Monopoly Capital vs. the base, then and now

[junior chįmp]

Damn you guys are smart

[Technocracy Timmy]

Damn you guys are smart

Me like big worded mouth men.

[PSOL]

Vittorio, you may want to incorporate more modern works of analysis in your evidence. Going back to the late 1800s is not entirely applicable to the situation we have today. Including modern pieces supporting your argument, like in your first post here, would be more helpful in getting people to see your point.

If one is arguing about what Marxism is, it only makes sense to go back to the source material. Nobody in the intervening years since 1883 has improved on Marx (indeed, attempts to 'update' Marxism typically end up in Keynesian underconsumptionist pablum) and capitalism itself does not change structurally whether its predominant social manifestation is that of small burghers playing their wares or a 20th century Fordist plant producing automobiles or Internet developers selling code today. The M-C-M' formula holds good wherever the law of value operates.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying to bring about modern “revisionist” theoreticians, I’m saying to apply the ideas of Marx into the modern era and experiences using scholarly work not of your own, like your opening post.

Also, while Marx laid the foundation for Marxism, there is still not yet an agreed upon endpoint on exactly how to organize society fully. You say that this is “positivism of the bourgeoisie”, but Marx was wrong in his original analysis I must say. What else to make of the two most successful revolutions based on the application happening in Feudal Russia and China, populated by peasants liberated from serfdom only a few generations ago. Or that the only “real” areas of revolutionary potential are in the now industrializing and/or neocolonial hotspots, a far cry from the revolutionary spark to begin in Industrial Europe or the US.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Vittorio, you may want to incorporate more modern works of analysis in your evidence. Going back to the late 1800s is not entirely applicable to the situation we have today. Including modern pieces supporting your argument, like in your first post here, would be more helpful in getting people to see your point.

If one is arguing about what Marxism is, it only makes sense to go back to the source material. Nobody in the intervening years since 1883 has improved on Marx (indeed, attempts to 'update' Marxism typically end up in Keynesian underconsumptionist pablum) and capitalism itself does not change structurally whether its predominant social manifestation is that of small burghers playing their wares or a 20th century Fordist plant producing automobiles or Internet developers selling code today. The M-C-M' formula holds good wherever the law of value operates.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying to bring about modern “revisionist” theoreticians, I’m saying to apply the ideas of Marx into the modern era and experiences using scholarly work not of your own, like your opening post.

Also, while Marx laid the foundation for Marxism, there is still not yet an agreed upon endpoint on exactly how to organize society fully. You say that this is “positivism of the bourgeoisie”, but Marx was wrong in his original analysis I must say. What else to make of the two most successful revolutions based on the application happening in Feudal Russia and China, populated by peasants liberated from serfdom only a few generations ago. Or that the only “real” areas of revolutionary potential are in the now industrializing and/or neocolonial hotspots, a far cry from the revolutionary spark to begin in Industrial Europe or the US.

People will not overthrow the status quo unless they are desperate enough and are left with no other option. Western Democracies provide the avenue for peaceful recourse so if there is need for change they will just vote in someone like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. The main reason why Lenin was able to seize power and then keep it was that he was the only one with a consistent message and a consistent foreign policy, "end the damn war!" in a country that only ever had a history of political change coming through violent means.

That is why it was one of the most rural and religious countries on earth that became the first "Communist Country". In many other countries, they came to power because they were the only ones left on the field who was fighting fascism (one extreme provides a foil for the other).  

The problem with Marx and the problem that Vittorio thus shares, is a fundamental disconnect with where people are in reality. It is easy for a theorist to say market impulse and/or religion is fake and an empty construct. But millions of people like the ability to make rational choices for themselves and millions of people believe in various religious sects as a matter of faith. To deny that or ignore that, among the many other "operating factors" ignores substantial elements of the "human experience" and thus one cannot hope to predict a future outcome while discounting these "counter-forces".

This was the point I was trying to make when I talked about the emphasis on class to the exclusion of all other factors. Maybe he is using a different definition of class or maybe there is some impulse that bet encapsulates the impetus that would in a vacuum push towards a Communist outcome, but whether or not such is the case, it still fails to account for the very things Vittorio wrote off as not existing or irrelevant and it is those missing elements that stand in the way of the "natural transition".

Russia would have never become Communist were it not pushed the point where that was the only viable outcome. Agrarian socialist perhaps, more than likely some other kind of Revolution, but it was the war, starvation and despair that made Communism viable in a place Marx thought would be the least hospitable.

Desperation drives people to embrace extremes, and that is why as a Conservative I prefer to alleviate such desperation to prevent such extremes from rising to power and threatening the system. If only other conservatives approached things the same way, and weren't likewise blinded by their own agenda and alternative facts.

