Cooking the Books 2: Global turbulence

Around 1973 the post-war boom came to an end. Various explanations were advanced. At the time one of the more popular was that profits had been squeezed because the working class had been able to take advantage of full employment to push up wages, as put forward by Andrew Glyn and Bob Sutcliffe in British Capitalism, Workers and the Profit Squeeze.

It was also the view, at the other end of the political spectrum, of Mrs Thatcher, who determined to destroy this supposed power of the unions. Which her government did after 1979. But this didn’t bring about a return to pre-1973 boom times. Which shows, argues Robert Brenner in The Economics of Global Turbulence, that it wasn’t increased wages that caused the fall in the rate of profit that precipitated what he calls “the long downturn” that is still with us.

So what did? His explanation is that the unplanned and competitive nature of capitalism led to world overproduction and overcapacity in manufacturing industry. The expansion of American manufacturing industry led the post-war boom but, in time, the same productive methods it employed were applied by its competitors in Germany and Japan, so increasing – over-increasing in fact (in relation to paying demand, not real need of course) – world manufacturing capacity.

“Normally” this would be rectified by a world slump in which the high-cost, inefficient producers would be eliminated but this didn’t happen, argues Brenner, or at least not sufficiently, because of government intervention and because some of the inefficient producers were prepared to carry on with reduced profits. And it still hasn’t happened as, although world paying demand (world trade) has expanded, world manufacturing capacity has expanded more, with the arrival, first, of Korea and Taiwan and, now, of China. As a result since 1973 the world economy as a whole has only been limping along.

The motor of capitalism has always been industry, which transforms material things into other material things. It is the renewal and expansion of such industries, and the repercussions this has on the rest of the economy, that has resulted in the accumulation of productive capital that is the essence of capitalism. But in Western countries today, with their stagnant or declining manufacturing sectors, this no longer appears to be the case. Judging by the commentaries on the financial pages, this role of motor would seem to have been taken over by “consumption”.

Capitalism has of course always satisfied paying consumer demand but this has been generated as a by-product of the accumulation of capital. Keynesianism was an attempt to go beyond this and artificially stimulate consumer demand through government spending.

Brenner argues that governments are still trying to stimulate and manipulate demand, by deliberately engineering an illusory increase in wealth by lowering short-term interest rates. This has the effect of increasing the price of stocks and shares and houses; people feel richer and, once a stock exchange or housing bubble develops, can get more money to spend through cashing in their capital gains. Brenner calls this “asset-price Keynesianism” and argues that in the end it is just as impossible to sustain as classical Keynesianism. Not only does it lead to “stop-go” as the artificially inflated demand draws in imports and creates balance of payments problems, but it also leads to stock exchange and/or housing booms and busts.

He says that the current apparent expansion in the US will sooner or later come to an end (as it now seems to be) “but, whether the reversal takes place with a whimper or a bang, economic slowdown and new turbulence still seem much more likely than a leap into a new long upturn”. So capitalism will just stagger on from mini-boom to mini-slump and back as it has done since 1973.