So another of the shortest sittings of a Legislature in Canada has once again ended in Alberta. And it was business as usual in the only One Party State in North America. "There were also questions, but few answers, about the government's plans for health-care reform and how it intends to fix shortcomings in long-term care for seniors. "
And if you were expecting any explanation of the Governments 'Third Way' for Health Care as King Ralph did his Grande Tour of Canada, avoiding being in the Leg, well there weren't any. Albertas own scandal ridden Government sat for eleven days and failed to explain why it was giving out a contract on privatizing Health Care to a company charged with Fraud. Or why upon appointing a Chair for the Alberta Securities Commission (the Alberta Stock Exchange watchdog) he is found to have profited from insider trading and is fined by the OSC. Then he donates his ill gotten gains to the Food Bank and figures thats that. As does the Minister of Finance. And then the Klein Reich votes down a private members bill on Transparency in Government cause its not needed. Nope not here, cause all the pigs are at the trough and we can read about it in the press. Yep the Chretien Liberals pulled off Ad Scam in the wrong province, should have done it in Alberta and they would have gotten away with it. So is this the new ethical model of government we can expect from the Federal Conservatives, whose base is of course Alberta.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Peter Drucker RIP
Peter F. Drucker the father of post modern management passed away Nov. 11. He was a student of Joseph Schumpeter and classmate with leftwing economist Karl Polanyi. And while they both came out of the ecomomic mileu of Vienna both of them rejected Von Mises and Hayek for different reasons. However in the end Drucker would end his life rejecting the very capitalist system he, like Polanyi, would attempt to ameliorate. Last weeks Business Week reported on Druckers passing and his disenchantment with capitalism;
The story of Peter Drucker is the story of management itself. It's the story of the rise of the modern corporation and the managers who organize work. Without his analysis it's almost impossible to imagine the rise of dispersed, globe-spanning corporations.
But it's also the story of Drucker's own rising disenchantment with capitalism in the late 20th century that seemed to reward greed as easily as it did performance. Drucker was sickened by the excessive riches awarded to mediocre executives even as they slashed the ranks of ordinary workers. And as he entered his 10th decade, there were some in corporations and academia who said his time had passed. Others said he grew sloppy with the facts. Meanwhile, new generations of management gurus and pundits, many of whom grew rich off books and speaking tours, superseded him. The doubt and disillusionment with business that Drucker expressed in his later years caused him to turn away from the corporation and instead offer his advice to the nonprofit sector. It seemed an acknowledgment that business and management had somehow failed him.
The Man Who Invented Management
Drucker and Polanyi as students of Schumpeter, and survivors of the economic and poltical changes occuring in the world after WWI saw the failure of Vulgar Marxism, the belief in the ultimate crisis in the capitalism business cycle would create a revolution, and its supercession not just by Keynesianism but by a new rebirth of Capitalism from the ashes of the Great Depression. Unlike the Vienna School of economists both Polanyi and Drucker shared a common concern that economics was NOT divorced from society.
However, when Polanyi argues that it is the advent of the economic logic that destroys the social fabric, and that the latter protects itself through, for instance, the social regulation of labor markets, environmental pollution, and financial speculation, he seems to be treating not only "the economic" as an autonomous extra-social logic, but also "the society" as an undifferentiated whole. When "the society" is pegged against "the economy," it becomes difficult to see how "society" may be divided between those who do and do not benefit from the rule of markets and how "the economy," including the institutions of market society, is always shaped by political struggles, animated by cultural codes, and most importantly, embedded in economic theory.Karl Polanyi: Freedom in a complex society
Gone was the Fordist production model of industrial capitalism with its Tayorist management theory of fitting the worker to the machine. The workers aspiration for revolution were dashed by the failure of the Bolshevik revolution to ignite a world revolution, with the reactionary counter-revolution of fascism, and with capitalisms rebirth through war, when it seemed doomed in the Great Depression.
Keynes, Schumpeter, and Drucker all viewed the world from the influence that the failed workers revolution of the 20th century had had on capitalism. Druckers conclusions and predictions were based on the aspirations of the worker as a human being in the corporation not as an institution but as a community. These were exactly what workers who created Workers Councils and practiced Worker Self Management, during the revolutions in Russia and Europe and later during the Spanish Civil war, were decrying capitalism for.
Drucker's model of management is the Self Management of the failed workers movement, in the same way that Keynes economics was influenced by the need for capitalism to meet the social demands of the working class, unemployment insurance, benefits, the sharing of the good life capitalism promised for all and not just the elite. Schumpeters view that capitalism must overcome its bourgoies nature, and become the capitalism of everyman sums up what this school of post-modern capitalism offered the post WWII world.
-- It was Drucker who introduced the idea of decentralization -- in the 1940s -- which became a bedrock principle for virtually every large organization in the world.
-- He was the first to assert -- in the 1950s -- that workers should be treated as assets, not as liabilities to be eliminated.
-- He originated the view of the corporation as a human community -- again, in the 1950s -- built on trust and respect for the worker and not just a profit-making machine, a perspective that won Drucker an almost godlike reverence among the Japanese.
-- He first made clear -- still the '50s -- that there is "no business without a customer," a simple notion that ushered in a new marketing mind-set.
-- He argued in the 1960s -- long before others -- for the importance of substance over style, for institutionalized practices over charismatic, cult leaders.
-- And it was Drucker again who wrote about the contribution of knowledge workers -- in the 1970s -- long before anyone knew or understood how knowledge would trump raw material as the essential capital of the New Economy.
