What Stands Between You and Your Pile of Toys?

Speak Not of ‘Abundance,’ But of Production

Introduction

A funny thing happened on the way from what most called 'political economy' in the late 18th century to what many had begun calling 'economics' by the late 19th century. The same thing, ironically, happened even to what many called 'Marxism' by the early, immediate post-WWI, 20th century.

What was it? What was so funny? It was that production – and hence labor, extraction, exploitation, even ‘value’ in its politically salient form (surplus value) –simply dropped from most widely read technical discourses, and seemingly all academic discourses, as if through a trap door. It did so first as a normative concern, then, as always happens, as positive category.

In short, attention moved from what those who know Marx will recognize as Capital Volume I ('Production') subjects either to (a) Capital Volume II ('Circulation') subjects, among 'economists,' or to (b) German Ideology subjects, among 'Frankfurt School' social theorists and other exponents of what later came to be called 'Western Marxism' – what I think of as ‘Lit Crit Social Theory’ or ‘Marx-Curious Social Semiotics.’

Whither Production?

It is tempting to attribute this move to a wish to depart or deflect from 'the labor theory of value,' which, when (a) falsely taken for a kind of price theory, presents descriptive embarrassment, and (b) when correctly taken as an account of social resource accounting presents prescriptive embarrassment. Whichever the motive in particular instances, in aggregate this move did great mischief.

What mischief? Well, for one thing, theorists of and policymakers in western societies in time 'forgot how to make things. And, for another thing, critics of those societies in turn forgot how to critique what actually most matters in how we make things: namely, the outright robbery still at the core of our deeply connected processes of production and distribution.

To be a ‘high theory’ mainstream economist today is accordingly to be a theorist of consumption and ‘welfare’ or ‘utility,’ conceived as a state of satisfaction derived from consuming the things that one craves – not a theorist of where those things come from or how they are made.

To be a 'Marxian economist' today, in turn, is more often than not to be nothing more exalted than a primitive 'price-theorist' with mildly egalitarian sympathies: as if 1870s marginalism, focused on demand not supply, could somehow be Marxified – or, more like it, as if Marx could be Walrasianized. (Most who start down this road end up, correctly, concluding that he cannot, and thus abandoning him altogether in favor of Walras, who was himself mildly egalitarian enough even for today's few (unserious) 'socialists.'

To be a 'Marxian social critic' today, correspondingly, is then more often than not to be nothing more exalted than a primitive 'semiotician,' as if what Marx left us was simply a colorful vocabulary through which to find or ascribe 'social meanings' among the bewildering arrays of ever new, ever more purchasable objects and options circulating around us, again without ever having to ask where they came from and what role we ourselves – let alone exploitation – might have played in producing them.

All three of these perspectives – those of the modern marginalist or pseudo-Marxist economist and that of the ‘Western Marxist’ social ‘theorist,’ are those of the infant in the crib or the playpen, looking up at the mysterious mobile from which initially inexplicable colorful plastic objects dangle before him. In time, without looking much farther than the floating objects themselves, our gazers come to notice that these objects 'move' upon 'markets.'

The first two groups then come to reflect at best upon how these objects might come to have the 'prices' they do when they (somehow) come to exchange upon markets of never explained origin. The other group, perhaps less mechanically and more 'artistically' minded, reflects instead upon less precise or determinate 'hidden social meanings' arguably discernible in a 'social object language' that market exchange (still of unexplained origin) can be 'interpreted' as.

All three groups stop short, far short, of where Marx and his predecessors Steuart, Smith, and Sismondi actually took us – into the always crucial, yet seldom visited, realm of production, which determines all else. And all three groups, as just in effect noted, have current iterations still active today.

The most current, albeit nevertheless old news, crop of pseudo-Marxian Walrasians are of course the ironically named 'analytical Marxists.' The most current crop of Marx-curious social-semioticians are the 'value form' theorists who now are enjoying a bit of a comical vogue. And the most current crop of more mainstream economists and economy-curious ‘wonks’ what I’ll call the post-Clintonite dabblers in what they themselves call ‘abundance.’

It is the latter who will interest me here. For I have dealt elsewhere with the two kinds of production-ignorant pseudo-Marxians noted above. It is nevertheless what the former share with the latter – a professed interest in some of the consequences or effects of production and productive relations shorn of concern for production and productive relations themselves – on which I wish now to focus.

The Production Agenda and Dylanomics: Why Economies not ‘Busy Being [Productively] Born’ are ‘Busy Dying’

Ever since the crash of 2008, and especially since the start of the Covid pandemic of 2020, a smallish number of us who concern ourselves with economies have attributed modern dysfunctions to the aforementioned loss of attention to production. Theory’s productive aphasia has deprived theory of practical relevance, while practice’s counterpart blindness has deprived ‘Western,’ and especially British-derived, societies of far more.

