[OPE] "Financiers of the future must know their Marx"

The following is a letter published in the _Financial Times_ by
Bryn Rowlands. / In solidarity, Jerry

Financiers of the future must know their Marx
Published: February 4 2009 02:00

>From Mr Bryn Rowlands.

Sir, Michael Lipton (Letters, January 23) asked why John McFall and
Jon Moulton, when advocating bank nationalisation (Comment, January
21), added that later the banks should be returned to private
ownership. May I hazard an answer: free-market dogmatism and
ignorance.

I recall one late British prime minister, Harold Wilson, boasting
that he failed to get past page one of Karl Marx's Capital . More
recently, Gordon Brown showed his rejection of Marx's explanation of
the cyclical nature of capitalist economies with his claim to have
ended booms and busts.

A knowledge of Marxian economics may have allowed our financiers and
politicians to avoid, or at least have attenuated, the present crisis
of capitalism. As Marx warned, more than 140 years ago, crises of
capitalist credit mechanisms occur, "where the ever-lengthening chain
of payments, and an artificial system of settling them, has been
fully developed". Is it not the responsibility of professors of
economics to ensure that the prospective financiers and politicians
in the universities gain an in-depth knowledge of Marx's ideas and
then, perhaps, not repeat past mistakes?

Bryn Rowlands,
Malmesbury, Wilts, UK

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Received on Wed Feb 4 14:23:58 2009