LSE Marxist Society debate LSE Hayek Society

[jondwhite]

From Socialist Appeal – (split from Militant)

Quote:

We publish here a recording and report of a recent debate held at the London School of Economics between the LSE Marxist Society and the LSE Hayek Society on "Are free markets the solution to the current economic crisis". Representing the Marxist Society was Adam Booth, editor of http://www.socialist.net, who provided a Marxist explanation for the current crisis and for capitalist crises in general.

http://socialist.net/marx-vs-hayek-which-way-out-of-the-crisis.htm

[ALB]

The first 8 minutes of Booth's opening are not too bad as a demolition of the "free market" argument but from then on it's downhill all the way. In the following 4 minutes he outlines a crude underconsumption (which he calls "overproduction") theory of capitalist crises: the workers can't buy back all they produce; production was only sustained over the past 30 or so years workers being given credit to buy things; this came to an end in 2008; hence the current crisis.No wonder he has argued elsewhere that capitalism has now entered a period of "permanent slump":

Quote:

The use of credit to artificially maintain demand and avoid a crisis is a symptom of the contradictions of capitalism itself: primarily the contradiction of overproduction, due to the nature of capitalism as a system whereby production is in private hands and is only for profit, which means that – since profit is nothing but the unpaid labour of the working class – the working class (as a whole) can never afford to buy back (with wages alone) all that they produce.The current crisis is a reflection of this contradiction unravelling itself on a global scale. All the chickens have come home to roost for the capitalists, and now they –and society as a whole – are faced with an organic crisis of capitalism and a new normality.

In fact since it's a permanent feature of capitalism that "the working class (as a whole) can never buy back (with wages alone) all that they produce" on this argument capitalism ought always to have been in a state of permanent stagnation or even not have been able to come into existence.The fallacy of course is that paying demand is not made up just of workers' wages, but also of capitalists' profits. In other words, what the workers can't buy the capitalists can, especially on investment, or buying things to continue and expand production; there is no permanent underconsumption built into capitalism. Put very simply, crises occur when capitalists don't spend/invest because the prospect of making a profit has fallen or disappeared.Booth's theory of crisis is a disgrace to Marxism, but then we have always known that Militant were wrong on this.

[steve colborn]

Adam, Have we contacted the LSE in the past and offered "our" services, in this regard? If so, what has been the response?

[jondwhite]

As student societies are formed by students not the university, we would have to approach it from this angle. I suspect we'd get more sincere interest from the Hayek society than the 'Marxist' one. Forming a student society would require making a call out to members (and branches I think) for students for running stalls at freshers fairs.

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