The 2007-08 Financial Crisis from a Marxist View

Abstract

The international financial crisis in the American economy in 2008 brought again to the fore an economic discussion on the origin of crises. Previously, only the 1929 accident had such magnitude, putting in discussion the economic policies adopted until then, raising the economic debate between several economic schools of thought. The effects of the crisis were notorious about the financial markets, but also hit hard the real economy, especially the productive sector, such as industry and services. Indeed, the consequences on employment, income and on the level of trade were not only felt by the American economy, but also in other countries. Starting from this context, this article aims to describe the propelling elements and the forms of theoretical manifestation of the crises under a marxist perspective, seeking to understand the origins of this phenomenon from the marxist stream, as well as discourse about the 2008 crisis and its developments on the American economy. Therefore, it makes use of economic indicators on the evolution of prices and sale of real estate in the United States, growth rate of gross domestic product and employment and income between 2000 and 2010. The methodology also includes the arguments on the capital bearer of interest and fictitious capital in addition to the role of the rate of profit, exposed in the Marxist conception of the origin of financial crises. As a result, it can be seen that the fictitious capital dominates economic and political relations so that the crisis has its origin on capital and not in the productive sphere.

Miradas de la crisis contemporánea: la Gran Recesión 2008-2009

“…El capital ficticio es un concepto sui géneris dentro de la teoría económica que se presenta como la síntesis de las formas autonomizadas funcionales del capital que devenga interés (Alcalá, 2015); en tanto la financiarización se reconoce en la figura de capital especulativo (Lechuga y Bustamante, 2008).Para Cédric Durand (2017), el capital ficticio se caracteriza por la acumulación y comercio de acciones, derivados y otros instrumentos financieros. De esta forma el capital ficticio se desarrolla en términos aparentemente autónomos que facilitan el surgimiento de burbujas especulativas y productos derivados sofisticados (Taques et al, 2017). Por lo tanto, el sistema bancario es el epicentro de la crisis (Ivanova, 2013).…”

Crisis Eruptions: A Comparative Analysis of Right-wing Populism in El Salvador and Guatemala

“…The 2008 crash resulted from the surplus of wealth unable to be recycled as investment into the capital circuit as a result of slumping consumption and declining relative profitability in conventional investment, prompting pressures to offload these surpluses lest the circuit of capital and profit-making grind to a halt (Robinson, 2018;Kotz, 2015Kotz, , 2010. In Central America, this resulted in the beginning of a steady decline in conventional transnational investment (Bárcena et al, 2018;Beteta & Moreno-Brid, 2014), even as various "spatial and other fixes" (Arrighi, 2004) driven by the financialization of agriculture and mining became more prominent vehicles for investment (Robinson, 2018;Taques et al, 2017;Kotz, 2010) resulting in proletarianization or declassing of peasant and semi-proletarian populations, and land-grabbing (Robinson, 2018; coffee blight, affecting one of the region's still major exports (Avelino et al, 2015). El Salvador was more directly affected by the combination of the financial crisis and the coffee blight than Guatemala.…”