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By In Defence of Marxism Editorial Board
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Wednesday, 17 December 2008 |
 The crisis of world capitalism is unfolding
relentlessly and with gathering speed. First came the financial crisis (the
so-called credit crunch), but now the second phase has begun - the crisis of
the real economy - and it is accelerating as each day goes by. This is leading
to sharp changes in consciousness, rising working class militancy and the
beginnings of polarisation within the labour movement itself.
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By Rob Sewell
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Wednesday, 29 October 2008 |
 Martin Wolf in the Financial Times today: “…this would be a recipe… for xenophobia, nationalism and revolution… Everything must be done to prevent the inescapable recession from turning into something worse… Deflation is a real danger… At stake could be the legitimacy of the open market economy itself… the danger remains huge and time is short.”
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By Walter Leon
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Wednesday, 29 October 2008 |
 Over the past weeks, Britain, many other European countries and the US have announced plans to nationalise large chunks of the financial sector, thereby taking a good proportion of the commanding heights of the economy into public ownership. A step towards socialism one might wonder. Quite the opposite reassures us the Financial Times.
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By Alan Woods
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Friday, 10 October 2008 |
 Panic
has gripped the stock markets of the world. Things are completely out
of control, and there is nothing that governments can say or do that
can stop it. As in 1929, every time people thought that the worst had
come, further falls were just round the corner. Nobody knows how far
share prices have still to go. The world economy now finds itself in
unsheltered waters.
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By Rob Sewell
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Tuesday, 07 October 2008 |
 In the words of Alan Greenspan, “The crisis will mean a return to the ideological struggle between socialism and capitalism. Many of us thought that struggle was over with the collapse of the command economies, but this is not the case.” Reality is indeed coming home with a bang!
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By Walter Leon
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Friday, 03 October 2008 |
 What caused this financial crisis? Whilst the collapse of house prices was the straw that broke the camel’s back, this requires that it was already heavily laden with straw. Marxists understand that historical events don’t occur in a vacuum; rather, they are a result of the build up of contradictions within the system.
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By Socialist Appeal Editorial Board
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Thursday, 02 October 2008 |
 The Banks are going down like ninepins. The whole financial system has been based on an unstable house of cards of credit. The pyramid had been built up over years of mad speculation. Now it is all unravelling.
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By Michael Roberts
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Tuesday, 30 September 2008 |
 Such was the indignation of ordinary
Americans that yesterday the much trumpeted $700billion bailout was
voted down in Congress, sending shockwaves around the world's
financial institutions. Whatever they do now, a new package or no
package will mean serious economic downturn and reveal the real
nature of capitalism to all.
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By Mick Brooks
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Monday, 29 September 2008 |
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Bradford
& Bingley has finally been put out of its misery. After months of
cliff-hanging the government has been forced to nationalise the bank. In
many respects the ‘rescue’ plan is a clone of the $700bn Paulson plan being
pushed through in the USA. The basic idea is that the good stuff is sold off to
the private sector while the taxpayer is lumbered with the bad debts, the
toxins. Socialism for the rich and the rigours of free enterprise for the rest
of us!
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By Alan Woods
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Monday, 29 September 2008 |
 Let us compare
the perspectives of the Marxists with those of the bourgeois. In
contrast to the bourgeois economists who committed the grave error of
believing their own propaganda, the Marxist tendency explained the
reality of the situation long ago. The Marxists were laughed at then...
not anymore. What we have been saying for years is now becoming
reality for all to see.
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By Alan Woods
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Friday, 26 September 2008 |
 We live in exceptional times. The financial panic in the USA is
creating waves that are threatening to engulf the whole world. This is rapidly
transforming the consciousness of millions. Alan Woods, in a two-part article
looks at how the world economy reached the stage it has, where it is on the
brink of a serious downward, so serious that it could be as worse if not worse
than 1929.
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By Mick Brooks
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Thursday, 25 September 2008 |
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Last week US Treasury Secretary Henry
Paulson unveiled a dramatic plan to arrest the present financial crisis and
prevent future economic catastrophe. It is to cost $700bn.
It sounds like a breathtaking break from
neo-liberal philosophy. It’s not really. Neo-liberalism was always a giant lie.
Homeless people don’t matter. People in danger of losing their jobs in a
recession don’t matter. But, when it comes to banks and billionaires,
self-reliance is for the birds. These people are hapless bums.
