Bill Mitchell — Be careful not to get ahead of ourselves – hard-edged class struggle will be necessary

It is Wednesday and just a collection of snippets today. I am trying to finish a major piece of work and so that is what I am mostly doing today. And learning to program Geojson formats in R, so I can overcome the decision by Google to abandon their fusion table facility, which my research centre has relied on for some years to display map layers. And I have some press interviews to deal with. But today we consider the claim by the Financial Times editorial the other day that “Radical reforms are required to forge a society that will work for all”. It was an extraordinary statement from an institution like the FT to make for a start. But it reflects the desperation that is abroad right now – across all our nations – as the virus/lockdown story continues to worsen and the uncertainty grows. But I also think we should be careful not to adopt the view that everything is going to change as a result of this crisis. The elites are a plucky bunch, not the least because they have money and can buy military capacity. Changing the essential nature of neoliberalism, even if what has been displayed by all the state intervention in the last few months exposes all the myths that have been used to hide that essential nature, is harder than we might imagine. I think hard-edged class struggle is needed rather than middle-class talkfests that outline the latest gee-whiz reform proposals. The latter has been the story of the Europhile progressives for two decades or so as the Eurozone mess has unfolded. It hasn’t got them very far....

Bill goes there.

Many progressives erroneously think that now is the time for neoliberalism to collapse and social democracy to rise from it ashes. The really is that genuine and lasting reform cannot come from tweaking the existing system. The problem is with the design of the system based on key assumptions of economic liberalism ("capitalism") that are incompatible with social and political liberalism (democracy as governance of, by, and for the people, which is inherently "socialistic"). 

Here I define "capitalism" to mean a system that favors capital accumulation because "growth," and "socialism" as a system that favors welfare over growth. The elite and their cronies and minions favor the former, of course, and they aren't going to accept an overhaul of the system that favors their individual and class interests. And the way the system operates, they hold the reins of power. This is not only a national issue but also one that impacts the existing world order in terms of who makes the rules and how.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Be careful not to get ahead of ourselves – hard-edged class struggle will be necessary

Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

See also

Modern capitalism societies are built on a dichotomy: in the political space decisions are (to be) made on an equal basis with everybody having the same say and with the structure of power being flat; in the economic space the power is held by the owners of capital, the decisions are dictatorial, and the structure of power is hierarchical. The dichotomy was always a complex balancing act: at times, the political principles of nominal equality tended to intrude into the economic space and to limit the power of owners: trade unions, ability to sue companies, regulations regarding discrimination, hiring and firing. At other times, it was the economic sphere that invaded the political: the wealthy were able to buy politicians and impose the laws they liked.

The entire history of capitalism can be readily understood as the struggle between these two principles: is the democratic principle “exported” from politics to rule in economics too, or is the hierarchical principle of company organization to invade the political sphere. Social democracy was essentially the former; neoliberalism was the latter.

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