Friends,

I know of no clinical psychological study concerning the effects of starvation on an individual. Probably only the Nazis did such things. But what if we took a six-foot tall, three hundred pound man, somewhat flabby, and put him into a room, without food of any kind but we'll be nice and give him water. Suppose we required him to do regular calisthenics (this exercise should be considered analogous to the invariably rising productivity of the workers even in the midst of downsizings with flat wages but rising profits for executives.

So, our guy is locked in a room with only water, no food, and yet required to exercise. The total absence of food should be equated with deindustrialization, no inputs. There might come a point as the starved, exercising body strips away most of the fat and muscle definition is at its height. At this point he might look into the window and say to himself: "Damn, I'm ripped! I am so cut!"

This small window of euphoria is analagous to the height of some kind of national "bubble," that is before the process of starvation marches on and continues to eat away muscle, then bone, then nerve fiber, and the like, until death. A bubble is junk food, the substitution of real productive value with hype about "The Next Big Thing." One could say that what keeps the U.S. economy going in the midst of deindustrialization, are the bubbles of various kinds.


What about capitalism's anorexic/bulimic tendencies? The system tends to look at itself in the mirror and say: "I'm fat!!" then goes running for fifteen miles, swims endless laps around an Olympic size pool, runs on the treadmill for two hours, does aerobics, paints the garage, and then eats a bowl of soup. This mere bowl of broth symbolizes the severe pairing back of social spending by the government during times of crisis when state, local, and the federal government don't collect as much taxes from the financial sector, whom it may have to rescue for some reason or other.

This anorexia is also exemplified in the way in which private industry seems to relentlessly offshore plants, put downward pressure on wages and benefits of workers, and so forth to "trim the fat," and do whatever they have to do to "reduce labor costs," as well as shareholder return. That is also the bowl of soup. But productivity must go up, working hours must go up. This is the torturous, self-flagellating exercise regimen.

But the system also likes to "binge and purge." The system goes into paroxysms and gorge itself on the next big thing or bubble. In this phase the system doesn't even bother looking at itself in the mirror. It runs to the bathroom, sticks its finger down its throat and purges.... productive capacity overseas to various locations where labor costs are much lower and health and human safety standards are much more relaxed - like the anorexic, afraid of putting on weight.

But this constant self-induced vomitting, I hear, brings up stomach acid which wears away at the lining of the throat.

Let's return to the "dual reality" John Bellamy Foster referred to, of stagnant growth on the one hand, and the fact of, the way ".... the system has found new ways of reproducing itself,..." Stagnation and financialization which gives capitalism its appearance of dynamism.

I remember how, in the eighties people expressed concern about offshoring and the flattening of wages, as plant owners steadfastly, stubbornly, and one could tell, defensively, maintained that they were doing what they had to do to compete with overseas producers whose labor costs were much lower. I'm fat. Remember I told you about the analysis of Dr. Rick Wolf? For one hundred fifty years American capitalism underwent an unprecedented continued expansion with worker wages, productivity, and profits for bosses went up every decade. And there was a sweet spot between 1945 and 1975, in which American capitalism stood alone uncontested, with the economies of Europe and Japan having to be rebuilt by buying American products. But that stopped in the seventies as those shattered societies recovered and starting competing and out-competing U.S. industry.

Offshoring was one of those aspects of the changing economy that capitalists seemed to poutily defend. But by the nineties the chattering classes were extolling the virtues of offshoring as one of the innumerable positive aspects of globalization, remember? They said that this process, somehow, made the economy more efficient (I'm fat). Thomas Friedman, the New York Times journalist said that the world was flat and that no two countries that had McDonalds ever went to war, (it was all about the healing power in international relations of shared commerce). Francis Fukayama said that history had come to an end. Ronald Reagan, in the eighties, of course, had said that "Government is not the answer to our problems. Government is the problem." And Bill Clinton had said that "The era of big government is over," and signed what many regard as a highly punitive welfare reform bill worthy of The Gipper himself, signed the Financial Services Modernization Act which killed Glass-Steagal, which in the thirties, had prevented the merger of commercial and speculative investment banks, remember? And didn't he sign telecommunications legislation which opened the floodgates to the unprecedented concentration of all media in fewer and fewer gigantic multinational corporate hands?

In other words, the nineties saw the cementing of the neoliberal consensus, or Washington Consensus. Also, remember, the nineties saw the rise of the tech or Internet bubble. And then it burst. What is the bursting of a bubble analogous to in terms of human biological functionality? Well, suppose one ate ten pounds of food, but the quality of the food is such that one evacuates, say, eight-and-a-half pounds of.................................. waste. Sorry to go on with this base analogy but what goes down the toilet bowl? Scores of small businesses, "start ups," taking the hopes and dreams of thousands upon thousands who have lost their jobs from those and even more established companies.

Also, it is my understanding that bubble periods are always accompanied by financialization. And of finance itself, Kevin Phillips wrote, again, in Wealth and Democracy (2002): "Speculative heydays pull in large middle class participation, fueling themes about the democratization of money and investment, at least until the bubble pops" pxxi - introduction. This is part of what I have previously referred to as the Ring of Sauron dynamic, remember?

Also, we must note that increased investment, perhaps from a broader base of the population, also responded and fueled layoffs of workers. Again, Kevin Phillips.

"Pressure to maximize profits and stock prices by cutting employees came both from top management and from Wall Street and institutional investors, the latter responding to yardsticks that a single layoff added $60,000 to future year bottom line earnings. If layoffs and downsizings continued even as profits set records in the nineties, that was because the layoffs and downsizings were often the reason for the profits" (Wealth and Democracy, p.150). Finance will finance itself in the space where there is no productive action to enable. And in this we see, in microcosm, the national tendency to bulimia, binge and purge, as well as the anorexic tendency, since, no doubt, worker productivity (those workers left at the job) must rise to "pick up the slack."

wingedcentaur