The Man Who Invented Management
The Engineer Edward Deming inspired by Druckers work developed his management model, another subversion of workers self management, TQM; Total Quality Management. Today we know it for just in time production, multi-tasking, worker empowerment, etc. all the language of the self managed workers movement now turned on its head and used against the workers to guarntee a profitable capitalist enterprize.
Drucker and Deming's ideas were not accepted by American corporations until they face two major economic crisises, the first after the Oil crisis of '74. And later after the economic melt down with black October on Wall Street in 1987.
I think that economics sticks to the behavior of commodities. Absolutely. Consider the Arab oil boycott; it was very easy to see in 1973, and I was one of the few who said it would fail, because unlike modern American economists I do know a good deal of history. And modern American economists are incredibly ignorant of history— unbelievably—especially of economic history. But cartels have never lasted ten years; the only cartels that last are cartels that systematically cut their price, and OPEC made no signs of doing so, yet it isn't going to last. All 'a cartel does is signal the end of the dominance of its industry. That's it. And people will, when petroleum becomes expensive, find ways of doing with less. People will switch to different cars. In that sense I'm very much an economist. I believe in rational behavior, economically rational, in economics, but I do not believe that it is the dominant rational behavior, it is dominant in certain situations which people see as economic situations. But look, if you take the theme petroleum and then go back to the Depression, gasoline consumption didn't go down at all because people in this country discovered that wheels are more important than food. Freedom is more important than food. Now that is not an economic fact.
And so, long ago, I saw economics as an extremely important way of looking at things. But I don't accept the idea that it is a science, that it is mathematical, that it is rigorous, and that it is autonomous. In American economics today, there is no basic economic theory—no theory of price, no theory of value, no theory of change, no theory of the correlation of technology and economics, no theory of work—all the basic problems of economics are excluded because they are not capable of being quantified. That's much earlier, that's 1920. Economics is the last discipline in which logical positivism [the doctrine that the only truths are those affirmed by the methods of natural science] still holds sway, and that's why you can predict with certainty that this is the last generation of modern economics. Because in everything else, logical positivism is gone. And you know I was born into it. Logical positivism is the result of the marriage of America and Vienna. A Conversation with Peter F. Drucker
Their work was accepted by the post War economies of Japan and Germany. With Schumpeters observation of the Creative /Destructive nature of post modern capitalism came the rebirth of these two countries as economic competitors with America. And they did by adapting their unique forms of state capitalism to fit Druckers and Demings management structures. In the case of Japan it was the hierarchical creation of MITI, the joint state, business, banking corporation, which determined production for years in the future. In Japan it also took the destruction of the unions to be able to introduce Demings TQM models of production, where the workers once again was loyal to the company. The old paternalistic capitalism was writ large across the face of Japan.
In Germany it was the model of tripartism that succeeded, where state capitalism functioned through Works Councils, which meant the unions, corporations and the state shared in the risks and wealth of the growth of the German economy. This meant workers on the Boards of corporations, and a national strategy for growth much like Japan.
Schumpeter, Drucker and Demings were the new models of post modern management of capitalism, models of comptetive state capitalisms that gave America a run for its money. America still a nation of corporations and institutions in competition with each other did not accept the Drucker model of management nor Demings until the economic crisis of the late 1980's and eraly 1990's.
It was used to smash unions, roll back wages and benefits, outsource work, privatize the public sphere, and to get more work out of workers for less. It was the Wal-Mart greeter as happy worker in the corporation as community. No wonder in his last years Drucker turned his back on corporate America who had so abused his ideas.
CR: Do you think that your writings on management lend themselves to misuse?
PD: Most people, most laymen, when they hear management hear business management, but that is their mishearing. And from the beginning, even though my first books dealt with business simply because it was the only experimental area available, my public has been, especially in this country, at least as much nonbusiness as business. And you have a very peculiar situation because in this country by merely, believe me, pure historical accident: The study of organizations is located in the business school largely because the political scientists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century focused on constitutionalism and thus failed to see the emergence of the civil service and of government as an institution.
Concern with the working of government came out with the New Deal. Actually, Herbert Hoover was the first one with an interest in it, but no one picked it up until the New Deal. Very late. And then it was organized as a separate discipline and called "public administration," which is probably one of the most boring things we ever created; it deals only with procedures.
Drucker on the other hand understood that modern capitalism had become dominant, that it is reflected in all aspects of society, not just the board rooms. In fact his work in the NGO and non-profit sector showed that this was no longer the volunteer sector but a growing area of new capitalist organization.
His insights, like Polanyi's, into the function of capitalism as social organization while neither Marxist nor Anarchist benefits both in adding to a radical understanding of capitalism being the dominant social realtionship of society. As much as Foucault has with the issue of governability. And while Foucault is more popular with the Left, a little Drucker could go a long way to understanding how capitalist organization dominates all social institutions including unions, academia, meals on wheels, etc. Those who fail to see capitalism as a social relation, and only as an economic system will continue to miss this point.
The story of Peter Drucker is the story of management itself. It's the story of the rise of the modern corporation and the managers who organize work. Without his analysis it's almost impossible to imagine the rise of dispersed, globe-spanning corporations.
But it's also the story of Drucker's own rising disenchantment with capitalism in the late 20th century that seemed to reward greed as easily as it did performance. Drucker was sickened by the excessive riches awarded to mediocre executives even as they slashed the ranks of ordinary workers. And as he entered his 10th decade, there were some in corporations and academia who said his time had passed. Others said he grew sloppy with the facts. Meanwhile, new generations of management gurus and pundits, many of whom grew rich off books and speaking tours, superseded him. The doubt and disillusionment with business that Drucker expressed in his later years caused him to turn away from the corporation and instead offer his advice to the nonprofit sector. It seemed an acknowledgment that business and management had somehow failed him.
