Modern monetary theory—pandemic edition

Mark Tansey, “Garden” (2006)

Modern Monetary Theorists are having a moment, as governments (many of them run by conservative regimes, such as Donald Trump and the Republicans in the United States) are running gigantic fiscal deficits in order to combat the economic crisis occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic.*

This time, with the $2 trillion CARES Act, the U.S. federal government has taken an additional step down the road of Modern Monetary Theory, by having the Federal Reserve buy an unlimited amount of Treasury bonds and government-backed mortgage bonds — whatever was necessary “to support smooth market functioning”—in other words, by simply creating the necessary money.

But, as Michael Hudson et al. explain, the idea that is being celebrated right now—that running government budget deficits is stabilizing instead of destabilizing—”is in many ways something quite different than the leading MMT advocates have long supported.”

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) was developed to explain the logic of running government budget deficits to increase demand in the economy’s consumption and capital investment sectors so as to maintain full employment. But the enormous U.S. federal budget deficits from the Obama bank bailout after the 2008 crash through the Trump tax cuts and Coronavirus financial bailout have not pumped money into the economy to finance new direct investment, employment, rising wages and living standards. Instead, government money creation and Quantitative Easing have been directed to the finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sectors. The result is a travesty of MMT, not its original aim.

By subsidizing the financial sector and its debt overhead, this policy is deflationary instead of supporting the “real” economy. The effect has been to empower the banking sector, whose product is credit and debt creation that has taken an unproductive and indeed extractive form.

Let me back up for a moment. I’ve been an advocate of Modern Monetary Theory ever since I began to study it (at the prodding of friends [ht: br]), as can be seen in various of my blog posts. In particular, from the perspective of the Marxian critique of political economy, two formulations that represent both critiques of and alternatives to those of mainstream economics are particularly useful: government deficits and bank money.

Perhaps the best known (and, in many ways, most controversial) aspect of Modern Monetary Theory is the logic of running budget deficits. The mainstream view is that the government imposes taxes and then uses the revenues to pay for some portion of government programs. To pay for the rest of its expenditures, the state then borrows money by issuing bonds that investors can purchase (and for which they receive interest payments).** But, neoclassical economists complain, such borrowing has a big downside: budget deficits increase the demand for loans, because the government competes with all the loans that private individuals and businesses want to take on—thus leading, in the short run, to the so-called crowding-out effect and, in the long run, an increase in government debt and the potential for a government default.

Advocates of Modern Monetary Theory dispute both of these conclusions: First, they argue that governments should never have to default so long as the country has a sovereign currency, that is, so long as they issue and control the kind of money they tax and spend (so, e.g., the United States but not Greece). Second, taxes and bonds do not and indeed cannot directly pay for spending. Instead, the government creates money whenever it spends.*** Clearly, this is useful from a left-wing perspective, because it creates room for government spending on programs that benefit the working-class—including, but certainly not limited to, the much-vaunted jobs guarantee.****

The second major contention between mainstream economics and Modern Monetary Theory concerns the role of banks—in particular, the relationship between bank lending and money. As Bill Mitchell explains,

Mainstream economic theory considers banks to be institutions that take in deposits which then provides them with the funds to on-lend at a profit. Accordingly, the ability of private banks to lend is considered to be constrained by the reserves they hold.

In other words, banks are seen as financial intermediaries, funneling deposits and then (backed by reserves) allocating a multiple of such deposits to the best possible, most efficient uses.

From the perspective of Modern Monetary Theory, private banks don’t operate in this way. Instead, they create money, by making loans—and reserve balances play little if any role.

A bank’s ability to expand its balance sheet is not constrained by the quantity of reserves it holds or any fractional reserve requirements. The bank expands its balance sheet by lending. Loans create deposits which are then backed by reserves after the fact. The process of extending loans (credit) which creates new bank liabilities is unrelated to the reserve position of the bank.

This is exactly the opposite of the mainstream story, with the implication that banks create loans (and therefore money) based on the profitability of making such loans, an activity that has nothing to do with the central bank’s adding more reserves to the system.

Both points—concerning the financing of government spending and endogenous bank money—are well known to anyone who has been exposed (either sympathetically or critically) to Modern Monetary Theory. In my view, they fit usefully and relatively easily into modern Marxian economics, especially in terms of both the theory of the state (e.g., government finances) and the theory of (fiat) money.

The problem, it seems to me, arises in the terms of the major complaint registered by Hudson et al.—namely, that government stimulus plans have mostly been directed to the finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sectors, which are considered unproductive and extractive, and not to the “real” economy, which is not.

Readers who know something about the history of economic thought will recognize that these productive/unproductive and extractive/non-extractive distinctions have a long lineage and can be traced back, first, to the French Physiocrats and, later, to Adam Smith—in other words, to the beginnings of modern mainstream economics.

