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No Solution is Possible to Recession Within the Ruling System
THE VOLCANIC eruptions of imperialist meltdown have started the already distorted Indian economy grievously as
various reports show. Containers are piling up at the ports as importers of most of the goods have refused to receive
them. Many more factories have closed now. Workers and employees are laid off by the MNCs as well as corporate
houses. The much talked about IT and software sector is the worst affected with practically every unit laying off or
firing employees, or cutting down wages of hundreds of thousands engineers and technicians. The Infosys has asked
its more than a hundred thousand engineers to take one year leave offering 50% salary. The depression in the real
estate sector has forced almost all to cut down their projects. As a result man hundreds of thousands are going to
loose jobs. The formerly estimated 35 million job losses is going to be surpassed soon making the unemployment rate
the worst in recent decades.
Not only the industrial and service sectors are severely affected. The expert oriented cash crop sector promoted
with the MNCs, corporates and government agencies playing a major role is also seriously affected. Though
Manmohan-Chidambaram team is shamlessly repeating that still an 8% growth rate is possible in order to cheat the
masses going to vote in the six states now and later at all India level for Lok Sabha elections, the illusion bubble they
are trying to create is bound to burst soon. Similar to the inflation rate persisting near 10%, the growth rate is bound to
fall much more as the crisis in all export oriented industrial, service and agricultural areas escalate in coming days.
By the end of 1980s, four decades of comprador rule serving imperialist interests and native elite classes had
already worsened the imperialist globalization policies imposed under IMF-WB dictates in the name of energizing the
economy, instead of improving has worsened it. Increasing integration of Indian economy with the global capital-
market system led by US imperialism has led to the consequence of the bursting of the bubble in US and in other
imperialist ahead with the neo-liberal policies and their advocates are entirety responsible for the present acute
recession and crisis. In spite of it, the ruling forces are adding insult to injury by bailing out the villains, instead of
saving the masses.
This grave situation calls for intensifying the struggle to reverse all imperialist globalization connected policies
including kicking out IMF-WB-WTO and MNCs. Struggle to put an end to export oriented policies including creation of
SEZs, CMZ is urgently called for. What is required is a national and people oriented development policy giving priority
to self-reliance in all sectors, clubbed with revolutionary changes in land relations and promotion of agriculture. It is
foolish to boast about advances in rocket engineering and launching of Chandrayan, when the development of science
and technology to promote industry and agriculture a self-reliant basis is not taken up. In short what is called for is the
throwing out of the dependant and comprador policies and developing a national policy ensuring food, clothing,
housing, education, healthcare and employment for all.
But, in spite of the unprecedented crisis faced by the masses following the meltdown in imperialist centres starting
from the US, the ruling classes and the political parties of all shades serving them are not ready to reverse the
comprador policies which are making the rich richer, while the poor poorer. This has intensified the contradictions
between the masses and the ruling system unprecedentedly. The objective situation has become more favourable to
struggle for revolutionary social change. The revolutionary left, patriotic and democratic forces should seize this
opportunity to advance the people’s struggles in all fields with this objective.
Articles
The International Financial Crisis 2008 Manifests a New
Phenomenon in the Imperialist World System
Stefan Engel
[Stefan Engel, Chairman of the MLPD, speech at a Hall Meeting on November 14th 2008 in Delhi on the issue “Global
Financial Meltdown & Portents for India” - Red Star]
Dear participants,
Dear guests of the meeting
Dear comrades!
I pay my cordial gratitude to you for inviting me to the today meeting. I want to make my contribution in order to
throw a light upon on the extraordinary character and the backgrounds of the current international financial crisis. With
respect to its depth and dimension there is no doubt that the present financial crisis outmatches all that we know in
capitalism since it came into being.
It is a new phenomenon that can be ascribed to essential changes the imperialist world system has
experienced since the beginning of the 1990’s on the basis of the reorganisation of the international production. In
Japan in 1990, there has already been a financial crisis manifested in comparable back-grounds as in 2007 in the U.S.
In my book “Götterdammerung (Twilight of the Gods) over the New ‘World Order’”, that was published in March 2003,
it reads in this respect:
“The 1990 banking crisis in Japan had a new dimension. Prior to this, bank crises always remained limited to
individual institutions or sectors, as, for example, the collapse of the Savings & Loans (thrifts) in the USA at the end
of the 1980s showed.
