From: "Dave Bedggood" <dr.bedggood-AT-auckland.ac.nz>
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 17:30:35 +0000
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Japan


>Yoshie wrote:

> Dennis wrote:
> >Wait a sec -- if mandarins are so terrible for economies, why did Japan
> >boom from 1947-1990, with no help from overseas investments, Wall Street
> >punters or mutual funds speculators? Japan and South Korea ran into
> >problems only when they did what the punters said they should've done long
> >ago -- liberalize their markets, cut off cheap credit for domestic firms
> >and weaken their developmental states.
> 
> Surely capital control, the developmental state, protectionism, the
> bank-centered financing of corporations, etc. had something to do with
> post-WWII development of Japanese economy. But that's not the whole story.
> In fact, if you concentrate on those arguably internal features, you create
> an *illusion* that the kind of economic development that Japan experienced
> can be replicated again elsewhere under capitalism. Japan developed at the
> right time (during the boom years) in the right place (designated as the
> key U.S. military ally in the Asia-Pacific theater at the time lots of
> revolutionary wars and revolts were going on in SE Asia). Economically and
> ideologically, the Japanese ruling class had more space for maneuver than
> was or is possible for others.
> 
> >At the same time, Japan has been
> >shirking its metropolitan duties, by preferring to invest in American
> >T-bonds rather than buying Southeast Asian commodities. The resulting
> >crisis of overproduction is now threatening to burn Sumitomo
> >Bank-sized holes in the global credit superstructure, and will have to be
> >solved by a multinational Keynesianism initiated by Japan, the world's
> >largest global creditor.
> 
> The Japanese ruling class does not exercise the sort of cultural,
> political, and military hegemony that the U.S. has in this century, even if
> they think such a multinational Keynesianism is in their interest, which I
> doubt they do. (Hegemony isn't simply a matter of being the biggest
> creditor.) The world is becoming solidly neo-liberal, you see, following
> the U.S. model. I think that the Asian currency crisis will be simply used
> by world capitalists as 1) an ideological object lesson to crush the idea
> of planned development; 2) a way to introduce labor discipline; and 3) an
> opportunity to buy productive assets.
> 
> Yoshie
> 
Yoshie is right. This left liberal idea of a multinational 
Keynesianisn is based upon the idea of national Keynesianism which 
followed the 2nd World War. But that was tied to the massive defeats 
of the Great Depression and War which smashed and devalued constant 
and variable capital. It cannot even be reproduced in single nations 
today, Japan is the test supreme test of that. It is a 
symptom of the problem, not the solution.   It is Japan, and to a 
lesser extent the Tigers and Germany, which have been able to prolong 
state intervention and moderate the law of value longer than most, 
which now have to be exposed to the cut and thrust of the semi-naked 
law of value courtesy of US multinationals.

Yoshie is also right to refer to US hegemony as strategic and not 
just based on indebtedness. The US ruling class  has restructured along 
neo-liberal lines, has as strong dollar and can pay its creditors  by screwing
 its own workers and those in NAFTA and its linked proxies. It also dominates 
the IMF and World Bank, and the free trade agencies of WTO and the 
impending MAI. It is sitting pretty to bankrupt and buy up half of Asia at
bargain basement prices.  

Add to that the  fact that the US has won the cold war 
and can use the whip of the restoration of capitalism at horrific 
cost in the former Eastern bloc to drive home submission to market 
forces against state planning in Asia. This is crucial in the US's 
ability to repartition Asia at the expense of Japan and the EU who 
are in a much weaker position. Critically, it will be the role of the 
working classes in Asia, especially China, who will react to this 
intensified imperialist domination and spark off resistance. 

This poses the question of how do workers try to defend their jobs 
and conditions.  Rather than blocing with their nationalist bosses to 
fight off imperialism, the working class must go directly for workers control 
of their economies. This will of course drive their nationalist 
bosses straight into the arms of  the imperialists as their local 
agents, and reinforce the class as opposed to the national basis of 
their fundamental interests in fighting for a workers state and 
socialism. 

We can illustrate such a fight by reference to an important struggle 
facing workers everywhere today - the MAI push to dictate total freedom 
of movement in an out of the semi-colonies and weaker imperialist states. 
 The MAI basically seeks to prevent nation states from given preference to 
national as opposed to multinational investment. It seeks to set up a body
 of "international" law governing trade and investment which will bind 
weaker, oppressed states. Workers must oppose the MAI on the basis
 of fighting for workers control of their local economy by means of 
measures for  economic and social planning against the law of value. 
Today, under the conditions of a increasingly destructive 
inter-imperialist trade and military warfare, and when the law of value 
destroys more potential  value than it creates, every means of imposing 
workers controls on market forces is a progressive step.  

Dave.




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