I haven't seen that before uplink. Good one!
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Capitalism in Crisis...
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Posted 1 year ago #
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Too much regulation and growth is limited so business goes elsewhere - that's the theory. I do not know enough to refute that.
But isn't the current crisis of capitalism due to an almost complete lack of regulation, essentially?
Investment bankers got their hands on the capital resources of retail banks due to deregulation (eg. repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act in the US in 1999) which has allowed them to do what they damn well like with savings capital. Big financial institutions became bigger and more bloated by swallowing up smaller competitors. These big corporations become a law unto themselves because government had taken away all the controls. Mortgage lenders lost money hand over fist by making unsecured loans of 11 times the nominal salary of their shit-poor customers. Surpise, surprise! They don't make the payments. Bad debt causes the whole grotesque system to spiral wildly out of control then the Government has to step in to bail out institutions which are too big to fail because the same government has allowed them to get that way in the first place. Systemic risk?
Markets always find novel ways to fail but will probably survive, despite all the lurches and crashes and re-configurations and capitalism will no doubt be with us as the dominant social and economic force in the lives of just about everyone on the planet, whether they know it or not. The great competitive theory of the 20th Century, Communism has all but failed. Before deregulation, a lot of people got really quite rich out of the triumphant ideology but now a very few people have become unimaginably well-off and a very large number of people have become very poor. The current incarnation is not a force for good in the world.
We are now being asked to subsidise failed banks and hand over control to bankers who will (we hope) get us back on track but only if they are allowed to help themselves to huge chunks of the profits. "Oh but we must! Otherwise the best talent will go elsewhere". **** that. Call their bluff and let them go. Better still, turn the whole risk/reward thing on its head and say "You broke this and now you have to fix it. If you fix it we won't put you in jail"
BUT, and here is the genius that lies at the heart of the deregulation movement, we can't put them in jail. They haven't broken any laws because there are no laws any more. Government has failed us by not exerting state control over economies. In this sense, I agree with molgrips.
That appears to me to be the state capitalism is in just right at this moment. No doubt it's a gross over-simplification but this debate is helping me to cut through the fog.
Posted 1 year ago # -
If it weren't for the forces of capital working on civilisation since its start, we'd all be in mud huts dying like flies aged 40.
It is ridicolous to say there would be no progress without capitalism or that it alone , rather than improved undersatnding of disease, sanitation, diet etc increased this. Even today many poor non capitalist [ relatively] have higher life exxpectancies despite having less money
However, some countries like Saudi Arabia have very high GNP per capita but don't have high life expectancies. Alternatively, there are countries like China and Cuba that have low GNP per capita have reasonably high life expectancies.
Posted 1 year ago # -
It now (apparently) depends on your definition of capitalism.
A great many things were invented because they could be sold were they not?
Posted 1 year ago # -
Neccessity is the mother of invention
I have never heard the phrase profit is the mother of invention.Posted 1 year ago # -
Pretty pithy though I feel.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Sorry. If you pay me I will come up with something better
Posted 1 year ago # -
Will £3bn be enough sir?
*tugs forelock*
Posted 1 year ago # -
IMO the video in the OP was disappointedly bad. A mixture of omissions, half-truths, and stating the bleeding obvious. I learnt nothing from it, and had I not known better, I could have easily been misled by it.
The video does however provide something very useful - it encapsulates everything which is wrong with the left, and why the political-economic situation today is so dire.
David Harvey sums it all up very nicely towards the end with "I don't have the solution, I think I know what the nature of the problem is" A strange thing for a Marxist to say - I have never met a Marxist who doesn't think they know the solution.
Of course David Harvey does know what the ultimate solution is. He is a communist and he therefore believes in the transformation from a capitalist society into a socialist society. But as a professional waffler, David Harvey does not provide answers - only critique. And that, lies at the very heart of why the left is in such a mess.
For 30 years the left in Britain has either been in retreat or stood impotent on the sidelines. It is very quick to criticise the big bad Tories, the bankers, the neo-liberals, etc, and yet never offers any viable alternative - it lacks both the confidence and the commitment to do so. And then it throws up its collective hands in horror when the mass of the people believe that there is no alternative to the neo-liberal model. The left blames everyone but themselves.
A couple of weeks ago I was at this event :
It was full of academics and professional wafflers, like David Harvey, who spent the day talking mostly to sun-dried organic Guardian readers about the great evils of capitalism and the terrible things it was doing to poor people and the environment.
Needless to say no answers were provided - but everybody felt a whole lot better at the end of the day after they had slapped each other on the back for being such good anti-capitalists. An exercise in self-congratulatory waffle.
Tomorrow there will be a national demonstration against government cuts. It was first announced that it would happen about 6 months ago - now there's a bit of spontaneous activity which grabs the mood of the nation. The organisers very thoughtfully decided to have it at the weekend so as to cause minimal disruption - hopefully it will pass with very few people even noticing.
