Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54705 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Customer Reviews

Useful account of capitalism's failure
This is a very useful study, composed of essays published in the American journal Monthly Review from May 2006 to April 2008, with an introduction and a last chapter written in December 2008. It covers the USA's household debt bubble, the wider boom of debt and speculation, the emergence of monopoly-finance capitalism, the financialisation of capital, the crisis' onset in 2007, and the financial bust of 2008.

The authors show how finance capital has been taking more and more surplus value from the real productive economy. This led not to growth but to more debt: in the USA, $4.5 trillion in 1980, $51 trillion in 2007.

Ben Bernanke, head of the Federal Reserve Bank, said at the peak of the housing bubble, "these price increases largely reflect strong economic fundamentals." As a mad monetarist he sees the crisis as solely monetary and the solution as monetary - print more money. But life is proving that printing money means more hoarding by the rich, not new loans and investment.

In 1965, financial profit was 15 per cent of all US domestic profits, and manufacturing 50 per cent; by 2005, finance took 40 per cent, industry just 15 per cent. The financial sector has outgrown its base in the real economy. No government now has enough money to act as lender of last resort. War spending dragged the USA out of the 1930s slump, but now even larger war spending (doubled since 1995) can't prevent a slump. As Keynes wrote, "the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation."

The authors write, "increasing inequality in income and wealth can be expected to create the age-old conundrum of capitalism: an accumulation (savings-and-investment) process that depends on keeping wages down while ultimately relying on wage-based consumption to support economic growth and investment."

They quote the great American economist Hyman Minsky who concluded, "Capitalism is a flawed system in that, if its development is not constrained, it will lead to periodic deep depressions and the perpetuation of poverty." But restraints on the financial markets are impossible (under capitalism) because the markets burst through all regulation. So capitalism does always lead to deep depressions and mass poverty.

Stagnation and financial busts, not growth and full employment, are capitalism's norm. Its inherent laws cause its absolute decline.

An intelligent and readable academic perspective
This book presents a clear Marxian case for the root cause of the economic crisis. Although many will disagree with the policies the authors suggest, their analysis is solid and supported with relevant data. Highly recommended as a refreshing alternative to the Keynesian and monetarist explanations for the crisis (anybody know what they are, by the way?)

A must read!
If you want an alternative [Marxist] explanation of the reality of this great financial crisis and what might be done about it, this is your book. Though I should warn from my own experience that if you are not familiar with some financial, economics, banking, etc. terms you might find it a bit difficult to understand some 'complicated' sentences and graphs. Nevertheless, general argument is clear and cogent "if the goal is to advance the needs of humanity as a whole, the world will sooner or later have to embrace an alternative system [SOCIALISM!!]. There is no other way."