[Marxism] Robert Fitch: only Marxism can explain the financial crisis

[Charles Brown <cdb1003@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Fitch says the ultimate cause of the crisis 
was

"the implosion of the greatest and longest 
global expansion in the history of capitalism going back to the first 
industrial revolution (1760-1830). The 
rapid transformation, particularly of the Chinese and Indian economies, 
produced a super boom that blew away 
all norms for economic expansion.16"

.and

"And what drove the boom?" 

CB: (the ultimate, ultimate cause)
the high rate of exploitation of Indian 
and Chinese workers

"Notwithstanding the core claim of the
 sensible center that the nature of the period was defined by the rise of 
post-industrialism and the fall of the
 blue collar worker who would go the way of the peasant, the boom was shaped by 
record rates of manufacturing 
growth and even higher rates of growth in manufacturing trade. The increase in 
manufacturing itself was fed by a world-reshaping, mass migration of 
manufacturing capital from 
the more developed to the less developed countries. Capital was attracted by 
appalling, but ultimately ravishingly 
high rates of labor exploitation -- to India, which was emerging as the world's 
back office, but above all to China,
 which became the world's workshop, employing 109 million manufacturing workers"

and

"For the economists, the financial markets 
determine the markets for commodities. Any nation could have a giant trade 
surplus; it's ultimately just a policy 
choice about savings behavior. The country with the giant surplus just happened 
to be China. Utterly ignored is 
the fact that trade surplus/ capital glut could never have formed without 
staggeringly high rates of labor exploitation 
in the strict Marxian sense: the ratio of value added by labor divided by 
wages.32 As far as what drove the boom and 
what caused the bust (CB: the ultimate, ultimate cause), it's the rate of 
exploitation that's the dog. The savings rate is the tail."

CB: So, the ultimate, ultimate cause of the
crisis is the exploitation
of workers, which impoverishes
and restricts the consumption
of the masses

As Marx says, 

"The ultimate reason for all
real crises always remains the
poverty and restricted consumption
of the masses as opposed to the
drive of capitalist production to develop
the productive forces as though only
the absolute consuming power of 
society constituted their outer limit "
(Capital vol. III, Moscow, 1959, pp.
472-73) ; 

Fitch also brings this beaut:

Marx wouldn't have been surprised at the
 failure of the once highly touted $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. 
"The entire artificial system of
 forced expansion of the reproduction process cannot, of course, be remedied by 
having some bank, like the Bank
 of England, give to all the swindlers the deficient capital by means of its 
paper and having it buy up all the 
depreciated commodities at their old nominal
 values."34 Making the swindlers whole does nothing to restore profitability in 
the real sector.
34 Vol III, ch.30. p. 490










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