File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1997/97-02-15.234, message 60


Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 22:22:49 -0500 (EST)
From: Spoon Collective <spoons-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU>
Subject: M-G: Welfare state & capitals crisis (fwd)




---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: 14 Feb 97 02:41:29 EST
From: neil <74742.1651-AT-CompuServe.COM>
To: "Recip. Of Conf." <labr.party-AT-conf.igc.apc.org>
Cc: CWO <106361.1743-AT-CompuServe.COM>,
    marx-gen <marxism-general-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu>,
    mauro <batcom-AT-poboxes.com>, "A. Smeaton" <smeatoaj-AT-uwec.edu>
Subject: Welfare state & capitals crisis

dear friends,


Huge cuts in social welfare programmes are being carried out 
in much of the industrialized world.
To get some political/economic grip on why the welfare state
were built up  and now why the dismantling  of them thru 
a growing consensus of both the left and right wings of capital.

This is important for real  militants and activists if we are to
develop better anvanced politics , organization, strategy 
and tactics to deal with this crisis.

What follows is a brief overview of the background to 
why the rulers are  on the blitzkreig path so as to help
clarify matters so as we are not resigned to outmoded  politics-
economics, and active work  which will only , as 
in the past 15yr track record shows , the workers, is spite
of spirted struggles and immense sacrifice  from time to time,
 end up, for the most part,  getting our asses handed back to 
us on a platter.


The western  welfare states were built up in the wake of the
imperialist WW2  to fend off another post war revolutionary wave
like the one following WW1.
In the posts war world, mass strikes followed the war
and the Russian led state-cap  bloc  became a serious
contender for world power, and its (pseudo) militant 
ideology  was winning over masses fed up with the
old capitalist lies and labor skinning.

Germany, Britalin , Italy , Belgium, Sweden, France,
Holland, the USA  etc. all adopted various social reform programs 
to maintain support of workers for the existing order..

This welfare statism was based and promoted by  (false)
bourgeois and reformist assumptions, 
1) the keeping of near "full employment" (2%-3% unemployemnt rates)
2) big taxes would insure the payment of workers pensions, etc.

For  about 20 years this was  not a huge problem.but
by the late 60s the caps. rate of profits began to slow 
and the 'boom'  subsided.
The limits of Keynesian regular  wage increases 
in tandem with high inflation policy  to negate the increases
began to show  its limits/deception .

But at that time, the workers could better strike back with economic
mass actions  a la France, '68 , Italy '69-70, etc. and
still the bourgeois employed state-cap reforms to keep
matters in check.
But the limits for the rulers were reached by the mid-70s, e.g the
peeling back the US " Great Society " & British Welfareism
under Labor where state spending reached 48% of GDP
(Rev. Perspectives-- New Series 3--#4 autumn 1996).

Keynesian  like hyperinflation led the bourgeois toward a
new startegy  even as Labor ruled Britian in 1976 as 
the British "Independent" of 8/9/96 admits.
Thatcher a la  Reagan  only continued the austerity
for workers  that the Callaghan & Carter regimes
 initiated  but at higher levels in the 80s.

But the state could not continue expenditure 
for  lasting relief   as their growthrates fell
and unemployment remaied at higher levels.
European states reached regular 10%+  workers pushed  off 
their jobs in the 80s.

Contrary to Laborist/liberal myths, the drives
of the advanced capitals to savage welfarism 
and the workers comes because of the
 real continuing crisies .
The political  states ecomomic leversge has changed
Qualitatively since the 40s-50s.
Then states had actually a Bigger mass of capital
than which private capital could hope to deploy  .
However growing concentration  and centralization
of capital  by  monopolists capital  over the 
last 4  decades  let the monopolies gain the
superior blocs of capital , esp. liquid  than
any cap states could hope to match.-- except
for maybe  the US .

This is  part of the "Globalization" processes -
state capital became more fixed (economic
inrastructure , etc)  and could not keep up 
with the thrust of capital turnovers needed 
to overcome the tendency of the profit
rates to fall. 

There was a decisive shift in the balance 
between the state -cap and Intl. finance capitals.
Pol. states could no longer control  independently
even what went on in their own territories, 
and the needds for capital meant open up
financial markets to direct investment of
monopolies  more eager to quicker  repatraite capital
to their national base of operations. 

So in this jungle of labor skinning,  the 
US was the pace setter but then lost
ground as Japan challenged  , with 
huge investments in the US and winning  a
big slice  the US  auto markets. 
Similar trends took place in Europe.

So more keenly , countries that want greater
investments have to balance their budgets
and lower levies on the rich and so  hike the pain
for workers.
For workers, capital operations are  a menace
and workers are pushed down to sacrifice so the 
bourgeois state can rig up the most attractive
regime and terrain for new capital penetration , 

So the social democrats /liberal s, like those  neo-Keynesians 
>from  the Economic Policy  Institute  in Washington and other
reformist mirage peddlers  who think that  the national state
 had to control their steel,  electronics, and other infrastructure
have been washed-up and hung out to  dry bythe 
capitalist system they want to save and are 
superceded by day to day reality..

They have no coherent explanation for all the  stepped up 
attacks on the workers, the privatizings, deregulating ,
and re-structurings in basic industry  as capitals 
bi-partisan states are sorting out the problems 
in re-capitalization  as world capital reaches the end 
of the 3rd  cylcle of accumulation of the 20 th century. 

The rulers have not yet toatlly 'solved' this material 
basis in their crisis .
Their solutions in the deepening breakdown is
both more imperialist interventions and wars
and further pauperization of the working class,
whether under the Kennedy plan or the  Gingrich
plan which in 'negotiation" actually ends up being
 90%---the basic plan of big business.

Reformists have been preaching  faith in the liberals 
--even as they bed down  with the right . Social democrats
and laborists keep up some militant rhetoric at times
 but in power they become mere shadows/apologists  of the
 ruling  reactionaries offensive. 

These confusions increase the  low level of class opposition, 
organized on the political and industrial plane-- and all the defeats,
make the rulers state smell blood and the sharks are moving
in for the bigger kill.
We workers  need to show the  class enemy in struggle
that they will have to pay social consequences for 
their attacks and social muggings.
We need unity in struggle , but with freedom of militants 
to polemicize.

The workers of Europe are starting to stir and are
skeptical  more now of both the right and left parties
of capital . We need to learn more about this 
growing class militancy in europe and  make efforts
to embrace some  new opposition tactics here , out side
the control of the liberals and union apparatuses.
As the militant actions pick up, a new workers 
revolutionary movement ca n be constructed. 

For more on the Bankruptcy of social democracy
and liberalism and their united front  with the
conservatives to maintain capitalist exploitation 
and what workers can do to stop it , write;
Revolutionary  Perspectives
Box 338
Sheffield, S3 9YX
UK

Neil






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