The Man Who Invented Management
Drucker and Polanyi as students of Schumpeter, and survivors of the economic and poltical changes occuring in the world after WWI saw the failure of Vulgar Marxism, the belief in the ultimate crisis in the capitalism business cycle would create a revolution, and its supercession not just by Keynesianism but by a new rebirth of Capitalism from the ashes of the Great Depression. Unlike the Vienna School of economists both Polanyi and Drucker shared a common concern that economics was NOT divorced from society.
However, when Polanyi argues that it is the advent of the economic logic that destroys the social fabric, and that the latter protects itself through, for instance, the social regulation of labor markets, environmental pollution, and financial speculation, he seems to be treating not only "the economic" as an autonomous extra-social logic, but also "the society" as an undifferentiated whole. When "the society" is pegged against "the economy," it becomes difficult to see how "society" may be divided between those who do and do not benefit from the rule of markets and how "the economy," including the institutions of market society, is always shaped by political struggles, animated by cultural codes, and most importantly, embedded in economic theory.Karl Polanyi: Freedom in a complex society
Gone was the Fordist production model of industrial capitalism with its Tayorist management theory of fitting the worker to the machine. The workers aspiration for revolution were dashed by the failure of the Bolshevik revolution to ignite a world revolution, with the reactionary counter-revolution of fascism, and with capitalisms rebirth through war, when it seemed doomed in the Great Depression.
Keynes, Schumpeter, and Drucker all viewed the world from the influence that the failed workers revolution of the 20th century had had on capitalism. Druckers conclusions and predictions were based on the aspirations of the worker as a human being in the corporation not as an institution but as a community. These were exactly what workers who created Workers Councils and practiced Worker Self Management, during the revolutions in Russia and Europe and later during the Spanish Civil war, were decrying capitalism for.
Drucker's model of management is the Self Management of the failed workers movement, in the same way that Keynes economics was influenced by the need for capitalism to meet the social demands of the working class, unemployment insurance, benefits, the sharing of the good life capitalism promised for all and not just the elite. Schumpeters view that capitalism must overcome its bourgoies nature, and become the capitalism of everyman sums up what this school of post-modern capitalism offered the post WWII world.
-- It was Drucker who introduced the idea of decentralization -- in the 1940s -- which became a bedrock principle for virtually every large organization in the world.
-- He was the first to assert -- in the 1950s -- that workers should be treated as assets, not as liabilities to be eliminated.
-- He originated the view of the corporation as a human community -- again, in the 1950s -- built on trust and respect for the worker and not just a profit-making machine, a perspective that won Drucker an almost godlike reverence among the Japanese.
-- He first made clear -- still the '50s -- that there is "no business without a customer," a simple notion that ushered in a new marketing mind-set.
-- He argued in the 1960s -- long before others -- for the importance of substance over style, for institutionalized practices over charismatic, cult leaders.
-- And it was Drucker again who wrote about the contribution of knowledge workers -- in the 1970s -- long before anyone knew or understood how knowledge would trump raw material as the essential capital of the New Economy.
The Man Who Invented Management
Drucker grasped the mundane fact that prosperity and democracy are the result of most people spending most of their time working for others. Somehow the crooked timber of mankind has to work as one. It has to organise and thus be managed.
After the second world war Drucker did something unprecedented: he examined a company, General Motors, as a social phenomenon. He saw it not as a Victorian sweatshop but as a living, breathing institution whose chief creative resource was its staff and customers. The resulting masterpiece, The Concept of the Corporation, appalled GM and its executives were banned from reading it. It sold millions, notably, the author noted wryly, in Japan.
Drucker was a radical conservative. A passionate capitalist, he realised that companies which behaved as mere assembly lines to enrich their owners soon fall victim to state control, as they had in fascist Germany. (He also noted that assembly lines moved no faster than their slowest operative.) Workers had in some sense to “own” their work or they would not innovate.
From this he evolved the concept of the “knowledge worker”. He invented, or first articulated, concepts such as decentralisation, privatisation, teamwork, globalisation, management by objective and corporate social responsibility. Companies must be part of American society, the American dream, he said, or good people would not work for them and bad people would capture them and need ever-tighter regulation. Drucker’s writings and preachings made corporate America respectable again after the Depression.
How my hero would have wept at Whitehall’s mad managersThe Engineer Edward Deming inspired by Druckers work developed his management model, another subversion of workers self management, TQM; Total Quality Management. Today we know it for just in time production, multi-tasking, worker empowerment, etc. all the language of the self managed workers movement now turned on its head and used against the workers to guarntee a profitable capitalist enterprize.
Drucker and Deming's ideas were not accepted by American corporations until they face two major economic crisises, the first after the Oil crisis of '74. And later after the economic melt down with black October on Wall Street in 1987.
I think that economics sticks to the behavior of commodities. Absolutely. Consider the Arab oil boycott; it was very easy to see in 1973, and I was one of the few who said it would fail, because unlike modern American economists I do know a good deal of history. And modern American economists are incredibly ignorant of history— unbelievably—especially of economic history. But cartels have never lasted ten years; the only cartels that last are cartels that systematically cut their price, and OPEC made no signs of doing so, yet it isn't going to last. All 'a cartel does is signal the end of the dominance of its industry. That's it. And people will, when petroleum becomes expensive, find ways of doing with less. People will switch to different cars. In that sense I'm very much an economist. I believe in rational behavior, economically rational, in economics, but I do not believe that it is the dominant rational behavior, it is dominant in certain situations which people see as economic situations. But look, if you take the theme petroleum and then go back to the Depression, gasoline consumption didn't go down at all because people in this country discovered that wheels are more important than food. Freedom is more important than food. Now that is not an economic fact.
