Bringing capitalism to the US

[Black_Rose]

I found this quote from Steve Sailer's blog (http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/02/peter-turchin-on-big-picture.html):



Back when the Berlin Wall and Soviet Union fell, I was fond of observing that, "The end of communism wasn't going to bring capitalism just to Russia, but the USA as well".

Little did I know then how right I was and how disastrous this was going to be.

I believe this is what happened when the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc fell.

What do you think of it?

[Blake's Baby]

You believe that the fall of the Soviet Union was 'the end of communism'? You believe that the fall of the Soviet Union was the beginning of capitalism in the USA?

Neither of these things is true. The USA and Russia have been capitalist since the 19th century.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I found this quote from Steve Sailer's blog (http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/02/peter-turchin-on-big-picture.html):



I believe this is what happened when the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc fell.

What do you think of it?

If they mean "neoliberal" capitalism when they say "bringing capitalism to the US" then they are obseving something that happened but they are observing it upside-down and backwards because of their ideological assumptions.

Both the US and USSR-model economomies need to be seen together as part of a world economy. In this view we see that both "market" and "socialist" economies developed large welfare states around the same time historically due to historic events (revolutions, imperial competition, rise of worker movements) as well as interrelated problems in the world economy (depressions, economic instability).

The "free-market/neoliberal" ideology did not become introduced in the US or UK AFTER the fall of the USSR but when the Keynsian capitalist model began to run into problems in the 1970s. This is when both governments began to privitize some things while destabilizing other public institutions and industries. Financilization was introduced and now capital was being invested all over the place very rapidly and fluidly which gave an edge and incentive for further sell-offs of public entities to privite companies. All of this was justified politically through "free-market" ideological arguments.

I believe that the USSR had "state-capitalism" and, to put it very broadly, the heads of those economies (when they began to face economic pressures) couldn't just sell-off everything in the same way within that political arrangement, so "reform" was necissary - of course it wasn't an easy or smooth to transition (nor was it in the "market" countries like the US/UK when mass privitizations happened... but neither were on a "counter-revolutionary" scale of social upheaval).

But at any rate, even if someone disagrees with my specific arument, I think it is historically clear that privitization trends and "free-market" justifications and ideology from the top of society in the US and UK predated the fall of the USSR model by quite a bit.

What is scary/interesting now is that I think there is a new period of instablity for the international economy and while in some places (like the US) they seem to have shored up things temporarily without having to fully break from the neoliberal model, I don't know if it will be sustainable - and there are some bourgoise alterantives that seem to be on the table now like a return to more state-capitalism for example (the Economist did a cover story about the benifits of a China-like state-capitalist model... long-term planning is more possible, even the ability to curtail democracy is good in their view - though I think market economies can do that just as easily - because large structural changes can be made without protests or popular dissent interfearing).

[Black_Rose]

You believe that the fall of the Soviet Union was 'the end of communism'? You believe that the fall of the Soviet Union was the beginning of capitalism in the USA?

Neither of these things is true. The USA and Russia have been capitalist since the 19th century.

It is a pithy comment; most of its elegance derives from its lack of elaboration as it is assumed that the reader has reasonable definition of "capitalism" and "communism" within the context of his remarks. The irony he alluding to was the fact that not only the political economy of the USSR and Eastern Bloc changed, but also that the US became more capitalist due to the fall of the Communist superpower.

The quote is quite consistent with a Marxist-Leninist perspective (and it also captures one of the reasons why I still consider myself a Marxist-Leninist). "Capitalism" in this sense means an economic system primarily driven by ruthless competition and demands of influential capitalist that is unmoderated by the mitigating aspects of the welfare state. Workers without the bulwark of the welfare state began to exposed to the brutal and unsympathetic nature of capitalism.

[Jimmie Higgins]

It is a pithy comment; most of its elegance derives from its lack of elaboration as it is assumed that the reader has reasonable definition of "capitalism" and "communism" within the context of his remarks. The irony he alluding to was the fact that not only the political economy of the USSR and Eastern Bloc changed, but also that the US became more capitalist due to the fall of the Communist superpower.

The quote is quite consistent with a Marxist-Leninist perspective (and it also captures one of the reasons why I still consider myself a Marxist-Leninist). "Capitalism" in this sense means an economic system primarily driven by ruthless competition and demands of influential capitalist that is unmoderated by the mitigating aspects of the welfare state. Workers without the bulwark of the welfare state began to exposed to the brutal and unsympathetic nature of capitalism.So then Regan and Thatcher attacked unions and pushed privitization after 1989?! The attack on workers and the reorganization of capital away from a keynsian model was well under way in the West by the time the USSR collapsed.

[Black_Rose]

So then Regan and Thatcher attacked unions and pushed privitization after 1989?! The attack on workers and the reorganization of capital away from a keynsian model was well under way in the West by the time the USSR collapsed.

