Overripe Economy , livre ebook

Overripe Economy
Overripe Economy
American Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy
Alan Nasser
First published 2018 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright Alan Nasser 2018
The right of Alan Nasser to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3794 4 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3793 7 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7868 0293 4 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0295 8 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0294 1 EPUB eBook
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Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
If I should write a book for you
That brought me fame and fortune too That book would be
Like my heart and me
Dedicated to you
Dedicated To You (Sammy Cahn, Saul Chaplin and Hy Zarat), ASCAP
for
Julia Ann and Lydia WanGui
sine quibus non
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The Ineffective Response to the Current Crisis
The Origin of this Book
Capitalism s Two Historical Signature Incarnations: Free-Market and Social Democratic
The Long-Term Historical Origins of the Post-Social-Democratic Settlement
The Periodization of the Book s Historical Genealogy
1. The Nineteenth Century: Framework Stimulants, Destructive Competition and the Making of Oligopoly Capitalism
The First Industrial Revolution s Framework Stimulants: The Steam Engine and the Railroad
Competition and Crisis
Railroads, Crises of Overinvestment and Overproduction and the Forging of Capitalist Class Consciousness
The First Intervention: Consolidation as the Antidote to Overinvestment and Overproduction
The Establishment of Oligopoly Capitalism
Consolidation and Centralization in the Nineteenth Century: The Abiding Contradictions of Investment-led Growth and the Persistence of Destabilizing Competition
The Second Intervention: Regulation
2. Working-Class Resistance, the State-Supported Capitalist Response, the Mechanization of Industry and the Defeat of Organized Labor
The Early American Sense of Freedom and Equality
Proletarianization, Workers Resistance and Private-Public Repression
The Militarization of Repression
Mechanization, the De-Skilling of the Proletarianized Labor Force and the Assault on Skilled Labor
The First Wage-Push Profit Squeeze
The Mechanical Counterpart of Proletarianization: The Assembly Line
The End of the Railroad Age, the First World War and the Resurgence of Labor s Militancy
The Business Counterattack and the Defeat of Organized Labor
3. The 1920s: The Dynamics of Mature Industrial Capitalism
Framework Stimulus: The Automobile Industry
Production and Productivity in the 1920s
The Advance of Productivity and the Ongoing Expulsion of Labor and Capital From Production: The Era of Disaccumulation
Wages, Production, Prices and Profits in the 1920s
The Ongoing Concentration and Centralization of Production and Distribution
Excess Capacity, Underconsumption, Advertising, Credit and the Birth of American Consumerism
Inequality and the Faux Middle Class of the 1920s
Stagnation Tendencies in the 1920s
Galloping Disaccumulation: The Long-Term Expulsion of Labor From Production, De-Skilling and Technological Unemployment
Inequality, Surplus Capital and Speculation: Embryonic Financialization
Investment and Employment in Mature Capitalism: The Displacement of Capital and Labor From Production and Wage-Driven Demand
4. The 1930s and the Great Depression
Herbert Hoover s Response
Popular Dissent Overcomes the Political Apathy of the 1920s
The Beginnings of Business Mobilization
The 1932 Presidential Election
The Third Intervention: The First New Deal and its Limitations
Roosevelt s Limitations as a New Dealer
The Making of the First New Deal
The National Industrial Recovery Act Births a New Labor Militancy
Keynes s Intercession
The Fourth Intervention: Fed-Up Labor Resurgent
The Fifth Intervention: The Plot to Overthrow Roosevelt
The Sixth Intervention: The Second New Deal and its Paradigmatic Achievements
Social Security and the Works Progress Administration: Major Casualties of Roosevelt s Fiscal Conservatism
The End of the Recovery and the Triumph of Sound Finance
Was the Depression the Result of Overinvestment or Underconsumption?
Systemic Problems and Secular Stagnation
5. The Rise and Fall of the Golden Age
The Golden Age as Heir to the New Deal and the Great Society
Would New Deal Victories Remain Permanent?