[Vittorio]

Working the night shift, so I won't be able to respond as immediately as before.

People will not overthrow the status quo unless they are desperate enough and are left with no other option.

Hardly. History is full of revolutions in which the status quo was overturned in less-than-desperate times - not the least in 1776. (And indeed, labor action like union drives and strikes are far more frequent in good economic times than in bad.)

Western Democracies provide the avenue for peaceful recourse so if there is need for change they will just vote in someone like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.

Except that you yourself evidently do not believe this, for elsewhere you've written

... As any realist student of history will tell you, this is the road to REVOLUTION and this why is either fight back or Bernie or Warren are coming to burn your sh**t to the ground.

Either Warren and Sanders are wild-eyed revolutionaries, or they are functionally harmless peddlers of ameliorative Keynesian snake-oil. You seem to vacillate in your view, depending. I myself know that they are incapable of making structural changes to the order of social relations, even if there were 538 clones of Senator Sanders in the Congress.

Thein reason why Lenin was able to seize power and then keep it was that he was the only one with a consistent message and a consistent foreign policy, "end the damn war!" in a country that only ever had a history of political change coming through violent means.

Great Man Theory at its most vulgar. Lenin had nothing to do with February, and hardly anything to do with October until it was underway. Lenin didn't "seize power" - a combination of the burgeoning Russian working-class and the Russian military did

That is why it was one of the most rural and religious countries on earth that became the first "Communist Country". In many other countries, they came to power because they were the only ones left on the field who was fighting fascism (one extreme provides a foil for the other).

Setting aside that 'Communist country' is a contradictory in adjecto, this also happens to constitute a boring application of Horseshoe Theory. In fact there were basically no differences between the government's in the Soviet sphere of influence and those in the Axis, both being capitalist, and their basic compatibility is demonstrated in Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

The problem with Marx and the problem that Vittorio thus shares, is a fundamental disconnect with where people are in reality. It is easy for a theorist to say market impulse and/or religion is fake and an empty construct. But millions of people like the ability to make rational choices for themselves and millions of people believe in various religious sects as a matter of faith. To deny that or ignore that, among the many other "operating factors" ignores substantial elements of the "human experience" and thus one cannot hope to predict a future outcome while discounting these "counter-forces".

We have never denied that ideology, religion, etc. are real powers. We simply say that they are not independent of the material fundamentals of the society which produces them, without which they do not exist. One does not live on the Word alone, but on bread grown in the ground.

This was the point I was trying to make when I talked about the emphasis on class to the exclusion of all other factors. Maybe he is using a different definition of class or maybe there is some impulse that bet encapsulates the impetus that would in a vacuum push towards a Communist outcome, but whether or not such is the case, it still fails to account for the very things Vittorio wrote off as not existing or irrelevant and it is those missing elements that stand in the way of the "natural transition".

My point is that class reductionism is a conspiratorial worldview, not unlike structural anti-Semitism, which perceives the bourgeoisie as a unified, consciously malevolent force that operates independently of all other considerations than their own collective will, as in vulgar leftism. Marx's break with the Utopians was in large part predicated on his demonstration that not only is the capitalist class as determined by Capital as the working-class, but that Capital can exist independently of the capitalists altogether .

As Bordiga says (translated from the Italian, hence the stilted prose):

Capital is only concentrated in the state for the convenience of surplus-value and profit manoeuvring. It remains “available to all” or available to the components of the entrepreneurial class — no longer simply production entrepreneurs, but openly business entrepreneurs — they no longer produce commodities, but, Marx has already said, they produce surplus value.

The capitalist as person no longer serves in this — capital lives without him but with its same function multiplied 100 fold. The human subject has become useless. A class without members to compose it? The state not at the service of a social group, but an impalpable force, the work of the Holy Ghost or of the Devil?

Russia would have never become Communist

It never did.

Desperation drives people to embrace extremes, and that is why as a Conservative I prefer to alleviate such desperation to prevent such extremes from rising to power and threatening the system. If only other conservatives approached things the same way, and weren't likewise blinded by their own agenda and alternative facts.

And yet you promote the maintenance of the very system of social relations which make Communism inevitable.

[pbrower2a]

Holy f#ck this thread is unreadable.

It is tragic how poorly written so much left content is, but I do appreciate Vittorio's effort.

Marxism-Leninism is obsolete, having shown its catastrophic failure. Markets are a good idea for enforcing economic reality in a way that central planning cannot be. To be sure, capitalists can be nasty people, but such goes with unaccountable power no matter what the form.

