In all these instances [of crises] the solution to overaccumulation is devaluation. By reducing the prices of commodities, closing factories, firing workers, cutting wages and benefits, writing down debts and slashing real estate values capitalism can devalue capital in all of its stages. This process of devaluation — this violent purging of the system — is the necessary antidote to the problem of overaccumulation. This is what a crisis is- a drastic process of devaluation.
[T]he superstition that the budget must be balanced at all times, once it is debunked, takes away one of the bulwarks that every society must have against expenditure out of control. . . . [O]ne of the functions of old-fashioned religion was to scare people by sometimes what might be regarded as myths into behaving in a way that long-run civilized life requires.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Crisis and the Overaccumulation of Capital
Crisis and the Overaccumulation of Capital:
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