Labor Struggles to Secure and Expand New Deal Gains
The Persistence of the 1920s Stagnationist Settlement
The Foundations of the U.S. Golden Age
The Great Society: A Further Response to Persistent Poverty
The Dusk of the Golden Age: The Withering of the Golden Age s Stimulants
The Seventh Intervention: The Taft-Hartley Act
The Second Red Scare
The Eighth Intervention: Deindustrialization
Financialization: The First Stage
The Changing Pattern of Investment and Employment and the Ongoing Expulsion of Labor From Production
The Long Boom, Strengthened Labor and the Wage-Push Profit Squeeze
The Political Significance of the Full-Employment Profit Squeeze
The Ninth Intervention: The Political Counterrevolution of Capital, the Powell Memo and the Quiet Coup
6. The New Financialization: Debt, Investment and the Financialized Firm
The Stagflation of the 1970s and the Beginnings of Neoliberalism
The Tenth Intervention: Bill Clinton and the Reaganization of the Democratic Party
The Era of Secular Stagnation - The Condition of Overripe Capitalism
Summers, Krugman and Skidelsky on Secular Stagnation
Securitization: Investment and Profits Without Production
The New Financialization
Financialization and the Growth of Leveraged Corporate Debt
The Dot.com and Housing Bubbles
The Eleventh Intervention: The Bailout as Declaration of Finance Capital s Command of the State
TARP and QE as Emblems of Financial Hegemony
The Twelfth Intervention: Occupy
Debt and the Transformed Nature of the Firm and of Investment Under Financialized Capitalism: LBOs, Private Equity and the Shareholder-Value Movement
Financialized Capitalism s Dependence on Burgeoning Debt
Buybacks and the Debt-Driven, Private-Investment-Starved New Normal
7. The Landscape of Austerity: Polarization, the Destruction of Jobs, and the Emerging Police State
The New Expulsion of Labor: AI, Robotization and Declining Investment Costs
Ongoing Job Loss Since the End of the War and Into the Future
Manufacturing and the Society of Abundance
The Hollowing Out of the Middle Class and Job Polarization
Jobless Recoveries and Wage and Employment Patterns in the Digitalized Economy
Burgeoning Unstable Work and the Emerging Precariat
The American Worker Becomes Marginal to the U.S. Economy
The Development of Inequality
The Shaping of American Democracy
The Thirteenth Intervention: The Bernie Sanders Movement
Anticipating Social Dislocation: The Decline of Democracy and the Emergence of the Repressive State
The Suppression of Dissent
Where Things Stand
8. Conclusion
The Consciousness of the Working Class
Actually Existing Tendencies of Resistance
The Indispensability of the Left s Contribution to Transcending Capitalism
Appendix A: Economic Maturity and Disaccumulation - A Mildly Wonkish Summation
The Dynamics Of Investment
Appendix B: What Keynes Really Prescribed
Neoclassical Economic Theory
Keynes s Critique of Neoclassical Theory: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
Keynes, Secular Stagnation and the Transition from Productive to Financial Investment
Full Employment Means Full Employment: Why Aggregate Demand Policy is Misguided
The Disconnect Between Stimulating Private Demand and Reducing Unemployment
The Inequitable Distributional Effects of Conventional Pump Priming
The Failure of Aggregate-Demand-Management Keynesianism and the Current Employment Crisis
The Present Age of Abundance and the Withering Away of Necessary Labor
How Well Has Keynes s Forecast of an Economy of Abundance Held Up?
Abundance, Leisure and Consumerism
Productivity Growth: Abundance and Leisure or Superprofits and Inequality
A Final Word on the Indispensability, Under Capitalism, of Substantial Deficits - Public or Private
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
Without the substantial sacrifices my parents, George Nasser and Freda Monsour Nasser, took on, I would not have had the first-rate education - which, in the U.S., only money can buy - that provided me with the training and resources, both political-economic and philosophical, to write this book. My gratitude to George and Freda is boundless.
One s intellectual development typically features key transition periods. Extensive interchange with John Beversluis, Julia Garnett, Hugh Lacey, Richard Nasser, Lydia Nasser and Charles Nisbet were instrumental over the course of these evolutions. During my 31 years on the Faculty of The Evergreen State College, my teaching colleagues and friends Jeanne Hahn, Peta Henderson, Charles Nisbet and Tom Rainey contributed to a substantial broadening and deepening of my social-scientific understandings. My former students and dear friends Adam Hilton, Thomas Herndon, Genevieve LeBaron, James Parisot and Ellis Scharfenaker have been sources of encouragement, affection and intellectual stimulation and challenge. They have become what every teacher wants of his finest students, their teacher s teacher.
Radhika Desai offered helpful comments on Chapters 1 th