Most years I attend the London conference of the Historical Materialism journal. This brings together academics and others to present papers and discuss issues from a generally Marxist viewpoint. This year I presented a paper on whether rising inequality causes crises under capitalism (Does inequality causes crises). My session was well attended and the audience included many of the small band of Marxist economist s around at the moment.
The gist of what I said was this. Rising inequality of income and wealth in the major economies has become a popular thesis among both mainstream and heterodox economists. The thesis is founded on the arguments that wages as a share of GDP have been falling in the major economies. This creates a gap between demand and supply, or a tendency to underconsumption. That gap was filled by an explosion of debt, particularly household debt. It is also encouraged financial institutions to engage in riskier financial investments that exposed them to eventual disaster. The credit boom fuelled a housing bubble but eventually that burst and the house of cards came tumbling down. QED? full: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2015/11/08/too-much-profit-not-too-little/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
