On Feb 24, 2009, at 2:20 PM, Patrick Bond wrote:
> And another point is temporal. You're looking at the last fifteen
> years, whereas the overaccumulation problem that got all that
> fictitious capital sliding into such zany circuitries - leading to
> the current epiphenomenal financial crisis - goes back to the late
> 1970s, and it was *then* that the overinvestment and excessive
> production to meet intense competition signaled firms to slow fixed
> capital investment. (Unless you think, like comrades Henwood,
> Panitch and Gindin, that capital solved its 1970s crisis by the mid
> 1980s. But they're wrong and I know you appreciate that.)
Capital, which isn't a thing or a person but let's use it like that under erasure anyway, did solve its 1970s crisis by the mid 1980s. That doesn't mean the problem was fixed for all time. Capitalism is a dynamic system that thrives on overcoming crises.
This is what I don't get about your position. It would seem, from reading you, that socialism could solve the economic problem, while capitalism is in some sort of terminal crisis. But even socialism would have problems that it would have to solve (starting with its introduction), and no doubt serious ones (starting with its introduction). That's human life for you. And for capitalism, so far no crisis has proved terminal. Maybe its luck will run out, but it has proved itself remarkably resilient - unless we do something about it politically.
Doug