1.5 Conclusion

Alright, having so much trouble fitting all my material on inflation theory into a couple of thousand words, so I’ve decided to make it a whole new chapter. The upside is that this chapter is finished! The downside is that all the chapter references above are now wrong! Here’s the summary of the chapter as a whole. You may notice some subtle differences of emphasis from the body of the chapter, in point #4 in particular; that’s partly thanks to the helpful discussions in the comments here. Eventually I’ll rework the earlier sections a little, correspondingly. But in general, I’m pretty happy with this chapter. Hopefully the next one will come faster.

A draft thesis section. This is a draft of an unfinished document, please don’t quote without getting in touch first. Quoting in blogs is fine.

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In this chapter I have set out my approach to understanding economic policy and its historical development within the broader social structure of capitalism. To summarise:

1. Economic policy exists at the boundary between two relatively independent systems, the state and the economy. These two systems are only relatively independent, because each is necessary to the other’s reproduction, and they are not even institutionally separate, in that, for example, the economic system depends everywhere on a system of laws and their enforcement, while state activities involve the use of money and wage-labour.
2. The capitalist state has historically evolved certain structures and processes which deal with dysfunctions in the economic system, and thus modified the way in which the two structures reproduce themselves as a whole. Two fields in which state involvement has been especially important are the reproduction of labour-power and the management of money. This evolution can be understood in more-or-less functionalist terms, though it is of course driven by conscious political activity – within legislative, executive and judicial structures – focused on solving specific ‘problems’, which dysfunctions appear as politically. This is definitely not to say the process is driven by a singular state subject.
3. However, in the course of the Great Depression and the Second World War, something like a unified strategic actor in the field of economic policy emerged (though the unity is of course contingent and can break down). It was unified partly on the basis of new macroeconomic theory which posited it as such an actor, calling for a rational and combined use of certain state structures which had already developed independently within the economic system for other reasons. It involved especially the use of state budgets (fiscal policy), central banking (monetary policy) and arbitration system (wages policy) as instruments.
4. The work of Jan Tinbergen on economic policy illustrates well the ‘point of view’ from the ‘subjectivity’ of economic policy. The economic system appears as a problem to be solved – in fact, even abstractly represented as a system of equations. However, the contradictions of the system – especially those arising from the conflicting aims of classes and other groups with the social power to pursue them – mean that it may lack a solution. Contradictions can reappear at a policy level, with instruments torn in different directions. This can motivate policy attempts to restructure its own apparatus and to reshape the economic system itself to attack the social power bases of the groups in pursuit of functionality. Meanwhile, groups themselves are actively seeking to improve their own strategic position. This may include attempts to use political power to restrain or direct policy itself. However, the fact that policy has come to be held responsible for the functionality of the system as a whole places powerful selective pressures on political possibilities.
5. My use of this conception of economic policy to explain the development of counter-inflation policy in Australia between 1945 and 1985 is in sharp contrast to the standard neoclassical ‘new macroeconomic consensus’s’ narrative of its own emergence, as essentially the triumph of correct views over error. Here I briefly pointed to some problems in the standard narrative, and signalled some aspects of my own story, which will be expanded upon in the coming chapters.

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