Is post-Marxist radicalism a possibility on the Left? Let us remember that Marxism has a simple syllogism behind it:


1. Corruption, cruelty, inequity, and dehumanization are unconscionable (major premise)
2. Capitalism is by nature a corrupt, cruel, inequitable, dehumanizing order (minor premise) 

Therefore capitalism is unconscionable and morally doomed.

Most people accept the major premise as a moral judgment. The minor premise is something that capitalists have a choice about. Maybe capitalists can save capitalism by making it human and by reducing the inequities to a minimum of necessity. On the other hand some people -- and these are in the spirit of those slave-owning planters who exploited their slaves ruthlessly who insisted upon others seeing those planters as benefactors to the slaves -- wax fat from the vices that Marx attributes to capitalism. Those who endorse the corruption, cruelty, inequity, and dehumanization that capitalism can imply seek brutal means in which to enforce their desires -- and fascism offers the tools. Maybe in America the fascists never got the chance to impose a nightmare (the 1915 Klan, which had most of the elements of fascism before Mussolini even created the name for his sick cause); in Germany, Italy, and Japan they got their way before they sought to impose their way where such was unwelcome.

Morality is no bourgeois construct; it existed among people barely out of the hunter-gatherer stage of economic and technical development. Capitalism without morals degenerates rapidly into a nightmare of a command society for the profit of an economic elite as shown in fascism.   

[Vittorio]

Let us remember that Marxism has a simple syllogism behind it:


1. Corruption, cruelty, inequity, and dehumanization are unconscionable (major premise)

Communists do not preach morality at all.

2. Capitalism is by nature a corrupt, cruel, inequitable, dehumanizing order (minor premise)

Dehumanizing, most literally, in the sense that it equates constant and variable Capital - labor and technology. The first two categories are moralistic; Marxism explicitly rejects the third, equality.

The elimination of all social and political inequality,” rather than “the abolition of all class distinctions,” is similarly a most dubious expression. As between one country, one province and even one place and another, living conditions will always evince a certain inequality which may be reduced to a minimum but never wholly eliminated. The living conditions of Alpine dwellers will always be different from those of the plainsmen. The concept of a socialist society as a realm of equality is a one-sided French concept deriving from the old “liberty, equality, fraternity,” a concept which was justified in that, in its own time and place, it signified a phase of development but which, like all the one-sided ideas of earlier socialist schools, ought now to be superseded, since they produce nothing but mental confusion, and more accurate ways of presenting the matter have been discovered.

- Engels to Bebel, 1875

... But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal. But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.

- Gothakritik §I

Capitalism isn't doomed because it is immoral, though it does undermine its own morality by subjecting it to commodity circulation. It's just doomed.

[All Along The Watchtower]

I an getting some serious vibes from OP, but that's just me.

[Cassandra]

Holy f#ck this thread is unreadable.

It is tragic how poorly written so much left content is, but I do appreciate Vittorio's effort.

Marxism-Leninism is obsolete, having shown its catastrophic failure. Markets are a good idea for enforcing economic reality in a way that central planning cannot be. To be sure, capitalists can be nasty people, but such goes with unaccountable power no matter what the form.

Is post-Marxist radicalism a possibility on the Left? Let us remember that Marxism has a simple syllogism behind it:


1. Corruption, cruelty, inequity, and dehumanization are unconscionable (major premise)
2. Capitalism is by nature a corrupt, cruel, inequitable, dehumanizing order (minor premise) 

Therefore capitalism is unconscionable and morally doomed.

Most people accept the major premise as a moral judgment. The minor premise is something that capitalists have a choice about. Maybe capitalists can save capitalism by making it human and by reducing the inequities to a minimum of necessity. On the other hand some people -- and these are in the spirit of those slave-owning planters who exploited their slaves ruthlessly who insisted upon others seeing those planters as benefactors to the slaves -- wax fat from the vices that Marx attributes to capitalism. Those who endorse the corruption, cruelty, inequity, and dehumanization that capitalism can imply seek brutal means in which to enforce their desires -- and fascism offers the tools. Maybe in America the fascists never got the chance to impose a nightmare (the 1915 Klan, which had most of the elements of fascism before Mussolini even created the name for his sick cause); in Germany, Italy, and Japan they got their way before they sought to impose their way where such was unwelcome.

Morality is no bourgeois construct; it existed among people barely out of the hunter-gatherer stage of economic and technical development. Capitalism without morals degenerates rapidly into a nightmare of a command society for the profit of an economic elite as shown in fascism.   

Why are you talking at me?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Western Democracies provide the avenue for peaceful recourse so if there is need for change they will just vote in someone like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.

Except that you yourself evidently do not believe this, for elsewhere you've written

... As any realist student of history will tell you, this is the road to REVOLUTION and this why is either fight back or Bernie or Warren are coming to burn your sh**t to the ground.