And so, long ago, I saw economics as an extremely important way of looking at things. But I don't accept the idea that it is a science, that it is mathematical, that it is rigorous, and that it is autonomous. In American economics today, there is no basic economic theory—no theory of price, no theory of value, no theory of change, no theory of the correlation of technology and economics, no theory of work—all the basic problems of economics are excluded because they are not capable of being quantified. That's much earlier, that's 1920. Economics is the last discipline in which logical positivism [the doctrine that the only truths are those affirmed by the methods of natural science] still holds sway, and that's why you can predict with certainty that this is the last generation of modern economics. Because in everything else, logical positivism is gone. And you know I was born into it. Logical positivism is the result of the marriage of America and Vienna. A Conversation with Peter F. Drucker
Their work was accepted by the post War economies of Japan and Germany. With Schumpeters observation of the Creative /Destructive nature of post modern capitalism came the rebirth of these two countries as economic competitors with America. And they did by adapting their unique forms of state capitalism to fit Druckers and Demings management structures. In the case of Japan it was the hierarchical creation of MITI, the joint state, business, banking corporation, which determined production for years in the future. In Japan it also took the destruction of the unions to be able to introduce Demings TQM models of production, where the workers once again was loyal to the company. The old paternalistic capitalism was writ large across the face of Japan.
In Germany it was the model of tripartism that succeeded, where state capitalism functioned through Works Councils, which meant the unions, corporations and the state shared in the risks and wealth of the growth of the German economy. This meant workers on the Boards of corporations, and a national strategy for growth much like Japan.
Schumpeter, Drucker and Demings were the new models of post modern management of capitalism, models of comptetive state capitalisms that gave America a run for its money. America still a nation of corporations and institutions in competition with each other did not accept the Drucker model of management nor Demings until the economic crisis of the late 1980's and eraly 1990's.
It was used to smash unions, roll back wages and benefits, outsource work, privatize the public sphere, and to get more work out of workers for less. It was the Wal-Mart greeter as happy worker in the corporation as community. No wonder in his last years Drucker turned his back on corporate America who had so abused his ideas.
CR: Do you think that your writings on management lend themselves to misuse?
PD: Most people, most laymen, when they hear management hear business management, but that is their mishearing. And from the beginning, even though my first books dealt with business simply because it was the only experimental area available, my public has been, especially in this country, at least as much nonbusiness as business. And you have a very peculiar situation because in this country by merely, believe me, pure historical accident: The study of organizations is located in the business school largely because the political scientists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century focused on constitutionalism and thus failed to see the emergence of the civil service and of government as an institution.
Concern with the working of government came out with the New Deal. Actually, Herbert Hoover was the first one with an interest in it, but no one picked it up until the New Deal. Very late. And then it was organized as a separate discipline and called "public administration," which is probably one of the most boring things we ever created; it deals only with procedures.
And so we had no focus where one could look at the new reality of an institution after this. Even now your liberal arts tradition considers organizations to be abnormal. Here is Ken Galbraith, who writes a book which argues that there exists two institutions: first the government and then business. It never occurred to Ken that Harvard University is a very powerful institution. I once said to Ken, an old friend, at dinner, "Your last book is a tour de force but, you know, from a Harvard professor, no mention of the university as an institution is a little funny." And he looked at me and said, "My God, I never thought of that." And he doesn't know that the labor union and the hospital are institutions. A Conversation with Peter F. Drucker
And this is the very failure of the American Ruling Class, both its poltical and economic arms, remain divided, as does its ideolgy as reflected in the Free Market Liberaltarians on one hand and the Republican War Party on the other. That failure is why in Canada an American style neo-con movement has failed, because our civil society is made up of insitutions, organization, and the 'individulaist' ideology of American liberaltarianism is out of touch with the rest of the world. It is a throw back as Drucker correctly points out to the 19th century. There are no new ideas coming out of the neo-cons despite the 'neo' in their name.Drucker on the other hand understood that modern capitalism had become dominant, that it is reflected in all aspects of society, not just the board rooms. In fact his work in the NGO and non-profit sector showed that this was no longer the volunteer sector but a growing area of new capitalist organization.
His insights, like Polanyi's, into the function of capitalism as social organization while neither Marxist nor Anarchist benefits both in adding to a radical understanding of capitalism being the dominant social realtionship of society. As much as Foucault has with the issue of governability. And while Foucault is more popular with the Left, a little Drucker could go a long way to understanding how capitalist organization dominates all social institutions including unions, academia, meals on wheels, etc. Those who fail to see capitalism as a social relation, and only as an economic system will continue to miss this point.
"Economic liberalism was the organising principle of a society engaged in creating a market system. Born as a mere penchant for non-bureaucratic methods, it evolved into a veritable faith in man's secular salvation through a self-regulating market.... Only by the 1820s did [economic liberalism] stand for the three classical tenets: that labour should find its price on the market; that the creation of money should be subject to an automatic mechanism; that goods should be free to flow from country to country without hindrance or preference."
"There was nothing natural about laissez-faire; free markets could never have come into being merely by allowing things to take their course. ... Laissez-faire itself was enforced by the state. The [1830s and 1840s] saw not only an outburst of legislation repealing restrictive regulations, but also an enormous increase in the administrational bureaucracy able to fulfil the tasks set by the adherents of liberalism. ... Laissez-faire was not a method to achieve a thing, it was the thing to be achieved."
"This paradox [of the need for a strong central executive under laissez-faire] was topped by another. While laissez-faire economy was the product of deliberate state action, subsequent restrictions on laissez-faire started in a spontaneous way. Laissez-faire was planned; planning was not."
