[lbo-talk] Minsky

[Rakesh Bhandari]

Hi Doug,
couldn't find your reply. Just can't see how Minsky is not only not 
Marxist but methodologically antithetical.  A general crisis may 
manifest itself first of all in the sphere of bank credits, as a 
financial crisis, only later involving commerce and sphere of direct 
production. This is indeed how things will appear, but Marx shows the 
apparent succession in time is misleading. Difficulties in bank 
clearances appear as the cause, the basis, the source of all general 
crisis. Yet a crisis of over-accumulation  may have already taken 
place, it may manifest itself only in the course of time in 
disturbances and confusion in the sphere of bank clearances. All this 
is not to say that all  banking crises are delayed manifestations of 
a crisis of over-accumulation. But Minsky at least according to 
Crotty argues that they can never be. Yet today even Stiglitz and 
DeLong suggest that an underlying shortage of investment outlets vis 
a vis global savings has led the sub-prime mess.  Of course that 
shortage of investment outlets itself needs to be explained (petering 
out of technological innovations, continued overcapacity, 
underconsumption, insufficient deficit govt spending given the neo 
liberal ideological revolution led by rentiers, shortage of surplus 
value given earnings which would have to be retained for continued 
accumulation). I hope others take up this debate.
Rakesh