Hans G. Despain
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| Volume 67, Issue 04 (September) |
Paul M. Sweezy escreveu em 1982, “tenho a impressão de que a profissão econômica ainda não começou a retomar o debate sobre a estagnação que foi tão abruptamente interrompido pela eclosão da Segunda Guerra Mundial.” Trinta anos depois, as coisas parecem ter mudado. O ex-secretário do Tesouro dos EUA, Larry Summers, chocou os economistas com suas observações sobre a “estagnação” na IMF Research Conference em novembro de 2013, e mais tarde ele publicou essas ideias no Financial Times e no Business Economics.1
Os comentários e artigos de Summers foram seguidos por uma explosão de debates sobre a "estagnação secular" — um termo comumente associado ao trabalho de Alvin Hansen das décadas de 1930 a 1950, e frequentemente empregado na Monthly Review para explicar os desenvolvimentos nas economias avançadas das décadas de 1970 ao início dos anos 2000.2 A estagnação secular pode ser definida como a tendência à estagnação de longo prazo (ou secular) no processo de acumulação privada da economia capitalista, manifestada no aumento do desemprego e do excesso de capacidade e na desaceleração do crescimento econômico geral. É frequentemente referida simplesmente como "estagnação". Existem inúmeras teorias de estagnação secular, mas a maioria das teorias tradicionais remonta a Hansen, que foi o principal seguidor inicial de Keynes nos Estados Unidos e que derivou a ideia de várias sugestões do [livro] Teoria Geral do Emprego, Juros e Moeda de Keynes (1936).
As respostas a Summers têm sido por todo o mapa, refletindo tanto o fato de que a economia capitalista tem desacelerado, quanto o papel em negá-la por muitos daqueles que buscam legitimar o sistema. O economista de Stanford John B. Taylor contribuiu com uma firme negação da estagnação secular no Wall Street Journal. Em contraste, Paul Krugman, que está intimamente alinhado com Summers, endossou a estagnação secular em várias ocasiões no New York Times. Outros economistas notáveis, como Brad DeLong e Michael Spence, logo opinaram com suas próprias opiniões.3
Três economistas proeminentes têm novos livros abordando diretamente os fenômenos da estagnação secular.4 Agora, ela foi formalmente modelada pelos economistas da Brown University Gauti Eggertsson e Neil Mehrotra, enquanto o livro de alto nível de Thomas Piketty baseia seu argumento teórico e recomendações políticas nas tendências de estagnação do capitalismo. Essa explosão de interesse na versão Summers/Krugman da estagnação também resultou em uma coleção de artigos e debates, editada por Coen Teulings e Richard Baldwin, intitulada Secular Stagnation: Facts, Causes and Cures.5
Sete anos após "A Grande Crise Financeira" de 2007-2008, a recuperação continua lenta. Pode-se argumentar que a duração e a profundidade da Grande Crise Financeira são uma crise cíclica bastante comum. No entanto, as medidas monetárias e fiscais para combatê-la foram extraordinárias. Isso resultou em uma sensação generalizada de que não haverá um retorno ao "normal". A ressurreição de Summers/Krugman dentro do mainstream do conceito de estagnação secular de Hansen é uma tentativa de explicar como medidas políticas extraordinárias após a crise de 2007–2008 levaram apenas à estabilização de uma economia letárgica, se não comatosa.
Mas o que esses economistas querem dizer com estagnação secular? Se a estagnação é uma realidade, sua concepção dela torna as ferramentas políticas atuais obsoletas? E qual é a relação entre a noção de estagnação secular de Summers/Krugman e a teoria do capital financeiro monopolista?
Abaixo, as Ideias Principais da Estagnação Secular (doravante MISS) são apresentadas como seis pilares, ou seis argumentos fundamentais, que constituem um interesse renovado na estagnação secular. Isso não quer dizer que esses seis argumentos sejam todos compatíveis entre si — na verdade, não são, pois representam, como veremos, um debate convencional sobre a relevância relativa das causas do lado da demanda e do lado da oferta da estagnação secular — mas simplesmente para ajudar a dar sentido aos parâmetros amplos do MISS. Podemos então contrastar o entendimento do MISS, que representa o caráter da teoria econômica convencional nessa área, com o entendimento bem diferente da tendência de estagnação da teoria do capital financeiro monopolista.
Seis pilares do MISS
Em "estagnação secular", o termo "secular" pretende diferenciar entre o ciclo de negócios normal e a estagnação crônica de longo prazo. Uma desaceleração de longo prazo na economia ao longo de décadas pode ser vista como sobreposta ao ciclo de negócios regular, refletindo a tendência em vez do ciclo.
Na linguagem geral da economia, a estagnação secular, ou simplesmente estagnação, implica que o crescimento econômico potencial de longo prazo caiu, constituindo o primeiro pilar do MISS. Isso foi argumentado de forma mais contundente por Robert Gordon, bem como Garry Kasparov e Peter Thiel.6 O argumento deles é que o efeito cumulativo do crescimento das mudanças tecnológicas atuais (e futuras) será muito mais fraco do que no passado. Além disso, as mudanças demográficas colocam limites no desenvolvimento do “capital humano”. O foco está na tecnologia, que a economia ortodoxa geralmente vê como um fator externo à economia e no lado da oferta (ou seja, em relação ao custo). A posição de Gordon é, portanto, diferente daquela de keynesianos moderados como Summers e Krugman, que se concentram nas contradições do lado da demanda do sistema. Na visão tecnocrática do lado da oferta de Gordon, há forças em ação que limitarão o crescimento do insumo produtivo e a eficiência desses insumos. Este pilar do MISS enfatiza que são as restrições no lado da oferta agregada da economia que diminuíram completamente o crescimento potencial de longo prazo.
O segundo pilar do MISS, também uma visão do lado da oferta, remonta pelo menos a Joseph Schumpeter. Para explicar a crise massiva de 1937, Schumpeter sustentou que havia surgido um crescente clima antiempresarial. Além disso, ele argumentou que a ascensão da corporação moderna havia deslocado o papel do empreendedor; o espírito antiempresarial teve um efeito repressivo na confiança e no otimismo dos empreendedores.7 Hoje, esse segundo pilar do MISS foi ressuscitado sugestivamente por John B. Taylor, que argumenta que a recuperação ruim é melhor "explicada pela incerteza política" e "regulamentação aumentada" que é desfavorável aos negócios. Da mesma forma, Baker, Bloom e Davis argumentaram vigorosamente que a incerteza política pode conter o investimento privado e o crescimento econômico.8
Summers e Krugman, como keynesianos, enfatizam um terceiro pilar do MISS, derivado da famosa teoria da armadilha da liquidez de Keynes, que afirma que a "taxa de juros real de pleno emprego" diminuiu nos últimos anos. De fato, tanto Summers quanto Krugman demonstram que as taxas de juros reais caíram nas últimas décadas, portanto, passando de uma explicação exógena (como nos pilares um e dois) para uma explicação mais endógena da estagnação secular.9 O problema final aqui é a falta de demanda por investimento, de modo que, para que o investimento líquido ocorra, as taxas de juros têm que ser levadas para perto de zero ou abaixo. Seu forte argumento é que agora há momentos em que taxas de juros reais negativas são necessárias para igualar poupança e investimento com pleno emprego.
No entanto, “as taxas de juros não são totalmente flexíveis nas economias modernas” — em outras palavras, os ajustes de taxas de juros determinados pelo mercado falham cronicamente em atingir o pleno emprego. Summers afirma que há forças financeiras que proíbem que a taxa de juros real se torne negativa; portanto, o pleno emprego não pode ser alcançado.10
Alguns teóricos afirmam que houve mudanças estruturais demográficas aumentando a oferta de poupança, diminuindo assim as taxas de juros. Essas mudanças incluem um aumento na expectativa de vida, uma diminuição na idade de aposentadoria e um declínio na taxa de crescimento da população.
Outros, incluindo Summers, apontam que a estagnação na formação de capital (ou acumulação) pode ser atribuída a uma diminuição na demanda por fundos emprestáveis para investimento. Uma explicação convencional oferecida para isso é que as novas tecnologias e empresas de hoje, como Google, Microsoft, Amazon e Facebook, exigem muito menos investimento de capital. Outra hipótese é que houve uma diminuição importante na demanda por fundos emprestáveis, embora eles argumentem que isso se deve a uma preferência por ativos seguros. Esses fatores podem funcionar juntos para manter a taxa de juros real muito baixa. A implicação política das baixas taxas de juros seculares é que a política monetária é mais difícil de ser implementada de forma eficaz; durante uma recessão, ela é enfraquecida e pode até se tornar ineficaz.
