The alternative bookfair at Ghent was very good. It was well organised, good selection of stalls, nice atmosphere, and a good venue (it was in an old factory, I think, so high ceilings so it did not get too hot — always a problem at the London anarchist bookfair). And the food was very good. I would recommend going to the next one! So a big "well done!" to everyone involved!
The alternative bookfair at Ghent was very good. It was well organised, good selection of stalls, nice atmosphere, and a good venue (it was in an old factory, I think, so high ceilings so it did not get too hot — always a problem at the London anarchist bookfair). And the food was very good. I would recommend going to the next one! So a big "well done!" to everyone involved!
The meeting went well, good questions and hopefully I did not speak too fast (my accent is somewhat strong and when I speak fast when I get nervious, like when I’m speaking in public…). Got two questions which had been raised in Glasgow (on lifestylism) and London (on the changes to the meaning of "libertarian" in America). Hopefully the audience enjoyed it, they seemed to.
There was an ICC member (left-communists, don’t worry too much if you have never heard of them or their ideology) in the audience who asked a couple of questions on Marx. Somewhat strangely, he asked about Kropotkin supporting the allies in World War One — as noted in AFAQ, this seems designed to avoid mentioning the awkward facts that, one, most Marxist parties supported the war and, two, the vast majority of anarchists did not. He also asked a question on the need for "centralisation", to which I noted anarchists advocate federalism and the system of councils with mandated delegates he suggested was first advocated by Bakunin, not Marx. At best, Marx came closer to Bakunin after the Paris Commune (and many of those ideas where, unsurprisingly, found in Proudhon).
The strangest event was the meeting on syndicalism, which I attended as part of the audience. There were speakers from the SAC (a syndicalist union), WSM (a neo-Platformist anarchist group) and the French CNT-AIT (ostensibly an anarcho-syndicalist union). The meeting organisation was not great (too disjointed and it did not flow) but was really strange was the discovery that the French CNT-AIT were not syndicalists! Yes, they called what they were advocating "anarcho-syndicalism" but it was not anarcho-syndicalism. The speaker explicitly attacked unions (all unions!) and proudly proclaimed that the CNT did not exist. What the speaker was advocating was a workplace group of anarchists, not a syndicalist union. Such a group has its uses, yes, but it is not anarcho-syndicalism as, say, Rocker advocated. While I’m not an anarcho-syndicalist, I’m sympathetic to it and I was surprised that a section of the IWA-AIT seems to have decided it is useless.
Suffice to say, another ICC member was in the audience nodding in agreement with the French CNT speaker — which, I would suggest, says it all… I should also note he was quoting a pamphlet from a British Solfed section, and someone posted a thread on libcom asking what the ICC thought of it. As if anarchists should take the advice of a ultra-leftist marxist sect…
And talking of which, Freedom reprinted an article from the early 1990s by the old council communist group Wildcat. It contained a few somewhat strange comments, as well as misrepresenting Keynes’ arguments. If you really want to understand the limitations of a theory, you should at least understand it first. I should note that the Black Flag article I mention in the letter is an edited version of the one I link to.
I’ll be in Freedom bookshop on Wednesday evening (7pm), speaking at the launch of their new edition of Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid (using some of my research from my evaluation of that classic). If you haven’t been to Freedom for a while, you should — it has really been revamped and much improved. A bit like the newspaper!
Dear Freedom
I can only assume that “A Prole’s Guide to the Recession” (Freedom, vol. 70, no. 3, p. 13) was reprinted as a warning to anarchists on the stupidity on taking ultra-leftism seriously. While there were a few correct comments within it (otherwise its services to political satire would have been all too obvious), in general it was so confused as to be downright misleading.
It starts off badly, proclaiming that inflation is a “means of attacking real wages (as stated by J.M. Keynes in his General Theory…).” The first part is correct, the second is problematic – “as stated by” Keynes gives the radically false impression that he urged such a policy, which is false.
Keynes first mentions this aspect of inflation in Chapter 2 (which discusses “The Postulates of the Classical Economics”), noting that while workers resist direct wage cuts “it would be impracticable to resist every reduction of real wages, due to a change in the purchasing-power of money which affects all workers alike.” He goes on to add that “it is fortunate that the workers, though unconsciously, are instinctively more reasonable economists than the classical school, inasmuch as they resist reductions of money wages.” With regards to wage-cuts by inflation he notes that unions do not strike “on every occasion of a rise in the cost of -living” and so “do not raise the obstacle to any increase in aggregate employment which is attributed to them by the classical school.” (pp. 14-5)
In other words, Keynes is analysing the claims of neo-classical economics that unions cause unemployment by keeping wages too high and finds them lacking. He even praises unions in resisting wage cuts, noting they are better economists than the so-called experts! He points to inflation to show that cutting wages need not increase employment, a theme he returns to in chapter 19 (“Changes in Money-Wages”). There he explains why cutting (money) wages will not reduce unemployment and, in fact, will make it worse. He notes, in passing, the obvious fact that “a movement by employers to revise money-wage bargains downward will be much more strongly resisted than a gradual and automatic lowering of real wages as a result of rising prices.” (p. 264) However, his argument aimed to show that there is “no ground for the belief that a flexible wage policy is capable of maintaining a state of continuous full unemployment.” (p. 267) His “preference” was for “allowing wages to rise slowly whilst keeping prices stable.” (p. 271)
My article (“Welcome to your pay rise”) in issue 228 of Black Flag discusses this in more detail.