Either Warren and Sanders are wild-eyed revolutionaries, or they are functionally harmless peddlers of ameliorative Keynesian snake-oil. You seem to vacillate in your view, depending. I myself know that they are incapable of making structural changes to the order of social relations, even if there were 538 clones of Senator Sanders in the Congress.

Stages of extremism my friend. For a Conservative, Sanders and Warren are basically communists. For a marxists, they are as you put it snake oil salesmen.

The subject of the previous post was about how Conservatives have destroyed themselves within the context of the political dynamic by empowering the Progressive Left long term through destructive policies. I never referred to them as a socialist or marxists in that post, I referred to them as Far left or the Progressive Left. My only use of the word socialist was in defending a more centrist economic program by saying it was not socialist, which a conservative might be apt to call anything that involves spending money these days.

The subject of post in this thread, pertains to the many factors that cause western societies to resist the natural transition from capitalism to communism and one of those is the ability to vote in the Progressive Left thus neutering the appeal of more radical and dangerous option with support for a complete abandonment of the market economy for central planning, which Pbrower described above as obsolete and for good reason.

For a Conservative, Sanders/Warren are indeed going to wreck them on many of their cultural/social priorities, because enough people have pushed to desperation economically to vote for that kind of change. But that is still within the confines of reforming the market system, not abandoning it. Thus what counts as a radical change to a conservative would to someone such as yourself be considered naively seeking to reform the un-fixable present system as opposed to replacing it.  

[Vittorio]

Western Democracies provide the avenue for peaceful recourse so if there is need for change they will just vote in someone like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.

Except that you yourself evidently do not believe this, for elsewhere you've written

... As any realist student of history will tell you, this is the road to REVOLUTION and this why is either fight back or Bernie or Warren are coming to burn your sh**t to the ground.

Either Warren and Sanders are wild-eyed revolutionaries, or they are functionally harmless peddlers of ameliorative Keynesian snake-oil. You seem to vacillate in your view, depending. I myself know that they are incapable of making structural changes to the order of social relations, even if there were 538 clones of Senator Sanders in the Congress.

Stages of extremism my friend. For a Conservative, Sanders and Warren are basically communists. For a marxists, they are as you put it snake oil salesmen.

This is the very essence of relativism. It's also not at all how society works.

You can institute all the social democratic programs you please - you can 'democratize the workplace' through the formation of worker's council's, equalize income through the steepest progressive tax you please, install a six or even four-hour workday (all positions well in advance of either Warren or Sanders - and so long as production for exchange, rather than use, prevails, and with it the commodity form, what you have is capitalism. You can even eliminate individual capitalists altogether and retain capitalism, because, as Marx discovered, Capital is a force unto itself.

Conservatives can think of Warren and Sanders as being Communists as much as they please. They're quite simply wrong, entirely wrong, and the entire social democratic project taken to its logical conclusion leads not to Communism but to a particular form of capitalism which is functionally indistinguishable from your own Bismarckian welfare statism, differing only in degree.

The subject of the previous post was about how Conservatives have destroyed themselves within the context of the political dynamic by empowering the Progressive Left long term through destructive policies.

The 'Progressive Left' are merely the emissaries of one faction of Capital - the tech sector, green capital, nonproductive finance, the unions, etc.

never referred to them as a socialist or marxists in that post, I referred to them as Far left or the Progressive Left. My only use of the word socialist was in defending a more centrist economic program by saying it was not socialist, which a conservative might be apt to call anything that involves spending money these days.

And Communism will be directed against the bourgeois Left (even in its most ostensibly'radical' forms) as against the Right and its institutions. Communism is an alteration in the mode of production, not a mere political movement.

More momentarily.

[Vittorio]

Point two, while I'm in break.

The subject of post in this thread, pertains to the many factors that cause western societies to resist the natural transition from capitalism to communism and one of those is the ability to vote in the Progressive Left thus neutering the appeal of more radical and dangerous option with support for a complete abandonment of the market economy for central planning, which Pbrower described above as obsolete and for good reason.

This is a subjectivistic interpretation of political economy, which grossly overemphasizes the political role played by the capitalist Left (in this reading, to mitigate revolutionary consciousness through reformist measures) and understates their role as the emissaries of a concrete faction of Capital. This misinterpretation is shared by the bourgeois Leftists of the 'official' (Marxist-Leninist/Maoist/Trotskyist) revolutionary sects, who mirror-image capitalist concepts in their formulations.

Keynesian measures have an objective role to play in the function of the capitalist economy, primarily to create new markets for capital accumulation through redistribution of wealth. Such redistribution, far from being antithetical to capitalism, has been at its core from the beginning, e.g. enclosure. These measures facilitate capital flows and cut against the tendency of the rate of profit to decline. These interventions also tend to strengthen some groups within Capital (like high tech) at the expense of others.