Edward Glaeser, focando no “desemprego secular”, coloca sérias dúvidas sobre o primeiro pilar do MISS, mas então faz um argumento adicional muito importante. Glaeser rejeita a noção de que houve uma desaceleração na inovação tecnológica; a inovação é simplesmente “implacável”. Da mesma forma, ele está muito menos preocupado com baixas taxas de juros reais seculares, que podem ser muito mais cíclicas. “Portanto”, argumenta Glaeser, “a estagnação provavelmente será temporária”.
No entanto, Glaeser ressalta o desemprego secular e, portanto, a disfunção dos mercados de trabalho dos EUA constitui um quarto pilar do MISS: “A disfunção no mercado de trabalho é real e séria, e parece improvável que seja resolvida por qualquer tendência econômica óbvia”. De alguma forma, então, o problema é devido a uma inadequação de habilidades ou “capital humano” do lado dos trabalhadores, que, portanto, precisam de retreinamento. “A tendência secular massiva de desemprego é um problema social terrível para os EUA, e um que o país deve tentar resolver” com uma política direcionada.11 O argumento de Glaeser para a disfunção dos mercados de trabalho dos EUA é baseado em choques gerados pela recessão no emprego, especificamente de trabalhadores menos qualificados dos EUA. Depois de 1970, quando os trabalhadores perderam seus empregos, o dano ao capital humano se tornou permanente. Em suma, quando o capital humano se deprecia devido ao desemprego, as habilidades gerais e o “talento” são “perdidos” permanentemente. Isso pode ser porque as habilidades necessárias na economia de hoje precisam ser constantemente praticadas para serem retidas. Assim, há um efeito de catraca no desemprego causado por recessões, pelo qual o desemprego vinculado à recessão não é totalmente revertido durante as recuperações — e tudo isso está relacionado às habilidades (o capital humano dos trabalhadores), e não ao capital em si. De acordo com Glaeser, o efeito catraca do desemprego associado à recessão é ainda mais exacerbado pela rede de segurança social dos EUA, que "tornou o desemprego menos doloroso e aumentou os incentivos para ficar fora do trabalho". 12
Glaeser argumenta que, se seu argumento secular do desemprego estiver correto, as intervenções fiscais macroeconômicas defendidas por Summers e Krugman estão equivocadas. 13 Em vez disso, a rede de segurança deve ser redesenhada para encorajar, em vez de desencorajar, as pessoas a trabalhar. Além disso, os incentivos ao trabalho precisam ser radicalmente melhorados por meio de investimentos direcionados em educação e treinamento da força de trabalho. 14 Essas visões dentro do debate convencional, enfatizando fatores exógenos, são geralmente promovidas por economistas de água doce (conservadores) em vez de economistas de água salgada (liberais). Assim, eles tendem a enfatizar fatores do lado da oferta ou de custo.
O quinto pilar do MISS argumenta que o crescimento da produção e da produtividade está estagnado devido à falha em investir em infraestrutura, educação e treinamento. Quase todas as versões do MISS subscrevem alguma versão disto, embora existam variações conservadoras e liberais. Barry Eichengreen sublinha este pilar e condena os recentes desenvolvimentos fiscais dos EUA que “cortaram até o osso” os gastos do governo federal dedicados à infraestrutura, educação e treinamento.
O quinto pilar do MISS reflete necessariamente um desequilíbrio entre os gastos com investimentos públicos e privados. Muitos teóricos sustentam que o desequilíbrio entre os gastos com investimentos públicos e privados, portanto a estagnação secular, “não é inevitável”. Por exemplo, Eichengreen argumenta que se “os EUA experimentarem estagnação secular, a condição será autoinfligida. Ela refletirá a falha do país em atender às suas necessidades de infraestrutura, educação e treinamento. Ela refletirá sua falha em… apoiar a demanda agregada em um esforço para trazer os desempregados de longo prazo de volta ao mercado de trabalho.”15
O sexto pilar do MISS argumenta que o “excesso de dívida” da alavancagem excessiva de empresas financeiras e famílias, bem como o endividamento privado e público, são um sério obstáculo à economia. Esta posição foi defendida com mais força por vários colegas de Summers em Harvard, mais notavelmente Carmen Reinhart e Kenneth Rogoff.16 Atif Mian e Amir Sufi também argumentam que o endividamento das famílias foi o principal culpado pelo colapso econômico de 2007–2008. Sua recomendação política é que o risco para os tomadores de empréstimos hipotecários deve ser reduzido para evitar calamidades futuras.17
Conforme observado, os defensores do MISS não necessariamente apoiam uma compatibilidade entre os seis pilares acima: aqueles favorecidos pelos conservadores são do lado da oferta e exógenos em ênfase, enquanto os liberais tendem para o lado da demanda e endógenos. Em vez disso, na maioria das vezes esses pilares são desenvolvidos como teorias concorrentes para explicar a garantia de algum aspecto da estagnação secular e/ou para defender posições políticas específicas enquanto criticam posições políticas alternativas. No entanto, a preocupação aqui não é se há a possibilidade de uma síntese de visões tradicionais. Em vez disso, a ênfase está em quão parciais e separadas tais explicações são, tanto individualmente quanto em combinação.
O ressurgimento do interesse na estagnação secular é muito bem-vindo. Cada um dos pilares da ideia tradicional de estagnação secular traz um foco (nebuloso) para as contradições do capitalismo. Nenhum deles, no entanto, chega à essência da questão — uma vez que evitam especificamente a questão das contradições no próprio processo de acumulação. A definição predominante de estagnação secular proclama uma diminuição real nas taxas de crescimento, PIB e/ou emprego, em vez de ver o problema mais amplamente como uma tendência embutida na lógica do sistema. É precisamente aqui que o MISS erra o alvo. É duvidoso que uma síntese mais alta dos seis pilares do MISS possa ser alcançada com base no fato de que forças e mecanismos da história e da sociedade existem de tal forma que o PIB, as taxas de crescimento e o emprego necessariamente estagnarão secularmente. Além disso, as várias propostas de políticas do MISS se mostrarão inadequadas, o que é ilustrado por uma compreensão mais completa de como a tradição marxista vê a estagnação secular.
A tradição marxiana: Michał Kalecki e Josef Steindl
Uma síntese mais elevada, que explica a estagnação secular, existe na teoria do capital monopolista-financeiro. Pode-se dizer que a inspiração dessa teoria começa com as ideias de Michał Kalecki, desenvolvidas pela primeira vez na década de 1930 e enraizadas em uma concepção marxista de composição de classe da produção e nas tendências de monopolização do capitalismo. A visão kaleckiana enfatizou que o processo de livre concorrência gera uma tendência para o capital se tornar mais concentrado e centralizado, por meio do qual empresas gigantes individuais emergem.18
A teoria kaleckiana afirma que a concorrência entre grandes empresas e as consequências da presença onipresente de empresas gigantes para empresas médias e pequenas gera tendências no capitalismo moderno em direção à exploração intensificada, excesso de poupança e subinvestimento. Elas estão relacionadas às estratégias de custo, preço, produção e investimento de empresas gigantes individuais para manter o domínio do mercado.
Josef Steindl desenvolveria as implicações da estagnação secular da teoria geral kaleckiana em seu Maturity and Stagnation in American Capitalism.19 Na visão steindliana da estagnação secular, há “fatores endógenos inerentes ao desenvolvimento do capitalismo — principalmente o desenvolvimento da competição imperfeita, monopólio e oligopólio”, de modo que a estagnação pode ser vista como emergente das tendências da acumulação moderna de capital.20 A essência da teoria de Steindl é que o processo de acumulação de capital sob a presença onipresente das estratégias de empresas gigantes dá origem a um aumento nas margens de lucro e um declínio na taxa de utilização do estoque de capital, ou um aumento na “capacidade excedente”. É importante ressaltar que isso não precisa necessariamente resultar em um aumento na renda dos capitalistas (embora possa). Em vez disso, como Steindl enfatizou:
A tendência de aumento da participação dos capitalistas no produto existe, afinal, potencialmente. É uma consequência do crescimento do oligopólio. A expressão dessa tendência só pode ser um aumento nas margens de lucro bruto. Isso significa que a parcela real da renda líquida dos capitalistas não precisa aumentar em nada. As margens de lucro bruto aumentadas podem ser compensadas por um grau reduzido de utilização, de modo que não haja uma mudança da renda real dos salários para os lucros, mas uma mudança da renda potencial dos trabalhadores para o desperdício em excesso de capacidade.21
Em outra parte do mesmo livro, Steindl diz:
A conclusão é que com o padrão de ajuste da margem de lucro esperado nos tempos modernos (devido à predominância do oligopólio), um declínio primário da acumulação de capital irá — por meio de um grau reduzido de utilização — levar com um certo atraso a uma redução adicional na acumulação. Isso não pode levar facilmente a um equilíbrio. O empreendedor individual pode pensar que, ao reduzir o investimento, ele irá curar seu excesso de capacidade, mas, na verdade, para a indústria como um todo, essa estratégia tem apenas o efeito de tornar o excesso de capacidade ainda maior.22
Assim, de acordo com Steindl, a taxa de mais-valia e a margem de lucro bruto aumentam, enquanto as taxas de lucro líquido realizado podem estagnar ou cair devido ao excesso de capacidade. Por exemplo, se uma grande empresa experimenta uma diminuição na demanda, ela tem o poder de resistir às reduções de preço e, em vez disso, diminui a utilização da capacidade. É a diminuição na utilização da capacidade que tende a amortecer a demanda por investimento, e a probabilidade de estagnação secular surge.