The official TUC leaflets for the demo focused mostly on the tired old message concerning how horrible and nasty the Tories are - just in case not everyone was aware. And again needless to say, it doesn't bother too much offering an alternative.
Today for the first time in over thirty years people are starting to doubt whether TINA is true after all, there is potentially a captive audience for anyone who is prepared to offer an alternative. We are at the present faced with a government more regressive than even Thatcher. And yet the left instead of grabbing this opportunity would rather remain silent - other than telling everyone how awful things are. If this strategy is so good then why hasn't it worked for the last 30 years ?
Still, everyone on the demo will feel good at the end of tomorrow - basking as they will in the warm glow of knowing that they're not Tories.
If anyone wants more waffle by David Harvey, then I reckon this video is better - it certainly imo covers a lot of truths :
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYQb0fthNfIIt is a lot longer but he does at least mention socialism - although he appears to be uncertain how that can be achieved....very useful. Part of David Harvey's problem imo is his obsession with the complexities of dialectics, ie, no one single issue can be the cause of change - society must evolve in many different aspects. So like the neo-liberal who argues that the complex nature of the market means that a laissez faire approach which allows it to evolve is the only solution, David Harvey appears to be unsure on intervention - preferring instead to give a running commentary as events unfold. Of course I could be misrepresenting him, but it's the only conclusion I can come up with.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Thanks Ernie.
Once I'd distilled all the emotive lefty-bashing out of your response, I discerned that you feel that critics of the current incarnation of capitalism (should "capitalism" have a capital C?...) have one thing in common: none of them offer any solutions. Am I right in this interpretation? (serious question, ignore my goading).
But I think some solutions are being offered, both by yer man David Harvey (join an anti-capitalist organisation and mobilise society to become aware of what is actually going on) and by respondents on this thread who are arguing for a return to regulation in the spirit of the Glass-Steagall Act which followed the Wall Street Crash. Conditions may differ radically from those times but I'm sure there are smarter people than us who have regulation strategies which will allow market economies to flourish sustainably under regulation, and which might prevent the worst of humanity sucking $3bn into their own personal accounts at the expense of a marginal European nation. Surely you agree that this is an absurd scenario?
There seems to be a passive-aggressive rhetoric coming from the "right" or the "pro-free-market" faction which is the product of a monstrous hubris.
As the frequently-referred-to "OP" (another P-A affectation, I think), I have to state my own personal standpoint. I'm no Marxist. I readily acknowledge that Communism has failed and I'm pragmatic enough to temper my socialist leanings with a note of realism; however there has to be some kind of humanist territory where hard work and enterprise are rewarded but greed is rightly vilified.
Posted 1 year ago # -
buzz-lightyear - Member
I was discussing this (not the personal insults) at work (idling). A colleague suggested that centralised regulation would probably fail. The economics engine is many interacting engines on different cycles. The algorithm to govern engines must therefore be scalable to all engine sizes and self-regulate in a distributed way.
That's a rather profound insight.
Posted 1 year ago # -
As the frequently-referred-to "OP" (another P-A affectation, I think), I have to state my own personal standpoint. I'm no Marxist. I readily acknowledge that Communism has failed and I'm pragmatic enough to temper my socialist leanings with a note of realism; however there has to be some kind of humanist territory where hard work and enterprise are rewarded but greed is rightly vilified.
Which probably makes me a Social Democrat, by definition. I'm uncomfortable with that, if only because it conjures up images of Spitting Image caricatures of David Owen and Shirley Williams.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Once I'd distilled all the emotive lefty-bashing out of your response
All politics is emotive. But I can assure you that my "lefty-bashing" is done from a cool analytical perspective.
Posted 1 year ago # -
OK.
So how about answering my questions?
Posted 1 year ago # -
So how about answering my questions?
Well I've got a demo to go on tomorrow so can only give quick answers.
Yes you can write capitalism have a capital C, although I tend not bother these days.
And yes the left does have the solutions, it just doesn't feel that it's vital to get that message across.......just bash the Tories instead. Part of the problem is that it feels that talking about stuff like socialism will rock the boat too much. There is also imo a lack of commitment plus a lack of connection with ordinary working people.
There are of course exception such as Leninists like myself
And finally, yes regulating the market is indeed a solution. In fact the immediate solution to the present crises is a return to the social-democratic agenda and a mixed economy with universal welfare provisions. Sadly even this is too radical for some on the left to articulate - despite the fact that John Maynard Keynes was an anti-socialist who offered his solutions as a means of preserving capitalism.
So that's a "yes" to all three of your questions then.
Posted 1 year ago # -
edit, cba
Posted 1 year ago # -
****, can't be arsed either then.
Posted 1 year ago # -
dd, i've pulled it. i'm too busy trying to get myself educated today to get dragged into this.
Posted 1 year ago #
Topic Closed
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