Hot Air Over Climate Change--Business as Usual
Guess who is not sitting at the Climate Change Conference table in Montreal? Those most impacted by the decisions of course. In this case first nations peoples of the Arctic North like the Inuit. Inuits Transformed by Global Warming
Guess who is sitting at the table?
Why the corporate bosses of the petroleum industry. Regional, not global, carbon cuts most likely - BP Like the President/CEO of British Petroleum, now branded BP with groovey TV ads about being environmentally aware. And prepared to profit from new technologies and alternative energy. BP to build world's biggest alternative power business
And of course politicians who have failed to either accept Kyoto or have like Canada's Liberals failed to fulfill their Kyoto commitments.Political turmoil on eve of Canada's climate forum / Host country struggles to meet Kyoto pledge
Not that that Kyoto was anything but a sop for capitalism anyways. It was all about making Capitalism Green. Alcan funds planting of 100,000 trees in project to keep Montreal Climate Change Conference carbon neutral Carbon sinks and carbon credits, exchanges of credits between polluting industries and countries with trees. Greenpeace says rich countries export climate change But Kyoto and this conference, dubbed Kyoto2, will NOT change anything because frankly Capitalism Is NOT Sustainable.
And hey I am not the only on to say that the Montreal Conference will do little to change capitalism. So does the influential Policy Think Tank of the Executive branch of Capitalism, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in the United States. And they set the agenda for the most powerful capitalist country in the world.
David G. Victor, a Council adjunct senior fellow for science and technology and director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University, spoke to cfr.org's Esther Pan on November 23 about what to expect from the Montreal Conference.
What you expect to come out of the climate change conference in Montreal?
Mostly nothing.
And until the fact that climate change is the direct result of capitalism is realized the protestors who want something done about climate change will be gain nothing but more hot air from Conferences like those in Montreal. The protocols will be all about alternatives to keep capitalism functoning with business as usual, CLIMATE CHANGE: Blair Hopes for New Nuclear ProgrammeWhile the very real impact of capitalism on climate change continues on an expotential curve that increases its impact on our lives every day.
Health effects of climate change felt worldwide
Many farmers see climate change as threat
Capitalism is in a period of what the communist left calls decadence or as economist Joseph Shumpeter joyfully called it Creative Destruction.
"Can capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can." Thus opens Schumpeter's prologue to a section of his 1942 book, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. One might think, on the basis of the quote, that Schumpeter was a Marxist. But the analysis that led Schumpeter to his conclusion differed totally from Karl Marx's. Schumpeter believed that capitalism would be destroyed by its successes.Innovation by the entrepreneur, argued Schumpeter, led to gales of "creative destruction" as innovations caused old inventories, ideas, technologies, skills, and equipment to become obsolete. The question, as Schumpeter saw it, was not "how capitalism administers existing structures,... [but] how it creates and destroys them." This creative destruction, he believed, caused continuous progress and improved standards of living for everyone.
That means that as we produce more and more goods, and expand the technological capablities of society we also end up destroying more of our world not to improve the living standards for everyone, but for the few in the industrialized nations. And while capitalisms ability to create a technology of rational distributive good its fails to do so because it is dominated by the need to make profits. Where Schumpeter left his analysis the decadence theory of capitalism picks up and says that the contradiction as Marx points out is that advanced capitalism actually holds back technological or other creative solutions to problems, like Climate Change, because it needs to make a profit whether it be through mass layoffs, wars, famines, or environmental destruction. So while it is creative it is ultimately destructive, a suicidal system.This is the reality of Creative Destruction or the decadence of Capitalism. And it is having a world wide impact. Focus: So, are we going to freeze or fry?
The real domination of capital, technology-driven mass production, became prevalent only in the 20th century (and continues its development to this day). The moment at which the progress of real domination fundamentally changed the conditions of accumulation for global capital is hard to pinpoint. But it is certain that such a change took place, whichever term is used to describe it, that massive devalorization became an intrinsic part of the accumulation process, that therefore the continuation of capitalism imposed on society increasingly brutal violence and self-destruction and thus placed before the working class the need to fight, not to improve its conditions of exploitation within capitalism, but to overthrow it. That’s why we consider 1914 as the starting date of capitalist decadence. In the remaining part of the century, war would make more casualties than in the entire preceding human history. It is true that amidst this endemic destruction, capitalism continued to develop and to grow, that real domination continued to deepen and spread, and that the resulting technification continued to stimulate productivity and thus also the quantity and quality of use-values, even for the working class. Those who think that the conditions for revolution require the irreversible stagnation of capitalism and abject poverty for the vast majority of the working class will wait forever. They have not understood that an irreversibly stagnating capitalism is an oxymoron, that crisis and productivity growth do not exclude each other, that capital seeks higher productivity to fight its crisis, yet worsens it this way, that the struggle of the working class is not one of variable capital reacting only against its own demobilization but of the part of humanity which, because of its place in the production process, is most capable both of recognizing the mortal danger that capitalism represents for humanity and of eliminating it.
THE GENESIS OF CAPITALIST DECADENCE
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Johnny B Good
I know I have been slagging John Bowman who does the CBC Election Blog, here and here and we have been having it out in the comments, with irreverance and at least a friendly sense of humour about my criticisms of his blog. And to give the guy credit, his latest blog on CBC covers all the bases about the party blogs and includes the BQ and the Greens. And while I have complained about him giving the Conservatives too much coverage this time around he says it like it is, their weblog sucks, warmed over press releases.The guy listens and responds. So this is a way of saying good on ya Johnny boy. And I am still waiting for your take on the babble dust up.