In other words, the function of Keynesian programmes (which do not exist outside of or in opposition to Capital) is not to buy off the working-class to prevent revolution, but to expand the movement of Capital. The former, subjective, function of these programmes follows the latter, objective function.

More to follow.

[Kingpoleon]

I am reminded of those famous Soviet programs, especially Khrushchev’s, that centered their economic system on competition. Or, perhaps, the words of Trotsky himself: “As all problems in a Socialist society... [for the solution] individual competition will have the widest scope and the most unlimited opportunity.” Or, perhaps, Lenin himself: “Now that a socialist government is in power our task is to organise competition.” These foremost, highest examples of Marx’s ideas in practice clearly and soundly demonstrate a contradiction and, indeed, direct opposition to the underlying basis of Marxism: that capitalism and competition lead only to greed and selfishness. Marxism is itself a contradiction in terms, for all but the edgiest “libertarian socialists” and, to a lesser extent, self proclaimed Stalinists/Maoists.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I don't think Bismarckian statism is well suited to America to be honest. I mean the umbrella concept of a "nationalist economics" (at least to the extent of national responsibility, not necessarily outright protectionism) and coupled with the "desire to ease the strain on the system for the sake of its own preservation" are necessary yes, but the exact means of how you achieve that can be very different.

For instance against a backdrop of economic nationalism you have a choice between embracing monopolies, which than then be state controlled/influenced and move down the road towards state capitalism with the government redistributing through statism to keep the system afloat and keep the pitch forks at bay. That is very much the German economic model from the late 19th and early 20th century and we certainly know what that helped to lead to.

One the other hand, you can go the opposite direction while still under the umbrella of the "nationalist economic model" and the "the desire to ease the strain on the system for self preservation", by breaking up monopolies and trying to restore market competition. This was more the approach of TR, at least in the 1900's.

Ironically comparing TR and the Germans, I would argue the Germans came up with a more market friendly national healthcare system while TR's proposals were less so but of course TR never succeeded in implementing anything. I still think the German model for health care is the best starting point for the US, to which the additions of greater choice and some level of state influence/administration would make it well suited to our system. Certainly a far better match for America and its political history then going for a system like that which dominates the anglo-sphere.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

My takeaway from this thread is that, man, conservatives are really quite bad at arguing against Marxists. No wonder all the kids at university are into that stuff.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

My takeaway from this thread is that, man, conservatives are really quite bad at arguing against Marxists. No wonder all the kids at university are into that stuff.

The reasons that college kids are into that stuff is because the policy makers have left them behind and so they have reacted in a very natural way. The difference between myself and most other conservatives, is I don't blame them for embracing extremism, I blame the policy makers for screwing them over in the first place.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Working the night shift, so I won't be able to respond as immediately as before.

People will not overthrow the status quo unless they are desperate enough and are left with no other option.

Hardly. History is full of revolutions in which the status quo was overturned in less-than-desperate times - not the least in 1776. (And indeed, labor action like union drives and strikes are far more frequent in good economic times than in bad.)

Run of the mill labor union action is not a social or societal revolution. Also, 1776 was not one either it was led from the top down by colonial elites who wanted the ability to run the colonies as they had without Britain interfering. 

[pbrower2a]

Holy f#ck this thread is unreadable.

It is tragic how poorly written so much left content is, but I do appreciate Vittorio's effort.

Marxism-Leninism is obsolete, having shown its catastrophic failure. Markets are a good idea for enforcing economic reality in a way that central planning cannot be. To be sure, capitalists can be nasty people, but such goes with unaccountable power no matter what the form.

Is post-Marxist radicalism a possibility on the Left? Let us remember that Marxism has a simple syllogism behind it:


1. Corruption, cruelty, inequity, and dehumanization are unconscionable (major premise)
2. Capitalism is by nature a corrupt, cruel, inequitable, dehumanizing order (minor premise) 

Therefore capitalism is unconscionable and morally doomed.

Most people accept the major premise as a moral judgment. The minor premise is something that capitalists have a choice about. Maybe capitalists can save capitalism by making it human and by reducing the inequities to a minimum of necessity. On the other hand some people -- and these are in the spirit of those slave-owning planters who exploited their slaves ruthlessly who insisted upon others seeing those planters as benefactors to the slaves -- wax fat from the vices that Marx attributes to capitalism. Those who endorse the corruption, cruelty, inequity, and dehumanization that capitalism can imply seek brutal means in which to enforce their desires -- and fascism offers the tools. Maybe in America the fascists never got the chance to impose a nightmare (the 1915 Klan, which had most of the elements of fascism before Mussolini even created the name for his sick cause); in Germany, Italy, and Japan they got their way before they sought to impose their way where such was unwelcome.

