Workers' Liberty

The Bank of England’s move in early March to a new monetary tactic — “quantitative easing” — came alongside much economic-disaster news.

The banks “bailed out” so lavishly last year still need more bailing out. Lloyds TSB, which was supposed to be a “strong” bank capable of saving HBOS by buying it out with Government aid, turns out to be as much a basket case as any other.

What sort of new shape of capitalism do you think might emerge from the shake-out of this crisis?

At this writing (January 2009), firms in all sectors of the U. S. economy are cutting their payrolls; unemployment and homelessness are soaring; and the working class is taking the biggest hit to living standards in several generations, raising deep doubts about the capacity of our capitalist society in the near term to ensure overall social reproduction.

Do you think a markedly new regime of capitalism is going to emerge out of this crisis?

The world economic crisis took a sharp turn for the worse in September 2008. Some of the Marxist economists who had discussed the crisis in our first series of interviews, March-July 2008, have commented again. No.3: Leo Panitch.

The world economic crisis took a sharp turn for the worse in September 2008. Some of the Marxist economists who had discussed the crisis in our first series of interviews, March-July 2008, have commented again. No.2: Fred Moseley.

The world economic crisis took a sharp turn for the worse in September 2008. Some of the Marxist economists who had discussed the crisis in our first series of interviews, March-July 2008, have commented again. No.1: Michel Husson.

Dick Bryan and Michael Rafferty, Capitalism with Derivatives, Palgrave Macmillan 2006

Since the 1980s, the trade in financial derivatives has become vastly greater than any other sort of trade.

Makoto Itoh and Costas Lapavitsas, Political Economy of Money and Finance, Macmillan 1999

The Wall Street Journal of 1 December reported that the government of Latvia, beset by economic crisis, sent its Security Police to arrest university economics lecturer Dmitrijs Smirnovs... for being too pessimistic.

Economists, and the governments advised by them, are pulling all they can out of the books and research papers in order to tame the current economic crisis. What have they learned, and what are its limits?

Bank of England and government support for the banks so far totals something like the equivalent of £18,000 for every child, woman, and man in the UK.

"Recent increases in the prices of food and fuel have led to higher inflation rates among older and poorer households than among younger and richer ones", reported the Institute for Fiscal Studies on 14 October.

In a poll published by the Financial Times on 19 October, 80% of people across the European Union blamed the banks for the current economic crisis.

John Maynard Keynes posed many sharp questions about capitalism, often further developing ideas which Marx had sketched before him. He framed the whole issue as one of "safeguarding capitalism", but can "Keynesian" methods really do that?

Still trying to get your head round “sub-prime”, “structured finance” and “deleveraging”? You could have done worse than Robert Peston’s guide to how the Super Rich Fucked up all Our Lives. Here the basic mechanics of the financial crash were told quite well.

For decades now we've been told that the only way to a dynamic and efficient economy is privatisation and fiercer free-market competition. Now the same capitalist governments say that the only escape from economic disaster is to nationalise and regulate.

A comment often heard at the moment is “While I normally agree with strikes, it's not right when we're going into a recession”.

Martin: Since late 2006, stream of financial collapses. That's how the crisis has immediately presented itself.

An abridgement of Marx's Capital, volume 1, produced by the German Marxist Otto Rühle. Download as pdf (see "attachment").

This course covers Capital volume 1 in 10 weeks. The basic reading is either 'Capital' volume 1 itself, or Otto Ruhle's abridgement of 'Capital'. Copies of that abridgement are available, price £1.50, from the AWL, or you can read / download the document from this website.

In moments of desperation, capitalist governments reveal themselves. Take these two examples: Alistair Darling’s prognosis for the British economy and the recent bail-outs of US mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Darling’s admission that the economic crisis will be worse than most people thought, his slashing of growth forecasts and comments about voters being “pissed off” with New Labour paint a pretty picture of the turmoil at the heart of government.

The TUC has responded to the economic crisis by demanding, “action to stop unemployment growing further still… Unions are looking for action to boost demand; we urge the Bank to cut interest rates and the Government to take the cap off public sector wage increases.”

The strongest feature of this book is the detailed evidence it compiles of continued large variation in social conditions between the leading capitalist countries.

Michel Husson is a Marxist economist well-known on the French left, author of many books include Critique de la marchandisation (forthcoming) and until 2007 a member of the LCR. He responded to questions posed by Martin Thomas.

Dick Bryan is the co-author of a recent book, Capitalism With Derivatives, and of several articles, in which he argues that the recent rise of financial derivatives marks a fundamental new stage in capitalist development, and especially in the development of what functions as "money" in capitalism. He is a professor at the University of Sydney. He spoke to Martin Thomas.

Trevor Evans is a professor at the Berlin School of Economics, and has also worked in Nicaragua and other countries. He has written especially on the interrelation between finance and capitalist crises. He spoke to Martin Thomas.