File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9802, message 7


Date: Sun, 1 Feb 98 8:58:26 EST
From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Fixing Asia








		C.'s




	I think the IMF policy will *only* work in Asia, where the
economies are big and sophisticated enough to rebound after the squeeze. 
Monetarism is no good for small economies and those with truly broken
production (Russia). In Korea, I don't see anything wrong with a few banks
going broke and a few other capitalists losing all their money.  As long
as there are enough other businesses around to keep the economy going,
fuck 'em.  The rest of the world needs Keynesianism (or socialism, of
course) but Russia shows the pitfalls waiting for Keynesian policy all
over the world.  When gangsters and mandarins can use the government
script for their own amusement, there is no benefit to Keynesianism
because it just causes market deformities.  Those deformities eventually
undermine the infrastructure development.  Keynesianism cannot support too
many crooks. 



	It's fun to deride and decry the blinkered, uncaring IMF, but what
about the local capitalist greed-heads in the countries it lends to? 
Certainly Suharto deserves a great deal of the blame for Indonesia's
problems, if not all.  Why do we forget that the Chaebols were run by
crooks, as well as the Korean government?  Instead of demonizing Western
capitalist tools, why not demonize all capitalists, from the great to the
small?  The left should be using the Asian crisis as an "I told you so" on
the inevitability of capitalist excess and stupidity.  Instead, the left
has made this a drama between "countries" (as if the economic policies of
these states were arrived at democratically instead of capitalistically) 
and the bad old IMF.  This may come from the same place as the
Japan-worship that much of the left participated in.  Japan was somehow a
model of compassionate, democratic planning for the future as opposed to
the market melee that Western capitalists organized for their own
pleasure.  Of course it turns out that Japanese capitalists have been
robbing the place blind all the while. 


	Don't spare the rod you use against the IMF and spoil the capitalist
child.  





	peace





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