[PEN-L:29528] Re: RE: Liu on Stiglitz

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

> "Devine, James" wrote:
>
> [clip]
> Stiglitz, allying himself with Sorros, repeats his belief that there
> are > fundamental flaws in the current global financial architecture.
> It is the height of untimely timidity for him to write that the
> failure of the new IMF rescue of Brazil "should renew the resolve to
> understand why the global financial system is operating so poorly."
>
> Why? Because transferring wealth from the poor to the rich is an
> unsustainable game.
>
> Henry C.K. Liu


Last paragraph flamboyances are frequent (I've committed them myself a
number of times), and that may be operative here. But to affirm that
"transferring wealth from the poor to the rich is an unsustainable game"
is a denial of the founations of marxism, the theory of surplus value.
Where else has wealth _ever_ come from except by transfer from the poor
(producers) to the rich (appropriators). The image Henry gives is a
static one which dissolves the unity (and therefore the contradiction)
of capital and labor.

The horror of capitalism is that it is _both_ unsustainable _and_,
apparently, indefinitely sustainable, becoming ever more destructive
(and self-destructive) but always arising from its own ashes. If you
don't hit it it won't fall, as someone once said.

Carrol

Carrol