If you were seeking an example of Keynesian government today you wouldn’t look first to the West, but to China, where a Communist Party that brooks no opposition presides over a technocratic regime par excellence. Not only are China’s economic managers hard-headedly pragmatic in their approach to the politics of the market, but the deeper impetus for the policy-makers in Beijing is, in Mann’s sense, truly Keynesian. What is at stake is the post-Tiananmen compromise: accept and support the regime in exchange for growth and social transformation. Much has been made of the role of neoliberal thinkers in launching Deng’s market revolution in the 1980s. But when the going gets rough, the Chinese turn Keynesian. Beijing’s response to the 2008 crisis was the most dramatic work-creation stimulus in history. When in 2009 the governor of the People’s Bank of China proposed a new global currency system, he explicitly invoked Keynes’s proposals at Bretton Woods. Beijing’s successful management of China’s growth involves exchange controls, guidance of the exchange rate and direct regulation of bank lending – techniques reminiscent of 1950s Keynesian fine-tuning. And President Xi’s current personal priority is the elimination of the final residuum of absolute poverty by means of large-scale resettlement and investment.
Hitherto, the ultimate justification of Keynesianism hasn’t been simply the preservation of the status quo, but the promise of progress. Keynes waxed lyrical about the economic opportunities for our grandchildren; the only things that could stop them from being realised were wars and economic crisis. Radical politics made the same wager. As Mann puts it, the Marxian case is ‘based on the guarantee that, however long it might take, unrelenting struggle will eventually be rewarded. In other words, when Marx urged the proletariat to make history, he did so by positing – through analysis, not prophecy – a light at the end of the tunnel.’ But if growth is the common denominator of the political philosophies we inherit from the 19th century, are those philosophies capable of grasping the existential challenges that are presented by climate change? As the world melts before our eyes, what does Keynesian managerialism have to offer our children and grandchildren? Don’t we need a revolution? But then what, today, is the promise of revolution? ‘Whatever radical wagers we choose to make,’ Mann writes, ‘there is a very real possibility that we make them in vain. There is no certain victory, even in the longest run or the latest instance – or if there is, it is presently unimaginable. No matter how long and hard the path, it may still end in disaster.’
This makes for grim reading. But if we expand our horizon beyond what Mann clearly regards as the exhausted model of Western Keynesianism, it might not be grim enough. If, faced with fundamental environmental challenges, Keynesianism is reaching its ultimate limit, will it end with a whimper or a bang? Beijing faces the classical Keynesian dilemmas raised to a new level of extremity. Xi’s ‘Chinese dream’ is the most spectacular Keynesian promise ever made. The underlying fear of domestic unrest is palpable, the scale of repression is astonishing, but so is the gamble on growth. There is no counterpart in Western experience to the astonishing transformation in the fortunes of a population of more than a billion people in a matter of thirty years. But like any instance of rapid capitalist growth, China’s boom is fraught with danger. The country’s finances are highly unstable. The boom generates deep inequality at home, while abroad it incurs the envy of the United States, a declining hegemon with erratic politics and a track record of aggression. Added to which few places on earth experience the environmental costs of growth more acutely than China. Large parts of the country are at risk of becoming uninhabitable. The promise of growth is more real and more life-altering than ever. But so too is the possibility of catastrophe. Keynesians insist that we resist the blandishment of future calm to focus on the turmoil of the present. But on a rapidly warming planet, the waters are calmer now than they will be later. Just decades from now, a large part of humanity may count itself lucky if it is only in the long run that we are all dead.
andrei wrote: i heard james joyce is tough, this is probably like the james joyce of rap, ostensibly, if you wanna think of it in those terms. haha, and it bumps, too!
Alaskasoft Corporation wrote:Alaskasoft Corporation and Sordid Affair...two classic great men
Marlon Rando wrote:it's hard to tell exactly what the new socialists believe socialism is, but it seems more like free college than living with less
I hate hippies as much as the next guy, but at least they believed in leaving things behind, living communally. They didn't just hate the brutalities of a supply chain or the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few. They knew that having a bunch of stuff made you a shitty person. It was a spiritual idea people used to hold.
mcwop23 wrote:
Barthes Starr wrote:gonna crosspost this thread on mcwop's behalfmcwop23 wrote:
lordofdiapers wrote:Paul is worthy
guy forget wrote:Woah wait a minute Phish is dumb as hell
lordofdiapers wrote:Paul is worthy
guy forget wrote:Woah wait a minute Phish is dumb as hell
delgriffith wrote:
I don't really have any words for how horrific this is.
palmer eldritch wrote:grace cathedral park wrote:Does anyone else ever feel like scientists were bending the truth on their predictions and everything is happening much sooner than they said but since there’s nothing to be done they just lied to make us not worry but then every businessman and politician in power is just in total nihilist mode and capitalizing on the end of the world before they all hide underground in Kansas or wherever? Asking for a friend
I do not
Marlon Rando wrote:It's amazing we don't have a violent leftist-environmentalist underground
Marlon Rando wrote:yeah I mean we have lots of people chaining themselves to pipelines, infiltrating CAFOs. I was referring to a more violent underground movement, people putting bullets in heads. I can't believe that movement doesn't really exist, especially with so many people who are economically desperate, don't have much to lose.
delgriffith wrote:Quick Google search reveals that I have no idea what I'm talking about.
lame sayings wrote:participated in my first civil disobedience at a climate protest earlier in the month. can't wait to escalate it's gonna be our only hope.
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