A teoria endógena de Steindl sobre o desenvolvimento capitalista como base da estagnação secular foi um grande passo à frente na compreensão da macrodinâmica e dos processos de acumulação capitalista sob o regime de oligopolização de indústrias-chave. Steindl foi capaz de colocar a ênfase diretamente no desenvolvimento da competição imperfeita, no poder de monopólio dos oligopólios e em sua capacidade de resistir à competição de preços, ao mesmo tempo em que germinava a nova nêmesis do excesso de capacidade e as tendências à estagnação secular. Os problemas básicos permaneceram os notavelmente kaleckianos — exploração intensificada, excesso de poupança e subinvestimento.
Sweezy e Hansen foram rápidos em apontar que o problema com a teoria de Steindl era que ela não levava em conta fatores exógenos importantes, como inovação e novas indústrias que poderiam evitar o declínio e a crise.23 O próprio Steindl abraçaria a crítica de que ele havia "errado, no entanto, ao desconsiderar a função econômica da inovação no capitalismo". Steindl também acreditava ter subestimado a capacidade dos oligopólios de mover sua atividade de investimento para outros ramos industriais. Em outras palavras, ele falhou em antecipar a tendência e o processo de conglomeração corporativa, que provou ser uma forma popular de crescimento empresarial desde a década de 1960. No entanto, Steindl argumentou que há evidências massivas de que grandes empresas priorizam investimentos seguros acima de um mero motivo de lucro.24 Assim, os principais problemas do capitalismo maduro tornam-se exploração intensificada, subemprego, altos lucros brutos, excesso de poupança, excesso de capacidade e subinvestimento.
A tradição marxista: Teoria do capital monopolista
Sweezy, junto com Paul A. Baran, forneceria uma teoria mais completa do investimento de empresas gigantes. Eles confrontaram teoricamente as respostas políticas e históricas à tendência forte e sistemática de aumento do excedente e aos problemas de excesso de capacidade e absorção de excedente. Nesse sentido, eles representaram mais avanços teóricos na compreensão da estagnação secular e das contradições do capital monopolista. A raiz das contradições não é o fracasso do sistema, mas seu sucesso. As empresas gigantes do capitalismo monopolista aumentam a produtividade e as margens de lucro, enquanto a capacidade produtiva abundante e o alto potencial de poupança tendem a cortar o investimento antes que o pleno emprego seja alcançado.
A força motriz de qualquer expansão é a criação de nova capacidade produtiva, e o capital monopolista realiza isso brilhantemente. O problema é que o rápido aumento do excedente real e potencial durante uma expansão gera uma parcela crescente de busca por investimento. O capitalismo monopolista tem uma dinâmica autocontraditória; em termos simples, o sistema tem uma "incapacidade crônica de absorver tanto excedente quanto é capaz de produzir". Os impressionantes aumentos da capacidade produtiva aumentam de forma constante tanto o próprio excedente como a “oferta de excedentes destinados ao investimento”, mas simultaneamente não conseguem “gerar um aumento correspondente na magnitude dos pontos de venda de investimento”.25
In terms of Marxian reproduction schemes, for the investment-seeking surplus to be reinvested successfully and rapid growth to occur, the means of production (Department I) would need to outpace the expansion of consumption goods and services (Department II). Eventually, the means of production become so built up that a social disproportionality manifests between productive capacity and corresponding consumer demand.26 Baran and Sweezy said, “Twist and turn as one will, there is no way to avoid the conclusion that monopoly capitalism is a self-contradictory system.”27 Under the conditions of overexploitation and underemployment of the working class, excess capacity continually tends to cut off potential net investment by lowering expected profits on new investment. The system fails to generate both the capitalist-consumption and investment outlets necessary to absorb the rapid rise in surplus produced by giant firms and their impressive productive capacity.
Kalecki said, “The tragedy of investment is that it causes crisis because it is useful. Doubtless many people will consider this theory paradoxical. But it is not the theory which is paradoxical, but its subject—the capitalist economy.”28 The tragedy underscores the fact that surplus that cannot be absorbed will not be produced. Thus, “it follows that the normal state of the monopoly capitalist economy is stagnation.”29
However, Baran and Sweezy contended that capitalist consumption and investment are not the only two outlets for the absorption of surplus: it can also be wasted.30 Since the absorption of the surplus by means of consumption and investment are endogenously circumvented, the issue of economic waste would form “the pivotal element around which Baran and Sweezy’s Monopoly Capital was organized” and constituted the bulk of their theoretical consideration for understanding the macroeconomic dynamic of contemporary monopoly capitalism.31
In brief, according to Baran and Sweezy the capitalist system increasingly relies on “waste.”32 It includes: (1) the sales effort, consisting of advertising, market research, sales outlets, various sales personnel expenses, public relations, lobbying, conspicuous or “showy” business space, product appearance, packaging, planned obsolescence, model changes, etc.; (2) war, militarism, imperialism, and other non-defense public spending; and (3) “diversion of potential surplus into the financial sector (listed as ‘finance, insurance, and real estate’ in the national account).”33 With the system’s increasing reliance on economic waste, real human needs become more and more remote within the logic and macroeconomic dynamic of the monopoly capitalistic system.
An important point must be underscored: the potential surplus can be absorbed by the financial sector. Later on, Sweezy contended that the increasing role of finance had been under-theorized in Monopoly Capital—a shortcoming he and Harry Magdoff quickly remedied.34
The marxian tradition: Monopoly-finance capital theory
Costas Lapavitsas correctly identifies monopoly capital theorists as among the first to appreciate the importance of the developments within the financial sector. Early on it was monopoly capital theorists who understood the importance of the process of financialization. They must be praised for both anticipating the collapse of 2007–2008 and explaining the crisis and the durability of stagnation into the future.35 Lapavitsas further points out too many political economists fail to “realize their affinities with”—and, we could add, their theoretical debt to—”the tradition of Monthly Review.”36
Monopoly capital theory contends that it is all but impossible to understand the political economy of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries without appreciating how the “financial explosion” reconfigured contemporary capitalism. For Baran and Sweezy, the development of monopoly capital was not the bastardization of pure capitalism, but the “legitimate” or evolutionary outcome of capitalist “laws” of development. Similarly for Magdoff and Sweezy, financialization is not merely parasitic upon “functioning capitalists,” but is the logical and necessary development from the laws of capitalist development.37 In 1966, Baran and Sweezy contended that the private sales effort and public spending were the most important forms of waste. Today, the excess surplus is primarily absorbed through the financial sector, as Magdoff and Sweezy argued in the 1980s, and more recently, Foster, Fred Magdoff, and Robert McChesney. They underscore the importance of finance in their conception of monopoly-finance capital, which places the proper emphasis on the structural necessity of finance within monopoly capital.38
This terminology is consistent with Sweezy’s insistence that the full “triumph of financial capital” had become the axis of both economic and political power.39 This triumph would temporarily stabilize the macroeconomic variables and generate economic growth—but above all is a resplendent expression of stagnation. The basic stagnation problem of monopoly capitalism has never subsided, but in fact worsened.40 Stagnation itself is a function of the surplus generated by monopoly capital, which becomes increasingly difficult to absorb. It is in this sense that the financial explosion and triumph of financial capital was a most dazzling illustration of the “fundamental contradiction of capitalist society.” Namely, the “contradiction between the ends of production regarded as a natural-technical process of creating use values, and the ends of capitalism regarded as a historical system of expanding exchange value.”41
In other words, the financial activity of monopoly-finance capital is significantly a process of systemic waste. Of course, financial expansion can have a limited stimulative effect on production, directly by increasing employment somewhat, and indirectly through what is known as the “wealth effect.” This means that a certain portion of capital gains (growth in financial assets) expands overall economic growth through enhanced spending on capitalist consumption. In this way, financial gains contribute in a roundabout way to surplus absorption. But the contemporary ballooning of finance and speculation nonetheless represents a considerable waste (and indeed a loss) of much of the surplus potentially available to society. The financialization process generates new, long-term contradictions, notably in the form of financial bubbles that threaten to burst. At the same time it has a huge redistributive effect, enhancing the amassing of wealth out of all proportion to income and leading to greater polarization of income and wealth, as dramatically illustrated by Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty–First Century. Moreover, it creates a whole new financial power elite with a vested interest in the constant growth of the casino economy.42
Key here is that the financialization process, while leading in limited ways to an increase in production, does not do so in an equivalent way to the financial gains being amassed, creating a growing discrepancy between finance and production. It is thus unable to overcome the stagnation problem and indeed serves to deepen it over the long-run. All of this is captured in the title of Lapavitsas’s recent book: Profiting Without Producing.