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By Rob Sewell
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Monday, 22 September 2008 |
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The capitalist system is in the throes of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. This is the view not only of the billionaire George Soros, but also of the International Monetary Fund, the custodian of the capitalist system, and all the serious capitalist commentators.
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By Michael Roberts
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Monday, 22 September 2008 |
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After a week of turmoil on financial markets, on Saturday 20 September President Bush said he was proposing to spend $700bn of taxpayers’ money to buy the rotten mortgage assets held by the banks on Wall Street. He said he was doing this to help the average American family with their homes and jobs.
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By Michael Roberts
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Tuesday, 16 September 2008 |
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Financial markets in Wall Street, New York, the City of London and all over are in turmoil. In just 24 hours, two out of the four largest investment banks in the US have disappeared. All this confirms what Marxists have always maintained: capitalism does not operate in a smooth and steadily increasing way to progress. It operates violently, lopsidedly, in cycles of boom and slump. Now more banks are set to fail and there will be more misery in the financial markets. Working people are also set to suffer as massive job losses are announced.
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By Michael Roberts
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Tuesday, 16 September 2008 |
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Written in August, one year after the beginning of the credit crunch, this
article explains how that earthquake in the global financial system has
left banks, insurers, pension and municipal funds, hedge funds and private
equity companies tottering and falling. Collateral damage has been immense
and the after-shocks are still to come.
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By Mick Brooks
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Monday, 08 September 2008 |
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The Financial Times has hailed the
effective takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the US government as “what
could become the world’s biggest ever financial bail-out.” Treasury secretary
Henry Paulson has promised he will pump in ‘unlimited liquidity.’ Don’t you
wish the government would grant you unlimited liquidity? When it comes to the
food and fuel bills of the poor and the working class, the British and American
governments find that the cupboard is bare. But now it’s not bare. Predictably
markets all over the world have breathed a sigh of relief. Fannie and Freddie
have effectively been nationalised – and big business thoroughly approves!
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By Mick Brooks
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Tuesday, 15 July 2008 |
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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may sound like two characters out
of the old West, but Fannie Mae is the Federal National Mortgage Association
and Freddie Mac is the Federal Home Mortgage Corporation and they're both in
big trouble. The big two have liabilities of $5.3trillion outstanding. This is
as big as the entire US
national debt, which has ballooned under Bush's stewardship.
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By Mick Brooks
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Monday, 14 July 2008 |
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Hedge funds are in the news again. They don't much like
being in the public gaze. We wonder why. Does their speculation cause prices to
go up? Do they drive firms into bankruptcy so workers lose their jobs? These
are the questions being asked. Let's see what they get up to.
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By Mick Brooks
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Thursday, 01 May 2008 |
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The immediate cause of the sliding dollar
is not far to seek. It’s the US
deficit with the rest of the world. Last year the USA imported nearly twice as much
as it exported. Their current account deficit stands at 6% of national income.
If a country is spending more than it’s earning, then it has to pay for the
difference.
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By Michael Roberts
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Thursday, 27 March 2008 |
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Under capitalism if there is no profit, there is no
production even if people need things or services. Therefore, over the last 25
years there has been a massive expansion of the unproductive sectors of the capitalist
economy, i.e. a massive increase in fictitious capital. This is now expressing
itself in what may be the worst crisis for more than 30 years.
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By Mick Brooks
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Monday, 17 March 2008 |
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Last month 100,000 American private sector workers lost their jobs. This is
the third monthly rise in the unemployment figures in a row. Everything
indicates that the USA is now in recession. As it is the biggest
single market in the world, this will inevitably have a big impact on the
rest of the world.
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By Mick Brooks
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Monday, 17 March 2008 |
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Last Thursday it
was Carlyle Capital Corporation. On Friday it was the turn of Bear Stearns, the
fifth largest bank in the USA.
The American Central Bank, the Fed, is due to meet this week to talk about
interest rates. Most likely they will cut them again. The trouble is, the more
they slash rates the more people can smell the fear.
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By Mick Brooks
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Monday, 17 March 2008 |
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Republication of the article is timely. In 2007 the sub-prime mortgage
bubble finally burst. The financial crisis has already had a knock-on effect on
the banks through the credit crunch. The capitalist world stands on the
threshold of recession.
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By Ed Doveton
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Wednesday, 13 February 2008 |
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In 2006 the
world's richest two percent of adults owned more than half the global wealth,
while half the world's population own only one percent. In 2007 the World
Wealth Report estimated the total wealth of rich individuals at $37.2 trillion!
