Marxism and the crisis of Capitalism.docVIP

MARXISM AND THE CRISIS OF CAPITALISM Sean Sayers [Presentation at Marx and Philosophy Society Panel at Historical Materialism Conference, London, 7 November 2008. Comments invited to s.p.sayers@kent.ac.uk] 1. Capitalism is going through its greatest crisis since the 1930s or before. The banking system has been saved from meltdown (at least for the time being) only by extensive government intervention in the USA, Britain, and a number of other countries. Stock markets all over the world have plummeted. A long and deep recession is in prospect. Capitalism, it is sometimes said, may be on the verge of collapse. Few economists or politicians foresaw these developments. The long boom had lulled them into the believe that the cycle of boom and bust had finally been overcome. One figure who would not have been surprised and whose reputation has risen dramatically is Marx. After a long period when his ideas were dismissed as refuted, there is now a new interest in them. He long ago argued that capitalism is inherently unstable and prone to crisis, and he predicted its eventual demise. Marxs analysis of capitalism, it is said, has been proved correct. But exactly which aspects of Marxs analysis have been vindicated? In the first place, Marxs critique of the free market has been confirmed. The liberal, laissez-faire, free market philosophy which has dominated economic and social thought for the past 30 years has been discredited. Even Alan Greenspan, the former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, one of its most influential champions, has admitted that the free market philosophy is flawed. I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms. The present crisis is demonstrating, yet again, that the free market is not the benign, self-regulating mechanism that the free market fundamentalists have claimed it to be. It does