Re: [Marxism] Lenin's Tomb on the Stockmarket

["Tom O'Lincoln" <suarsos@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A thought-provoking article, but I have some questions.

>>Soon, fellow insurgents, you will experience delays on the Central Line as 
>>stockbrokers finish themselves with gymnastic flips into an oncoming 
>>train. For, a spectre is haunting capital. *Illustration: graph of 1929 
>>crash*<<

Well maybe, but this reminds me that (to borrow a phrase) Marxists have 
predicted seven of the last three depressions.

>>The main reasons for the structural precarity are: (i) the exorbitant 
>>levels of global debt, with hedge funds currently valued at $1.5 trillion, 
>>making a 'great unwind' probable; (ii) a liquidity boom which has 
>>increased financial instability; (iii) the imbalances in the US economy, 
>>with a middle class squeezed by declining house prices and the drop in 
>>real wages, and its relative global decline leading it to seek less 
>>multilateral ways to expand its hegemony; (iv) the entry of rising 
>>capitalisms to the global club, with competition increasingly taking the 
>>form of neo-imperialism<<

But the last bit has two sides, and at this point it still seems to me the 
more important side is the dramatic growth of the Chinese economy. An 
economic doomsday scenario should have something to say about that. Is it 
going to stop? No mention of China in this article,

>>The long-term tendency of the rate of profit to fall is the underlying 
>>factor that needs to be highlighted. The declining profitability of 
>>manufacturing in the US, Japan and Europe is what has led to the growing 
>>reliance on the service economy.<<

This is hardly news. But why should the decline of manufacturing in the 
west -- which has brought a transfer to developing countries like China --  
be grounds to predict the next *global* depression? If anything it has been 
the basis for years of growth. Surely what matters is the rate of profit 
overall, not in one sector where it's longterm decline in the west.




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