Anachronistic déjà vu

Unemployment is rising, banks are failing, the debt crisis turns out to be impossible to solve, the Third World is hardest hit by the downturn but the United States isn't far behind...

What is this? A description of the state of the world economy in 2013? Wrong answer, think again! It's the world economy back in...1988. That's when the U.S. Socialist Workers' Party and their co-thinkers around the world adopted the "Action Program to Confront the Coming Economic Crisis". Reading the introduction was an almost bizarre experience. Talk about déjà vu. But then, the present world economic system (a.k.a. capitalism) does periodically plunge itself into crisis. On *that* score, at least, Ol' Karl Marx was right. In fact, the SWP's action program is based on Trotsky's "Transitional Program", adopted already in 1938!

But what about the demands in the program? How well do they stand up today? In my opinion, SWP's program is a rather typical left-wing radical program, bordering on leftist populism and cornucopianism. The three main slogans are: cancel the Third World debt, a six-hour working day with no loss in pay, affirmative action (quotas) for women, Blacks and Chicanos. Other demands include unemployment benefits the size of an average working-class wage, automatic pay-rises to keep up with inflation, a federal minimum wage, and free immigration.

The most obvious objection that comes to mind is that the Action Program is grossly unrealistic. Who would pay for all these far-reaching reforms? Where should the money come from? The SWP actually admitted when I challenged them on this point that the program isn't meant to be "realistic". The demands are necessary to "unite the working class in its fightback". The question of where the money should come from is politically irrelevant. SWP's presidential candidate in 1988 and 1992, James Warren, frankly told me (and an entire public meeting!) that he couldn't care less where the federal government finds the money: "Hell, they can borrow the money". They can do...what?! My first lesson in left-wing populism. In all fairness to brother Warren, my own "solution" to the problem wasn't very thought-out either, but that's for another time... ;-)

Of course, the SWP could raise seemingly impossible demands in the belief that a socialist transformation of society would lead to immense economic growth (certainly in the United States), thereby making it possible to find the money, after all. At least I think that was their belief. However, many other left-wing groups really *did* believe that the money were around for the plucking (without borrowing)! This was a very common position on the Swedish left during the 1980's. It was based on the ideas of a maverick Keynesian economist, Sven Grassman, who staunchly denied that there was an economic crisis in Sweden.

Today, with peak oil and climate change, both positions are difficult to defend. There really is a crisis, and there really isn't enough money. Nor is it very likely that socialism could generate enough economic growth to save the day in the end, even assuming that socialism would be more efficient than capitalism. The limits to growth are physical. If the pipelines are empty, it doesn't matter who owns them...

Curiously, some of the demands in the Action Program could be used even today, not because they are particularly radical and forward-pointing, but rather because they are "conservative". How ironic! The demand for a six-hour working day is really a demand to share the *available* jobs equally. It's not a way to create *new* jobs - it only looks that way in the ledgers. In the same way, the demand for affirmative action is a demand to give women and minorities a fair share of the pie - the present pie, which may very well be shrinking. Even the ultra-radical demand to repudiate all debts is really a kind of "conservative" crisis measure which simply restores the status quo as it looked like before the lending and borrowing got out of hand.

I wouldn't be too surprised if some governments (not necessarily just left-wing governments) would implement demands of this kind in the future, wholly or in part, as a kind of "scarcity industrialism" stop gap measures. Nor would I be surprised if they would be touted as "solutions to the crisis" in good ol' populist manner. (If that's what it takes to sell them, no problemo. Where do I sign up?) However, I doubt very much that there will be full unemployment benefits, automatic wage rises to compensate for inflation, open borders, or "no loss in pay" for the shorter workweek.

"Action Program to Confront the Coming Economic Crisis" therefore sounds both eerily familiar, despite being 25 years old, and yet also strangely anachronistic. The coming crises will probably be confronted by very different action programs...