Morality is no bourgeois construct; it existed among people barely out of the hunter-gatherer stage of economic and technical development. Capitalism without morals degenerates rapidly into a nightmare of a command society for the profit of an economic elite as shown in fascism.   

Why are you talking at me?

Sometimes I am expounding on the subject -- nothing more and nothing less.

[Kingpoleon]

I don't think Bismarckian statism is well suited to America to be honest. I mean the umbrella concept of a "nationalist economics" (at least to the extent of national responsibility, not necessarily outright protectionism) and coupled with the "desire to ease the strain on the system for the sake of its own preservation" are necessary yes, but the exact means of how you achieve that can be very different.

For instance against a backdrop of economic nationalism you have a choice between embracing monopolies, which than then be state controlled/influenced and move down the road towards state capitalism with the government redistributing through statism to keep the system afloat and keep the pitch forks at bay. That is very much the German economic model from the late 19th and early 20th century and we certainly know what that helped to lead to.

One the other hand, you can go the opposite direction while still under the umbrella of the "nationalist economic model" and the "the desire to ease the strain on the system for self preservation", by breaking up monopolies and trying to restore market competition. This was more the approach of TR, at least in the 1900's.

Ironically comparing TR and the Germans, I would argue the Germans came up with a more market friendly national healthcare system while TR's proposals were less so but of course TR never succeeded in implementing anything. I still think the German model for health care is the best starting point for the US, to which the additions of greater choice and some level of state influence/administration would make it well suited to our system. Certainly a far better match for America and its political history then going for a system like that which dominates the anglo-sphere.

The great trick in getting Republican support for healthcare won’t be support for a European style healthcare system. Instead, if you really want to get Republican support, draw parallels between a universal healthcare system and Israel’s healthcare system. That alone would break down a lot of opposition from evangelical and neoconservative elements in the party, which, combined, have enough of a base to be a solid majority in the GOP.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I don't think Bismarckian statism is well suited to America to be honest. I mean the umbrella concept of a "nationalist economics" (at least to the extent of national responsibility, not necessarily outright protectionism) and coupled with the "desire to ease the strain on the system for the sake of its own preservation" are necessary yes, but the exact means of how you achieve that can be very different.

For instance against a backdrop of economic nationalism you have a choice between embracing monopolies, which than then be state controlled/influenced and move down the road towards state capitalism with the government redistributing through statism to keep the system afloat and keep the pitch forks at bay. That is very much the German economic model from the late 19th and early 20th century and we certainly know what that helped to lead to.

One the other hand, you can go the opposite direction while still under the umbrella of the "nationalist economic model" and the "the desire to ease the strain on the system for self preservation", by breaking up monopolies and trying to restore market competition. This was more the approach of TR, at least in the 1900's.

Ironically comparing TR and the Germans, I would argue the Germans came up with a more market friendly national healthcare system while TR's proposals were less so but of course TR never succeeded in implementing anything. I still think the German model for health care is the best starting point for the US, to which the additions of greater choice and some level of state influence/administration would make it well suited to our system. Certainly a far better match for America and its political history then going for a system like that which dominates the anglo-sphere.

The great trick in getting Republican support for healthcare won’t be support for a European style healthcare system. Instead, if you really want to get Republican support, draw parallels between a universal healthcare system and Israel’s healthcare system. That alone would break down a lot of opposition from evangelical and neoconservative elements in the party, which, combined, have enough of a base to be a solid majority in the GOP.

Only after you reign in the corporate money flowing into the GOP.

[pbrower2a]

I don't think Bismarckian statism is well suited to America to be honest. I mean the umbrella concept of a "nationalist economics" (at least to the extent of national responsibility, not necessarily outright protectionism) and coupled with the "desire to ease the strain on the system for the sake of its own preservation" are necessary yes, but the exact means of how you achieve that can be very different.

For instance against a backdrop of economic nationalism you have a choice between embracing monopolies, which than then be state controlled/influenced and move down the road towards state capitalism with the government redistributing through statism to keep the system afloat and keep the pitch forks at bay. That is very much the German economic model from the late 19th and early 20th century and we certainly know what that helped to lead to.

One the other hand, you can go the opposite direction while still under the umbrella of the "nationalist economic model" and the "the desire to ease the strain on the system for self preservation", by breaking up monopolies and trying to restore market competition. This was more the approach of TR, at least in the 1900's.