The loss – in fact, the deliberately labor-exploitative ‘offshoring’ – of productive capacity has notoriously brought ever-worsening income- and wealth-inequality, ‘financialization’ and consequent macroeconomic volatility, addiction epidemics and social breakdown, and now full political breakdown to affected countries. These developments, which culminated in and then were supercharged by the crash of 2008, were of course bad enough...

But as millions began literally dying in 2020 while ‘Western’ nations struggled to produce N95 masks, pulmonary ventilators, and even hospital space adequate to the tasks of treatment, the ‘existential’ nature of the vulnerabilities wrought by productive atrophy, compressed now as they were into very short time-spans, became no longer ignorable. At least in the eyes of some …

If you ‘Google’ my name and such words as ‘production,’ ‘produce,’ ‘make,’ ‘supply,’ ‘supply-side,’ and the like, you will find scores and scores of books, articles, and draft legislation both before and, especially, during and after the pandemic. A few – but surprisingly few – others began writing similarly. Little, though, happened in response. A salutary exception here in effect ‘proved the rule’: …

Representative Ro Khanna and Senator Marco Rubio, whom I had assisted with production-friendly legislation since 2018 after doing similar work for other Congressmembers from 2010 through 2014 on ‘Nation-Building Here at Home,’ in late 2022 introduced landmark legislation that I had drafted for them back in 2020.

This National Reconstruction and Continuous Development Act of 2022 would replicate the public-private coordination structures that brought the ‘miracles’ of US productive mobilization and development in the early 19^th century, the Civil War and immediate post- Civil War era, the First World War mobilization and prosecution, and then the Second World War mobilization and Prosecution.

In (1) vesting macro-planning and coordination authority in a jurisdictionally layered public-private Council akin to the War Industries and War Production Boards of the two world wars (‘Plank I,’ a.k.a. ‘the National Reconstruction and Continuous Development Council’); (2) assuring adequate financing in all potentially useful forms by upgrading the existing Federal Financing Bank within Treasury into a full-on latterday War or Reconstruction Finance Corporation again as in the two world war mobilizations (’Plank II,’ a.k.a. ‘the Upgraded FFB’); (3) restoring the Federal Reserve System to its original status as a network of regional development finance institutions focused on production not speculation (‘Plank III,’ a.k.a. ‘Spread the Fed’); and (4) converting the already existing TreasuryDirect system into a network of universally available, P2P digital savings and payment ‘wallets’ (‘Plank IV,’ a.k.a. ‘Digital Greenbacks’), … this Act would, and still could, give practical effect to the new theoretical turn I have been seeking to introduce – actually, restore – to contemporary ‘Development Economics’ …

I have been calling this practical platform ‘the Production Agenda’ since well before Covid, and Congressman Khanna happily does likewise now. Read or view any talk or interview that he gives, and you will either read or hear it. And for this reason he is the only Democrat worth thinking about in connection with the Presidency as of next cycle.

The theoretical vision that underlies that practical agenda, in turn, I call ‘Dylanomics,’ in honor of the poet Robert Zimmerman’s memorable line that ‘he not busy being born is busy dying.’ That adage is as true – indeed probably more true – in the case of economies than it is in the case of individuals. ‘National development’ is never a ‘done deal’ or a one-off achievement, never about mere one-time ‘take off’ – a conceit handed down by Walt Rostow, a Cold War Defense Department apparatchik rather than a proper economist. It is, rather, a continuous process of maximally rapid yet stable dissemination economy-wide of continuously developing new technologies percolating up from both public and private sector innovators.

Until we recapture full appreciation of the latter, and hence until we re-recognize the absolutely decisive importance of ‘industrial clustering’ of a kind (a) that we once had, (b) that China now has, and (c) that no private sector entity has, or should have, the legal authority or ‘market power’ to bring about, productive restoration will remain out of reach.

Which take us to …

‘Abundance’: Products without Production

In recent years, and especially recent weeks, policy thinkers are all aflutter with a putatively new discovery – viz., the discovery that supplies matter. A more ‘abundant’ supplying of goods, services, infrastructures, we are informed as if this were in fact information, means ‘a bigger pie.’ That in turn means less squabbling over ‘the slices.’ More ‘spoils,’ less to-do about ‘the division of spoils.’ Why fight over distribution and redistribution if there is ever more to distribute. A good time can be (painlessly) had by all.

This is of course true enough – indeed trivially so – so far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far – indeed it goes little further than tautology. For the sole obstacle to abundance, it seems, is …

… Yep, ‘there you go again,’ the guvment. You read that right. The ‘new’ abundance agenda is essentially just warmed-over Reaganism. The state ideology, ironically (or tragicomically) enough, of precisely that period when the US decisively ceded productive supremacy to Asia (with Germany), financialized its economy, and flipped from being the world’s largest creditor nation to its largest debtor nations – a troika of calamities from which we still grope, as does ‘the abundance agenda’ itself – for means of escaping.

