{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","uuid":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","normalized_title":"zombiecapitalismglobalcrisisandtherelevanceofmarx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","isbns":["9781608461042"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":426,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Zombie%20Capitalism%20Global%20Crisis%20and%20the%20Relevance%20of%20Marx","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/search"},"page":{"printed_page":299,"pdf_page":299,"physical_index":299,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"96a4016ec53d6dbad4ea2aa57a2f5b5d64027ba6ddddad6e08dadc85d73197c7"},"chapter":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","content":"Those radical economists who put the stress on financialisation in creating the crisis risk opening the door to such apologies for the system. Their characteristic argument has been to claim that profit rates had recovered in the 1980s and 1990s sufficiently to have brought about a revival of productive investment were it not for the power of financial interests. Such was the argument of the French Marxist Michel Husson, when he claimed in 1999 that there were \"high levels of profitability\" ,72 and Stockhammer and Dumenil were saying much the same thing in the summer and autumn of 2008 .73 If they were right, the crises which broke in 2001 and on a much bigger scale in 2007-8 would indeed have had causes very different to previous ones, including the inter-war slump, and greater control by the existing state over the behaviour of the financial sector would in the 21st century be sufficient to stop such crises. In accordance with such an approach, Dumenil and Levy described the \"Keynesian view\" as \"very sensible\" and looked to \"social alliances\" to \"stop the neoliberal offensive and put to work alternative policies-a different way of managing the crisis\" . 74\n\nYet, as we have seen from the various profit rate calculations in Chapters Eight and Nine, there seems little to justify claims that crises today have different roots to those in the past. The form of the crisis might be different each time to the last, but its impact will be just as devastating. No amount of regulation of finance alone will prevent a recurrence of crisis, and the cost to the capitalist state of trying to stop this can become almost unbearable.\n\nIt is true that \"financialisation\", having risen out of a situation of low rates of profit and accumulation, fed back into both. There was enormous waste as labour and skills went into moving money from one pocket to another; as potentially productive material resources were used to build and equip ever more grandiose office buildings, and as the financial \"Masters of the Universe\" gorged themselves in conspicuous consumption. It may also be, as Ben Fine has argued, that financialisation had the effect of driving a \"wedge . . . between real and fictitious accumulation\" ,75 making it difficult for capitalists to see through the fog of the markets and recognise productive investment opportunities. But, ultimately, it was the deeper problems facing the productive sectors of capital that brought this situation about. Finance is a parasite on the back of a parasite, not a problem that can be dealt with in isolation from capitalism as a whole.\n\nFinancialisation and the Bubbles That Burst\n\n299","previous_page":298,"next_page":300}