Labour Wrap: Marx, Keynes & the policy pendulum

KARL Marx must be spinning in his grave in London’s Highgate cemetery, says Terry Bell in his latest Labour Wrap. Because his name, with an apparent nod to his ideas, was this month quoted approvingly at a conference of institutional investors in New York.

It was a conference addressed by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, who was accompanied by a delegation of business and trade union leaders. And it was Federation of Unions (Fedusa) general secretary, Dennis George, who introduced Marx as part of a call for greater collaboration between workers and business.

However, Bell maintains that the ideas attributed to Karl Marx actually belong to the the reformist economist Maynard Keynes, who is credited with proposing a “gentler, kinder capitalism”. This is now being promoted as the pendulum of economic policy starts to swing away from neo-liberalism and back towards more collaboration and regulation.

According to Bell, there is nothing new in this move; similar developments were promoted in the boom years following World War II. This was before Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in Britain became the figureheads and praise singers for global neo-liberalism.

But this laissez-faire version of capitalism has clearly failed and business leaders, politicians and mainstream economists are now desperately seeking ways out of the resultant mire of joblessness and instability. However, says Bell, they cannot see any alternative to the profit-based system of competition and private ownership and seek merely to reform, not transform, what exists. 

However, he maintains that there are examples, even within the present system of cutthroat competition, that should be looked at and considered; that in countries as diverse as Britain and Argentina, there are examples of successful worker-owned enterprises.

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