However, the crisis in Japan encompassed the entire financial apparatus. How could that happen? The
government in Tokyo had abolished the separation between mortgage and other banking operations at the end of
the 1980s. Real estate speculation then was heated up by large debt-financed construction projects. The real
estate prices rose to dizzying heights; the land prices alone doubled in Tokyo from 1985 to 1990. Simultaneously,
a speculative 430 Chapter III/3 stock boom developed.
The Japanese banks, which maintained little capital, had granted extensive loans against the deposit of securities
and property fund shares. To cool down the speculation, the Japanese central bank raised the key lending rates.
This increased the interest rates which individual banks had to pay to the central bank. The banks passed these
costs on to the borrowers, loans were made more expensive, the money supply was curbed, and the growth of
speculative capital was slowed.
The IFO-Schnelldienst described the dramatic consequences: The restrictive monetary policy practiced again
starting in mid 1989 finally made the bubble burst. As a result, stock prices lost almost two thirds of their peak
value in a “piecemeal crash.” Though the losses in value in the property and real estate sector were distinctly
slower, they were and are hardly less dramatic.
The assets destroyed to date are estimated at twice the value of the Japanese gross domestic product. In 1992
the crisis spread to the real economy. As a consequence of the losses in value and the increased cost of finance,
investment and consumption caved in. Then, for the first time, trade and industry came under pressure to reduce
capacities. Due to the cave-in of prices both on the stock exchange and in the property and real estate markets,
the banks were sitting on a huge mountain of now bad loans and dishonoured guarantees. (No. 8, 1999, p. 27;
emphasis added).
Numerous big banks collapsed, including the leading securities house Yamaichi Securities. Due to the bank crisis
the Japanese economy was dragged deeper into the maelstrom of the world economic crisis of 1991 to 1993 than
the other imperialist countries and, through the end of the decade, had considerable difficulty recovering.” (Twilight
of the Gods…, Kapitel III).
However, in those days this crisis was still limited to the Japanese finance capital and did not yet took on an
international character.
In the year of 2007 a mortgage crisis broke out in the U.S. Millions of small homeowners were unable to repay
their loans because the central bank systematically raised interest rates to pay off government debt. The foreclosure
sales took on such dimensions that the entire real estate market in the USA collapsed. Real estate in the USA lost
value so dramatically that millions of loans went bad, that is, no longer were covered by real equivalents. All big banks
in the world therefore had to write off billions, which netted them gigantic losses. To date the banks worldwide have
lost a total of 1.4 trillion US dollars solely because of outstanding loans.
The starting point of this mortgage crisis was based in a gigantic crisis program that was put up by US president
Bush in the year 2001. In my book from 2003 you can read about this:
“In 2001 alone, the Federal Reserve Board cut the key lending rates for overnight money eleven times; they were
lowered from 6.5 to 1.75 percent, the lowest level in over 40 years. In 2002 a further reduction to 1.25 percent
followed. The interest rates were deliberately pushed down beneath the inflation rate so that a negative real
interest rate was the result. This deliberately devalued savings with the intention of stimulating purchases.
In addition, the US government adopted a tax reduction program on the scale of US$ 1.2 trillion through 2010 and
awarded extensive military contracts in connection with the preparations for a new war against Iraq. But these
measures too did not put a quick end to the overproduction crisis.
The Crisis of State Regulation 439 cheap money was used in many cases to refinance debt and was not spent. At
the start of 2003, US President Bush announced a comprehensive economic stimulus program (“Growth and Jobs
Plan”). It was supposed to pump US $670 billion into private business in the next ten years, US $98 billion in 2003
alone.
Even bourgeois economists doubt that this program will lead the US economy out of its crisis. Normally, an
increase in lower and medium incomes results in an increase in consumption, while the top incomes, the principal
beneficiaries of this stimulus program, are more likely to seek profitable investment.
Moreover, it was questionable whether the rise in stock prices by more than 10 percent, as anticipated by the Bush
Administration, would materialize. On the other hand, it was already certain that the government debt in 2003 –
even without the cost of an Iraq war – would grow by US $300 billion.
It is a well known fact that such debts are repaid at the expense of the broad masses. If a sustained economic
revival fails to materialize in the USA, a similar development as in Japan 440 Chapter III/4 threatens – with even
more far-reaching consequences for the entire world economy.’ (Twilight of the Gods, Kapitel III).
It is a fact that the interest rates of the US Central Bank (FED) increased up to 6,5% in 2007 also as a
consequence of the war on Iraq what as a result made a broad mass of US citizens incapable of paying off small scale
credits and what finally triggered the mortgage crisis.