This is of course, on one well known definition, insanity. It is expressly counseling repetition of what we have tried before and failed with.

How in the hell did this happen? How could seemingly smart people fall into this trap?

I'm guessing that the insanity owes to some combination of two or three reasons:

(1) First, there's been a steadily growing, if subarticulate, sense of the dysfunctional developments with which I opened. There’s an inchoate recognition that when things began going wrong in the US was when we stopped producing, stopped making, stopped building, and instead (a) we started just 'pushing paper' (the phrase emerged during late Reagan years - significantly enough, after our financialization had begun gathering steam, our S&Ls were wiped out leaving only big Wall Street type banks (the era of the 'yuppie'); (b) our steel and cognate industries imploded (a popular song called 'Allentown' topped the charts in the early '80s); and (c) Japan eclipsed us as a manufacturer/producer/exporter), while turned to merely 'extracting' (the term emerged during Obama years as the tech platforms, which essentially find new ways to squeeze rents from us rather than produce, began to reach scale). The book in effect speaks to that inarticulate worry, finally giving it voice.

(2) Second, unlike the Production Agenda noted above, the 'abundance' story doesn't place any intellectual demands on you in purporting to explain what happened and how. It simply tells an already-familiar, entirely clichéd fairy tale about 'red tape,' 'bureaucracy,' 'excessive regulation,' etc. You don't have to think anything more once they start trotting that out. The script of the thoughtstream is already written and programmed into you as a post-Reagan-era American. It's already as well-established a part of the American episteme as 'cowboys' and 'freedom.' So we end up getting a very very easy Pavlovian endorphin hit: …

Abundance, lots of stuff - goooood.

Red Tape, interference - baaaaaad.

Note how much easier this makes the implied remedy too: If the problem is just some obstacle, blow it up, bulldoze it. Easy. Endorphin rush. Instant vicarious gratification.

If, by contrast, you've got to conceive, design, legislate, and put into place a planning and coordinating structure involving every level of government, every jurisdictional field handled by a cabinet level agency, and leaders from every principal economy-constituting private sector industry and labor organization as we did in preparing for the two World Wars, ... well, that's work.

The difference of perspective is also reflected in the different titles. 'Production Agenda' references what has to be done right from the get-go. 'Abundance' could just as well be titled 'Manna.' It gives you kid-with-lots-of-toys vibes - again, instant gratification - while sparing you the trouble of having to think about how stuff gets made. And if the only thing standing between you and your pile of toys is a big bad Regulator, well, there is an easy kid solution to that too: just throw a tantrum and tear it all down.

You know that Musk must love the ‘abundance agenda’ and its strange manifesto. He is in effect already enacting it - illegally.

(3) Finally third, that last observation melds with another - how the so-called ‘abundance agenda’ just continues to push the old Reagan line yet again. It's all just 'red tape' and 'unelected bureaucrats,' which we now can see not only take away our freedom but also take away our toys, our stuff. They are the Grinch who steals your Christmas, not serious public servants executing our will as expressed through legislation. So of course now Republicans will be waving this book like a 'proof' that they were right all along. 'Look!,' they will triumphantly squeal, 'even yer libral Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein admit it! Fweedom! Abundance!'

What do you bet now that Musk invites Thompson and Klein to join 'D.O.G.' while touting it as a large-hearted concession to ‘commonsense bipartisanship’?

Theoretically and practically, however, there is nothing to see here. ‘No “there” there.’ Its all old – and very bad – retread-Reaganite news.

Conclusion

Let me close, then with a simple question-trio for the new ‘abundance’ charlatans:

1. What country has produced more abundance, literally by orders of magnitude, than any other in history over the last 20 years?

2. What country did the same from the early 19^th to the late-mid 20^th century? And finally …

3. Are those countries famed for their lack of bureaucracy, regulation, or 'government interference'?

End of Story.

One quick caveat: Note that none of this is to say there are no silly regulations or process tangles. For this very reason I drafted another bill for Rep. Khanna right after he and Senator Rubio introduced the big bill described up above: viz., the Expedited National Reconstruction Permitting Act of 2023, pursuant to which the aforementioned National Reconstruction and Continuous Development Council can use it’s the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause power to cut through such obstacles when there is urgent reason to do so.

The point here, then, is to say that as putative mono-causal explanation, the so-called ‘abundance’ story it is mind-bogglingly superficial, silly, and … sorry to say, … lazy.

And if there is one thing that will not bring abundance of anything but belly fat, heart disease, and Ozempic addiction, it is laziness.