On the Problem of Disciples

Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. And falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" Acts of the Apostles 9:3&4

Disciples have long been a problematic lot. Blame it on Paul maybe, for one wonders how you can possibly square his teachings with those of the Christ. His head may have hit the road to Damascus a little too hard, or you might blame it on all his wandering with the Greeks. And why not? The Greeks have a lot to answer for, remember, the Greeks were the first of the great schools of Eastern thought to infect the Romans. A century after having conquered Greece, many Romans were lamenting the decadence of "eastern" thoughts and ways. Cato would complain bitterly that Romans had adopted the Greek practice of sitting at the assembly and theater -- a people do not conquer the known world sitting on their rumps! A century later, Paul wandered the old Greek cities, picking up lord knows what, well, one thing for sure, too much Platonism. Such is the problem of disciples.

In our day, some of the most problematic disciples are those of John Maynard Keynes. Thinking they uphold the teachings of their master, the "neo-Keynesians" increasingly threaten to destroy Mr. Keynes' valuable legacy. The biggest problem for the neo-Keynesians is this is not the 1930s, the world, particularly the United States is a far different place. It is simply irrefutable fact that over the last several decades, growth rates in the US, "old" Europe, and Japan have lessened compared to the decades immediately following World War II. These economies are not going to simply grow out of more and more debt. More importantly, the massive debt accrued in the last couple decades pointed to tremendous underlying structural problems, and this cannot be ignored, in fact addressing them are the essential solutions.

In the cries of the neo-Keynesians there is far too little critique of what got us to this point. Let's take jobs as a good example. Amongst the most prestigious neo-Keynesians, those who write, appear, or are quoted in our illustrious newspapers and television shows, advocate the need to create jobs. Many are the same people, who at the time capitulating to the neo-liberalism of the past several decades, were silent, or actively advocated the deindustrialization of America and the creation of low paying servant jobs across the American landscape. Are these the new jobs they now want to create? If so, who advocates the harsher hair-shirt brothers and sisters, the neo-liberal budget cutters, or the neo-Keynesian advocates of jobs at any wage and perpetual debt?

The dirty, little, not so secret foundation of corporate globalization was simple labor arbitrage, searching the globe for ever cheaper labor, and then selling back into the increasingly hollowed out industrial economies for greater profit. Many of the neo-Keynesians of the last three decades were cheerleaders for corporate globalization, while once the so-called party of Keynes, the Democrats under the leadership of the Clintons et al, paved the way for Chinese goods and the creation of the United States of Walmart. How many good paying jobs and small business were lost without a peep from those now crying for more debt and jobs? Instead of Chinese tariffs wouldn't a better response be the breaking up of Walmart into ten thousand pieces?

Corporate globalization as labor arbitrage was always only a short-term profit maker. It would eventually lose out to rising wages in the new industrial nations and the eventual collapse of the old consumer societies under the weight of debt. But more importantly, the seeking of labor arbitrage across the planet, was really an attempt to keep a step in front of automation. As Marshall McLuhan stated four decades ago, "When the circuit learns your job, what are you going to do?" We are now at the point when even the cheapest of labor, particularly when adding the increasing cost of oil for transport, will have a difficult time competing with automation -- in short, the end of the industrial economy as we know it.

Keynes to his great credit, from the publishing of his Economic Consequences of the Peace, which first gave him renown and then ten years later in Economic Possibilities of Our Grandchildren, talked about industrial capitalism being a short transitory phase of human history, that in the not too distant future would be transcended. Unfortunately, his disciples enshrined or more accurately enchained humanity to industrial capital models. In the 1930, Economic Possibilities of Our Grandchildren, Keynes thought, with the caveats of war and population growth, people a century later would have at most a fifteen-hour work week, in hindsight, underestimating the cultural strength of industrial capital. However, he did not worship this culture, but bore it a grudging respect, unlike his disciples, whose chants of "more debt" and "more jobs" are hollowed devotionals to a dead epistemology, holding few solutions to the challenges before us.