Marx basically answered the question of how the bourgeoisie tries to surmount cyclical overproduction crises:
“And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of
productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old
ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means
whereby crises are prevented.” (“Manifesto of the Communist Party,” Marx and Engels, Selected Works in three
volumes, Volume 1, p. 114).
But matters wouldn’t have rested with the mortgage crisis. The gigantic losses of the international monopoly banks
triggered off an international bank crisis. In one week the 5 biggest investment banks of the USA disappeared from
the scene. A dramatic blow to the centers of finance speculation!
The bank crisis triggered off an international stock exchange crisis and is in turn being intensified by that crisis.
Massive profit setbacks, losses, and sudden falls in stock prices drain equity capital also at big banks and state-owned
banks.
The force and the speed with which the crisis spread from a relatively small segment, the mortgage banks and a
few hedge funds in the USA, to the international finance system as a whole, including big international banks, was not
expected by bourgeois experts and led to a profound crisis of confidence and even to real panic. To prevent the entire
world finance system breaking down, government measures on an unprecedented scale were taken to get the
international bank and stock exchange crisis under control.
All in all, up to now 5.2 trillion US dollars in state funds have been expended to shore up the banks. Nevertheless,
one still does not get the impression that the crisis has been brought to a standstill or that it has bottomed out.
In view of the danger of the collapse of the world finance system under the impact of the international finance,
bank and stock exchange crisis, the most powerful imperialist states have gotten together to pursue a joint, mutually
coordinated international crisis management. This is something new in this form and points to the political
significance of the current international finance and bank crisis.
This is not just about restoring ability to pay. A single state, and even the EU as a strong alliance, would no longer
be capable of this at all in view of the dimensions of the world finance market and its mutual international
dependencies. So they have no other choice unless they want to go down together. All government declarations
justifying the comprehensive support measures emphasize that the purpose is to restore “confidence in the economic
system”.
What unites the leading imperialists is the will to maintain their rule at all costs to plunder and oppress the masses
in the imperialist countries, including their system of neo-colonialism for the plunder of the dependent and oppressed
countries.
However, the measures of the state can alleviate the problem of the international finance and bank crisis
temporarily at most, not solve it. The measures taken to cope with the international financial crisis are no new
measures. In my book I wrote the following with respect to the state crisis management:
“Japan, like Germany and France, was not able to get over the 1992–93 setback in industrial output until 1997.
But the next overproduction crisis in Japan came on the heels of this in 1998; this setback had just been made
good in 2000 when the third overproduction crisis within ten years arrived in 2001. In 2001, Japan’s industrial
output was 7.9 percent below the level of 1991.
This tremendous weakness of the Japanese economy was closely connected with the persisting bank crisis. The
Japanese financial system was saddled with a huge burden of “bad loans” estimated to total 50 to 100 trillion yen
(460 to 920 billion euros) in 2001. In ten years, the Japanese government launched ten economic recovery
programs with a total volume of 1,200 billion euros. The Japanese central bank staged one round of interest rate
cutting after the other until it finally came down to a “zero interest rate policy.
With these unprecedented state measures, consumers were to be moved to spend their money instead of putting it
aside for a rainy day. Investment also was to be stimulated. But contrary to expectations, no revival of the economy
occurred, not to mention an economic boom. In view of the gigantic destruction of capital the state programs could
merely keep the contradictions in a state of tension and avert the total financial collapse of the Japanese economy.
However, the other side of the coin was a record state debt amounting to 140 percent of the gross domestic
product. Unsuccessful in bringing about a relative revival of a more protracted nature, the state measures
produced exactly the opposite effect and hastened the further economic decline.
The weekly, Die Zeit, bemoaned the cul-de-sac into which state crisis regulation had manoeuvred itself:
Zero interest rates – no such thing?
Yes there is, in Japan.
There the Bank of Japan demands no more interest since the spring of 1999 – but to no avail.
The economy shrinks, deflation prevails.
The impotence of monetary policy is what dismays the guild of modern economists.…
“The Curse of All That Money,” (Die Zeit, No. 47, 2001).
In contrast to inflation, which devalues money relative to commodities, deflation devalues commodities relative to
money. Deflation is an expression of the law-based tendency to destruction of surplus capital….
Permanent inflation is a phenomenon based on the state monopoly measures taken to redistribute the national
income to the monopolies and on the effect of monopoly prices.
Deflation is a consequence of the battle of annihilation of the international monopolies, which gained in intensity
particularly in the overproduction crisis.
