Re: [Pen-l] Michael Heinrich versus the crisis-mongerers

["Jim Devine" <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

Novus/Heinrich is right on this one. Economic crises alone can't sink
capitalism;  mass opposition is neeeded.

On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 12:27 PM, Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> URL for this is:
> http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/michael-heinrich-versus-the-crisis-mongerers/
>
> Louis Proyect wrote:
>>
>> After having waded through Rosa Luxemburg, Henryk Grossman and various
>> lesser figures in the course of a discussion of "crisis theory" on the
>> Introduction to Marxism class, I was curious to see what Michael Heinrich
>> had to say in an article titled "The Current Financial Crisis and the Future
>> of Global Capitalism" on MRZine. I know next to nothing about Heinrich
>> except that his work is highly touted by a Marxmail and LBO-Talk subscriber
>> from Germany who uses the tag Angelus Novus. Heinrich has something of a
>> following there apparently.
>>
>> The thrust of Heinrich's article is to make the case that Marxists are
>> wrong to speak in terms of crisis leading to the downfall of capitalism. Not
>> only is it theoretically incorrect, there is nothing in Marx's writings to
>> support such an idea—at least in their most mature phase. Marx supposedly
>> expected the European-wide financial crisis of 1858 to unleash revolutionary
>> movements, but was somewhat surprised to see that the capitalist system came
>> out of the crisis "greatly strengthened", to use Heinrich's words. Heinrich
>> writes:
>>
>> "Marx learned a lesson: in capitalism, crises function as brutal acts of
>> purification. The destruction wreaked by crises removes previous impediments
>> to accumulation and frees up new possibilities for capitalist development."
>>
>> This formula, of course, found its most refined expression in Joseph
>> Schumpeter's writings, a highly esteemed bourgeois economist who had read
>> his Marx and who postulated the theory of "creative destruction" in
>> "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy":
>>
>> "Every piece of business strategy acquires its true significance only
>> against the background of that process and within the situation created by
>> it. It must be seen in its role in the perennial gale of creative
>> destruction; it cannot be understood irrespective of it or, in fact, on the
>> hypothesis that there is a perennial lull. . . ."
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-- 
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
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