David North, the national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US), spoke last week at San Diego State University (March 19) and University of California, Berkeley (March 22) on “The Capitalist Crisis and the Return of History.” We publish here the notes upon which his lectures were based.
The massive Fed intervention into financial markets since March has taken to ever greater levels the parasitism that forms the modus operandi of the US economy.
Over the past 12 years, since the financial crisis of 2008, the state has provided trillions of dollars to the banks, hedge funds and corporations, shattering the nostrums of “free market” capitalism.
No matter how much it seems that “value” can simply be created out of thin air, the gargantuan mass of fictitious capital and debt ultimately rests on the surplus value obtained from the exploitation of the working class.
The year 2018—the bicentenary of Marx’s birth—will be characterized, above all, by an immense intensification of social tensions and an escalation of class conflict around the world.
The effect of the changes is to assure the financial oligarchy that the ultra-low interest rate regime, so essential to its wealth accumulation, will continue indefinitely.
International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