Marx already pointed out the devastating effects of a general deterioration of prices:
“it causes the production process of capital, which is based on certain price relations, to falter; it interrupts the
chain of payment obligations and destroys the function of money as a means of payment.
The collapse of the credit system in turn exacerbates the crisis in the reproduction process.” (Twilight of the
Gods…, Kapitel III).
The root cause of the international financial crisis is in the increasing decay of the imperialist world system,
which expresses itself in the ever larger scope of the share of speculative capital. Speculative capital is nothing but
accumulated capital which can no longer be invested in production to produce maximum profit.
In the speculation, international finance capital searches for new ways to realize maximum profits. The new
dimension of the speculation and the crisis-like bursting of its bubble is a consequence of the reorganization of
international production. The present bank and stock exchange crisis was not caused by a world economic crisis, but
by a speculation crisis.
From December 2005 to 10 December 2007, the nominal value of the financial derivatives doubled to 596 trillion
US dollars. But that compared with a gross market value of only 14.5 trillion US dollars; this is a ratio of 41 to 1. This
figure shows the extent to which the speculation already has divorced itself from reality.
These financial markets operate outside stock exchange trading, that is, outside the supervision and rules
applying there, and contribute in a major way to destabilize the international finance systems. Mortgage and credit card
debt was securitized, that is, outstanding debts were turned into securities and sold worldwide. The higher the risk of
non-payment was, the higher the returns that were expected.
The other side of this speculation is that no lender can be certain any more that he will actually get the insurance
payout for the credit loss. This substantially contributes to the mutual distrust and the credit crises.
The stock exchange crisis already resulted in enormous losses by the end of September 2008. Compared with
October 2007, over 20 trillion US dollars in speculative capital have been destroyed on the international stock
exchanges. Compared with that: in the stock market crash of 1929 merely it was 50 billion US dollars, or 400 times
less!
The actual main problem is its effect on the process of production and reproduction of capitalist world production,
which further intensifies the finance and bank crisis.
The first block stoppages already are occurring in the automobile industry because the markets have rapidly
collapsed. Since many people today now only pay for their cars with small loans, and these small loans currently are
hard to get, the US car market has declined by as much as 50 percent. As a result, US auto production has been
reduced by one third. In the newest piece of news you can here, the car – sell in India was going back by menus 14%
too.
The danger of the outbreak of a new world economic crisis is imminent.
But as yet the finance crisis has not yet fully gone through to the world economy. In Germany leading economists
have now predicted a “recession” because after the gross national product slightly declined by 0.25 % in the second
quarter of 2008 in comparison to the first quarter, growth rates now decline by 0.5 % also in the third quarter in
comparison to the second quarter.
But this is not a crisis because either the level of the gross national product as well as the level of industrial
production are still extraordinarily higher than the year before. Also the entire year of 2008 will still experience a
positive growth of 1.7 % in Germany. That shows that we have to keep a cool head in analysis making.
The bourgeois governments and their economies currently need to produce a bulk of “credible” propaganda to
justify their subsidiaries benefiting the finance capital as never before.
I assume that the international financial crisis is a precursor to a real world economic crisis.
A new world economic crisis, which will come sooner or later, will throw all previous world economic crises into the
shade as a result of the internationalization of production. It will probably produce much stronger fluctuations than the
previous world economic crises in 1981, 1991 and 2001.
That for the following reasons:
First: Because the Chinese economy now is very closely intertwined with the world economy, we must expect that
China too will be affected by an overproduction crisis – as will India, Russia, Brazil and Eastern Europe, which was not
the case in the years 2001 to 2003.
This would eliminate the special factors which gave the international monopolies a way out of the world economic
crisis of 2001.
Second: The coming world economic crisis will be more comprehensive than the crisis of 2001/2002 on account
of the new stage of integration and interaction of the capitalist world economy and the dimension of the structural crisis
on the basis of the reorganization of international capitalist production.
Third: The transition to a new world economic crisis and the interconnection with the stock market speculation
intensifies the crisis of the reproduction process of capital and will give rise to a string of speculation, money, finance,
foreign exchange, stock market and bank crises.
Fourth: The possibilities of the state-monopoly-capitalist crisis regulation schemes are increasingly more limited
due to the new stage of the internationalization of production. The conventional instruments even have no effect for the
most part.
When the world economic crisis breaks out with full force, no package of state crisis measures will be able to bring
this destruction of capital under control.
New drastic crisis-retarding measures will trigger off new government budget crises within a short period of time,
even to the point of national bankruptcy.