The basic results of monopoly-finance capital can be summarized in nine points. First, the high productive capacity of monopoly-finance capital generates an enormous surplus. This actual and potential surplus generates excess saving and excess capacity. Second, there are not adequate profitable investment opportunities for the system fully to absorb the excess surplus in productive investment activity; thus, systemic reproduction requires waste. The normal state of monopoly capitalism is stagnation. Third, monopoly capital organization gives political advantage to capital over labor in the class struggle, increasing the rate of exploitation, and establishing superexploitation of the most vulnerable workers worldwide. Fourth, the control over price decisions by large corporations generates a hierarchy of profit rates (rather than any tendency toward an average rate of profit), roughly hierarchically ordered based on size of firm and relative degree of market and political power. Fifth, monopoly capital regulates industries by means of quantity adjustments, rather than price, by manipulating their excess productive capacity depending on the degree of competition. Sixth, the second through fifth basic results above generate an increase in the potential rate of capital accumulation. In turn this generates a gap (or fundamental contradiction) between potential output (exchange value) and surplus absorption (use value); this fundamental contradiction manifests stagnation. Seventh, the primary mechanism to overcome the fundamental contradiction is economic “waste.” Eighth, various forms of waste can generate growth and employment, and the appearance that all is well. Ninth, financialization, itself a form of waste, can stave off stagnation for a time, but ultimately intensifies the overall contradictions of monopoly-finance capital, which run deep.
Stagnation: A Symbiotic Relationship of Politics, Sociology, and Economics
Secular stagnation, as an underlying tendency complete with countervailing factors, should not be expected always to take this form directly, although it periodically surfaces as slow GDP growth and high unemployment. Rather, the various types of waste that pervade the economy are attempts to avoid these results and are just as much a part of the overall dynamic. The contradictions run deep and persist. Stagnation is reflected in financial euphoria, financial over-leveraging, financial instability, underemployment, stagnant or declining real income, household indebtedness, indebtedness of firms, public indebtedness, and inequality.
We must always remember Kalecki’s warning that there is a lack of profitable investment opportunities—and we can add, that the sales effort, public spending, and financial activity—are forms of waste, even though this will doubtless be considered “paradoxical. But it is not the theory which is paradoxical, but its subject: the capitalist economy.”43
This paradox requires great patience and persistence. Many of the MISS theorists point to important considerations. Summers and Krugman “discovered” that real interest rates fail to equilibrate savings and investment, wherefore full-employment is not achieved. Taylor, Baker, and others rightly point out that “policy uncertainty” holds back private investment. Gordon and others are correct to worry that various demographic changes place limits on productive efficiency of inputs and cause “headwinds” for economic growth. Glaeser is on the right track in his treatment of the dysfunctions of U.S. labor markets. Likewise Eichengreen and others ask crucial questions in addressing the continual imbalances and contradictions between the roles of private and public investment. No one could fault Reinhardt and Rogoff these days for worry about the increasing over-leveraging of financial firms creating systemic instability.
However, the piecemeal approach to secular stagnation in the six pillars of MISS is at best highly incomplete. MISS fails to understand the contradictions of contemporary capitalism and the tendencies of stagnation as a totality. They are too reductionist with respect to systemic problems, and fail to understand stagnation in its full historical, political, social, and economic context. The theory of monopoly-finance capital is far more capable of explaining the contradictions of contemporary capitalism and realizing capitalism is no alternative.
The system of monopoly-finance capitalism is economically institutionalized stagnation and waste. Politically it is what István Mészáros calls “institutionalized irresponsibility.” Magdoff and Foster have argued that normal (or even progressive) fiscal and monetary policies are not capable of overcoming the contradictions caused by the tendency toward stagnation and financialization. However, there are several impressive alternative practical social arrangements to contemporary social relations. Magdoff and Foster approvingly outline an “economic bill of rights” or Freedom Budget for All Americans from the work of Paul Le Blanc and Michael Yates.44
To create an economic bill of rights or any alternative radical reform will necessitate intellectual leadership. As Georg Lukács concluded, “‘Intellectual leadership’ can only be one thing: the process of making social development conscious.”45 Stagnation, waste, and crises are the dysfunction of both social development and well-being more generally. As Thomas I. Palley says, stagnation and financialization are not “just a matter of formal macroeconomic analysis, but also [involve] understanding the political and sociological dynamics” of society.46
Intellectual leadership then means that we are to not only make conscious the causes of economic dysfunction (as MISS is groping towards, and the monopoly-finance capital theory has already achieved to a greater extent), but also the political and sociological dysfunctions, along with the psychological and personal hardships. The most urgent responsibility is for intellectuals to theorize the depth of the contradictions of monopoly-finance capitalism. To echo Wolfgang Streeck, it is wrong to demand that those who theorize paradoxical contradictions also offer immediate solutions. Current contradictions may not have immediate solutions “achievable here and now.”47
Intellectual leadership is also important; as Palley says, “it is not just ideas that matter. It is the combination of ideas and power.”48 The economic power of giant firms has allowed them the ability to gain political power and influence. Mészáros says, “The institutionalized irresponsibility” of stagnation and waste “cannot be overcome without the establishment of a substantively democratic decision making process.” It requires “a radical emancipation of politics from the power of capital.”49
But democratic institutions are in serious peril and deterioration. Evidence is mounting that political leaders are responding significantly to the policy preferences of corporations and the wealthy. In turn this increased political power has allowed giant firms to increase their economic wealth and power. Rent-seeking activity is arguably more important to giant firms than is profit-seeking.50 The result is a U.S.-style oligarchy, whereby corporate influence (especially corporate financial influence) in the political realm is massive, weakening democratic institutions.51
Streeck says there is a “very old tension between democracy and capitalism.” Indeed, it can be argued that, in the words of Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, “capitalism and democracy are not complementary systems. Rather they are sharply contrasting” and antagonistic social orders. Baran and Sweezy say “Votes are the nominal source of political power, and money the real source: the system, in other words, is democratic in form and plutocratic in content.”52
Today what has emerged from this tension is a coalition formed around the economic power of massive firms and the wealthy. This coalition has specialized in the practice of political predation. James Galbraith calls this a “Predator State,” the toleration of which “is a formula for eventual national economic failure.” The corporate coalition forming the Predator State seeks “to control the state partly in order to prevent the assertion of public purpose and partly to poach on the lines of activity that past public purpose has established.” In the private sector itself, bad and predatory rent-seeking business practices are driving out good business practices.53
The result of corporate domination in the political and economic realm has been the deterioration of democracy, economic instability, financial crises, massive inequality, and, in the words of Colin Mayer, “serious deficiencies in both the efficient delivery of public goods and services, and the effective adherence of corporations to responsible conduct.” Larry Bartels says the political and economic trends raise serious questions regarding “whether democracy can flourish in the midst of great concentrated wealth.” Galbraith says the tendency within U.S. politics is “to run the state as though it were, in fact, just a corporation, with the rules that govern companies displacing the rules that govern republics. And so today we live in a corporate republic.”54
The essential problem is analogous to that of the colonial United States. It is no longer a despotic King George, but the activities of giant corporations maximizing both rents and profits, that are generating systemic oppression and crisis. As C.S. Lewis brilliantly illuminates, we:
live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the [corporate] offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.55
Costas Lapavitsas correctly identifies monopoly capital theorists as among the first to appreciate the importance of the developments within the financial sector. Early on it was monopoly capital theorists who understood the importance of the process of financialization. They must be praised for both anticipating the collapse of 2007–2008 and explaining the crisis and the durability of stagnation into the future.35 Lapavitsas further points out too many political economists fail to “realize their affinities with”—and, we could add, their theoretical debt to—”the tradition of Monthly Review.”36
Monopoly capital theory contends that it is all but impossible to understand the political economy of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries without appreciating how the “financial explosion” reconfigured contemporary capitalism. For Baran and Sweezy, the development of monopoly capital was not the bastardization of pure capitalism, but the “legitimate” or evolutionary outcome of capitalist “laws” of development. Similarly for Magdoff and Sweezy, financialization is not merely parasitic upon “functioning capitalists,” but is the logical and necessary development from the laws of capitalist development.37 In 1966, Baran and Sweezy contended that the private sales effort and public spending were the most important forms of waste. Today, the excess surplus is primarily absorbed through the financial sector, as Magdoff and Sweezy argued in the 1980s, and more recently, Foster, Fred Magdoff, and Robert McChesney. They underscore the importance of finance in their conception of monopoly-finance capital, which places the proper emphasis on the structural necessity of finance within monopoly capital.38
This terminology is consistent with Sweezy’s insistence that the full “triumph of financial capital” had become the axis of both economic and political power.39 This triumph would temporarily stabilize the macroeconomic variables and generate economic growth—but above all is a resplendent expression of stagnation. The basic stagnation problem of monopoly capitalism has never subsided, but in fact worsened.40 Stagnation itself is a function of the surplus generated by monopoly capital, which becomes increasingly difficult to absorb. It is in this sense that the financial explosion and triumph of financial capital was a most dazzling illustration of the “fundamental contradiction of capitalist society.” Namely, the “contradiction between the ends of production regarded as a natural-technical process of creating use values, and the ends of capitalism regarded as a historical system of expanding exchange value.”41
