Boomers: The Evil Generation!

[Lexicus]

I'm curious what you think it means.

I think it means you're saying that Volcker's interest rate hike and the resulting recession was a good thing? I'm not 100% sure though because it also reads as if you're being sarcastic about the "good economy we enjoyed for the next 2 decades."

 

[civvver]

15 years ago I had 100s of resumes for each open position and could be picky and low ball away. Now there are almost more openings then people to take them and I can't be as choosy and must offer more money. I would think the current crop of graduates would appreciate this situation. (but will admit we're often looking for more experience. )

The job market is awesome, interest rates are at historic lows and the housing market still hasn't quite returned to peak 2004-2006, but people still complain. I don't get it. Though a couple years ago were better, it's still a great time to be a consumer and at the beginning of your career.

 

[metalhead]

I think it means you're saying that Volcker's interest rate hike and the resulting recession was a good thing? I'm not 100% sure though because it also reads as if you're being sarcastic about the "good economy we enjoyed for the next 2 decades."

It was a necessary thing, given that the only real alternative - socialist revolution - was not in the cards. I don't know how that equates with me peddling any particular economic ideas. It's simply what happened. The effects were devastating to millions of workers and several industries, but that's capitalism for you. Peoples' well being is less important than wealth and, uh, not being socialists.

But even given that, Reagan was also taking the opportunity to popularize the Welfare Queen, so that the people whose livelihoods were sacrificed also got to be demonized so that government wouldn't have to be responsible for mitigating the negative consequences. This disgusting behavior led Americans to . . . [checks notes] re-elect Reagan in a historic landslide.

 

[Lexicus]

It was a necessary thing,

Well, that makes a lot of the stuff you've said in this thread pretty gosh-darn ironic, considering that you're clearly one of those people who support (or accept as necessary, which amounts to the same thing) the policy measures that have rendered it impossible to attain the standard of living enjoyed by the Boomers and their parents.

 

[metalhead]

Well, that makes a lot of the stuff you've said in this thread pretty gosh-darn ironic, considering that you're clearly one of those people who support (or accept as necessary, which amounts to the same thing) the policy measures that have rendered it impossible to attain the standard of living enjoyed by the Boomers and their parents.

I have to admit I'm rather flummoxed at being told by a Marxist that observing the reality that capitalism necessitates terrible outcomes is the same thing as supporting the continuation of it.

 

[Lexicus]

Well, let's start with the false assumption that the two choices on the table were some kind of Marxist revolution or a sharp interest rate hike.

 

[metalhead]

Well, let's start with the false assumption that the two choices on the table were some kind of Marxist revolution or a sharp interest rate hike.

This is pretty persuasive on the matter, to me.

In volume III of “Capital,” Marx wrote: “For the sake of a few millions of money many millions of commodities must therefore be sacrificed. This is inevitable under capitalist production and constitutes one of its beauties.”

In other words, the Bank of England, in order to save a few millions in gold in its vaults, had to sacrifice much of the wealth of the nation. And Marx described this ironically as one of the “beauties” of the capitalist system.

The founder of scientific socialism, however, did not denounce the Bank of England for doing this in the way U.S. progressives denounced Paul Volcker for doing exactly the same thing. Instead, Marx was using the irony that was characteristic of him to explain how under the capitalist mode of production the Bank of England had no real choice. And that as long as the capitalist system lasted, so would this “beauty”—along with the other “beauties” of the capitalist system.

Unlike Marx, the Keynesian economists—many no doubt well-meaning reformers—believed that there must be a way of removing this “beauty” from capitalist system. But the crises of the 1970s—even more than the super-crisis of 1929-33 and even than the crisis of 2007-09—demonstrate the need to periodically sacrifice the wealth of the nation—and the lives of the workers—in order to save the gold bars in the vaults of the central banks, or the gold value of the currency under a paper money system.

It is a built-in feature of the capitalist system. You cannot get rid of this necessary “beauty” without the transformation of the capitalist system into socialism. This was the conclusion of the greatest economic scientist of all times, Karl Marx. And Marx’s finding was confirmed in practice by the crisis of the 1970s and its climax—the “Volcker shock.”

Therefore, the “real barbarous relic” isn’t the role of gold within the capitalist monetary system, as Keynes claimed. Nor is gold the cross that weighs down on the backs of labor as the sliver-tongued William Jennings Bryan proclaimed. The real “barbarous relic,” the “cross” that weighs down on the backs of all those who work, is the capitalist system itself.