Against this backdrop, the Report of the Central Committee of the MLPD to the Eighth Party Congress
forecasts:
“Owing to the decreasing effect of the state crisis regulation, the upward variations between the crises and the
downward variations during the crisis are stronger.
That leads us to expect a far-reaching destabilization of the future social development especially upon the
outbreak of a new world economic crisis.” (pp. 18 ff.)
The world economic crisis that can expected with the force of law makes very clear that the temporary economic
upswing of 2004 to 2007, contrary to all public propaganda, was not an expression of a stabilization and positive
development of the imperialist world system. It was mainly the result of special effects in the world economy:
In fact, an upswing of the world economy since 2004 caused the world product to rise from 31,823 billion US
dollars in 2000 to 54,312 billion US dollars in 2007. The concrete causes of this growth can be found in an enormous
expansion of the world market due to the integration of East European and many neo-colonially dependent countries.
In these countries a tremendous structural crisis was and is taking place owing to the destruction of the
bureaucratic-capitalist mode of production.
So the basis of the upswing is an incredible destruction of traditional capital through the reorganization of
international production, the dimensions of which even throws the destruction caused by major wars into the shade.
International finance capital assimilates these economies, completely changes their production, smashes existing
production structures and builds up huge overcapacities to supply these new markets.
Just in the so-called BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – 40 percent of humanity lives today.
Gigantic investments of international finance capital streamed into these countries, and this drew further countries into
an economic upswing.
The upswing of the world economy brought the international super-monopolies tremendous growth and gigantic
maximum profits. The sales revenues of the 500 biggest super-monopolies rose from 2004 to 2007 at an annual rate
of between 10 and 13 percent – their reported profits grew each year by 25 to 30 percent.
This was the result of tremendously increased exploitation of the industrial workers and shameless plundering of
government coffers around the globe. While the number of employees in the 500 biggest super-monopolies of the
world rose by 15 percent to 54 million from 2003 to 2007, the sales per employee exploded in the same period by 25
percent to 436,000 US dollars in 2007.
Dear Comrades,
With law-governed effect the coming world economic crisis will combine with deep political crises; the already
chronic latent political crisis will break out deeper and more often. It will intensify the class struggle between the
monopolies and the working class to the utmost and constitute the basis for the revolutionizing of the working class
and the broad masses.
The Hamburger Party Congress of the MLPD came to the conclusion:
“The large-scale failure of crisis-moderating government regulatory activities leads us to expect that the coming
world economic crisis will have a comprehensive and deep character never before seen since the Second World
War.
This can speed up the process of destabilization of the imperialist world system, sending tremendous shock waves
through the economic base and the superstructure and leading to an extraordinary intensification of the class
struggle.
Sudden, rapid developments in the transition to the global environmental catastrophe also can deeply shake the
social fabric.
Whether or not the economic and political crises that can be expected will grow into a revolutionary crisis depends
mainly on the interpenetration of the objective factor with the subjective factor of class struggle. .......
It is the historical mission of the international working class, together with its allies, under the leadership of Marxist-
Leninist parties, to overcome imperialism and to make the dream of a socialist society rid of exploitation of man by
man come true through its conscious act.” (Dokumente des VIII. Parteitag, p. 236)
The ruling classes are well aware that the imperialist world system finds itself in a crisis-charged transitional
situation. The laws inherent in their worldwide rivalry force them to unscrupulously intensify the exploitation of the
international working class to the utmost.
They will make every effort to cut achieved wages, social benefits and democratic rights and freedoms to the level
of the lowest standards in the world. They will generate poverty, hunger and misery for billions of people, shedding
imperialist crocodile tears as they do, to ensure their maximum profits. The ruling forces systematically are preparing
to maintain their power with every means available to them in a future political crisis.
Dear Comrades,
Our theoretical analysis in the book, “Götterdämmerung over the “New World Order”‚ published in March 2003,
closes with the words:
“When the battalions of international finance capital marched out to reorganize production, distribution and finally
the world in their interest, they had no idea that their crusade would only accelerate their general decline.
Drunk from their own propaganda about the “end of history” they also were not aware that by unfettering the
international productive forces they would give new strength and perspective to the revolutionary aspiration of
mankind for a new society without exploitation, oppression and war.
The twilight of the gods, the Götterdämmerung of international finance capital has broken.
It is the eve of a genuinely new world order – of the united socialist states of the world.” (Twilight of the Gods
…,Kapitel III).
National Scene
International Scene