{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","uuid":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","normalized_title":"zombiecapitalismglobalcrisisandtherelevanceofmarx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","isbns":["9781608461042"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":426,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Zombie%20Capitalism%20Global%20Crisis%20and%20the%20Relevance%20of%20Marx","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/search"},"page":{"printed_page":163,"pdf_page":163,"physical_index":163,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"af947b2c4083acf0773d2168f37fb1dc9c11aca60a5b7d3b280950c5e4999059"},"chapter":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","content":"John Strachey had been by far the best known Marxist writer on economics in Britain in the 19 30s. His books, The Nature of Capitalist Crisis, The Coming Struggle for Power and The Theory and Practice of Socialism had taught Marxist economics to a whole generation of worker activists and young intellectuals, with the message that capitalism could not escape from recurring and ever deeper crises. Yet by 1956 he was arguing, in his book Contemporary Capitalism, that Keynes had been right and Marx wrong on the crucial question of whether the capitalist crisis could be reformed away.10 Keynes's only mistake, Strachey held, was that he failed to see that the capitalists would have to be pressurised into accepting his remedies: \"The Keynesian remedies . . . will be opposed by the capitalists certainly: but experience shows they can be imposed by the electorate\".1 1\n\nThe belief that Keynes's ideas were responsible for the long boom persists today, with a widespread view on the left that the abandonment of those ideas is responsible for the crises of recent years. This is essentially the position put forward by the journalists Dan Atkinson and Larry Elliot in a series of books, 12 the Observer columnist Will Hutton 13 and the radical economic consultant Graham Turner. 14 A version of it is accepted by some Marxists. Gerard Dumenil and Dominique Levy ascribe the post-war growth to a \"Keynesian\" approach by industrial capital, in which accumulation was based on a \"compromise\" with working class organisations on the terrain of the welfare state.15 David Harvey presents a picture of capitalism expanding on the basis of \"a class compromise between capital and labour\" in which \"the state could focus on full employment, economic growth and the welfare of its citizens\", while \"fiscal or monetary policies usually dubbed 'Keynesian' were widely deployed to dampen business cycles and to ensure reasonably full employment\" .16\n\nYet the most amazing fact about the period in which Keynesianism reigned supreme as the official economic ideology was that the measures it proposed for warding off crises were not used. The economy expanded despite their absence until the 1960s in the US and the 1970s in Western Europe and Japan.\n\nAs R C 0 Matthews long ago pointed out, the economic expansion of the post-war years in Britain did not depend on the specific Keynesian \"remedies\" to recurrent crises of budget deficits or a higher level of government investment than in the pre-war years.17 Meghnad Desai has noted, \"In the USA Keynesian policies were slow to be officially adopted . . . They finally triumphed with the Kennedy-Johnson tax cut of 1964\" .18 That was after the Great Boom had already lasted 15 years (25 years if you exclude the shortlived recession of the late 1940s). The same point is made for Germany by Ton Notermans: \"Countercyclical demand management policies were only pursued in Germany... during the 1 970s\".19 In so far as government intervention was used to determine the speed of the economy, it was to slow down booms, not to avert recessions, as with the \"stop go\" policies of British governments faced with balance of payments problems in the 1950s and 1960s. Michael Bleaney, re-analysing the figures used by Matthews and others, concludes that Keynesianism played little role in the West European long boom, and only a limited one in the US. And he notes that it was the big increase in US levels of military expenditure compared with the pre-war years that provided most of the \"fiscal stimulus\": \"Largely because of much higher defence spending, total government spending on goods and services increased by nearly 9 percent of potential GNP\". 20\n\nThe Long Boom\n\n163","previous_page":162,"next_page":164}