Yes, the process started before the collapse of the USSR, but the fall of the USSR removed a potential inhibitory constraint that could decelerated privatization and flexible labor markets.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Yes, the process started before the collapse of the USSR, but the fall of the USSR removed a potential inhibitory constraint that could decelerated privatization and flexible labor markets.I think that this freed up capital for more investment and took a lot of the pressures off the economies and so that's why the West was able to enjoy a bit of a boom in the early 1990s, but I don't think the existance of the USSR would have changed much in regards to the larger trends that lead to the US and UK abandoning Keynsian methods for neoliberal ones. Again, the trend was clearly going in this directing already before the late 1980s and had begun in the 1970s - so I think it could only be speculation to say that if the USSR was still there in 1995, that these trends would have gone in a fundamentally different direction - it might not have been as sucessful, maybe they wouldn't have had a new period of growth after the early 1990s recession, but it would have to be because of other speculative events like a military conflict or what this or that country did subjectivly, or a rise in struggle or whatnot. It's like saying "what if the NAZI party had been discreditied when Hitler was sent to jail" - sure maybe things would have been different, but the same sorts of pressures that lead to fascism would have still been there and without a working class revolution, there probably would have been some kind of "WWII" type conflict or even some kind of fascism, but with a different party, in Germany to "solve the problem".

[Lokomotive293]

You believe that the fall of the Soviet Union was 'the end of communism'? You believe that the fall of the Soviet Union was the beginning of capitalism in the USA?

Neither of these things is true. The USA and Russia have been capitalist since the 19th century.

Of course the terminology is not correct in Marxist terms, but he has a point. With the fall of socialism came the rollback of the "welfare state" in the West. And, I do believe the capitalist offensive in the West and the East have everything to do with each other. It was clear that already in the 1980s, the USSR started running into problems, and wasn't as strong as it used to be anymore, that's exactly the time when, on an international level as well as on their respective national levels, Imperialists started going back on the offensive.
I don't know that much about the US, but especially in Germany, after the counter-revolution of 1989/90 the capitalist offensive gained a new quality, with German Imperialism making new claims towards being a world power, taking part in wars all over the world, and attacking the rights and living standards of workers "at home".

[Blake's Baby]

Of course the terminology is not correct in Marxist terms, but he has a point. With the fall of socialism came the rollback of the "welfare state" in the West...

Not really, the 'rollback' of the welfare state started in the 1970s if not before. The Soviet Union may have stagnated by then; but the one didn't cause the other, they were both aspects of the same thing thing, the crisis of the world economy that's been ongoing since the late 1960s.

The 'welfare state' in the west and the command economies of the east were both neo-Keynesian attempts to control the economy. The stagflation of the '70s was the nail in the coffin of Keynesianism, for both west and east. The west was quicker to begin gthe attempt at economic restructuring; the east was slower, and therefore weaker, and thus it collapsed, a dozen or so years after the beginning of the 'western perstroika' of Thatcherism/Reaganomics (which were in many way merely continuing the 'reforms' that had begun in the mid-1970s in response to the crisis).






...And, I do believe the capitalist offensive in the West and the East have everything to do with each other. It was clear that already in the 1980s, the USSR started running into problems, and wasn't as strong as it used to be anymore, that's exactly the time when, on an international level as well as on their respective national levels, Imperialists started going back on the offensive...

'Imperialists' as in the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan, do you mean?


...
I don't know that much about the US, but especially in Germany, after the counter-revolution of 1989/90 the capitalist offensive gained a new quality, with German Imperialism making new claims towards being a world power, taking part in wars all over the world, and attacking the rights and living standards of workers "at home".

Yeah, well, some of us had that even in the 1970s and '80s, giving lie to the assertion that it was a post-'89 or a post-'91 development. Certainly after re-unification Germany was more forceful and confident. Kohl talked about re-unification with 'Middle' Germany, provoking fear in Poland that he might start claiming East Prussia; and German interferrence in the Balkans triggered the wars in the Former Yugoslavia of 1991-9. Germany revived its historic 'drive to the Med' and the thinking that lay behind the 'Berlin-Baghdad railway'. These foreign-policy developments were contingent on the break-up of the Russian Bloc. But German capitalism had been attacking workers' living standards for a long time before that, as had pretty much all countries.

When you see two things that happen at a similar time, it's not always the case that one is causing the other. They may both be caused by something that you haven't noticed; in this case, it's the economic crisis that began to affect certain parts of the world economy in the late 1960s and became open in the early 1970s, that led to both the attacks on the working class around the world, and the break of the bloc sytem (which in turn allowed second-rate powers like Germany to start to pursue a line more independent of Washington). How else to explain that the 'attacks on the working class' started about 15 years before the events tht you think caused them?