The Real Movement

Communism is free time and nothing else!

Tag: unemployment

September 2, 2015

Why Marxist can’t explain the collapse of Keynesian economic policies

Part Three

“Instead of understanding so-called ‘labour values’ as ontologically prior to money prices, the position adopted here is that order and regularity in the inter-relations of units of capitalist production is possible only because there is a form of value, namely money, as a precondition for it. Only once this form of commensurating products obtains is there any meaning to the supposition of a law of value rooted in labour time and appearing as price. The money-form structures such determinations as socially necessary labour time, deciding to what degree actual labour times are socially validated, or replaced by socially imputed amounts of labour.” –Chris Arthur, Value and Money

The collapse of Keynesian state management of the economy has never been explained by Marxists. Instead we have witnessed one Marxist scholar after another suggesting a return to Keynesian policies is both possible and necessary. In this part of the series, I will show why Keynesian policies ultimately collapsed. And, moreover, all talk of a return to the so-called Keynesian social state is a fantasy.

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August 28, 2015

Why Marxists can’t explain how Keynesian policies work

(And they can’t explain why Keynesianism collapsed either)

Part Two

This is part two of the series, “How fiat currency killed Marxism”. Part one is here.

YoungstownPlantAt the high level of abstraction of Capital, money has to be a commodity, because Capital presents a theory of a “pure” capitalist economy, without state intervention. And in the 19th century laissez-faire capitalism (without state intervention) that Marx was analyzing, money was a commodity and money had to be a commodity in its functions of measure of value and store of value. However, in the post-1973 contemporary capitalism, money is no longer a commodity (i.e. is no longer convertible into gold at a fixed exchange rate), and money does not have to be a commodity in Marx’s theory. The state-guaranteed fiat money serves the same purpose as gold under the gold standard – it provides an observable, homogeneous, quantitative, and socially valid expression of abstract labor.  —Fred Moseley, Money has no price

If Keynesian currency devaluation allows the state to maintain production for profit by reducing the real value of wages, why were Keynesian policies abandoned in the late 1970s for neoliberalism? To explain why this happened, requires some discussion of the problem with simple Keynesian “full employment” policies.

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June 4, 2015

Husson’s and Treillet’s call for labor hours reduction: Important but seriously flawed

I just finished reading this article by Michel Husson & Stephanie Treillet on the significance of labor hours reduction, Liberation Through Vacation. I want to offer some thought on why I think it is, on sfweek29ethe whole, as important as it is disappointing. I make these points, not because I disagree with what I think was the intended thrust of their article, but because certain folks will go after Husson’s and Treillet’s argument. For instance, A. Kliman has already taken David Graeber and others to task for their weak arguments on labor as just another attempt to rebrand social democracy. (See Kliman’s, Post-Work: Zombie Social Democracy with a Human Face?) My point here is to expose weaknesses in their argument because Husson and Treillet’s main thrust is, after SYRIZA’s election, the most important development to emerge from the crisis in 2015.

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April 7, 2015

Why reduction of labor hours cannot work as a ‘policy tool’

I have been rereading the paper by Kallis, Kalush, O’Flynn, Rossiter and Ashford, “Friday off”: Reducing Working Hours in Europe. I first learned of the paper when it was tweeted by Alex Tsipras on the night SYRIZA was elected to lead No_Known_Restrictions_A_little_spinner_in_Globe_Cotton_Mill._Augusta,_Ga.,_by_Lewis_W._Hine,_1909_(LOC)the government of Greece. I found it remarkable that this paper, which calls for a reduction of labor time, was being distributed by the head of that radical party on the eve of its victory. Did it signal his intention to pursue a new, radical, approach to the crisis in the European Union?

After that initial reaction, I’m now beginning to understand how the argument of Kallis, et al. was limited by a flawed approach to labor hours reduction in which labor hours reduction is essentially treated as just another tool of fascist state management of the economy. Many of the flaws relate to their poor (perhaps, non-existent) grasp of the basics of labor theory and reliance on neoclassical theory to make their argument. Those flaws can be broken down into three questions:

  1. Is labor hours reduction a policy tool?
  2. Can reducing hours of labor fix social ills created by capitalism?
  3. Is a reduction of hours of labor compatible with capitalism?