Using his Tableau Économique, François Quesnay attempted to show that the proprietors and cultivators of land were the only productive members of the economy and society, as against the unproductive class composed of manufacturers and merchants. It follows that the government should promote the interests of the landowners, and not those of the other classes, which were merely parasitic. Smith took up this distinction but then redeployed it, to argue that any labor involved in the production of commodities (whether agricultural or manufacturing) was productive, and the problem was with revenues spent on unproductive labor (such as household servants and landlords). The former led to the accumulation of capital, which increased the wealth of nations, while the latter represented conspicuous consumption, which did not.

Marx criticized both formulations, arguing that the productive/unproductive distinction had to do not with what workers produced, but rather with how they produced. Within capitalism, labor was productive if it resulted in the creation of surplus-value; and, if it didn’t (such as is the case with managers and CEOs who supervise the production of goods and services, as well as all those involved in finance, insurance, and real estate), it was not. So, the Marxian distinction is focused on surplus-value and thus exploitation.

And that, it seems to me, is the major point overlooked in much of Modern Monetary Theory. FIRE is extractive in the sense that it receives a cut of the surplus created elsewhere in the economy. But so are industries outside of finance, insurance, and real estate, since the boards of directors of enterprises in those sectors extract surplus from their own workers. And those different modes of extraction occur whether or not there’s a jobs guarantee provided by the creation of money by governments or banks.

From a Marxian perspective, then, the crucial distinction—both theoretically and for public policy—is not that between FIRE and the so-called real economy, but between classes that appropriate the surplus and otherwise “share in the booty” and the class that actually produces the surplus.

Right now, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the class that is working to produce the surplus and provide the commodities we need is the one that is carrying the burden—either because they have been laid off and mostly left to their own devices, without paychecks and healthcare benefits, or been forced to continue to labor under precarious and unsafe conditions.

It’s that class, the American working-class, that is suffering from the ravages of the current economic crisis precipitated by the pandemic. They’re the ones, not their employers (whether in FIRE or the “real” economy), who deserve to be bailed out.

 

*Although this is certainly not the first time Republican administrations have run fiscal deficits, and allowed the public debt to soar—as long as they’re in power. They did it under Ronald Reagan, both Bushes, and long before the pandemic with Trump’s tax cuts. The only time American conservatives seem to worry about deficits and debt is when Democrats hold the reins.

**Wealthy individuals and large corporations long ago determined they prefer to be paid to purchase government debt instead of being taxed.

***So why, then, does the government need to tax at all in Modern Monetary Theory? Best I can figure, there are two major reasons: First, taxation makes sure people in the country use the government-issued currency, because they have to pay taxes in that currency (and not, e.g., in some kind of local or digital currency). Second, taxes are one tool governments can use to control inflation. They can take an amount of money out of the economy, which keeps consumers and corporations from bidding up prices.

****But that’s clearly not a new idea. Back in 1943, Michel Kalecki argued that governments had the ability to use a spending program (e.g., through public investment or subsidizing mass consumption) to achieve full employment. But it would likely be opposed by an alliance of big business and rentier interests based on three reasons:

(i) dislike of government interference in the problem of employment as such; (ii) dislike of the direction of government spending (public investment and subsidizing consumption); (iii) dislike of the social and political changes resulting from the maintenance of full employment.

In other words, capitalists are against both the government’s usurping of their private role as masters of the economy and society and the strengthening of the working-class, for whom “the ‘sack’ would cease to play its role as a disciplinary measure.”

Bachaqueros and the distinction between productive and unproductive labor

Every economic theory includes—or, at least, is haunted by—the distinction between productive and unproductive labor. The distinction serves as the basis of all their major claims, from the most basic theory of value to the conception of who deserves what within capitalism.

The distinction began with the French Physiocrats, especially François Quesnay, who in his 1758 Tableau Économique made a distinction between the “Productive” Class (which consisted of agricultural producers) and two other groups: the “Proprietary” class (which consisted of only landowners) and the “Sterile” class (which was made up of artisans and merchants). The idea was that all new value was created only by agricultural producers, not by industry or commerce.

It was then picked up by Adam Smith, who criticized the Physiocrats for overlooking the important contribution of manufacturing to the wealth of nations. While Smith broadened the concept of productive labor (to include both agriculture and industry), he retained the notion of unproductive labor (especially the “menial servants” he worried industrial capitalists would waste their profits on, thus undermining their “historic mission” to accumulate capital).

Karl Marx, in his critique of Smith, took over the distinction between productive and unproductive labor but then transformed it. For him, labor was productive to the extent that it produced surplus-value; all other labor (e.g., the labor of corporate managers as well as that of personal servants) was considered unproductive labor.*

Neoclassical economists, for their part, sought to abolish the distinction between productive and unproductive labor, based on the idea that any labor (when combined with physical capital and land) that contributes to a nation’s wealth should be considered productive.**

And, of course, there’s John Maynard Keynes, who, after the crash of 1929 and in the midst of the first Great Depression, referred to the “rentier,” the “functionless investor,” who contributed nothing but was still able to capture returns based on the scarcity of capital. Keynes therefore imagined a time when, with the aid of the state, capital would become abundant, which would mean “the euthanasia of the rentier, and, consequently, the euthanasia of the cumulative oppressive power of the capitalist to exploit the scarcity-value of capital.”