In other words, the financial activity of monopoly-finance capital is significantly a process of systemic waste. Of course, financial expansion can have a limited stimulative effect on production, directly by increasing employment somewhat, and indirectly through what is known as the “wealth effect.” This means that a certain portion of capital gains (growth in financial assets) expands overall economic growth through enhanced spending on capitalist consumption. In this way, financial gains contribute in a roundabout way to surplus absorption. But the contemporary ballooning of finance and speculation nonetheless represents a considerable waste (and indeed a loss) of much of the surplus potentially available to society. The financialization process generates new, long-term contradictions, notably in the form of financial bubbles that threaten to burst. At the same time it has a huge redistributive effect, enhancing the amassing of wealth out of all proportion to income and leading to greater polarization of income and wealth, as dramatically illustrated by Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty–First Century. Moreover, it creates a whole new financial power elite with a vested interest in the constant growth of the casino economy.42
Key here is that the financialization process, while leading in limited ways to an increase in production, does not do so in an equivalent way to the financial gains being amassed, creating a growing discrepancy between finance and production. It is thus unable to overcome the stagnation problem and indeed serves to deepen it over the long-run. All of this is captured in the title of Lapavitsas’s recent book: Profiting Without Producing.
The basic results of monopoly-finance capital can be summarized in nine points. First, the high productive capacity of monopoly-finance capital generates an enormous surplus. This actual and potential surplus generates excess saving and excess capacity. Second, there are not adequate profitable investment opportunities for the system fully to absorb the excess surplus in productive investment activity; thus, systemic reproduction requires waste. The normal state of monopoly capitalism is stagnation. Third, monopoly capital organization gives political advantage to capital over labor in the class struggle, increasing the rate of exploitation, and establishing superexploitation of the most vulnerable workers worldwide. Fourth, the control over price decisions by large corporations generates a hierarchy of profit rates (rather than any tendency toward an average rate of profit), roughly hierarchically ordered based on size of firm and relative degree of market and political power. Fifth, monopoly capital regulates industries by means of quantity adjustments, rather than price, by manipulating their excess productive capacity depending on the degree of competition. Sixth, the second through fifth basic results above generate an increase in the potential rate of capital accumulation. In turn this generates a gap (or fundamental contradiction) between potential output (exchange value) and surplus absorption (use value); this fundamental contradiction manifests stagnation. Seventh, the primary mechanism to overcome the fundamental contradiction is economic “waste.” Eighth, various forms of waste can generate growth and employment, and the appearance that all is well. Ninth, financialization, itself a form of waste, can stave off stagnation for a time, but ultimately intensifies the overall contradictions of monopoly-finance capital, which run deep.
Stagnation: A Symbiotic Relationship of Politics, Sociology, and Economics
Secular stagnation, as an underlying tendency complete with countervailing factors, should not be expected always to take this form directly, although it periodically surfaces as slow GDP growth and high unemployment. Rather, the various types of waste that pervade the economy are attempts to avoid these results and are just as much a part of the overall dynamic. The contradictions run deep and persist. Stagnation is reflected in financial euphoria, financial over-leveraging, financial instability, underemployment, stagnant or declining real income, household indebtedness, indebtedness of firms, public indebtedness, and inequality.
We must always remember Kalecki’s warning that there is a lack of profitable investment opportunities—and we can add, that the sales effort, public spending, and financial activity—are forms of waste, even though this will doubtless be considered “paradoxical. But it is not the theory which is paradoxical, but its subject: the capitalist economy.”43
This paradox requires great patience and persistence. Many of the MISS theorists point to important considerations. Summers and Krugman “discovered” that real interest rates fail to equilibrate savings and investment, wherefore full-employment is not achieved. Taylor, Baker, and others rightly point out that “policy uncertainty” holds back private investment. Gordon and others are correct to worry that various demographic changes place limits on productive efficiency of inputs and cause “headwinds” for economic growth. Glaeser is on the right track in his treatment of the dysfunctions of U.S. labor markets. Likewise Eichengreen and others ask crucial questions in addressing the continual imbalances and contradictions between the roles of private and public investment. No one could fault Reinhardt and Rogoff these days for worry about the increasing over-leveraging of financial firms creating systemic instability.
However, the piecemeal approach to secular stagnation in the six pillars of MISS is at best highly incomplete. MISS fails to understand the contradictions of contemporary capitalism and the tendencies of stagnation as a totality. They are too reductionist with respect to systemic problems, and fail to understand stagnation in its full historical, political, social, and economic context. The theory of monopoly-finance capital is far more capable of explaining the contradictions of contemporary capitalism and realizing capitalism is no alternative.
The system of monopoly-finance capitalism is economically institutionalized stagnation and waste. Politically it is what István Mészáros calls “institutionalized irresponsibility.” Magdoff and Foster have argued that normal (or even progressive) fiscal and monetary policies are not capable of overcoming the contradictions caused by the tendency toward stagnation and financialization. However, there are several impressive alternative practical social arrangements to contemporary social relations. Magdoff and Foster approvingly outline an “economic bill of rights” or Freedom Budget for All Americans from the work of Paul Le Blanc and Michael Yates.44
To create an economic bill of rights or any alternative radical reform will necessitate intellectual leadership. As Georg Lukács concluded, “‘Intellectual leadership’ can only be one thing: the process of making social development conscious.”45 Stagnation, waste, and crises are the dysfunction of both social development and well-being more generally. As Thomas I. Palley says, stagnation and financialization are not “just a matter of formal macroeconomic analysis, but also [involve] understanding the political and sociological dynamics” of society.46
Intellectual leadership then means that we are to not only make conscious the causes of economic dysfunction (as MISS is groping towards, and the monopoly-finance capital theory has already achieved to a greater extent), but also the political and sociological dysfunctions, along with the psychological and personal hardships. The most urgent responsibility is for intellectuals to theorize the depth of the contradictions of monopoly-finance capitalism. To echo Wolfgang Streeck, it is wrong to demand that those who theorize paradoxical contradictions also offer immediate solutions. Current contradictions may not have immediate solutions “achievable here and now.”47
Intellectual leadership is also important; as Palley says, “it is not just ideas that matter. It is the combination of ideas and power.”48 The economic power of giant firms has allowed them the ability to gain political power and influence. Mészáros says, “The institutionalized irresponsibility” of stagnation and waste “cannot be overcome without the establishment of a substantively democratic decision making process.” It requires “a radical emancipation of politics from the power of capital.”49
But democratic institutions are in serious peril and deterioration. Evidence is mounting that political leaders are responding significantly to the policy preferences of corporations and the wealthy. In turn this increased political power has allowed giant firms to increase their economic wealth and power. Rent-seeking activity is arguably more important to giant firms than is profit-seeking.50 The result is a U.S.-style oligarchy, whereby corporate influence (especially corporate financial influence) in the political realm is massive, weakening democratic institutions.51
Streeck says there is a “very old tension between democracy and capitalism.” Indeed, it can be argued that, in the words of Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, “capitalism and democracy are not complementary systems. Rather they are sharply contrasting” and antagonistic social orders. Baran and Sweezy say “Votes are the nominal source of political power, and money the real source: the system, in other words, is democratic in form and plutocratic in content.”52
Today what has emerged from this tension is a coalition formed around the economic power of massive firms and the wealthy. This coalition has specialized in the practice of political predation. James Galbraith calls this a “Predator State,” the toleration of which “is a formula for eventual national economic failure.” The corporate coalition forming the Predator State seeks “to control the state partly in order to prevent the assertion of public purpose and partly to poach on the lines of activity that past public purpose has established.” In the private sector itself, bad and predatory rent-seeking business practices are driving out good business practices.53
The result of corporate domination in the political and economic realm has been the deterioration of democracy, economic instability, financial crises, massive inequality, and, in the words of Colin Mayer, “serious deficiencies in both the efficient delivery of public goods and services, and the effective adherence of corporations to responsible conduct.” Larry Bartels says the political and economic trends raise serious questions regarding “whether democracy can flourish in the midst of great concentrated wealth.” Galbraith says the tendency within U.S. politics is “to run the state as though it were, in fact, just a corporation, with the rules that govern companies displacing the rules that govern republics. And so today we live in a corporate republic.”54
The essential problem is analogous to that of the colonial United States. It is no longer a despotic King George, but the activities of giant corporations maximizing both rents and profits, that are generating systemic oppression and crisis. As C.S. Lewis brilliantly illuminates, we:
live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the [corporate] offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.55
Conclusão
A teoria do capital monopolista-financeiro é uma posição teórica muito mais vantajosa do que a MISS para explicar as disfunções do desenvolvimento social. Uma maneira de pensar sobre o contraste é lembrar que Baran e Sweezy argumentam que o excedente excedente pode ser absorvido de três maneiras básicas: (1) consumido, (2) investido e (3) desperdiçado. A MISS tem várias teorias e recomendações de políticas, mas todas giram em torno de uma tentativa de usar a política fiscal para estimular o investimento privado e, em alguns casos, expandir o investimento público.
