[Marxism] What the World Economic Crisis Teaches about Capitalism

[Smitty Word <callmesmitty@xxxxxxxxx>]

New at Ruthless Criticism: translation of a lecture by an editor of 
GegenStandpunkt, Germany 23 April 2009

What the World Economic Crisis Teaches about Capitalism



Against the hopes and concerns for the speedy recovery of âourâ economy


Ever since the financial markets began collapsing and the real
economy shrinking at a hitherto unknown pace, capitalism becomes a
topic of discussion. Unfortunately, in quite a wrong way. People and
elite answer the diagnosis that âcapitalism doesnât function any moreâ
with the strong desire that it should immediately function again.

The government uses its political power over money and debts
to rescue the banks with trillions and to protect car-manufacturers and
other industries from destruction by stimulus packages and other
subsidies. All this is done â and nobody makes a secret about this â so
that capitalist profit-making gets going again and continues as before.


The unions and their members identify all the more with their
employers the more the survival strategies of the latter turn out to be
ever more incompatible with the interests of the workforce in wages and
livelihoods. The organized workforce does not respond to layoffs, part
time work, and wage-cuts with resistance against the capitalists, nor
do they reject the state that wants to rope them in for the rescue of
capitalism; they demonstrate side by side with their exploiters and
demand more money from the state for the owners of their workplaces:
âSave our jobs!â The state is called on to replace the profits of
capital so that workers can continue working!

The left complains the loudest about the greediness of the
banks and the speculative profit maximization they have allowed
themselves. They ask the state to rescue these same profiteers but only
so that they can again perform their social service for jobs and
exploitation by providing credit to the real economy. Banks, according
to the left, must be better controlled than up to now so that their
casino-capitalism never again gets the opportunity to harm the real,
productive capitalism. 

*

Moved by the worry that capitalism no longer functions as the basis
of life in the country and for its working masses, and yearning that it
might function again, people once again pay no attention to the
question: what kind of an economy actually functions here? â even and
especially in a crisis.
What kind of economy is this, if work is cut back or stopped and poverty grows 
because speculation in the billions by the big money houses goes bad?What does 
it say about the country if nothing within it
is so ârelevant to the systemâ as the banks? If the government's entire
power over money is brought into play and risked in order to spare
foreclosure on unsustainable credit constructions?What kind of an world economy 
is this, if the status of
nations is decided by whether they can muster the power to maintain
this swindle â or else not. All the states rescue â as best as they can
â their national wealth and their economic capabilities together with
their banks. They know that crises are the times of major economic and
political shifts in power. Some see the chances that the crisis offers:
chances for a revision of the global balances of power, others fear
them. And they all do everything so that âweâ will recover, so that
âAmerica will emerge stronger than beforeâ (Obama). This is what the
capitalistic jobs of the future depends on. A people that wants to live
without being discouraged from capitalism â and actually lives for it â
will even have to answer for a victory in global crisis competition
with the due sacrifices.  

The answers to these questions clarify why this mode of production
deserves to be abolished â instead of being made to function again.
Never does the rule of capital reveal its absurdity so openly as in a
crisis in which capital accumulation â because it fails â strangles the
material life process of society.



      
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