While this wealth accumulates for a small minority, the vast majority of
humanity is seeing its living standards plummet. In these figures we see
another picture: the growing tensions between the classes that will lead to
social upheaval and revolution on an unprecedented scale.
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By Alan Woods
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Monday, 28 January 2008 |
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The second part of the transcript of Alan Woods' speech on the world political and economic
perspectives for year 2008 at a meeting of the leadership of the
International Marxist Tendency on January 13, 2008. You can also listen to the speech here.
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By Alan Woods
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Friday, 25 January 2008 |
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Transcript of Alan Woods' speech on the world political and economic
perspectives for year 2008 at a meeting of the leadership of the
International Marxist Tendency on January 13, 2008. You can also listen to the speech here.
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By Mick Brooks
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Wednesday, 23 January 2008 |
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Everything now clearly indicates that the
advanced capitalist world is headed for recession. The only question is when
and how deep that recession will be. In fact Merrill Lynch says the US economy
is already in recession. And that’s bad news for all of us. Here Mick Brooks at
what is really going on in the world economy.
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By Mick Brooks
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Wednesday, 23 January 2008 |
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We have seen the sharpest falls in stock markets around the
world for almost a decade. Billions have been wiped off share prices worldwide.
As we have predicted, fear mounted among the financial authorities that the
panic could lead to a full-blown recession.
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By Michael Roberts
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Tuesday, 22 January 2008 |
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Panic! The world's stock markets had their sharpest fall
since 9/11 on Monday 21 January. It is supposed to be the most miserable day in
the year in the Northern hemisphere, where the daylight is short, the weather
is bad, people have colds and flu and they have run up debts from Christmas. But
this year, it really was a Black Monday for capitalism.
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By Alan Woods
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Monday, 07 January 2008 |
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As the New Year begins Alan Woods comments on the state of world
affairs, highlighting the impasse facing humanity, a direct consequence of
capitalism in its phase of senile decay. At the root of the present world
turmoil is private property of the means of production, a system based on greed
for profit. In the next period the workers of the world are faced with the task
of removing the system.
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By Michael Roberts
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Wednesday, 28 November 2007 |
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Everywhere
the cry is: credit crunch! You can smell the sweat on the brows of bankers as
their necks are squeezed by the tightening credit noose. In all the offices of
the great investment banks of Wall Street, the City of London and gnomes of
Zurich, you can hear the hissing sound of the global financial bubble bursting
and deflating.
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By Michael Roberts
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Thursday, 15 November 2007 |
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According
to a recent United Nations study, the richest 1% of adults in the world own 40%
of the planet's wealth. Europe, the US and some Asia Pacific nations
accounted for most of the extremely wealthy. More than one-third lives in the US, while Japan
accounts for 27%, the UK for
6% and France
for 5%. But bourgeois economists still insist Marx was wrong!
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By Alan Woods
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Wednesday, 26 September 2007 |
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The bourgeois economists are incapable of understanding
crises, which are an inescapable result of capitalism. They look for subjective
factors such as “confidence”, even “human nature”. In reality what we are
witnessing are the real workings of the capitalist system in a period of
decline.
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By Alan Woods
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Tuesday, 25 September 2007 |
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The recent chaos on world stock markets is a
manifestation of the general turbulence that is the most prominent feature of
the present epoch. The crisis that affected the Northern Rock bank in Britain
is but an indication of dramatic
events that are being prepared globally.
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By Michael Roberts
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Wednesday, 19 September 2007 |
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Over the past 15 years
production has risen at about 3% a year in the OECD countries, while money
supply, mortgage and company debt, personal borrowing and the massive so-called
derivatives market based on this credit has increased at over 25% a year!
Result? A huge bubble which is now bursting, starting with Northern Rock.
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By Michael Roberts
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Monday, 27 August 2007 |
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Recently, the Bank of England hiked its interest rates yet
again to 5.75%,the fifth rise since August 2005, and "further action" on
interest rates could be on its way. The interest rate may go to 6% or more by
the end of this year. The credit-led boom is now in jeopardy as central banks
raise interest rates everywhere.
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By Mick Brooks
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Wednesday, 15 August 2007 |
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The financial turbulence of recent days has
wiped billions off the price of shares all around the world. On Friday August
10th London’s stock exchange, the FTSE 100, alone dropped £63
billion. What does this mean?