A lógica da teoria do capital monopolista-financeiro mostra que tais tentativas de estimular o investimento privado e público falham em abordar as causas políticas, sociológicas e econômicas mais profundas do problema. A teoria do excesso de capacidade sugere, em conjunto com Summers e Krugman, que taxas de juros reais mais baixas seriam necessárias para estimular o investimento autônomo. No entanto, na teoria do capital monopolista-financeiro, taxas de juros reais mais baixas não são uma solução. Taxas de juros reais baixas provavelmente levariam não muito longe no caminho para mais superacumulação e estagnação e financeirização adicional.
E quanto ao investimento público em infraestrutura e gastos não relacionados à defesa de forma mais geral, e à política progressiva de criação de empregos? Acredito que isso seja capaz de absorver com sucesso o excesso de superávit sem aumentar a capacidade excedente de empresas gigantes.56 O problema aqui, como enunciado acima, é que a estrutura de poder político do sistema capitalista monopolista-financeiro rapidamente cria oposição a qualquer aumento nos gastos fiscais, como assistência médica, moradia, alívio da pobreza ou programas de emprego.57 É a lógica do próprio capitalismo monopolista-financeiro que o contorna e o proíbe.58 Portanto, os gastos fiscais se tornam cada vez mais irracionais e destrutivos por meio de gastos militares, guerra e imperialismo.59
Assim, acredito que todas as recomendações políticas do MISS ficarão aquém. A coleção Secular Stagnation: Facts, Causes and Cures simplesmente demonstra o quão mal equipada a economia neoclássica é para entender as tendências sistêmicas em direção à estagnação secular e o desperdício que é gerado, causando contradições políticas, sociológicas e econômicas adicionais.60
A absorção do excedente continuará pelas vias dos sistemas de desperdício — principalmente finanças. Isso significa que podemos esperar baixo PIB, crescimento fraco e alto desemprego, conforme previsto no MISS. No entanto, isso não significa que a instabilidade financeira e as crises socioeconômicas sejam iminentes. As relações de poder social provavelmente continuarão os padrões de rendas estagnadas para os trabalhadores americanos, subemprego persistente e piora da desigualdade de renda e riqueza.
Lutar por uma "declaração de direitos econômicos" e gastos fiscais públicos voltados para aumentar o bem-estar humano requer "perspectiva histórica, coragem para encarar os fatos e fé na humanidade e em seu futuro. Tendo estes, podemos reconhecer a nossa obrigação moral de nos dedicarmos à luta contra um sistema maligno e destrutivo que mutila, oprime e desonra aqueles que vivem sob ele, e que ameaça devastar e matar milhões de outras pessoas em todo o mundo.”[61]
Notas
1 Harry Magdoff e Paul M. Sweezy, Stagnation and the Financial Explosion (Nova York: Monthly Review Press, 1987), 33; Lawrence Summers, “Why Stagnation Might Prove to be the New Normal,” Financial Times, 15 de dezembro de 2013, http://ft.com; Lawrence Summers, “U.S. Economic Prospects: Secular Stagnation, Hysteresis, and the Zero Lower Bound,” Business Economics 49, no. 2 (2014), http://larrysummers.com.
2 Hansen referiu-se mais frequentemente a “estagnação” do que a “estagnação secular”, embora sua teoria tenha se tornado associada ao último termo, talvez por causa de um famoso ensaio do economista de Harvard Alan Sweezy. Na Monthly Review, os termos foram usados de forma intercambiável por décadas, embora geralmente, como na teoria da estagnação das décadas de 1930 a 1950, focando apenas na “estagnação” sem o adjetivo. Veja Alvin H. Hansen, Full Recovery or Stagnation (Nova York: W.W. Norton, 1938); Alan Sweezy, “Secular Stagnation?,” em Seymour Harris, ed., Postwar Economic Problems (Nova York: McGraw Hill, 1943), 67–82; Paul M. Sweezy, “Why Stagnation?,” Monthly Review 34, n.º 2 (junho de 1982): 1–10; John Bellamy Foster, “Is Monopoly Capitalism An Illusion?,” Monthly Review 31, n.º 4 (setembro de 1981): 36.
3 John B. Taylor, “The Economic Hokum of ‘Secular Stagnation’,” Wall Street Journal, 1.º de janeiro de 2014, http://wsj.com; Português Paul Krugman, “Estagnação secular, minas de carvão, bolhas e Larry Summers”, New YorkTimes, 13 de novembro de 2013, http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com; Michael Spence, “Os verdadeiros desafios para o crescimento”, Project Syndicate, 23 de janeiro de 2014, http://project-syndicate.org.
4 Robert J. Gordon, Beyond the Rainbow (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015); Barry Eichengreen, Hall of Mirrors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); James K. Galbraith, The End of Normal (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014).
5 Gauti B. Eggertsson and Neil R. Mehrotra, “A Model of Secular Stagnation,” NBER Working Paper No. 20574, October 2014, http://faculty.fiu.edu; Thomas Piketty, Capital in theTwenty-First Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014); John Bellamy Foster and Michael D. Yates, “Piketty and the Crisis of Neoclassical Economics,” Monthly Review 66, no. 6 (November 2014): 1–24; Coen Teulings and Richard Baldwin, ed., Secular Stagnation: Facts, Causes and Cures (London: Center for Economic Policy Research Press, 2014), http://voxeu.org.
6 Robert J. Gordon, “Is U. S. Economic Growth Over? Faltering Innovation Confronts the Six Headwinds,” NBER Working Paper 18315, August 2012, http://cepr.org; Robert J. Gordon, “The Demise of U. S. Economic Growth: Restatement, Rebuttal, and Reflections,” NBER Working Paper No. 19895, 2014, http://nber.org; Robert J. Gordon, Beyond the Rainbow (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015); Garry Kasparov and Peter Thiel, “Our Dangerous Delusion of Tech Progress,” Financial Times, November 2012, 8, http://ft.com.
7 Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950, originally 1942), 111–21.
8 John B. Taylor, “The Economic Hokum of ‘Secular Stagnation'”; Scott R. Baker, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J. Davis, “Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty,” Chicago Booth Research Paper No. 13-02, January 1, 2013, http://ssrn.com; Scott Baker, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven Davis, “Economic Policy Uncertainty Index,” http://policyuncertainty.com, January 15, 2015.
9 Summers in Teulings and Baldwin, eds., Secular Stagnation, 35; Krugman, in Teulings and Baldwin, ed., Secular Stagnation, 63.