A Profitable Economics Debate
I want to thank Reg for his comments here . Where we had a short spat back and forth. We are actually having a great ongoing debate on real life economics, here. The wiff and woof of daily life as Canadian workers trying to make ends meet.
Now this is rather unique cause Reg is a Blogging Tory, and you all know what I think of them, and yet we are able to have a civil discussion, and an interesting one at that,over one of the hot button issues that supposedly divides us politically; economics. And we agree, stranger still.
Until you note that this is a Libertarian blog, and one of the principals of libertarianism is to debate between the left and right since we share several common values arising from classical liberalism;distrust of the state, belief in self government, respect for the individual, and a sense of social responsibility. Don't believe me, then check out Kevin Carsons libertarian blog.
Anyways I see Reg has been kind enough to link Le Revue Gauche as a daily read on his website links. I am honoured. Especially when right whingnuts attack the left with comments like 'we are evil' or don't get it when it comes to economics. Such as this comment which was left in response to my article Housing Bubble, Debt Boom
galbraith said...Could you possibly be more economically illiterate? Money not flowing to your beloved social bureaucracies in taxes immediately becomes part of capital markets, providing lower interest rates. But I wouldn't expect the Marxists in your public education schooling to have let you in on that fact. They're too busy trashing the very companies that their own retirement funds are invested in.
This comment is particularly ironic considering most of the data in the article is from such respected capitalist publications as the Financial Post and the Report on Business, as well as clippings from other MSM sources. Facts they call them. And I am accused of being economically illiterate. Because my analysis is based on an understanding of Marxist economics.
Thats the other irony of bveing called economically illiterate, my article Social Insecurity The Phony Pension Plan Crisis has been published online, by autonomist marxists, who also publish right wing economists as well as left wing ones. I think in general the Libertarian Left and the Autonomous Marxist movement has a higher level of tolerance for this kind of debate than the Neo-Cons do.
When Reg first commented here I was expecting another galbraith, since I checked his site and found he was a Blogging Tory. And while we initailly disagreed and still do on Labour Sponsored Investment Funds, he took up the challenge, made good points and we have been having a great dialouge ever since.
Now for those of you that believe that there are two solitudes between the Left and Right...these are the solitudes of dogma. Reg and I will continue our economic debates, or not, but we welcome your contributions. I think its interesting that both of us agree that the basic economic issue in Canada is NOT tax cuts, but capital invesgtment or the lack of it.
For background here are my articles on the economics of daily life and I look forward to your comments Reg.
Jobs Not Tax Cuts
More Income Trust Fallout
Air Canada Profits From Bankruptcy
State Capitalism By Any Other Name
What's good for GM is bad for Workers
Canada's Billion Dollar Rip Off
It's the Labour Theory of Value, stupid
Corporate Canada Plays Hide the Sausage
Corporate Canada is in the Money
We Need a Living Wage
NEO LIBERALISM A FAILURE IN CANADA
Social Insecurity Appendix
Now this is rather unique cause Reg is a Blogging Tory, and you all know what I think of them, and yet we are able to have a civil discussion, and an interesting one at that,over one of the hot button issues that supposedly divides us politically; economics. And we agree, stranger still.
Until you note that this is a Libertarian blog, and one of the principals of libertarianism is to debate between the left and right since we share several common values arising from classical liberalism;distrust of the state, belief in self government, respect for the individual, and a sense of social responsibility. Don't believe me, then check out Kevin Carsons libertarian blog.
Anyways I see Reg has been kind enough to link Le Revue Gauche as a daily read on his website links. I am honoured. Especially when right whingnuts attack the left with comments like 'we are evil' or don't get it when it comes to economics. Such as this comment which was left in response to my article Housing Bubble, Debt Boom
galbraith said...Could you possibly be more economically illiterate? Money not flowing to your beloved social bureaucracies in taxes immediately becomes part of capital markets, providing lower interest rates. But I wouldn't expect the Marxists in your public education schooling to have let you in on that fact. They're too busy trashing the very companies that their own retirement funds are invested in.
This comment is particularly ironic considering most of the data in the article is from such respected capitalist publications as the Financial Post and the Report on Business, as well as clippings from other MSM sources. Facts they call them. And I am accused of being economically illiterate. Because my analysis is based on an understanding of Marxist economics.
Thats the other irony of bveing called economically illiterate, my article Social Insecurity The Phony Pension Plan Crisis has been published online, by autonomist marxists, who also publish right wing economists as well as left wing ones. I think in general the Libertarian Left and the Autonomous Marxist movement has a higher level of tolerance for this kind of debate than the Neo-Cons do.
When Reg first commented here I was expecting another galbraith, since I checked his site and found he was a Blogging Tory. And while we initailly disagreed and still do on Labour Sponsored Investment Funds, he took up the challenge, made good points and we have been having a great dialouge ever since.
Now for those of you that believe that there are two solitudes between the Left and Right...these are the solitudes of dogma. Reg and I will continue our economic debates, or not, but we welcome your contributions. I think its interesting that both of us agree that the basic economic issue in Canada is NOT tax cuts, but capital invesgtment or the lack of it.
For background here are my articles on the economics of daily life and I look forward to your comments Reg.
Jobs Not Tax Cuts
More Income Trust Fallout
Air Canada Profits From Bankruptcy
State Capitalism By Any Other Name
What's good for GM is bad for Workers
Canada's Billion Dollar Rip Off
It's the Labour Theory of Value, stupid
Corporate Canada Plays Hide the Sausage
Corporate Canada is in the Money
We Need a Living Wage
NEO LIBERALISM A FAILURE IN CANADA
Social Insecurity Appendix
Friday, December 02, 2005
Smilin Jack for PM
If Canadians could vote for PM seperate from their MP, Jack would end up smilin as our new PM . Jack is the most popular party leader in English Canada, as all the polls for the past year say including this one today;Jack Layton: 58 per cent favourable; 42 per cent unfavourable; for a net of +16 (two point drop in the past month).
