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Reading Marx to make sense of the financial crisis
By Gabriele Catania |
July 23, 2009, Thursday
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SUDDENLY Karl Marx is cool again. Not only in continental Europe, home of so-called "social capitalism," but also in the United States (although in states such as Oklahoma it's a criminal offense to have a copy of "Das Kapital" in your library).
Already in 1998, prominent American capitalist and billionaire George Soros, the man who "broke the Bank of England," wrote that "the capitalist system by itself shows no tendency toward equilibrium."
"The owners of capital seek to maximize their profits. Left to their own devices, they would continue to accumulate capital until the situation became unbalanced. Marx and Engels gave a very good analysis of the capitalist system 150 years ago, better in some ways, I must say, than the equilibrium theory of classical economics," he wrote.
More recently, in Washington-based magazine Foreign Policy, the Canadian academic Leo Panish underscored that "the irrationality built into the basic logic of capitalist markets - and so deftly analyzed by Marx - is once again evident ... As Marx knew, micro-rational behavior has the worst macroeconomic outcomes. We now can see where ignoring Marx while trusting Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' gets you."
According to American writer Francis Wheen, author of the voluminous biography "Karl Marx: A Life," the German philosopher could yet become the most influential thinker of the 21st century.
But above all, Marx is being re-evaluated in Europe, particularly in Germany, where he was born almost two centuries ago.
In Trier, a wealthy city on the Moselle River, his birthplace is luring a rising number of tourists, and is fast becoming one of the main national attractions.
Furthermore, only last year German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck admitted that certain parts of Marx's thinking are really not so bad.
In the same period, Jorn Schutrumpf, head of the German publishing house that produces Marx's works, enthusiastically announced "that we're seeing a very distinct increase in demand for his books."
In the eastern part of Germany "Das Kapital" is a bestseller, and the famous German director Alexander Kluge has just shot a monumental 570-minute film based on Marx's masterpiece.
According to Kluge, "Marx analyzed the basic concepts about what happens inside the human being, what differentiates the human being, his social being, from the wolf."
In the rest of Europe, Marx's appeal is strong.
In France, President Nicholas Sarkozy (a voracious reader) was pictured reading "Das Kapital," while in Italy the Economic Minister, Professor Giulio Tremonti, tried to explain the global crisis by quoting Marx .
The question remains: have Europeans finally understood that untrammeled capitalism without the intervention of a strong state can become a monster, or are they just being affected by a transient fashion in the worsening economic crisis?
(The author is director of the "Comitato Per Gli Studi Geopolitici" - Committee on Geopolitical Studies - a network of young scholars and researchers based in Trient, Italy. The views are his own.)
Already in 1998, prominent American capitalist and billionaire George Soros, the man who "broke the Bank of England," wrote that "the capitalist system by itself shows no tendency toward equilibrium."
"The owners of capital seek to maximize their profits. Left to their own devices, they would continue to accumulate capital until the situation became unbalanced. Marx and Engels gave a very good analysis of the capitalist system 150 years ago, better in some ways, I must say, than the equilibrium theory of classical economics," he wrote.
More recently, in Washington-based magazine Foreign Policy, the Canadian academic Leo Panish underscored that "the irrationality built into the basic logic of capitalist markets - and so deftly analyzed by Marx - is once again evident ... As Marx knew, micro-rational behavior has the worst macroeconomic outcomes. We now can see where ignoring Marx while trusting Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' gets you."
According to American writer Francis Wheen, author of the voluminous biography "Karl Marx: A Life," the German philosopher could yet become the most influential thinker of the 21st century.
But above all, Marx is being re-evaluated in Europe, particularly in Germany, where he was born almost two centuries ago.
In Trier, a wealthy city on the Moselle River, his birthplace is luring a rising number of tourists, and is fast becoming one of the main national attractions.
Furthermore, only last year German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck admitted that certain parts of Marx's thinking are really not so bad.
In the same period, Jorn Schutrumpf, head of the German publishing house that produces Marx's works, enthusiastically announced "that we're seeing a very distinct increase in demand for his books."
In the eastern part of Germany "Das Kapital" is a bestseller, and the famous German director Alexander Kluge has just shot a monumental 570-minute film based on Marx's masterpiece.
According to Kluge, "Marx analyzed the basic concepts about what happens inside the human being, what differentiates the human being, his social being, from the wolf."
In the rest of Europe, Marx's appeal is strong.
In France, President Nicholas Sarkozy (a voracious reader) was pictured reading "Das Kapital," while in Italy the Economic Minister, Professor Giulio Tremonti, tried to explain the global crisis by quoting Marx .
The question remains: have Europeans finally understood that untrammeled capitalism without the intervention of a strong state can become a monster, or are they just being affected by a transient fashion in the worsening economic crisis?
(The author is director of the "Comitato Per Gli Studi Geopolitici" - Committee on Geopolitical Studies - a network of young scholars and researchers based in Trient, Italy. The views are his own.)
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