10 Summers in Teulings and Baldwin, eds. Secular Stagnation, 32; Summers, somewhat distinct from Krugman, argues the primary financial forces prohibiting negative real interest rates are currency substitution and financial instability. But this merely begs the question: What has lowered the real rate of interest?
11 Glaeser, in Teulings and Baldwin, eds., Secular Stagnation, 74, 73.
14Ibid, 74, 78, 75, 76.
13 Ibid, 76.
15 Ibid, 69–78.
16 Eichengreen, in Teulings and Baldwin, eds., Secular Stagnation, 44–45.
17 Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, “Growth in a Time of Debt,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 15639, 2010, http://scholar.harvard.edu. For a devastating critique of Reinhart and Rogoff, see Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin, “Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth?,” Political Economy Research Institute, Working Paper Series 322, December 2013, http://peri.umass.edu; Carmen M. Reinhart, Vincent Reinhar, and Kenneth Rogoff, “Dealing with Debt,” paper presented at the NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics, Riga, Latvia, June 27–28, 2014 (revised August 2014), http://scholar.harvard.edu; Stephanie Lo and Kenneth Rogoff, “Secular Stagnation, Debt Overhang and Other Rationales for Sluggish Growth, Six Years On,” June 27, 2014, http://bis.org; Jeffry Frieden, “The Political Economy of Adjustment and Rebalancing,” April 2014, http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jfrieden/files/pe_of_adjustment.pdf; Ana Fostel and John Geanakoplos, “Reviewing the Leverage Cycle,” Cowles Foundation Working Paper 1918, September 24, 2013, http://cowles.econ.yale.edu; John Geanakoplos and Felix Kubler, “Why is Too Much Leverage Bad for the Economy?,” Cowles Foundation Working Paper, October 17, 2013, http://parisschoolofeconomics.eu; Carmen M. Reinhart, Vincent Reinhart, and Kenneth Rogoff, “Public Debt Overhangs: Advanced-Economy Episodes Since 1800,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 26, no. 3 (2012): 69–86; Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, “The Aftermath of Financial Crises,” American Economic Review 99 (May, 2009): 466–72, and This Time Is Different (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).
18 Atif Mian and Amir Sufi, House of Debt (University of Chicago Press, 2014).
19 Michał Kalecki, Theory of Economic Dynamics (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008, originally 1954).
20 Josef Steindl, Maturity and Stagnation in American Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976, originally 1952).
21 Alvin Hansen, “The Stagnation Thesis,” in Readings in Fiscal Policy, eds., Arthur Smithies and J. Keith Butters (Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin, 1955), 540–57.
22 Steindl, Maturity and Stagnation in American Capitalism, 245.
23 Ibid, 123.
24 Paul M. Sweezy, “Maturity and Stagnation in American Capitalism,” Econometrica 22, no. 4 (October 1954): 531–33; Alvin H. Hansen, “Growth or Stagnation in the American Economy,” Review of Economics and Statistics 36, no. 4 (November 1954): 409–14.
25 Josef Steindl, “On Maturity in Capitalist Economics,” in John Bellamy Foster and Henryk Szlajfer, eds., TheFaltering Economy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1948), 174–75.
26 Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966), 109, 88.
27 John Bellamy Foster, “What is Stagnation?” in Robert Cherry, et al., The Imperiled Economy (New York: Union for Radical Political Economics, 1987), 61.
28 Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 108.
29 Michał Kalecki, Essays in the Theory of Economic Fluctuations (New York: Russell and Russell, 1939), 149.
30 Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 108.
31 Ibid, 78.
32 John Bellamy Foster, The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism, new edition (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2014), 94, 89.
33 Ibid, 12.
5 Gauti B. Eggertsson and Neil R. Mehrotra, “A Model of Secular Stagnation,” NBER Working Paper No. 20574, October 2014, http://faculty.fiu.edu; Thomas Piketty, Capital in theTwenty-First Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014); John Bellamy Foster and Michael D. Yates, “Piketty and the Crisis of Neoclassical Economics,” Monthly Review 66, no. 6 (November 2014): 1–24; Coen Teulings and Richard Baldwin, ed., Secular Stagnation: Facts, Causes and Cures (London: Center for Economic Policy Research Press, 2014), http://voxeu.org.
6 Robert J. Gordon, “Is U. S. Economic Growth Over? Faltering Innovation Confronts the Six Headwinds,” NBER Working Paper 18315, August 2012, http://cepr.org; Robert J. Gordon, “The Demise of U. S. Economic Growth: Restatement, Rebuttal, and Reflections,” NBER Working Paper No. 19895, 2014, http://nber.org; Robert J. Gordon, Beyond the Rainbow (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015); Garry Kasparov and Peter Thiel, “Our Dangerous Delusion of Tech Progress,” Financial Times, November 2012, 8, http://ft.com.
7 Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950, originally 1942), 111–21.
8 John B. Taylor, “The Economic Hokum of ‘Secular Stagnation'”; Scott R. Baker, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J. Davis, “Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty,” Chicago Booth Research Paper No. 13-02, January 1, 2013, http://ssrn.com; Scott Baker, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven Davis, “Economic Policy Uncertainty Index,” http://policyuncertainty.com, January 15, 2015.
9 Summers in Teulings and Baldwin, eds., Secular Stagnation, 35; Krugman, in Teulings and Baldwin, ed., Secular Stagnation, 63.
10 Summers in Teulings and Baldwin, eds. Secular Stagnation, 32; Summers, somewhat distinct from Krugman, argues the primary financial forces prohibiting negative real interest rates are currency substitution and financial instability. But this merely begs the question: What has lowered the real rate of interest?
11 Glaeser, in Teulings and Baldwin, eds., Secular Stagnation, 74, 73.
14Ibid, 74, 78, 75, 76.
13 Ibid, 76.
15 Ibid, 69–78.
16 Eichengreen, in Teulings and Baldwin, eds., Secular Stagnation, 44–45.
17 Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, “Growth in a Time of Debt,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 15639, 2010, http://scholar.harvard.edu. For a devastating critique of Reinhart and Rogoff, see Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin, “Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth?,” Political Economy Research Institute, Working Paper Series 322, December 2013, http://peri.umass.edu; Carmen M. Reinhart, Vincent Reinhar, and Kenneth Rogoff, “Dealing with Debt,” paper presented at the NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics, Riga, Latvia, June 27–28, 2014 (revised August 2014), http://scholar.harvard.edu; Stephanie Lo and Kenneth Rogoff, “Secular Stagnation, Debt Overhang and Other Rationales for Sluggish Growth, Six Years On,” June 27, 2014, http://bis.org; Jeffry Frieden, “The Political Economy of Adjustment and Rebalancing,” April 2014, http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jfrieden/files/pe_of_adjustment.pdf; Ana Fostel and John Geanakoplos, “Reviewing the Leverage Cycle,” Cowles Foundation Working Paper 1918, September 24, 2013, http://cowles.econ.yale.edu; John Geanakoplos and Felix Kubler, “Why is Too Much Leverage Bad for the Economy?,” Cowles Foundation Working Paper, October 17, 2013, http://parisschoolofeconomics.eu; Carmen M. Reinhart, Vincent Reinhart, and Kenneth Rogoff, “Public Debt Overhangs: Advanced-Economy Episodes Since 1800,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 26, no. 3 (2012): 69–86; Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, “The Aftermath of Financial Crises,” American Economic Review 99 (May, 2009): 466–72, and This Time Is Different (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).
18 Atif Mian and Amir Sufi, House of Debt (University of Chicago Press, 2014).
19 Michał Kalecki, Theory of Economic Dynamics (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008, originally 1954).
20 Josef Steindl, Maturity and Stagnation in American Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976, originally 1952).
21 Alvin Hansen, “The Stagnation Thesis,” in Readings in Fiscal Policy, eds., Arthur Smithies and J. Keith Butters (Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin, 1955), 540–57.
22 Steindl, Maturity and Stagnation in American Capitalism, 245.
23 Ibid, 123.
24 Paul M. Sweezy, “Maturity and Stagnation in American Capitalism,” Econometrica 22, no. 4 (October 1954): 531–33; Alvin H. Hansen, “Growth or Stagnation in the American Economy,” Review of Economics and Statistics 36, no. 4 (November 1954): 409–14.
25 Josef Steindl, “On Maturity in Capitalist Economics,” in John Bellamy Foster and Henryk Szlajfer, eds., TheFaltering Economy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1948), 174–75.
26 Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966), 109, 88.
27 John Bellamy Foster, “What is Stagnation?” in Robert Cherry, et al., The Imperiled Economy (New York: Union for Radical Political Economics, 1987), 61.
28 Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 108.
29 Michał Kalecki, Essays in the Theory of Economic Fluctuations (New York: Russell and Russell, 1939), 149.
30 Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 108.