Whats The Buzz?
Apostles;
What's the buzz
Tell me what's a-happening
Jesus Christ Superstar
Well Buzz Hargrove is at it again, with his own politics of Stratgic Voting. This morning he was interviewed on CBC and was supporting the NDP. This afternoon he introduced Paul Martin to CAW delegates and was supporting the NDP in a Liberal Minority Government. His whole fixation is anybody but Harper. Which means as Buzz puts it a Liberal Minority Government and a strong NDP opposition. Now this could be dismissed as RealPolitick, since Buzz is concerned about Southern Ontario and his Autoworkers.
Liberal Leader Paul Martin tried to poach some union votes Friday -- and received a limited endorsement.
Buzz Hargrove, president of the Canadian Auto Workers Union, gave Mr. Martin a warm introduction to his union's leadership conference in Toronto and told reporters afterwards he wants the Liberal leader to remain prime minister after the Jan. 23 election.
The "extreme right-wing" Conservatives need to be kept from winning at all costs, Mr. Hargrove said.
Thus, union members might need to "vote strategically" in ridings where the NDP candidate is a distant third but the Liberals could win with union support, Mr. Hargrove said.
"We want a clear minority government, led by Paul Martin, with as many New Democrats holding the balance of power as possible."
The ideal political outcome, Mr. Hargrove continued, would be a minority Liberal government with the Liberals and NDP coming together to form a "stable coalition or sign an accord" to work together.
"That's in the best interest of Canada," Mr. Hargrove told reporters.
Mr. Hargrove, whose union has been a major financial supporter of the NDP over the years, has also been a bit of a loose cannon.
Asked if he had discussed the strategic voting idea with NDP Leader Jack Layton, Mr. Hargrove snapped: "No. I don't work for Jack."
But the CAW is more than just autoworkers now its a Canada wide union, one which also has ties with other unions like the Alberta Union of Public Employees, rogue unions that do not belong to the House of Labour the CLC and its Provincial Labour Federations. And Dan McLellan charismatic leader of AUPE is a died in the wool Liberal, as I blogged here he was being considered as a candidate in Edmonton for the Federal Liberals but turned them down. Instead he will be throwing his union weight behind Landslide Anne. Dan spoke at the CAW annual gathering and Buzz spoke in Edmonton at the AUPE convention. This little love affair has been going on since the CAW was suspended from the CLC for raiding the same time AUPE was. CAW raided SEIU, AUPE was raiding CUPE. AUPE supported the CAW. Buzz rejoined the House of Labour, and advocated for Dan. Dan saw more money coming into AUPE's coffers and not wanting to share it with the rest of the Labour movement stayed out of the CLC and its affiliates. AUPE is the largest Independent union in Alberta if not Western Canada.
What's the buzz
Tell me what's a-happening
Nor is the Strategic Voting concept new to Buzz he did it last election too. He started his political manouvers after the Provincial NDP government of Bob Ray attacked the unions with its social contract.
Internally it coincided with a rogue local in Oshawa, hmmm thats where all the job losses are now occuring, that revolted against the CAW/NDP alliance and supported the Reform Party. And went further demanding political freedom in the CAW to support the party of their choice. Note to those that are politically naive, Freedom of Choice is a Right Wing Slogan, as is We Are Not Political, We Are Non Paritisan. Wait a few minutes and the right wing will soon appear as being behind these slogans.
The debacle of the 1990-95 Ontario NDP government, opened up a serious rift between the NDP and the trade union bureaucracy, and in the 1995 election many unions chose to withhold aid, or at least downplay their support for the party. Currently the NDP hovers around 11% in the polls and few outside of some wildly optimistic party loyalists believe the party will improve on its 1995 showing. Hargrove then is caught in a bind. On the one hand he desperately wants to see Harris defeated, rightly describing his government as a disaster for working people; however, he has not forgiven the NDP (nor, for that matter, has the NDP asked for forgiveness!). No attempt is made to even conceal the contempt and loathing felt for the arrogant and intellectual Bob Rae in Labour of Love. Torn, Hargrove's alternative then has been to argue for strategic voting: In other words, while the paramount task is to defeat the Harris regime, this may mean in practice, the labour movement throwing their resources behind candidates other than the NDP if the NDP cannot win the riding. In effect they will be throwing their support behind the corporate Liberal party. Unfortunately the discussion around this policy was framed largely in terms of support for strategic voting or the traditional support of the NDP. Those who tried to argue a third policy were given little room for debate. After a long and heated debate at the CAW council in Port Elgin in December of 98, Hargrove's policy was adopted. Despite the fact that many CAW activists believe that most locals will pay only lip service this policy, the net effect will be to drag the CAW rightward and undermine any credibility the union has as a militant organization. Red & Black Notes #8, Spring 1999
Buzz developed his poltical plan of Strategic Voting around these events. But it has been a massive failure politically. And his current bid to be a Kingmaker with his mistaken Anybody But Harper Campaign seems out of step with current election reality. That was yesterdays campaign. But Buzz is hardheaded if nothing else. Unfortunately in politics that can mean disaster as his Strategic Voting campaign against Mike Harris in 1999 proved.
Union leaders themselves are partly to blame for being taken for granted by McGuinty. Canadian Auto Workers president Buzz Hargrove, for example, refuses even now to say a bad word about McGuinty, who has promised to keep in place Mike Harris's pro-scab labour law.