This brief survey of the history of economic thought is just a prelude to Branko Milanovic’s response to Ricardo Hausmann’s invoking of the distinction between productive and unproductive labor (in saying, with reference to Venezuela, “This is the crazy thing about the system. A lot of people are putting in effort [to buy the goods and resell them], and none of that increases the supply of anything. This is perfectly unproductive labor.”):***

That statement made me stop. “Perfectly unproductive labor”? But that “unproductive labor”, as every economist knows, improves the allocation of goods. The goods flow toward those who have greater ability to pay and since we tend to associate greater ability to pay with greater utility, the goods, thanks to bachaqueros’ activities, are better allocated. If one argues that bachaqueros activity is unproductive because it “does not increase the supply of anything” then one should argue that the activity of any trade or intermediation is unproductive because it does not produce new goods, but simple reallocates. The same argument could be used for the entire financial sector, starting with Wall Street. The entire activity of Wall Street has not produced a single pound of flour, a single loaf of bread or a single sofa. But why we believe that financial intermediation is productive is that it allows money to flow from the places where it would be less efficiently used to the places where it would be used more efficiently. Or for that matter from the consumers who cannot pay much to the consumers who can. Exactly the activity done bybachaqueros.

Milanovic is right: if “bachaqueros” are unproductive, why isn’t the labor of the financial sector? Or, more generally, of FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate)? Or of CEOs and other corporate managers?

That’s exactly the reason neoclassical economists generally don’t make a distinction between productive and unproductive labor. They want to see it all as productive: manufacturing, services, commerce, and finance; factory workers, office workers, and CEOs. The difference, in Hausmann’s case, is he wants to criticize the socialist economic policies of the Venezuelan government. So, the veil falls and even he, against the dictates of his own economic theory, invokes the distinction between productive and unproductive labor.

But once that door is open, who knows what ideas might follow? What happens if we begin to conceive of many kinds of labor and whole groups of economic agents within contemporary capitalism not only as unproductive, but as parasitical and even downright destructive?

 

*But note, because this point is often missed, Marx is not making a distinction between goods and services. Both can and often do involve productive labor.

An actor, for example, or even a clown, according to this definition, is a productive labourer if he works in the service of a capitalist (an entrepreneur) to whom he returns more labour than he receives from him in the form of wages; while a jobbing tailor who comes to the capitalist’s house and patches his trousers for him, producing a mere use-value for him, is an unproductive labourer.  The former’s labour is exchanged with capital, the latter’s with revenue.  The former’s labour produces a surplus-value; in the latter’s, revenue is consumed.

**However, there are forms of labor—such as that performed in households—that are not included in the usual neoclassical-inspired national-income accounts. One can argue, then, that neoclassical economics does retain some notion of unproductive labor.

***Hausmann, a former minister of planning of Venezuela and former Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank, currently Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at Harvard University (where he is also Director of the Center for International Development) views Venezuela as “the poster child of the perils of rejecting economic fundamentals”—because the Venezuelan government has had the temerity to attempt to achieve economic and social goals by sidestepping and regulating “the market.”

Unproductive labor

Paul Krugman [ht: br] has discovered that, under current conditions, finance may be unproductive.

Finally!

This, it seems, is the first time Krugman has recognized that the finance may in fact be a socially useless sector of economic activity—enriching a few and laying waste to the rest of the economy.

Actually, all economic theories make some sort of distinction between productive and unproductive labor. The Physiocrats, for example, argued that the agricultural sector was productive and all other sectors (such as manufacturing) were unproductive. Adam Smith, a critic of the Physiocrats, made a different distinction: between the productive labor of manufacturing and the unproductive labor of domestic servants. Karl Marx, famously, picked up Smith’s argument and turned it in a different direction: focusing on labor that was productive of surplus-value (e.g., the work performed by the producers of capitalist commodities) and labor that was unproductive because it did not produce surplus-value (e.g., the labor of those who supervised the labor of the productive workers as well as the labor performed in sectors like trade and finance, all of which was paid out of distributions of surplus-value produced elsewhere). Even neoclassical economists make a productive/unproductive distinction: in their case, between the productive labor of the private sector (including, of course, finance) and the unproductive labor of government workers.

Krugman really should have cited Marx in order to make the point that finance is an unproductive sector of the economy: it doesn’t produce surplus-value but, instead, “shares in the booty” of the surplus-value created during the course of producing capitalist commodities (whether goods or services). Instead, for reasons only he knows (neoclassical or Ivy League comradery, perhaps?) he relies on Paul Samuelson to identify finance as unproductive economic activity.

All of the various groups of economists (including Krugman) are, in one way or another relying on a distinction between socially useful and socially useless areas of economic activity and, therefore, on some sense of what society is and can be. Thus, for example, while neoclassical economists want to see a society based almost entirely on private property and free markets, Marxists want to focus on the contradictions created by the capitalist appropriation and distribution of surplus-value—and then to make the transition to a society in which those who actually perform surplus labor are the ones who collectively appropriate it.

In such a noncapitalist context, finance might actually become a socially useful activity.