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Thread: weekend commentary - learning from the past ...

  1. #1
    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default weekend commentary - learning from the past ...

    "The production of the means of production was replaced by the production of the means of destruction. Primary necessities were devoured at ever higher prices by millions of individuals engaged not in production but in destruction. This process meant ruin. But by virtue of the monstrous contradictions of capitalist economy this ruin assumed the guise and form of enrichment.

    The state floated loan after loan, one issue of paper money followed upon another and the state budgets which used to carry millions began carrying billions. Machines and equipment became worn out and were left unrepaired. The land was poorly cultivated. The capital construction work in the cities and on the systems of communication was discontinued. Meanwhile the number of government bonds, credits and treasury bills and notes kept growing incessantly.
    Fictitious capital swelled in proportion as productive capital kept being destroyed. The credit system became transformed from a means of circulating commodities into a means of mobilizing national wealth, including that which is still to be created by future generations, for war purposes.

    It was precisely because they feared a crisis which might prove catastrophic that the capitalist state continued after the war to follow the same policy as it did during the war, namely: new currency issues, new loans... guarantee of profits, subsidies for grain and other forms of government subsidies for salaries and wages, plus military censorship and military dictatorship.

    ... Enormous sums of money were left concentrated in the hands of dealers and speculators who invested them wherever the greatest profits offered at the moment. Hence the feverish commercial boom, accompanied by an unprecedented rise of prices and fantastic dividends, while none of the basic branches of industry anywhere in Europe approached the pre-war level.

    At the cost of the further organic dislocation of the economic system (growth of fictitious capital, depreciation of currency, speculation instead of economic rehabilitation) the bourgeois governments in league with the banking consortiums and industrial trusts succeeded in postponing the beginning of the economic crisis till the moment [of] the political crisis...

    Having thus obtained an important breathing space, the bourgeoisie imagined that the danger of crisis had been averted for an indefinite time. Supreme optimism reigned. It seemed as if the needs of reconstruction had opened up a lasting epoch of prosperity in industry, in commerce and especially in speculation. The year 1920 was the year of shattered hopes.

    Manifesting itself first in the field of finances and next in commerce and finally in industry, the crisis began in March 1920 in Japan, in April in the United States (a slight fall of prices had already set in by January); it passed on in April to England, France and Italy; it reached the neutral countries of Europe, manifested itself in a mitigated form in Germany and in the second half of 1920 spread throughout the entire capitalist world."

    Leon Trotsky
    4 July 1921

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    God/dess Deogol's Avatar
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    Default Re: weekend commentary - learning from the past ...

    Luckily we have Allah to lead us from the soon to be smoking ruins of capitalism.

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    Featured Member lunchbox's Avatar
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    Default Re: weekend commentary - learning from the past ...

    Quote Originally Posted by Deogol View Post
    Luckily we have Allah to lead us from the soon to be smoking ruins of capitalism.
    Actually history teaches us the government will hyperinflate currency, to produce debt deflation. Enjoy EVERYTHING doubling and tripling in cost so the LBO's can pay their debts.

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