Sir, – Two eminent economists, Paul Krugman (Business, November 19th) and Martin Wolf, cite Larry Summers with approval when he suggests that our economic future may be depressingly like our present. They agree substantially on some of the causes: excessive savings; low effective demand; increasing inequality. But neither seems able to go one step further and suggest the unmentionable. Marx was right. Left to its own devices monopoly capitalism will lead to increased concentrations of wealth, a decline in the workers' ability to consume and a dearth of productive investment.
Fifty years of social democracy managed to hold this tendency at bay but with the triumph of transnational capitalism, and no counterbalancing democratic force on a global or even regional level, capitalism is back to working as normal. Workers’ share of GDP is declining in most countries. Rights of global capital are enforced by the WTO but no equivalent force defends the global workers’ right to organise and negotiate a larger share.
Badly paid and insecure workers don’t borrow, don’t buy and don’t consume. Overpaid monopolists can’t consume all they produce. The inevitable result is stagnation; social decline and, according to Marx, revolution.
Perhaps he was too optimistic. Cyber-fantasy may be the new opiate of the masses and, with monopoly control of both state power and intellectual discourse, stable stagnation might last a very long time. Not a cheering thought. – Yours, etc,
Dr KEVIN T RYAN,
Castletroy Heights,
Limerick.