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Under the conditions prevailing in 1979—that is, a crisis of overproduction that had long been prevented from coming to a climax as a result of repeated “Keynesian” interventions in the economy—the only alternative to the Volcker shock was to end the contradiction between the socialization of the process of production and the private appropriation of the product, which is the real cause of the periodic crises of overproduction.

In other words, the only alternative to the Volcker shock—and the “monetarist” policies in Britain presided over by Margaret Thatcher and similar policies in other capitalist countries—would have been a socialist revolution.

However, no economic crisis, no matter how severe, can bring about a socialist revolution automatically. That was true during the super-crisis of 1929-33, it was true during the 1970s, and it is true today. The socialist transformation of society must be carried out as a conscious act of liberation by the working class. For many reasons that are far beyond the scope of these posts, neither the U.S. working class nor the global working class in 1979 was anywhere near the level of organization and class consciousness that would have been necessary to carry out such a revolution.

Given this political reality—and of course our job as Marxists is to change this political reality—there really was no alternative to the Volcker shock. Many well-meaning liberals and progressives who want to avoid the dangers of revolutions and the excesses that often accompany them—and unfortunately many Marxists—have described Volcker’s policies as a mistake.

According to them, Volcker and the Federal Reserve System should have expanded the quantity of token money to the extent that was necessary to prevent the already extremely high interest rates of August 1979 from rising further. This they claim would have avoided the Volcker shock.

Exactly how the collapse of the dollar and the other capitalist currencies would have been avoided is something they fail to explain. If the progressives are correct, then Paul Volcker is one of the greatest criminals in history. Yet far from being treated as a criminal, he is serving in the current liberal Democratic administration, and has always been a member of the Democratic Party, the party supported by virtually all American liberals and progressives.

If we claim Paul Volcker made a “mistake” when he allowed interest rates to rise as high as they did, what we are really doing is to cover up the realities of the capitalist system. This is, of course, exactly what the professional bourgeois economists are paid to do, whether they are Austrians, traditional neoclassical marginalists, Keynesians, or Friedmanites.

However when Marxists prettify the capitalist system—through the failure to fully appreciate and understand the economic discoveries of Marx—we are betraying our mission. Our mission is to tell the truth about the capitalist system, no matter how ugly this truth is. And the truth about capitalism is very ugly indeed!

The Volcker shock was therefore no mistake. It was necessary at the time in order to maintain the capitalist system of exploitation of wage labor in the long run. The “masters of the universe” on Wall Street know this full well, which is why they respect Paul Volcker, and this is why he is today a senior advisor to President Obama.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I think you're both missing the point a little....It's that politicians evidently act on the belief that the public tend to regard distinctions of class as basically unfair or unjust, whether or not they're particularly enthusiastic about any socialist program....

I'm thinking about what you said.

The job market is awesome, interest rates are at historic lows and the housing market still hasn't quite returned to peak 2004-2006, but people still complain. I don't get it. Though a couple years ago were better, it's still a great time to be a consumer and at the beginning of your career.

I would agree, but the problem is that for a large portion of working people real wages had not increased for many years. Buying power has not kept up in some key cost areas: housing and education. If you don't have college debt, that is a huge boost. If you want to live in an "in demand" city, that will be expensive. It has always been that way, but now all the lower cost options are farther away.

 

[Farm Boy]

I'm seeing more and more ads about how to "invest in real estate" again. I'd call that a warning sign, generally speaking. The speculators are getting heavy on those trying to live.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I'm seeing more and more ads about how to "invest in real estate" again. I'd call that a warning sign, generally speaking. The speculators are getting heavy on those trying to live.

I think much of that is the idea that "they" can sell a quick fix to those boomers who have no savings. My first memories of this kind of thing was the "buy land in Florida" deals from the 50s.

 

[Lexicus]

In other words, the only alternative to the Volcker shock—and the “monetarist” policies in Britain presided over by Margaret Thatcher and similar policies in other capitalist countries—would have been a socialist revolution.

Again, there were other alternatives on the table at the time that did not involve socialist revolution. All of them did involve the socialization of production to one degree or another, but I believe the author of the piece is betraying his own commitment to a specific model of revolutionary politics in this sentence.
And indeed this suspicion is confirmed here:

The socialist transformation of society must be carried out as a conscious act of liberation by the working class. For many reasons that are far beyond the scope of these posts, neither the U.S. working class nor the global working class in 1979 was anywhere near the level of organization and class consciousness that would have been necessary to carry out such a revolution.

