Global Capitalism Crisis - Best Arguments for Failure?

[Oswy]

I'm encountering right-libertarians at other forums who are doing their best to deny that the current global crisis in the financial markets (and increasingly elsewhere) are not a problem caused by the workings of capitalism, but of governments interfering with capitalism.

Here's an example of their rhetoric:


How can you possibly blame the free market for the financial crisis when in all countries in the world the state has a monopoly on money? We have central planning in banking and finance and yet the left claims that the private market has caused the problem...

Could you get any more stupid?

I've argued that 'free markets' aren't actually free in the sense that right-libertarians present them as (or that they don't exist if they are sticking to that definition) and I've argued that capitalism is not a process easily separated from bourgeois government, which itself is an element in the operations of capitalism.

Nevertheless, I don't think I'm doing very well. Can any experts here advise me on how best to present the argument which shows this crisis to be very much one of capitalism's internal logic and not, as the right-libertarians would have it, one of governments preventing capitalism from working 'properly' through genuinely free markets?

[manic expression]

A few things. First, many free-marketeers like to think of the government as separate from the business community, but this is a false claim. Who do you think runs the state? Who do you think runs the Fed? The US government has the same interests and objectives as American businessmen: they're produced by the same institutions, they come from and run in the same social circles and they are both fully tied to the capitalist order. Therefore, your opponent is guilty of a false dichotomy. It is not a question of businessmen vs. statesmen, it's a question of capitalist and capitalist...there's no difference in their interests.

When they say "central planning", ask them WHO the people doing the planning are. They're all capitalists through and through, and they all have the interests of the bankers and investors and corporatists at heart. The present capitalist economy is centralized, yes, but that's what capitalism is today. The analysis of imperialism is important here.

The truth is that the capitalist class and only the capitalist class pursued the policies that led to the ongoing meltdown. Centralization of banking and of capital characterize the capitalist system since the very end of the 19th Century. As monopoly capitalism developed from the previous system of laissez-faire, free-market policies were outdated by social, financial and historical realities. You CAN'T have free-market capitalism today because the entire system rests essentially on debt, speculation, monopoly and the like. That's what imperialism is, and free-marketeers can't bring themselves to realize this fact.

Lastly, I came into contact with this sort of argument, and this particular free-marketeer blamed the government for backing guaranteeing bad loans, and therefore supposedly ruining the market. This is wrong for one good reason. The single REASON those loans were guaranteed was because the capitalist class was trying their very best to increase profit more and more. The capitalists in Washington were working with the capitalists in Wall Street, and this cooperation contributed to the crisis today.

The reason for the crisis is multi-layered, but it all comes down to capitalism. First, everyone is in debt, thanks to the dynamics of imperialism. Second, businessmen (oftentimes not even large capitalists, just loansharks) were doing just about everything to get whatever they could from the margins, and that meant giving out loans they KNEW would default: the thirst for profit fuelled the fundamentals of the credit crash. The banks, for their part, were taking on these loans (with help from the capitalist government, remember) without even looking at them. The result was the system being flooded with bad credit, loss in profits and confidence and eventually the spectacular economic crisis we find ourselves in today.

Rest assured, capitalism is the culprit for this crisis. The functioning of the capitalist system was what led to where we are now. Anything else is willfully ignorant and the product of an insipid, self-deluding philosophy. They'll do anything to try to convince you that politicians aren't capitalists, whereas Marxists know that the capitalist class has a monopoly on economic AND political power.

I hope this answered some of your concerns.