"My campaign is to defeat the Mike Harris government and I don't care who gets elected, they can't be as bad," Hargrove says.
Wow word for word what Buzz said today about Paul Martins Liberals versus Harpers Conservatives.
What's the buzz
Tell me what's a-happening
The NDP's own right wing rump further exasperated this situation over the years by demanding the party distance itself from the Labour movement, a movement that was the party's founding partner. The seperation which is slowly leading to a divorce has been messy. Its ended up with provincial parties passing legislation when they are government that ends union and corporate donations to Political Parties. While claiming its no loss to do this cause the NDP gets little if any corporate support, its object is to break the ties that bind between the NDP and Labour. The result is those ties are broken. As Buzz proves. No use crying about it, the NDP made their bed and now can lay in it.
What's the buzz
Tell me what's a-happening
Of course if Buzz was a politician he wouldn't get elected he thinks out loud too much, and his strategic voting strategy is too out front. Samuel Gompers founder of the American Federation of Labour, was to the right of Buzz but had more political acumen, his was a the politics of pragmatism; you work behind the scenes by rewarding your friends and punishing your enemies. In Buzz's case his poltical agenda is clear, save jobs in Southern Ontario. And to do that he needs both Martin and Layton in power. However its not a politics of pragmatism, nor of the possible, its out in your face Buzz-ego politics that sow dissension on the Left.Even his own Executive Assistant who is running against a Liberal for the NDP says so.
In Parkdale-High Park, Peggy Nash, assistant to Canadian Auto Workers president Buzz Hargrove, is taking another run at the Liberals' Sarmite Bulte. The NDP nomination takes place tomorrow night. Bulte won last year with 19,727 votes to 16,201 for Nash. Conservative Jurij Klufas, also running again, got 7,221. Nash said the NDP was hurt in 2004 by voters going to the Liberals in order to stop the Conservatives. With another minority government a solid possibility this time around, voters are less likely to be scared away from the NDP, she argues.
Opps somebody should tell her about Buzz's plan. And pragmatically it could mean the defeat of some NDP candidates in close races as happened last election, leaving the hated Conservatives to get elected. Thanks Buzz.
What's the buzz
Tell me what's a-happening
Conservative Broadcasting Corporation?
John Bowman the CBC Election Blogger continues to ONLY blog about the Conservatives. His latest blog is about them fixing their security bug on their site, which meant folks couldn't give 'em money. This is news? This is worthy of blogging? I think not. And when he has quoted non Tory blogs, after his bosses noticed his bias, they are about wiat for it....the Conservatives. Hey Mothercorp time to replace JB.
Leaders Debate Deja View
The MSM have conspired to NOT include the Leader of the Green Party into their little club known as the Leaders TV Debate. Again just like last election. The difference is that this time the Green Party got enough votes that they get taxpayers money. So taxpayers should get to hear from them.
Shame! Shame! cry the members of the Progressive Blogging community pounding on their desks. We want to let them in on the debates.
The Green party is being given less attention this election than even last by the MSM and we ain't having it. The CBC places the Green Party under Other on their Web Site while the party earned enough votes to get taxpayer funding while the 'others' listed didn't come close.
If Buzz can get press for calling for Strategic voting, well its time fellow bloggers for us to demand fair play for the Green Party!
Whether ya vote for em or support em or NOT.
And so my fellow blogger, Murky View who is as offended as I over this deliberate censorship, err exclusion of the Greens from the Leaders TV Debate has launched a campaign to email complaints to the MSM.
Go Here and let the protest begin; CALL TO ACTION: Green Party not in Debate
And you can email the TV Debate gang and ask them to let the Greens In: question@electiondebate.ca
Orla has produced an online petition to lobby for the Greens Right to be in the debate. Regardless of whether you support them or vote for them its their right to be heard.
Shame! Shame! cry the members of the Progressive Blogging community pounding on their desks. We want to let them in on the debates.
The Green party is being given less attention this election than even last by the MSM and we ain't having it. The CBC places the Green Party under Other on their Web Site while the party earned enough votes to get taxpayer funding while the 'others' listed didn't come close.
If Buzz can get press for calling for Strategic voting, well its time fellow bloggers for us to demand fair play for the Green Party!
Whether ya vote for em or support em or NOT.
And so my fellow blogger, Murky View who is as offended as I over this deliberate censorship, err exclusion of the Greens from the Leaders TV Debate has launched a campaign to email complaints to the MSM.
Go Here and let the protest begin; CALL TO ACTION: Green Party not in Debate
And you can email the TV Debate gang and ask them to let the Greens In: question@electiondebate.ca
Orla has produced an online petition to lobby for the Greens Right to be in the debate. Regardless of whether you support them or vote for them its their right to be heard.
Dump the Conservative.ca blog
I have sent this little missive to the Conservatives about their election web-blog.
Dear Conservative.ca;
Your election blog is booooooring. Warmed over press releases do not a blog make. If you would like to see what a real blog looks like check out one of your own; Monte Solberg. Now while Mr. Solberg and I do not see eye to eye on practically anything, except perhaps our fondness for Timmys coffee when working, he is a shining example of what your blog should be. If you want a real election blog, dump yours and link to his.
Sincerely,
Eugene Plawiuk
Dear Conservative.ca;
Your election blog is booooooring. Warmed over press releases do not a blog make. If you would like to see what a real blog looks like check out one of your own; Monte Solberg. Now while Mr. Solberg and I do not see eye to eye on practically anything, except perhaps our fondness for Timmys coffee when working, he is a shining example of what your blog should be. If you want a real election blog, dump yours and link to his.
Sincerely,
Eugene Plawiuk
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