What the real alternative plans for dealing with the inflationary crisis had in common was that they made moves toward democratizing the workplace. And while not a "revolution" according to the vanguardist/Leninist definition of such, this idea was certainly viewed as tantamount to a revolution by the capitalists.

However, the general point of the piece, that the Volcker shock was necessary to sustain the existing model of captalist production, and that the immiseration of the working class in involuntary unemployment (and the corollary growth of precarious employment, employment on terms that cannot support existence, etc.) was the point, not a mistake, is certainly correct.

 

[metalhead]

Well, class consciousness leading to revolution, in American terms, could mean organizing to elect people who would support socializing industries over capitalist exploitation, even if he does speak in more explicitly revolutionary terms. Such an idea does seem revolutionary, when you consider we have what, a half dozen or so DSAs in Congress, none of whom talks about socializing production, yet all of whom stoke immense fear in their opposition at the thought of even tepid socialist reform.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Well, class consciousness leading to revolution, in American terms, could mean organizing to elect people who would support socializing industries over capitalist exploitation, even if he does speak in more explicitly revolutionary terms. Such an idea does seem revolutionary, when you consider we have what, a half dozen or so DSAs in Congress, none of whom talks about socializing production, yet all of whom stoke immense fear in their opposition at the thought of even tepid socialist reform.

What are your top 5 best examples of the success of socializing industry?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Well, that makes a lot of the stuff you've said in this thread pretty gosh-darn ironic, considering that you're clearly one of those people who support (or accept as necessary, which amounts to the same thing) the policy measures that have rendered it impossible to attain the standard of living enjoyed by the Boomers and their parents.

Nice to see someone finally add "and their parents," since the parents of the boomers not only enjoyed an IMMENSELY superior standard of living as compared to the boomers, but are the ones who actually instituted the whole rainbow of policies that punish the young worker in favor of the elderly retired.

Meanwhile...there is a huge difference between "accept as necessary" and "acknowledge as history." Everyone who curses Bill Clinton for having steered the Democratic party away from the course of powerful progressive policy they wish that he had taken and Obama for failing to put it back on the 'right path' should be looking at all the great advances the progressive movement made under McGovern and Dukakis. No matter how obvious it is to progressives that they are totally right about everything, their heroes were not going to get elected in the seventies, eighties, or nineties...and might be the only way to give Trump a second term.

 

[Birdjaguar]

From Huffington Post today:

https://www.huffpost.com/highline/article/capitalist-takeover-college/

All about the cost of college degrees.

 

[Farm Boy]

I think much of that is the idea that "they" can sell a quick fix to those boomers who have no savings. My first memories of this kind of thing was the "buy land in Florida" deals from the 50s.

Ah, this is reminding more of flipping houses in the aughts. But let's hope you're right.

If younger working families are getting shoved back out into regional cities(as a balance, it's always a thing that happens) because the hotspots are calcified and increasingly useless(for the theoretical intended purpose), the siphoning moves too, right?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Everyone....should be looking at all the great advances the progressive movement made under McGovern and Dukakis.

Wait wait wait wait. I know I was busy raising kids and earning a living in the 70s and 80s, but did I entirely miss 16 years of presidential history?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Wait wait wait wait. I know I was busy raising kids and earning a living in the 70s and 80s, but did I entirely miss 16 years of presidential history?

No. That was kind of the point. Clinton's remaking of the Democratic party, while bemoaned by the progressives, is what interrupted the absolute lock that the GOP had on the white house.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Ah, this is reminding more of flipping houses in the aughts. But let's hope you're right.

If younger working families are getting shoved back out into regional cities(as a balance, it's always a thing that happens) because the hotspots are calcified and increasingly useless(for the theoretical intended purpose), the siphoning moves too, right?

yes, I do think that most of today's get rich in real estate is just more of what has been going on for decades. Pay me to teach you how to get rich even though I have never used my technique to get rich.

It is the demand in hot spot cities that is the driving force, not calcification or uselessness.

 

[Lexicus]

No matter how obvious it is to progressives that they are totally right about everything, their heroes were not going to get elected in the seventies, eighties, or nineties...and might be the only way to give Trump a second term.

Dukakis and McGovern aren't my heroes.

Clinton's remaking of the Democratic party, while bemoaned by the progressives, is what interrupted the absolute lock that the GOP had on the white house.

Tbh in retrospect I'd rather have just had Bush and Dole in there. The policy outcomes couldn't have been much worse, and then the country's politics wouldn't have been so screwed up by Democrats spending eight years supporting and defending right-wing crap.