Keynesianism Will Not Save The World

[polly7]

By Pete Dolack
Source: Systemic Disorder
June 15, 2015

This is part of the “grow or die” dynamic of capitalism. It’s not only grabbing market share, it’s a mad scramble to “innovate” to increase profitability. That can be new production techniques but it is especially cutting costs — in the first place, wage costs. Thus robotics and automation to reduce the number of workers needed, which also “deskill” work to make workers more expendable, putting downward pressure on wages. Work speedups are part of the extraction of more profits, or an attempt to stave off declines in profit rates. And when these are finally insufficient, the work begins to be moved to new locations with lower wage levels and weaker regulation. “Free trade” agreements negotiated in secret that bring corporate wish lists to life both accelerate this tendency and are a product of it.

The capitalist that cuts costs first gains an advantage, but competitors follow, eroding the advantage. So the next step, and the next step, is carried out, intensifying these processes. The personality of the capitalist does not matter; he or she is acting under the rigors of competition. There is no way to put a human face on this or to permanently reverse the logic of capitalist competition. The present era of austerity and neoliberalism is the product of capitalist development. Even if a massive movement becomes sufficiently strong to effect significant reforms, eventually they would be taken back just as the reforms of the mid-20th century have been taken back.

Not only does the scope for expansion that existed during the Keynesian era no longer exist, the environmental limits and global warming that the world did not then face can no longer be avoided. Humanity is consuming far beyond the world’s replenishment capacity and changing the climate at a faster rate than ever before known. We can’t turn back the clock (and the “golden age” of capitalism wasn’t so golden if you were a woman, a Person of Color or a working person in a developing country) nor is it environmentally sound to ramp up production and consumption on the scale that a global Keynesian initiative would require.

Alas, this is a variation on the theme of “green capitalism” — the idea that the same system that has brought the world to its present state of crisis, a system that requires infinite expansion on a finite planet, that has turned to financialization because speculation is more profitable than production, that treats pollution and waste as external costs to be ignored will somehow now save us. Tinkering with the machinery of capitalism — which is what Keynesian nostalgia amounts to — would ameliorate conditions somewhat for a while, but offer no solution.

The days when it was still possible to believe capitalism can be a progressive force are behind us; the neoliberal assault is the “new normal.” When capitalism has penetrated into every corner of the world, there is nowhere else to expand: The only route for capitalists is to reduce wages and benefits. The only route for the 99 percent is an entirely different world.

Full article: https://systemicdisorder.wordpress.com/2015/06/10/keynesianism-will-not-save-the-world-2/

[Gregorian]

1. Here's the problem we face, even if we stopped growing today-

First of all, the thinking part of the human race is already way down the road of (It goes by several names, which I can't recall right now) steady state, or non-growth economics.

But the way this biological system works, it takes resources to grow. But in order to simply maintain that new size, more resources are required.

So even if we stopped growing today, the amount of energy and resources required to simply retain our size if more than the planet can take.