Karl Marx is hot

Image by Dunechaser via Flickr

Joe Weisenthal in Business Insider:

With things going the way they are, a lot of people are talking about big history in action, whether it’s the breakup of the Eurozone, or the simultaneous market/economic/political spasm happening in the US.

Today Paul Krugman reminds us once again that this could be 1937 all over again.

Simon Johnson thinks it could be even worse: The long depression of the 1870s all over again.

Recently Nouriel Roubini got a lot of attention for saying that Marx basically got the battle between labor and capital correct, and that capitalism itself now stood on the brink of collapse.

And even on Wall Street…

UBS’ George Magnus has a big piece out on political economy favorably quoting Karl Marx[…]

Again, you know it’s a real panic when everyone’s trotting out the old guys, and even capitalists think Marx got the endgame right.

Here’s what Roubini said:

“Karl Marx said it right. At some point capitalism can self-destruct itself because you cannot keep on shifting income from labor to capital without having excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand,” Roubini said. “That’s what’s happening. We thought the markets work. They’re not working.”

Zombie Marx

Recommended reading, following on from the above: Mike Beggs in Jacobin on “Zombie Marx”, starting with Brad DeLong’s attacks on David Harvey, but moving on to a fascinating discussion of which elements of Marx’s economic theory are relevant today, and how we should approach Marx’s work. Also read: Norman Geras on gravediggers and skeletons.

Related articles

• Marx Was Right. Capitalism May Be Destroying Itself by Nouriel Roubini… (xkorpion.wordpress.com)
• Zombie Karl Marx rises from the dead (exile.wordpress.com)
• Karl Marx had both disciples and close friends that took part in the 1848 socialist/communist revolts in Europe. Lots of them came here and sought to repeat their socialist experiment here during the War of Northern Aggression. Guess which side they ended (gunnyg.wordpress.com)
• Capitalism has hit a Crisis Point. Is it True? (wuwuming.wordpress.com)
• Watching a video: Baby Marx, On surplus value (serve4impact.com)

Blog round up

Will Davies: ‘predatory elites’

“Any society in which massive gains are privatised and massive losses are socialised is one which is suffering from a problem of predatory elites.”

Karel Williams speaking at Social Life of Methods this week. More thoughts on the conference in due course.

Dani Rodrik: (Some) economists’ topsy turvy world

Spain, where unemployment has risen to 20% and domestic demand has yet to recover, has just approved a labor reform law that makes it easier for employers to dismiss workers.

I hope someone from the IMF or OECD — the two institutions responsible for convincing the Spaniards that such a reform is an urgent priority — will explain to me how reducing the cost of firing workers can lower unemployment in the midst of a decline in labor demand.

Chris Dillow: Rooney: norms, contracts and lemons

The allegations that Wayne Rooney paid £1200 a time for sex brings a well-respected profession into disgrace. I refer, of course, to prostitution. In selling her story, Ms Thompson has broken the code that prostitutes, like priests and lawyers, do not divulge their dealings with clients.

This raises two economic issues.[…]

Jesse Walker: The Ruling Class: Scenes from the class struggle on the American right

Few essays attracted as much attention from right-wing readers this summer as “America’s Ruling Class—and the Perils of Revolution,” an extended argument that an incestuous social set “rules uneasily over the majority of Americans.” Written by Angelo Codevilla of the Claremont Institute and first published in The American Spectator, this very long article has now been expanded into a very brief book, called The Ruling Class. If you’re interested in the state of the American right, it’s an instructive document—a book that strives mightily to marry conservative cultural complaints to the libertarian case against an intrusive central government.[…]

Reihan Salam: How State Capitalism and Illiberal Democracy Will Shape the Global Economy

Ian Bremmer and Nouriel Roubini have written an absolutely terrifying essay for Institutional Investor magazine, which resonates with Stephen S. Cohen and Brad DeLong’s arguments in their excellent book The End of Influence. Bremmer and Roubini carefully explain why the rise ofbeggar-thy-neighbor state capitalism will result in “an extended period of anemic, subpar growth.”

Robert Reich: Why Obama Is Proposing Whopping Corporate Tax Cuts, and Why He’s Wrong

President Obama reportedly will propose two big corporate tax cuts this week.

One would expand and make permanent the research and experimentation tax credit, at a cost of about $100 billion over the next ten years. The other would allow companies to write off 100 percent of their new investments in plant and equipment between now and the end of 2011 at a cost next year of substantially more than $100 billion (but a ten-year cost of about $30 billion since those write-offs wouldn’t be taken over the longer-term).

The economy needs two whopping corporate tax cuts right now as much as someone with a serious heart condition needs Botox.[…]