed starting in late 1979, as an attack not only on workers (yes, no doubt that was not merely a coincidence), but as an alternative to stagflationary policies which hurt financiers? So the struggle over what kind of devalorisation occurs - inflationary or deflationary - can still proceed whether the ebb and flow of class struggle interferes, or not...
(Sorry, some of these insights come from my next-door neighbour Zimbabwe, which has lots of cost-push and monetary features of inflation, but also exhibits overaccumulation problems and repressed finance, like in the good ol' days... with inflation rates in the 200-500% range over the past two years.)
