The pandemic global slump of 2020 is different from previous slumps in
capitalism. The boom and slump cycle in capitalist production and
investment is often triggered by a financial crash, either in the
banking system (as in the Great Recession of 2008-9) or in the
‘fictitious capital’ world of stocks and bonds (as in 1929 or 2001). Of
course, the underlying cause of regular and recurring slumps lies in the
movements in the profitability of capital, as has been discussed/ad
nauseam/in this blog. This is the ‘ultimate’ cause. But ‘proximate’
causes can differ. And they are not always ‘financial’ in origin. The
first simultaneous international post-war global slump of 1974-5 was
triggered by a sharp rise in oil prices following the Arab-Israeli war;
and the double-dip recession of 1980-2 had similar origins. Again, the
1991-2 recession followed the ‘Gulf War’ of 1990.
The pandemic slump also has a different ‘proximate’ cause. In a sense,
this unprecedented global slump, affecting 97% of the world’s nations,
kicked off because of an ‘exogenous event’ – the spread of a deadly
virus. But, as has been argued by ecologists and in this blog, the
rapacious drive for profits by capitalist companies in fossil fuel
exploration, timber logging, mining and urban expansion without regard
for nature, created the conditions for the emergence of a succession of
pathogens deadly to the human body to which it lacked immunity. In that
sense, the slump was not ‘exogenous’.
<https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2020/03/15/it-was-the-virus-that-did-it/>
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2020/12/02/a-credit-crash-ahead/
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