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One of the funniest things that has come out of having to take seriously Henwood's "sound finance socialism" schtick is the notion MMT is an apologist for "paying rich people to lend to the government". MMT advocates for zero interest on government debt! The whole point is to 1/x
euthanize the bondholder class and eliminate the massive subsidies interest payments represent. But when you point that out to Dougie, his response is "ZIRP is incompatible with capitalism so it cannot work". Well, I'll happily stipulate to the first part of that! But wait, I 2/x
thought the whole problem with MMT was that it *wasn't* challenging the underlying power relations of capitalism, either through asserting the superiority of public finance over private finance or through the JG which would eliminate the reserve army of unemployed. So which 3/x
is it? Are we apologists for capitalism, or do we advocate policies that, if enacted, would fundamentally undermine capitalist relations? Surely i'm not the only one who sees the internal contradiction in claiming that "MMTers are apologists for the rich & dont have a theory 4/x
class struggle but they also advocate for policies that are fundamentally incompatible with capitalism and therefore are utopian". I mean, is the claim really that MMT isn't revolutionary because it doesn't challenge power relations, and the reason it doesn't challenge power 5/x
relations is because what it is trying to achieve is not possible without changing power relations? Really? And the somehow more 'realistic' alternative, grounded in a more Marxian understanding of class struggle & power relations, is "tax the rich to pay for shit". Really? 6/6