Ironically comparing TR and the Germans, I would argue the Germans came up with a more market friendly national healthcare system while TR's proposals were less so but of course TR never succeeded in implementing anything. I still think the German model for health care is the best starting point for the US, to which the additions of greater choice and some level of state influence/administration would make it well suited to our system. Certainly a far better match for America and its political history then going for a system like that which dominates the anglo-sphere.

The great trick in getting Republican support for healthcare won’t be support for a European style healthcare system. Instead, if you really want to get Republican support, draw parallels between a universal healthcare system and Israel’s healthcare system. That alone would break down a lot of opposition from evangelical and neoconservative elements in the party, which, combined, have enough of a base to be a solid majority in the GOP.

On my cynical view of the GOP, I almost expect it to support national health care so long as it is

(1) monopolistic and compulsory
(2) profits-first, and with little discretion to physicians
(3) heavily subsidized in set-up for the super-corporation
(4) without subsidies to the poor.

It is the duty of the common man to work longer, harder, and under harsher conditions for the Master Class, for whom no suffering by the masses can ever be in excess!

[All Along The Watchtower]

Keynesian measures have an objective role to play in the function of the capitalist economy, primarily to create new markets for capital accumulation through redistribution of wealth. Such redistribution, far from being antithetical to capitalism, has been at its core from the beginning, e.g. enclosure. These measures facilitate capital flows and cut against the tendency of the rate of profit to decline. These interventions also tend to strengthen some groups within Capital (like high tech) at the expense of others.

In other words, the function of Keynesian programmes (which do not exist outside of or in opposition to Capital) is not to buy off the working-class to prevent revolution, but to expand the movement of Capital. The former, subjective, function of these programmes follows the latter, objective function.

Now the bolded is an important point and worth expanding on. The "counter-cyclical" nature of Keynesian economics illustrates its stabilizing (regulatory) function. This was the whole point of the Bretton Woods system: to introduce a measure of rationality and predictability in a fundamentally irrational and unpredictable system.

Keynes's own central insight (or one of them, at least) was that the rational decisions of individuals in a capitalist economy - especially one in which a larger portion of the population was engaged in the consumption of the goods and services provided by their employers (see: Fordism) - could lead to irrational systemic outcomes, e.g. everyone from Wall Street bankers to low-wage laborers putting their savings under the mattress or whatever during a recession (only exacerbating the deflationary crisis of a recession).

Now I'm obviously grossly oversimplifying (and maybe getting some things wrong) about Keynes' economic theories, and leaving many things out, but for the purposes of this discussion the important point is that the inject of Keynesian policy measures and - perhaps more importantly - the building of centralized global financial institutions (the World Bank, the IMF, etc.), controlled ultimately from the "core" advanced capitalist economies in the post-WWII period, facilitated major state and (corporate) capitalist investment both short-term and long-term. And a good portion of this investment, in the context of the US being the unscathed capitalist superpower in the wake of the devastation of WWII, the urgent need to "contain" or even "roll back" Communism, and the growing power (and hence, bargaining power) of organized labor, ended up creating the "great middle class" in the advanced economies of the mid-20th century "Golden Age of Capitalism."

Of course, all of this was only possible economically (and politically) in an era of massive pent-up demand (the aftermath of WWII), enormous industrial and state capacity, and the spectre of Soviet Communism acting as a counterweight to the natural tendencies of capitalism. By the end of the 1960s and certainly by the 1970s, a confluence of factors strained this so-called "detente" between capital and labor to the breaking point, and it did indeed break - and the unconstrained absolutism of capital came back with a vengeance.

[Vittorio]

Keynesian measures have an objective role to play in the function of the capitalist economy, primarily to create new markets for capital accumulation through redistribution of wealth. Such redistribution, far from being antithetical to capitalism, has been at its core from the beginning, e.g. enclosure. These measures facilitate capital flows and cut against the tendency of the rate of profit to decline. These interventions also tend to strengthen some groups within Capital (like high tech) at the expense of others.

In other words, the function of Keynesian programmes (which do not exist outside of or in opposition to Capital) is not to buy off the working-class to prevent revolution, but to expand the movement of Capital. The former, subjective, function of these programmes follows the latter, objective function.

Now the bolded is an important point and worth expanding on. The "counter-cyclical" nature of Keynesian economics illustrates its stabilizing (regulatory) function. This was the whole point of the Bretton Woods system: to introduce a measure of rationality and predictability in a fundamentally irrational and unpredictable system.

Keynes's own central insight (or one of them, at least) was that the rational decisions of individuals in a capitalist economy - especially one in which a larger portion of the population was engaged in the consumption of the goods and services provided by their employers (see: Fordism) - could lead to irrational systemic outcomes, e.g. everyone from Wall Street bankers to low-wage laborers putting their savings under the mattress or whatever during a recession (only exacerbating the deflationary crisis of a recession).

