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A long foresight

Posted by Stanley Crossick on 20/03/09
Tags: Karl Marx on debt

“Owners of capital will stimulate working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalized…”

This is a quotation from “Das Kapital” written by Karl Marx in 1867. The quotation finishes with, “…and State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism.” This is rather unlikely to happen.

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Lukas Martos

Comment by Lukas Martos | 2009/03/21 at 19:32:29

Well, I do not remember this part from the book, can anybody pls. writhe here a page or even better describe the part of the book where it is written? (Due the differences between various national versions).

Because it sounds tho contenporary to me…

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Anthony Williams

Comment by Anthony Williams | 2009/03/23 at 01:47:00

That supposed Marx quote is a hoax that has been repeatedly debunked. See:

The Atlantic
http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/01/faux_marx.php

International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/25/business/col26.1-437515.php

The John Birch Society
http://www.jbs.org/index.php/news-feed-archive/4580-about-that-karl-marx-quote

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Zazie

Comment by Zazie | 2009/03/25 at 14:15:09

Yes sir. However, it may lead (still to see the empirical data to come in) to a social capitalism welfare state as seen in Sweden or Norway, i.e., where control and initiative may be balanced through, lets’ say, “economies of hope”. I don’t ofer them though as an exemplary model, there are still things to be fixed there too. If one’s back is “covered” through social wellfare mechanisms and minimum wage – to temper the potential looses’ risks in survival (what a backward term!), then initiative and competition will grow exponentially in those domains where people may be able to live from what they are passionate about and not from what they would be forced into. And here, the role of open minded economists would allow education systems to teach people it is good to know what one likes and go for it, for better results. Up to know we have seen in these economists’ mindful domains only fear of loosing control, with its extreme moral tale of snowballing escalade of nowadays banking systems, as a fundamental divorce between what Marx calls the metastructure – that is banking bureaucracies’ survival strategies – and real resources at hand to count as production forces – from a classical marxian view; but here there are also postmarxists to have their say. It is a bit reductionist, and belonging to more of past centuries thinking to call halt to “communism” – and here I use it just as a working methaphor -to every initiative working within the tension between control/profit global market strategies and “economies of contribution”, where, once survival is ensured – and boost real politk production – the ideatic domain of one making money from what they would be passionate about – would transfer the focus from blind “diversification of products” to the very content of those products. The same for the content of figures than empty figures. The same for the content in human lives and their own stories than succesion of empty actions wihtin data sets on “working labour forces” directed to fulfill some empty charts in management meetings. Fear of too much (human) information (to manage) then? But who would be that mechanistical to take what they don’t need?

Best wishes, Zazie (postgrad in Goldsmiths College, University of London)

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Stanley Crossick

Comment by Stanley Crossick | 2009/04/01 at 21:30:46

Lukas Martos: Whoops! I’ve now googled it and found that it is incorrect and doing the rounds, The best piece showing that it’s a hoax is: http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/01/faux_marx.php
Sorry to have misled but my source was a usually very reliable one.

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A long foresight

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