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By Alan Woods
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Monday, 13 August 2007 |
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This speech was delivered at a meeting of
the leadership of the International Marxist Tendency in Barcelona on 24 July
2007. The recent turbulence on world stock markets fully confirms the
perspectives outlined in it.
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By Michael Roberts
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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The
poorest 50% of the world's 6.6bn population own just 1% of the world's riches.
The answer? "Although we Americans strive to provide equality of economic
opportunity, we do not guarantee equality of economic outcomes, nor should
we." (Ben Bernanke, the chair of the US Federal Reserve)
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By Michael Roberts
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Thursday, 19 July 2007 |
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This is an important book, written by Andrew Kliman, and published by
Lexington Books. In a nutshell, what Andrew Kliman shows is that Marx's laws of
motion of capitalism (how capitalism works and does not work) are logically
consistent and theoretically valid.
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By Juan Ignacio Ramos
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Friday, 25 May 2007 |
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High levels of growth have been achieved in the
world economy, but these have been based on huge levels of easy credit, on
debt. This is not sustainable in the long run. Figures on the state of the US
economy indicate that the system is reaching its limits and crisis is looming.
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By Michael Roberts
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Wednesday, 14 March 2007 |
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The nerves of stock market speculators can’t be in too good
a shape these days. Wall Street has just suffered its second biggest point drop
in four years. This immediately spread to Asian stocks markets that suffered
serious falls.
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By Michael Roberts
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Thursday, 01 March 2007 |
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China
hints at a tax on capital gains and the Shanghai
stock exchange falls by 10%, but then the fall affects all the other major
stock exchanges. What does all this indicate? Michael Roberts gives his view on
the question.
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By Chris Kaihatsu
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Thursday, 25 January 2007 |
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A reader has objected to some of Michael
Roberts’ criticisms of Andrew Glyn’s latest book. Among others it deals with
the question of whether profit rates in the post-war period were affected by
wage increases. Roberts replies showing that the fundamental reason for the
decline was the same as that stated by Marx.
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By Michael Roberts
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Friday, 05 January 2007 |
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In his new book, Capitalism
Unleashed, Andrew Glyn attempts to explain how capitalism moved from the
crisis of the 1970s to recovery in the 1980s and 1990s. However, although full
of interesting information, the book fails to provide an overall analysis and
misses some essential aspects of Marxist theory.
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By Michael Roberts
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Friday, 24 November 2006 |
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Milton Friedman died on 16 November aged 94
years. He was one of the foremost bourgeois economists of the 20th
century. His reputation as a monetarist theoretician and advisor to the likes
of Thatcher, Reagan and Pinochet as these attacked all the gains of the working
class was well earned.
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By Michael Roberts
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Monday, 13 November 2006 |
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The
financial press and the investment houses of global finance capital are in
euphoria. The world's stock markets are booming. But a closer look reveals that
all this euphoria is misleading and the real situation is far less healthy than
would appear on the surface.
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By Michael Roberts
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Friday, 27 October 2006 |
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The
Financial Times recently claimed the British economy has been doing
rather well out of globalisation. A closer look at the figures shows that what
we have before us a growing polarisation, with the rich getting richer and the
poor poorer. On a world scale the position is even worse, which may possibly
explain the growing instability all across the globe.
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By Michael Roberts
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Wednesday, 24 May 2006 |
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Capitalism cannot provide
a decent living to everyone, but as long as it guarantees significant
layers of the population a reasonable standard of living it can
maintain a degree of social stability. Recent figures on the
situation in the USA show that “middle America” is beginning to
feel the pinch, a phenomenon which indicates that social turmoil will
soon be on the agenda.
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By Michael Roberts
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Monday, 27 February 2006 |
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One of the key elements in holding up consumer spending – and therefore sales and profits – in the USA has been growing house prices. The growing nominal value of housing has led to a widespread phenomenon of remortgaging, i.e. borrowing more to keep up annual family incomes. This cannot continue for much longer. The signs are already there that we are close to the limit. |
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By Michael Roberts
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Friday, 10 February 2006 |
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Capitalism in the advanced capitalist countries is becoming ever more based on finances and services. The idea is that the actual production of real goods can be done in less developed countries where labour costs are much cheaper. For this to work, the consumer boom in the West must be maintained permanently, otherwise who will buy the goods? Can this be maintained in the long run? |
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