Getting all Tied Up.

(right-click to open a larger image in a separate tab)

The big and tiresome MMT versus everybody else punch-up seems to be abating. Finally. Readers may guess the whole thing has left me unimpressed.

But my expectations about the part of the debate involving mainstream economists were low to begin with, so their bit in the debate didn’t surprise me. What surprised me, in the worst possible way, was how awful the MMT/Marxists debate was.

Commenting recently on that, Prof. Bill Mitchell, one of MMT founders, writes that Marxists are getting all tied up on MMT.

As both a Marxist and a sort of MMT sympathiser, I reached the conclusion he is right, unfortunately. But there’s more to that.

That’s why I decided to write this. It wasn’t a decision taken lightly and I suspect I won’t be making new friends in either side. In my opinion, Paul Mason’s “Risks Are ‘a Thing’ and so is the Death of Capitalism” (April 27, Medium), without falling in the gratuitous nastiness I witnessed in both Marxists and MMTers, illustrates that.

I start today a series considering his article.

----------

Mason opens his piece referring to the political inconvenience he sees in “hitching” the American Green New Deal -- which he supports -- to MMT ahead of the 2020 US elections. That shall be the focus of this post.

Our own Australian federal elections could be considered a dress rehearsal for next year American elections, as the Australian Labor Party has included in its platform strong redistributive measures and a more decided effort to control climate change, much like the Democratic Socialists of America intend to do.

Here our unnamed version of the GND is being the target of intense scaremongering from the ruling COALition. But our “GND” has not been hitched to MMT. Instead, it has been premised on raising taxes to pay for the expenses, much to Bill Mitchell’s disapproval.

Based on local experience, to me it’s unclear whether hitching the GND to MMT in the US shall hinder or not. Would a reference to MMT (and a consequent relaxation of “fiscal rectitude”) have weakened Labor’s position or strengthened it?

The organised labour movement, represented locally by the Australian Council of Trade Unions, is strongly behind the Labor campaign, but neither its “GND” component, nor “fiscal rectitude” seem to be determinant. Instead ACTU spokespeople constantly mention as motivation the wage increases Labor promised. The ACTU militancy has the COALition hyperventilating.

Moreover, I’ve only heard of a union branch moving openly against Labor’s climate change action proposals: the CFMEU-QLD (union covering miners). That had nothing to do with large economic concerns (fears of inflation or recession), but with the immediate need for well-paying jobs (which Indian coal mining giant Adani -- surprise, surprise -- has promised to deliver in spades) in a region with high unemployment. (See also)

In Australia MMT would have likely attracted unanimous condemnation from economists, as it did in the US; but the COALition didn’t need that to mount an as strong as fraudulent scare campaign targeting … the upper middle-class and wealthy retirees who see themselves as “battlers”. In fact, the pretext here has been precisely the increased taxation “fiscal rectitude” entails.

(source, image courtesy of George “Nasty Porky Pig” Christensen)

----------

Next posts in this series shall dwell on matters more substantial to Marxists.