3人の経済学者

Robert Skidelsky “Creative destruction: our economic crisis was wholly predictable” http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2013/05/creative-destruction-our-economic-crisis-was-wholly-predictable


シュンペーター的なタイトルだが、資本主義の危機に対する3人の経済学者――マルクス、ホブソン、ケインズ――の説明。「閉鎖経済」篇と(対外貿易を考慮した)「開放経済」篇。
曰く、


Keynes explained that it was uncertainty that causes economies to crash. Hobson explained how unequal income distribution makes crises more likely and recoveries more difficult. Marx explained that this inequality is inherent in the power structure of the capitalist system. All have their part to play in explaining the crisis and collapse of 2008.
また〈帝国主義〉論(ホブソン/レーニン)の今日的レリヴァンス;

The intuitions of Hobson and Lenin also speak to our present situation. Hobson’s notion of a structural imbalance between production and consumption, leading to “excess saving” that requires a foreign vent, surely applies to China. Lenin’s idea that the export of capital is required to overcome periodic crises of profitability in the advanced capitalist nations helps explain the “offshoring” of manufacturing (and service) jobs to China and east Asia.
グローバル化」を巡って;

Globalisation was business’s “open” economy answer to the problem of domestic underconsumption identified by Hobson and the declining rate of profit predicted by Marx. Hobson’s oversaving analysis best explains China’s reliance on export-led growth, but it also sheds light on western countries’ reliance on access to cheap credit to maintain the stagnating purchasing power of what is now called “the squeezed middle class”. Analysis in terms of the declining rate of profit is good at explaining the accelerated transfer of productive capacity to east Asia. And by completing the destruction of the Keynesian state, globalisation has handed our future to finance, which Keynes identified as the most uncertain, least stable element in the economic structure.
Dani Rodrik*1の「政治的トリレンマ」論;

According to the Harvard economist Dani Rodrik, we face a “political trilemma”: press on with globalisation and restrict democracy to improve economic efficiency, limit globalisation in the name of democracy, or globalise democracy.

The first option will be politically intolerable for large democracies of the west and the third is pie in the sky, which leaves the second. It is time to call a halt to the rush towards globalisation and take stock.

At the minimum, there needs to be a global bargain between the US and China and a regional bargain between Germany and its partners in the eurozone on their respective “rules of the road”, which should aim to prevent the continuing current account imbalances. This is the problem that Keynes’s clearing union was designed to overcome but which the Bretton Woods system failed to solve.

Yet Rodrik’s “trilemma” does not dig deep enough. It assumes that globalisation would be best if it could be made to work equitably. But global economic integration, in the absence of domestic policies to maintain full employment, create a broad base for consumption in all countries and reduce hours of work in the rich countries, is bound to be destructive for the reasons Keynes gave in 1936: it forces countries into export-led solutions to domestic problems which deny democratic control and are bound to bring them into conflict. Closed economy problems identified by Keynes, Hobson and Marx must be overcome if the open economy is to work harmoniously.

ホブソンって、レーニン*2に先立って「帝国主義」という概念を使った人というくらいのイメージしかないのだが、マルクスケインズと肩を並べるべき存在だったのか。
帝国主義―資本主義の最高の段階としての (岩波文庫 白 134-1)

帝国主義―資本主義の最高の段階としての (岩波文庫 白 134-1)

工学的

橋下徹の「従軍慰安婦」発言*1からかなり日数が経ってしまった。その間に様々なことがあった。
さてその橋下発言を東浩紀*2が援護したということがあった*3。東の援護射撃は色々な人が論じている*4。或る人が東の発想を「工学的」と評していた。或る種の最適化(optimization)を目指そうとするのだが、それは決定的なところで〈人権〉とか〈尊厳〉といった原理と衝突してしまう、云々。たしかに、以前から、東の〈社会〉*5に対する態度に、自らはシステムの外側にいて最適化を目指して微調整をするという意味での工学的態度を感じてはいた*6。そして、こいつはアレンティアンにはなれないだろうなと思っていた。また或る意味で〈マルクス主義者〉なのかも知れない。アレントからすれば、マルクスの誤りのひとつは「政治」或いは「歴史」をworkの対象として取り違えてしまったことだからだ。『人間の条件』へのMargaret Canovanの序文から引用;


To understand political action as making something is in Arendt's view a dangerous mistake. Making―the activity she calls work--is something a craftman does by forcing raw material to conform to his model. The raw material has no say in the process, and neither do human beings cast as raw material for an attempt to create a new society or make history. Talk of “Man” making his own history is misleading, for (as Arendt continually reminds us) there is no such person: “men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world.” To conceive of politics as making is to ignore human plurality in theory and coerce individuals in practice. Nonetheless, Arendt found thsat Marx had inherited this particular misconception of politics from the great tradition of Western political thought. Ever since Plato turned his back on the Athenian democracy and set out his scheme for an ideal city, political philosophers had been writing about politics in a way that systematically igonored the most salient political features of human beings―that they are plural, that each of them is capable of new perspectives and new actions, and that they will not fit a tidy, predictable model unless these political capacities are crushed. One of Arendt's main purposes in The Human Condition is therefore to challenge the entire tradition of political philosophy by recovering and bringing to light these neglected human capacities.
But this critique of political philosophy is not the only grand theme in the book that stems from her reflections on Marx. For although Marx spoke of making, using the terminology of craftmanship, Arendt claims that he actually understood history in terms of processes of production and consumption much closer to animal life―labor, in fact. His vision of human history as a predictable process is a story not of unique, mortal individuals but of the collective life-process of a species. While he was in Arendt's view quite wrong to suppose that this process could lead through revolution to “the realm of freedom,” she was struck by his picture of individuality submerged in the collective life of a human species, devoted to production and consumption and moving inexorably on its way. She found this a revealing representation of modern society, in which economic concerns have come to dominate both politics and human self-consciousness. (…) (pp.xi-xiii)
The Human Condition

The Human Condition

東浩紀の橋下擁護というのは(別の局面における)池田信夫の橋下擁護*7とパラレルなのではないか。

*1:See http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20130514/1368501019

*2:See also http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20060121/1137869912 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20060124/1138069211 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20080131/1201796826 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20081031/1225480601 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20081106/1225988138 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20081120/1227201998 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20081213/1229142951 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20090107/1231344604 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20090107/1231344604 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20090130/1233251234 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20090607/1244348445 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20090608/1244479972 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20090911/1252642373 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20100315/1268585636 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20100906/1283806461 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20100912/1284330521 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20101209/1291915158 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20101213/1292243637 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20110506/1304625968 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20110626/1309058098 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20110831/1314807916 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20120504/1336102452 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20120508/1336486987 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20120529/1338312298

*3:See http://matome.naver.jp/odai/2136846242720908101

*4:See eg. http://d.hatena.ne.jp/kamiyakenkyujo/20130514/1368458303 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/s3731127306/20130513/1368401483 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Apeman/20130514/p1 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Dr-Seton/20130522/1369232132

*5:これは社会学的な意味における社会。

*6:ドライヴァーを回して螺旋を締めたり緩めたりする、ラヂオのダイアルを左右に行ったり来たりさせながら周波数を合わせるとか、そんなイメージ。

*7:See http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20130423/1366683831