Now I'm obviously grossly oversimplifying (and maybe getting some things wrong) about Keynes' economic theories, and leaving many things out, but for the purposes of this discussion the important point is that the inject of Keynesian policy measures and - perhaps more importantly - the building of centralized global financial institutions (the World Bank, the IMF, etc.), controlled ultimately from the "core" advanced capitalist economies in the post-WWII period, facilitated major state and (corporate) capitalist investment both short-term and long-term. And a good portion of this investment, in the context of the US being the unscathed capitalist superpower in the wake of the devastation of WWII, the urgent need to "contain" or even "roll back" Communism, and the growing power (and hence, bargaining power) of organized labor, ended up creating the "great middle class" in the advanced economies of the mid-20th century "Golden Age of Capitalism."

Of course, all of this was only possible economically (and politically) in an era of massive pent-up demand (the aftermath of WWII), enormous industrial and state capacity, and the spectre of Soviet Communism acting as a counterweight to the natural tendencies of capitalism. By the end of the 1960s and certainly by the 1970s, a confluence of factors strained this so-called "detente" between capital and labor to the breaking point, and it did indeed break - and the unconstrained absolutism of capital came back with a vengeance.

Of course, the point to note here is that Keynesianism never represented an alternative to the "unconstrained absolutism of capital", precisely because those regulatory measures simply represented one form of the organization of Capital.

To this point I would recommend Paul Mattick Sr.'s Marx & Keynes: The Limits Of The Mixed Economy .

A strictly capitalist private-enterprise economy has never existed; the private property economy was always accompanied by a public sector, whose relative importance varied according to the specific historical conditions of developing capitalist nations. But the public sector was not regarded as autonomous; it was considered an unavoidable expense for assuring the proper functioning of the market economy. This was so even where the public sector included besides the “military capital” – the transportation system, utilities, and other special industries. All in all, whether more or less extensive, the public sector has always accounted for a part of the national economy.

...

Whereas in theory – no matter what the actual practice – government control in authoritarian countries serves the whole of society and not a particular class, in most Western nations, and particularly in the United States, government control is subordinated even in theory to the specific property relations of capitalism and therewith to the interests of big business. What real redistribution of income exists in the United States is to a large extent a shifting of tax-money from non-subsidized to subsidized sections of the economy; taxation and deficit-financing, i.e., deferred taxation, “has been turned into a vehicle for assuring the economic potency of private enterprise.”[23] The economy is thus co-determined by government and big business to such a degree that, for all practical purposes, government is big business and big business government.

Capital concentration has been much aided by government subsidization favoring the big producers which supply the great bulk of government-created demand. “In 1962 just under three-quarters of all prime contracts were let to 100 large corporations. Small businesses, which are defined as those having less than 500 employees, received somewhat less than one-fifth of all prime contracts awarded. Even when allowance is made for the fact that small business receives a substantial number of subcontracts, the extent to which defense work is concentrated in large organizations is pronounced.”[24] In newly-opening spheres of production, enterprises are often launched with government money and supported by steady government contracts and other forms of aid.

American capital has reached a degree of concentration which makes the existence of the whole of the economy dependent on the preservation and growth of its big corporations. An economic failure of this highly concentrated capital, which employs the great bulk of the laboring population, would be nothing short of national disaster. Its power is enormous; but if its power were less, or were endangered, it would have to be shored-up by the government to avoid economic collapse. Tax money is poured into private industry through government contracts and private enterprise becomes “in its most significant phase – the phase of capital formation – state-financed enterprise.”[25] It has been estimated, for example, that “tax money poured annually since the end of World War II into private industry, that is, defense contracts, is about equal to the amount of net capital formation in all United States industry, as represented by the rate of United States annual industrial expansion.”[26]

Governments, of course, cannot subsidize anything; they can only see to it that one part of the economy subsidizes another part, that socially-available profits are distributed in such a manner as to enable the prevailing society to function. In a way this has always been the case, through the workings of competition as well as through monopolization. But what previously occurred “automatically” through the market mechanism is now, under conditions of capital stagnation, done consciously by way of government-created demand, which is only another name for subsidization.

It is then not surprising to find economists lumping together market-determined and government-induced production to deduce from this total production the state of the economy, as if the mere quantity of production and not its profitability was indicative of the good or bad health of the national economy. Still, the rising national product must find a definite limitation in the associated relative decline of non-subsidized capital and in the further course of capital concentration.

Too big to fail etc. This book was written 39 years before TARP proved its central thesis - that Keynesian financing mechanisms are nothing more than a way for capitalism to sustain itself against itself.