From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@tiscali.nl)
Date: Wed Mar 19 2008 - 03:38:22 EDT
The question arises because Marxists want to show that they have a more profound understanding of the financial crisis than the pundits and the bourgeois economists and journalists, but they really haven't. In Karl Marx's own theory, a economic crisis is defined as an interruption or disturbance in the normal economic reproduction process, which repeats itself in a sort of "chain reaction" with increasing amplitude. This "reproduction process" is an ongoing cyclical process, which encompasses the four "moments" of production, distribution, circulation and consumption. What the economic crisis means is that suddenly a lot of labour and means of production are not utilised, consumption is cut back, and it is more difficult to trade, with the result that the volume of output falls. The "severity" of the crisis refers to the magnitude of the disturbance in the normal reproduction process, measured according to those criteria. To estimate the impact and duration of the current financial crisis requires a study of a lot of empirical data, rather than a mystical/metaphysical or biblical approach. Jurriaan _______________________________________________ ope mailing list ope@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/ope
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