"A spectre is haunting the treasuries and central banks of the West - the spectre of secular stagnation. What if there is no sustainable recovery of the economic slump of 2008-2013? What if the sources of economic growth have dried up - not temporarily, but permanently?" - preeminent Keynes scholar and economic historian Robert Skidelsky, "Secular Stagnation and the Road to Full Investment," Social Europe Journal, May 22, 2014 Both Karl Marx and J.M. Keynes concluded that the trajectory of capitalist development placed a radically emancipatory possibility on the political-economic agenda.
For the first time in modern history work time could be dramatically reduced with no reduction in our standard of living. In fact, if living standards are measured not merely by money wages but also by increased leisure, i.e. increased time available to develop and exercise our broad range of gratifying capabilities, the reduction in work time would elevate our standard of living to a degree hitherto unimaginable.
In what follows we'll see that less work with higher wages is at this historical juncture not merely economically possible, but desirable as the only practical alternative to the secular stagnation grimly forecast with much flurry by such luminaries as Paul Krugman, Larry Summers and Robert J. Gordon, and by the IMF in its April 2014 World Economic Outlook. Both Marx and Keynes saw their prescriptions as not merely a "better idea," but as the alternative to severe ongoing crisis, understood as dramatic reductions in real production, employment and wages.
The stakes are very high; even the mainstream it pricking up its ears. Krugman recently referred to "a growing consensus among economists that much of the damage to the economy is permanent, that we'll never get back to our old path of growth." ("Does He Pass the Test?,
The New York Review, July 10, 2014)
The secular stagnation portended is defined by Krugman as "a persistent state in which a depressed economy is the norm,with episodes of full employment few and far between." ("A Permanent Slump?"
The New York Times, November 17, 2013) Austerity hell forever.
There is an alternative, and the only one that is capable of addressing a situation in which profits and economic growth can no longer be achieved by investing in real production and hiring workers. An overripe, industrially saturated economy can be made into one that can deliver on capitalism's false promises. All workers can be employed, but for far fewer hours, and a just living wage can be provided to all. This is the arrangement recommended by Marx and Keynes. Keynes the Enlightenment liberal imagined that this could be accomplished by rational persuasion within the framework of a democratic capitalist economy. Marx knew better. Capitalism's property relations, along with its insatiable drive for increased profits, are incompatible with the desired prescription.
Comment: The real threat is not from 'over there' it is from 'out there' - incoming celestial bodies - comets, meteor/fireballs; and the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) which they generate.
Pierre Lescaudron discusses this in Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection: Victor Clube wrote, perhaps prophetically, in The Hazard to Civilization from Fireballs and Comets: