Re: [ox-en] Supply-side vs. Demand-side
- From: Seth Johnson <seth.johnson RealMeasures.dyndns.org>
- Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 07:39:19 -0400
Basically I am referring to the political philosophy which articulates
itself as based on "supply-side economics" as compared to the ostensible
alternative, "demand-side economics."
As Reagan put it:
Privatize and deregulate because that's "the American way" and America is a
moral exemplar
vs.
Tax-and-spend, bloated bureaucracy, "permissive liberalism" with a "hidden
agenda," etc.
All very surfacey, detached from analysis of the relations of production --
but articulated with reference to the supposed basis for determination of
"value" under capitalism: supply and demand. And articulated in such a way
that either you have to (say, to try to appear moderate), automatically cast
yourself on the "demand-side" pole of the opposition, or you have to go
below supply and demand (say, to have a solid basis for refuting the
opposition as such) and automatically cast yourself as "unAmerican." It's a
form of red-baiting, actually.
Seth
Graham Seaman wrote:
On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, Seth Johnson wrote:
Heh.
I guess not . . .
Looks like you're right. I certainly didn't understand the question.
Problem's this sentence:
'the hegemony for the last twenty years seems unique (to me) in the
respect that it has taken the analysis of political philosophy as far
down as it can possibly go'
What hegemony? Where does this hegemony analyse political philosophy?
Are you talking about the 'real world', or analyses of it? If so, could we
have at least one reference so we can try to work out what you're pointing
at?
best
Graham
>
:-)
Seth
Seth Johnson wrote:
I wonder whether anybody here might have considered the phenomenon that the
hegemony for the last twenty years seems unique (to me) in the respect that
it has taken the analysis of political philosophy as far down as it can
possibly go -- i.e. to the basis for determination of price in capitalism,
below which one can only go to classical labor value theory in order to
offer effective criticism. The rationale is crafted with respect to the
fundamental basis for "value" under capitalism, not with respect to numerous
other theoretical approaches operating on the basis of other, less central,
characteristics of the capitalist economic model.
Does this very schematic impression make any sense to the dyed-in-the-wool
Marx folks? And if so, what do you think it implies?
I have entertained the notion on occasion that, having bottomed out this
way, the only way we can go forward, without encountering unavoidable
contradictions at every turn, might now be that society will have to express
the pertinence of socially-necessary average labor time in economic theory.
Free software connects up with this consideration from the standpoint that
it might very well be that the supply-side rationale was crafted within the
context of the major impact that information technology was soon to bring to
things. One might trace this back to the establishment of WIPO, or to a
more recent moment that signals numerous confluent events -- the passage of
Bayh-Dole in America, the beginning of the GPL, and the expression of the
Reagan-era version of supply-side economics, all in the early 1980's.
Seth Johnson
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