Capitalism is Dead: Keynesianism, Marxism and Communism are too!

The Obama administration is making final preparations to sell its stake in the New York bank (Citibank), according to industry and federal sources. At today's prices, the sale would net more than $8 billion, by far the largest profit returned from any firm that accepted bailout funds, and the transaction would be the second-largest stock sale in history.  WSJ

John Kenneth Galbraith was once asked what he thought Nixon meant when he said, "We're all Keynesians now." Galbraith responded, in part, "He probably didn't know himself."  This might have been a joke.

I'm no expert on his views, but here's my attempt to succinctly present Keynesianism: 1) Capital (the means of production) is not the ultimate driver of economic growth, Demand is. 2) Demand can be manipulated by changes in government taxing and spending. 3) Economic growth can (and should) be maintained, if necessary, by such manipulations.

This interpretation of Keynesianism contrasts with that of Capitalism, which, I believe, in an ideologically pure sense holds that privately owned Capital, regulated solely by adherence to hard money rules of profit, loss and bankruptcy, is the driver of economic growth. Within that perspective, "Supply Side-ism" (if you will, a "child" of Capitalism) adopts the latter two elements of Keynesianism- capital can and should be manipulated by government intervention.

Using those definitions, with which, I'm sure, many will disagree, Capitalism is a rarely seen model. Supply Side-ism seems the most prevalent model in the west historically, and, recently throughout the world. US so-called Capitalists at the turn of the last century are, due to protective tariffs, better termed, Industrialists.

Within the past 30 or so years, however, the long time model of Supply Side-ism (sometimes leavened with Keynesianism, more often not) has fallen into disfavor and a new model has become preeminent in the US-Speculationism.

I'll borrow from Friedrich Nietzsche to continue: Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: "I am looking for Capitalism! I am looking for Capitalism!"


As many of those who did not believe in Capitalism were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost it, then? said one. Did it lose its way like a child? said another. Or is it hiding? Is it afraid of us? Has it gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances.


"Where has Capitalism gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed it - you and I. We are its murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Do we not smell anything yet of Capitalism's decomposition? Capitalisms too decompose. Capitalism is dead. Capitalism remains dead. And we have killed it. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto." (with slight modifications)

Nietzsche's madman ranted about God, but I think his form is useful in the current regard. For Nietzsche, God died because man stopped understanding the word (a pun for theologists) and believing in its intended sense. Those who followed after God's death would need some new more powerful (Nietzsche hoped to find something more fundamental, or was he just mocking the attempt, it's hard to tell sometimes) controlling idea or chaos would ensue.

While I feel Nietzsche's argument form seems quite apt for the purpose of this essay, I don't share his faith (if such was the case) that we will find any more powerful, fundamental, controlling idea....and thus chaos ensues.

Consider the opening news item. The government bought a corporation not with the idea of controlling it- i.e., contra right wing talk radio, Obama is no Marxist- but with the idea of profiting from the speculative purchase.

To paraphrase Nixon, "we're all Hedge Fund managers now."

Capitalism is dead. Long live Speculationism.

Speculationism is the belief that economic growth is a function of money flows- not the hard money of decades past but money of indeterminate value which allows its quantity to be increased almost endlessly. Like Keynesianism and Supply Side-ism, note the implicit coordination of the state's power to create money and the providers of economic growth, finance.

The above, as an aside, is but an observation, not a critique. I do, however, find it funny that in the same way US Industrialists, protected behind tariff walls, fancied themselves "capitalists" decades ago, so too do today's Speculationists, protected by the Fed's ability to create money. Who are they kidding?

To wit, the US seems increasingly comfortable allowing its capital to move where it will (and it seems to want to move away) so long as Speculators can profit, not by running the company- i.e. controlling the means of production- but by betting on changes in its "market set" value. In Speculationism the term widget can, in the new textbooks, apply equally well to the things produced and the means of producing them.  The term capital itself has morphed and is no longer a reference to the means of production but rather to the money (sometimes previously referred to as financial capital, but this became repetitious) which, presumably drives it. 

Economic growth in the US is less and less a function of what we make (and how efficiently we make it) and increasingly a function of speculative profit. Thus, argue the Speculationists, the foolishness of Volcker's idea of separating speculative activities from commercial banking: Industry is dying, commerce is a small thing. The business of America is Speculation.

And they are right. Whether this will prove wise in the future remains to be seen, but things don't look good from where I sit.  I think we will miss Capitalism, and the capital (in its old sense) which has moved away.

p.s. Yes I waxed hyperbolic and didn't do justice with my definitions. This is but an essay, a word which means, to try (in this case to throw some ideas into the internet ether)