31 Ibid, 78.
32 John Bellamy Foster, The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism, new edition (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2014), 94, 89.
33 Ibid, 12.
34 Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 115–41; 151–217; 139–41.
35 Paul M. Sweezy, “Monopoly Capital After Twenty-Five Years,” Monthly Review 43, no. 7 (1991): 52–57; “Investment Banking Revisited,” Monthly Review 33, no. 10 (1982): 1–12; Paul M. Sweezy and Harry Magdoff, The Dynamics of U.S. Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972); Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy, “Production and Finance,” Monthly Review 35, no. 1 (1983): 1–13, and Stagnation and the Financial Explosion.
36 Costas Lapavitsas, Profiting Without Producing (London: Verso, 2013): 15–20; John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, The Great FinancialCrisis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009); John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, The Endless Crisis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012). See also references in note 34.
37 Lapavitsas, Profiting Without Producing, 23.
38 Sweezy and Magdoff, The Dynamics of U.S. Capitalism, 7–29; Foster and McChesney, The Endless Crisis, 29–64; Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 14–51; Magdoff and Sweezy, “Production and Finance,” 1–13.
39 Magdoff and Sweezy, Stagnation and the Financial Explosion; Foster and Magdoff, The Great Financial Crisis; Foster and McChesney, The Endless Crisis.
40 Paul M. Sweezy, “The Triumph of Financial Capital,” Monthly Review 46, no. 2 (1994): 1–11.
41 Foster and Magdoff, The Great Financial Crisis, 5–6.
42 Paul M. Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970, originally 1942).
43 John Bellamy Foster and Hannah Holleman, “The Financial Power Elite,” Monthly Review vol. 62, no. 1 (May 2010): 1–19.
44 Kalecki, Essays in the Theory of Economic Fluctuations, 149.
45 István Mészáros, Beyond Capital(London: Merlin Press, 1995), 844; Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster, “Stagnation and Financialization,” Monthly Review 66, no. 1 (May 2014): 1–24; Hans G. Despain, “It’s the System Stupid,” Monthly Review 65, no. 6 (2013): 39–44; Paul Le Blanc and Michael D. Yates, A Freedom Budget for All Americans (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2013).
46 György Lukács, Political Writings, 1919–1929 (London: NLB, 1972), 15.
47 Thomas I. Palley, Financialization: The Economics of Finance Capital Domination (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014), 201.
48 Wolfgang Streeck, BuyingTime: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (London and New York: Verso, 2014), viii.
49 Palley, Financialization, 212.
50 Mészáros, Beyond Capital, 844, 893.
51 Larry M. Bartels, Unequal Democracy (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008), 286; James K. Galbraith, The Predator State (New York: Free Press, 2008); Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality (New York: W.W. Norton, 2012): 28–51.
52 Adam Bonica, “Avenue of Influence,” June 20, 2014, http://ssrn.com; Bartels, Unequal Democracy, 283–302; Robert A.G. Monks, Citizens DisUnited (New York: Miniver Press, 2013), and Corpocracy (New York: Wiley, 2007).
53 Streeck, Buying Time, 57; Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Democracy and Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1986): 3–26; Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 155.
54 Galbraith, The Predator State, 131–48.
55 Colin Mayer, Firm Commitment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 9; Bartels, Unequal Democracy, 284; Galbraith, The Predator State, 144.
56 C.S. Lewis, “Preface to the 1961 edition,” in Screwtape Letters (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2013), xxxvii.
57 Hans G. Despain, “Pragmatic Employment Policy,” Post Keynesian Economics Forum, November 2012, http://pke-forum.com. The issue here is that the institutional historical development of monopoly-finance capital will either necessarily: (1) become less and less capitalistic, or (2) become more and more wasteful, irrational and destructive. On the absorption of excess surplus, see John K. Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose ((Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973); Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 154; Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State (London and New York: Anthem Press, 2013).
58 John K. Galbraith comes to understand and begins advocating a simultaneous revolution in sociological relations, political order, and the economic physiology of society, see John K. Galbraith, Economics and the PublicPurpose, 134–45, 215–324, and The Anatomy of Power (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983). Baran and Sweezy dubbed Galbraith, “The prophet of prosperity without war orders”; see Monopoly Capital, 160.
59 Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 164–65, 155–77.
60 Ibid, 336–67, 142, 178–217.
61 John Bellamy Foster made this point in private correspondence, September 2014.
62 Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 367.
35 Paul M. Sweezy, “Monopoly Capital After Twenty-Five Years,” Monthly Review 43, no. 7 (1991): 52–57; “Investment Banking Revisited,” Monthly Review 33, no. 10 (1982): 1–12; Paul M. Sweezy and Harry Magdoff, The Dynamics of U.S. Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972); Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy, “Production and Finance,” Monthly Review 35, no. 1 (1983): 1–13, and Stagnation and the Financial Explosion.
36 Costas Lapavitsas, Profiting Without Producing (London: Verso, 2013): 15–20; John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, The Great FinancialCrisis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009); John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, The Endless Crisis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012). See also references in note 34.
37 Lapavitsas, Profiting Without Producing, 23.
38 Sweezy and Magdoff, The Dynamics of U.S. Capitalism, 7–29; Foster and McChesney, The Endless Crisis, 29–64; Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 14–51; Magdoff and Sweezy, “Production and Finance,” 1–13.
39 Magdoff and Sweezy, Stagnation and the Financial Explosion; Foster and Magdoff, The Great Financial Crisis; Foster and McChesney, The Endless Crisis.
40 Paul M. Sweezy, “The Triumph of Financial Capital,” Monthly Review 46, no. 2 (1994): 1–11.
41 Foster and Magdoff, The Great Financial Crisis, 5–6.
42 Paul M. Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970, originally 1942).
43 John Bellamy Foster and Hannah Holleman, “The Financial Power Elite,” Monthly Review vol. 62, no. 1 (May 2010): 1–19.
44 Kalecki, Essays in the Theory of Economic Fluctuations, 149.
45 István Mészáros, Beyond Capital(London: Merlin Press, 1995), 844; Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster, “Stagnation and Financialization,” Monthly Review 66, no. 1 (May 2014): 1–24; Hans G. Despain, “It’s the System Stupid,” Monthly Review 65, no. 6 (2013): 39–44; Paul Le Blanc and Michael D. Yates, A Freedom Budget for All Americans (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2013).
46 György Lukács, Political Writings, 1919–1929 (London: NLB, 1972), 15.
47 Thomas I. Palley, Financialization: The Economics of Finance Capital Domination (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014), 201.
48 Wolfgang Streeck, BuyingTime: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (London and New York: Verso, 2014), viii.
49 Palley, Financialization, 212.
50 Mészáros, Beyond Capital, 844, 893.
51 Larry M. Bartels, Unequal Democracy (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008), 286; James K. Galbraith, The Predator State (New York: Free Press, 2008); Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality (New York: W.W. Norton, 2012): 28–51.
52 Adam Bonica, “Avenue of Influence,” June 20, 2014, http://ssrn.com; Bartels, Unequal Democracy, 283–302; Robert A.G. Monks, Citizens DisUnited (New York: Miniver Press, 2013), and Corpocracy (New York: Wiley, 2007).
53 Streeck, Buying Time, 57; Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Democracy and Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1986): 3–26; Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 155.
54 Galbraith, The Predator State, 131–48.
55 Colin Mayer, Firm Commitment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 9; Bartels, Unequal Democracy, 284; Galbraith, The Predator State, 144.
56 C.S. Lewis, “Preface to the 1961 edition,” in Screwtape Letters (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2013), xxxvii.
57 Hans G. Despain, “Pragmatic Employment Policy,” Post Keynesian Economics Forum, November 2012, http://pke-forum.com. The issue here is that the institutional historical development of monopoly-finance capital will either necessarily: (1) become less and less capitalistic, or (2) become more and more wasteful, irrational and destructive. On the absorption of excess surplus, see John K. Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose ((Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973); Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 154; Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State (London and New York: Anthem Press, 2013).
58 John K. Galbraith comes to understand and begins advocating a simultaneous revolution in sociological relations, political order, and the economic physiology of society, see John K. Galbraith, Economics and the PublicPurpose, 134–45, 215–324, and The Anatomy of Power (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983). Baran and Sweezy dubbed Galbraith, “The prophet of prosperity without war orders”; see Monopoly Capital, 160.
59 Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 164–65, 155–77.
60 Ibid, 336–67, 142, 178–217.
61 John Bellamy Foster made this point in private correspondence, September 2014.
62 Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 367.
Hans G. Despain leciona economia política no Nichols College, onde é chefe do Departamento de Economia.
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