A Critique of Crisis Theory
- ️Mon Feb 17 2025
The capitalist industrial cycle consists of four major phases: crisis, stagnation, average prosperity, and boom.
On Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, five days before Donald Trump took office, an agreement was announced for a ceasefire to take effect the following Sunday, Jan. 19. President-elect Trump sent Steve Witoff, like Trump a New York City real estate magnate, to negotiate — or rather, lay down the law — to the Netanyahu regime.
When Israeli leaders protested that it was Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, Witoff, who is Jewish, swept these pious objections aside. He said that the Netanyahu regime would have to agree to terms established the previous May.
None of the tricks that worked under Trump’s predecessor to stop a ceasefire worked this time. It was an offer the Zionist entity could not refuse.
Section 3: Industrial Cycles
No two industrial cycles are alike, just as no two snowflakes are identical. Each industrial cycle is shaped by numerous non-cyclical factors, including technological, political, and military influences, as well as the discovery of new natural resources unique to that cycle.
Chapter 9: Profit and Interest
Some assumptions made in this chapter
In the last chapter, I indicated that when I examine the industrial cycle proper, I will assume initially that only metallic money and credit money exist and bring in token money at a later stage—that is, I will assume a gold standard.
However, in this chapter, it is more useful to assume the existence of not only metallic and credit money but also token-paper money. Here I will assume a paper money system and not the gold standard. The reason is that the laws determining the interest rate only find their full expression under a token money standard.
Chapter 8: Money as a Means of Payment
Credit relations separate the act of buying from the act of paying. Therefore, the development of credit gives rise to a new function of money: money as a means of payment.
On December 8, 2024, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s government collapsed before an offensive of U.S.-backed HTS rebels. The rebels call themselves Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham [HTS, in English: Organization for the Liberation of the Levant].
Assad was forced to flee the country after the Syrian Arab army put up little resistance to the pro-U.S.-NATO rebel offensive, ultimately finding refuge in Russia. HTS’s central leader is Ahmed al Sharaa, also known as Abu Mohammad al Julani. HTS consider themselves Sunni Muslims strongly opposed to other Islamic sects, such as the Shia and Alawites, as well as to other religions, including Christians and Druze. According to the HTS, all these religions and sects worship the “one true God,” in the wrong way.
Previously, al Sharaa was a member of al-Qaeda, the group founded by Osama bin Laden — the same group credited with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon building on 9/11/2001. The attacks killed thousands of people in the United States and were the declared target of George W. Bush’s “war on terror.” But times have changed, and today, HTS and al Sharaa are pictured by the imperialists and their media as moderates who can bring Western-style democracy and religious tolerance to the Syrian people.
When the media describes a group as moderate, it means they are doing what the U.S. imperialist world empire wants them to do. During the final days of the HTS advance to Damascus, the Israeli air force provided them with air support. U.S.-supplied Israeli forces bombed military bases and the headquarters of Syrian intelligence in the center of Damascus. The Israelis struck bases that housed Syrian troops and stockpiles of weapons that the Syrian army might have used to defend Damascus (this included the Mezzah Air Base).
Chapter 7: How money emerges out of the simple exchanges of commodities
In Chapter I, Volume I of Capital, Marx presents the following equation of exchange: 20 yards of linen = one coat
For example, say I have produced 20 yards of linen. Under the prevailing conditions of exchange, I can barter the 20 yards of linen for exactly one coat of a given type. The equal sign assumes that, in some sense, 20 yards of linen are the same as one coat. But exactly what is being equated here?
Section 2: The Form of Value — Money
Introduction: Do crises originate in the real or the monetary economy?
In the wake of the Great Depression, progressive economists played down the importance of monetary policy as opposed to fiscal policy. Instead, the progressive economists of the New Deal and post-New Deal eras saw the source of capitalist economic instability in either the instability of private investment or its chronic insufficiency. Progressives gave little weight to the importance of what is called monetary policy – the policies of the central bank. Instead, progressive economists emphasized the importance of fiscal policy. Fiscal policy refers to the central government’s taxation, spending, and borrowing policies. This view is supported by the belief that economic crises such as the one that led to the Great Depression arise in the sphere of production and not in circulation.
Chapter 6: Expanded Reproduction
According to Marx, the capitalist mode of production can, in the long run, exist only as a system of expanded reproduction. However, expanded reproduction can only take place if certain proportions are maintained between Department I, which produces the means of production, and Department II, which produces the means of (personal) consumption. These proportions must be maintained in terms of both use value and value.
There have been a series of dramatic developments over the last several weeks. The most dangerous being the collapse of Syria’s Baath Party government and its replacement by imperialist-backed rebels who emerged out of Al Qaeda and ISIS. This removes Syria from the axis of resistance that supported the Palestinian resistance.
We have also seen an imperialist-backed attempt to overthrow the government of the country of Georgia, and in Romania, a right-wing, anti-NATO candidate won. The U.S.-NATO-backed Romanian regime solved this problem by having the constitutional court throw out the election.
There has also been an attempted coup by South Korea’s president to restore the dictatorship that dominated the country before 1987.