So, yes, Keynes “stated” that inflation attacks real wages but only in the same sense that Wildcat did so, that is, recognising a fact. A key point of The General Theory was to explain why cutting wages would not result in lower unemployment (and I must note that Keynes’ key contributions were “formulated” in the 1930s, not “in the 1920s”). He did so by using the assumptions of neo-classical economics itself, extending their logic to the economy as a whole. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most neo-classical economists could not understand his arguments and instead sought refuge in notions of unemployment being caused by “sticky” wages (thanks to unions, say), a position him explicitly rejected — while praising Keynes!
Keynes was obviously more sympathetic to industrial rather than financial capital (he calls for the end of the rentier and “socialisation” of investment). In that sense, Wildcat was right to state Keynesianism “favours industry relative to finance capital, creating more employment so as to maintain social peace.” Keynes’ aim was to reduce the uncertainty associated with investment decisions, using the state to stabilise the economy (including wages) in order to revive the “animal spirits” of industrial capitalists. Needless to say, the ruling class took what it found useful from Keynes and ignored the more radical aspects of his ideas (both in terms of policy and economic analysis).
Which is part of the problem. There is a difference between Keynes and Keynesianism (or “Bastard Keynesianism”, Joan Robinson’s apt description of the neo-classical Keynesian synthesis that dominated post-1945 mainstream economics). While this post-war Keynesianism was “presented as a way of saving capital from communism” (more correctly, Stalinism) what drove Keynes was the Great Depression and understanding why, even after massive weakening of the already weak position of labour, it was so deep and so long. Keynes, of course, wished to save capitalism from itself and, significantly, to improve it, civilise it (save capitalism from the capitalists). If anyone is interested in a more accurate evaluation of Keynes, his insights and his aims, may I suggest Doug Henwood’s excellent Wall Street.
The hopes of even “Bastard Keynesianism” where dashed in the 1960s and 1970s, when social struggle exploded. This was a key blind-spot for Keynes, like neo-classical economists in general he ignored the issue of class, market power and social hierarchy. He failed to see how full employment would strengthen the working class and produce another crisis. The socialist Michal Kalecki, who independently discovered much of The General Theory at the same time, recognised this and predicted that business interests would seek to reassert their position – as they did in the 1970/80s.
Wildcat is, then, part-right again when it asserted hat high inflation “is generally a sign that the bourgeoisie is weak since it has to buy social peace. This is a why the Thatchers of this world are always going on about fighting inflation.” Yes, inflation shows that the bourgeoisie is weak – companies raise prices in an attempt to reap in circulation the profits they cannot appropriate in production (due to low unemployment and the corresponding rise in workers’ power). It seems to imply that inflation is a deliberate policy (Keynesianism being the “overall political management of the economy”) when, in fact, the state has no real control over the money supply (as Thatcher’s failed experiment with Monetarism proved beyond doubt). So high inflation is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an attempt to “buy social peace” – and the 1970s show, strikes for wage rises in response to rising prices can be common.
The Thatchers of this world create “social peace” by breaking working class resistance to price rises by means of high unemployment. Thomas Balogh described this policy memorably as “deliberately setting out to base the viability of the capitalist system on the maintenance of a large ‘industrial reserve army’ [of the unemployed] . . . [it is] the incomes policy of Karl Marx.” (The Irrelevance of Conventional Economics) This neo-liberalism is now imploding under its own contradictions, just as Keynesianism did.
The piece is correct to note the often unrelated nature of “recovery” and working class living conditions, as in the 1980s when unemployment did rise as growth increased again. Yes, anti-inflation policies have been the ideological and rhetorical cover for attacking wages and working class power and militancy (particularly since the 1970s and the rise of first Monetarism and then neo-liberalism). However, such insights do not make a confused article any better.
Then there is the notion that we are “supposed to regard” recession/depression “as a disaster” – defined as a “slow down in the growth of total commodity production”! Sorry, what is that meant to mean? Recessions are bad for working class people, and rising unemployment causes a distinct weakening of our power to improve our working conditions and, hopefully, transform society. And as this recession deepens there will be more than one “formulation” which stresses “the relation between wages and profits”, urging the cutting of the former to boost the latter and so recovery. In such circumstances, Keynes’ actual arguments may come in handy…
I know that it was first written in the 1990s, but that does not justify leaving in the assertion that “Keynesianism is not something likely to be revived in the near future”! Particularly when US capitalism has embraced massive stimulus packages (justified in terms of Keynesianism). It should be noted that, contra-Wildcat, (bastard) Keynesianism never went away. While its focus swapped from social to military forms, Keynesianism (i.e., state intervention) remained under Thatcher and continued to this day.
Finally, there is this assertion by Wildcat: “the only thing that can cause real economic collapse is the dictatorship of the proletariat.” Sorry, but Freedom last time I noticed was an anarchist paper. It should not be repeating confused and misleading Marxist expressions, particularly ones that have been used to justify the dictatorship over the proletariat. I know that Wildcat were not Leninists, but I should note that there was a “real economic collapse” under Lenin which was, in part, caused by the deeply flawed economic and political policies inherited from (orthodox) Marxism. Neither urging such a collapse nor the confused politics that helped deepen it should have any place in an anarchist paper.
Yours in solidarity,
Iain McKay