The following is my take on their approach.

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January 21, 2015

How a simple proposal from SYRIZA may just fundamentally alter class relations in Europe

The environmental scientist, Giorgos Kallis may be one of the most important economic thinkers in SYRIZA. I came across Kallis, quite accidentally when Alexis Tsipras, (Twitter: @tsipras_eu), highlighted giorgos21394016401Kallis’s writing in a recent tweet.

I immediately realized Kallis is a supporter of reduced labor time for the working class — a pet project of mine — both as an answer to Europe’s stubborn unemployment problems and on ecological concerns. According to a 2013 paper written by Kallis and Nicholas Ashford,

“under the right conditions, more free time can decrease unemployment and help develop a greener, more sustainable Europe.”

In other words, two of the most important global issues today, unemployment and global climate change, can be addressed by less labor.

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June 9, 2014

The single non-reformist reform that can end capitalism within months, not decades

the-labor-force-participation-rate-tanked--heres-the-not-so-scary-reason-whyThe problem of unemployment has been addressed from two different angles by activists: the guaranteed job for everyone who wants one and the basic income guarantee to provide every worker an income above the poverty level whether he or she can find a job or not. Both schemes have their advocates and some activists even advocate both ideas together.

The problem with both idea separately or in tandem is simple: No one can explain how either reform gets us where we want to go: not simply the end to unemployment, but the complete abolition of wage slavery — to end unemployment forever as the Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the working class.

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May 29, 2014

How the state began systematically privatizing profits and socializing losses

In my previous post I showed that unemployment in the capitalist mode of production has its genesis in employment. Unemployment is not the result of a lack of means to employ the unemployed, but results from the fact that the steady bankers-dont-go-to-jailimprovement of the productive power of labor displaces an ever larger portion of the working class from all possibility of being employed productively.

In the mode of production, to be employed productively means the worker is employed directly for production of value and surplus value. It has to be understood that capitalism is not the production of useful objects in general, but useful objects only insofar as these objects also contain surplus value, i.e., profit.

With development of the productive forces — of machinery, technology, science and the division of labor — an ever larger mass of useful commodities can be produced in the same period of time. On the other hand, a given mass of commodities can be produced with a diminishing expenditure of human labor.

The capitalist is not concerned with the ever growing mass of useful objects that can be produced, but with the diminishing expenditure of human labor necessary for production. This human labor alone is the source of the profits that is the sole aim of capitalist production.

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May 27, 2014

Capitalism’s Dirty Little Secret: Employment creates unemployment

bushquoteIn my previous post, I argued the aim of fascist state “full employment” policy is maximization of profits, not maximization of employment. The term “full employment” is a deliberately misleading label chosen by the fascists to present the policies of the fascist state as necessary to promote employment in the interest of both classes. In fact, “full employment policies” do not in any way address the need of workers and are only designed to maximize the profits of capital.

This is a significant finding at odds with how the issue is often presented on the Left. To put it simply, “full employment” is only necessary for the working class insofar as the worker is treated as a draught animal to be kept constantly at work.

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May 26, 2014

‘Full Employment’ and Profits: An introduction

CTW-SpeakoutForGoodJobs-2coThis new paper, by Hornstein, Kudlyak and Lange, shows how simpletons are trying to minimize unemployment by constructing a new measure of what they call “resource utilization in the labor market”. The message of the paper seems to be clear: If you have no hope of ever recovering employment to pre-2008 crisis levels, explain it away with statistics.

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May 11, 2014

Piketty is singing to our choir

Okay, so here is an argument unfortunately touching on the subject of M. Piketty and the whole inequality thingy. For those who have had enough of the mention of this simpleton’s name, I can only ask you to bear with me for the next 1000 or so words: I promise this will not be a simple regurgitation of what has been previously stated in the arguments of other writers for or against Piketty.

17-4094_hiresI want to draw attention to the parallels between Piketty’s work on inequality and the thinking of activists in the movements for an increased minimum wage, basic income and jobs guarantee. In large measure, Piketty’s work shares many of the same assumptions of activists in these movements and could be thought of as a theoretical argument for them.

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