Sunday 28 September 2008

Analysis On The International Capitalist Crisis Part 1




By Me.

We are living in a period of excitment and panic. Weird isn't it? Me and many Marxists have often been accused of 'wanting' a crisis and trying to a create a sense of panic. That is because we had predicted beforehand the financial panic that was going to being pushed by the debt-driven bubble economy and risky finance capitalism thus creating the present conditions of crisis. Oh, and just to let everyone know, I or any other of my comrades never announced a catastrophe, we were simply working out concrete, truthful, reasearched analysis of each stage of economic development. Unfortunately for our opponents from the bourgeois camp, our analysis has now turned into reality and their bourgeois theories of the smooth development of neo-liberalism have been completely bulldozed and discredited. It is the bourgeoisie, not the Marxists who are the pessimists that keep proclaiming the crisis of capitalism.

Massive protests have emerged in response to the bailout plan by created by Bush, including a demonstration by the New York Central Labor Council on the 25th of September. They were fighting against $700bn to go to, what the demonstrators described as a "privaleged band of overpaid executives". The protesters also called for the government to spend money on education and healthcare and housing as readily as they were handing out money to Wall Street. What was most striking was that the workers were calling for a general strike if the the bailout only benefited the rich. This signifies a complete change in the class consciousness of the workers, and not only in the USA.

I believe that the multi-billion dollar rescue of the whole financial system by Bush is inflicting severe damage on the US model of free-market capitalism. Its common to hear that the major financial insitutions are being "nationalised", but in reality, the colossal debts, errors and greed of modern-day predatory finance capitalism are being dropped on the backs of the proletariat. The American government were well aware that if they didn't intervene, it would threaten the very survival of the capitalist system. We will have to wait patiently and observe if Paulsons package is a success. However, that won't mean that the crisis will come to a halt, there is still more to come.

The bourgeois economists are afraid to refer back to 1929. They are afraid to have confidence in the markets because they stubbornly believe that this confidence (or lack of it) is the real cause of booms and slumps. In reality, however, booms and slumps are rooted in objective conditions. The rise and fall of confidence reflects actual conditions, although it can then itself become part of these conditions, helping to drive the market up - or, as in this case, down.

What I am basically trying to get across is, the government bailouts of the financial institutions and the de facto nationalisations, and more recently, the $700bn rescue plan, is a tragic blow to the prestige of US capitalism and free-market ideology.

Now, there are many leftists who believe that these "nationalisations" represents "socialism". One could not have it more wrong. The nationalisations carried out by the Bush regime aims to use government resources, including a massive increase in public debt, to re-stablise that capitalist system for a full recovery later on. Where does the bill go for the bailout? The working-class, who contribute the biggest share of taxes to the US state. Now one would ask, what would genuine socialism do in this situation? Well, it would involve nationalising the finance sector and the commanding heights of the economy by a workers state, ran democratically under the control of those who produce the wealth. Democratic planning would replace market anarchy. Production would be based on need, not profit. I say that with full confidence that the recent nationalisations taken on by the capitalist states of Britain and the US demonstrates the redundancy of private ownership and shows the bright alternative of a new advanced economic system.

Isn't it great that in the last moment of truth, the happy, bold and bright entrepeneurs of Wall Street and the City of London must transform into sad beggars, cup in hand, to ask the state for social security? Only that these poor beggars are in fact millionaires and they demand money with menaces. What remains of any semblence of normality when a Republican administration led by a fanatical free-marketeer nationalises major US investment banks? And it all came tumbling down...

to be continued...

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