Bankers' state and imperialism?

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Agent of the Fifth International's picture
Agent of the Fi...
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Apr 28 2013 18:18
Bankers' state and imperialism?

In class, my professor have been promoting the idea that bankers have seized control of "our" government; that interventions have taken place because of their desire to control the global money supply. In Libya, the West intervened to steal gold and have done so. The US wants war with Iran because the financial elite doesn't want to compete with the interest-free banking system that exists there. And the lists goes on.

But the center of criticism is finance, not the system as such. And we're being given the impression that the bankers have to be dethroned from power in order for the world to be safe and peaceful. A few students have been accepting of this. One of them told me that "they're (the powers that be) only after money".

Is there a way to respond to this? Or do they first require a more fundamental understanding of the operations of capitalism, making any response practically hopeless? I mean, is there an easy way to explain to them that you can't have 'capitalism without the core-peripheral relations' without having to suggest to them to read Libcom.org's entire reading list?

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Noa Rodman
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Apr 28 2013 23:51

I don't know. You put it already quite well, my reading suggestion just repeats your point;

http://libcom.org/library/credit-romanticism-golden-pincers-zachary-atlas

Quote:
Naturalists observe the contradictions of capitalism, manifested in bank credit and believe them to be results from incorrect modus operandi (incorrect methods of lending) of bankers. From this their simple and naive recipes of healing the diseases of capitalism, their normative approach to the problem of limits of credit expansion. They do not understand a simple thing, namely, that these contradictions are inherent to capitalism, and that therefore, regardless of the "modus operandi" of bankers, credit, as one of the immanent forms of the capitalist mode of production cannot but include these contradictions in itself. Precisely these objective contradictions of capitalism condition the subjective actions of bankers, which the naturalist "condemn" with as much vigor as naivety, not realizing that another "mode of action" of bankers is at all impossible!

What is the substantive difference between expansionist and naturalists in the given question? Both one and the other cannot, of course, not detect the real contradictions of bank credit. But both one and the other deny the necessity of these contradictions.

However they deny these contradictions in different ways. Marx found that "banking and credit become... the most potent means of driving capitalist production beyond its own limits, and one of the most effective vehicles of crises and swindle.55" The abnormality of credit from the point of view of both directions consists of the point that from time to time there take place "crises and swindle," whose presence is impossible to deny. The naturalists believe that crises occur due to improper credit policy of bankers, which should not bring capitalist mode of production beyond its own limits. The expansionists, conversely, see the abnormality of the situation in the point that limits are artificially placed to credit expansion; they seek salvation (only in theory) in unrestricted credit expansion to "drive capitalist production beyond its own limits" and with this finish with the contradictions of this mode of production. They want to eliminate the contradictions of credit of one or another credit policy.

But neither restrictive, nor expansionist policy are in a state to eliminate the contradictions of credit and the credit system. These contradictions exist and will exist for as long as the capitalist mode of production, generator of these contradictions, is preserved.

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Spikymike
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Apr 29 2013 14:37

Whilst I don't agree with all their analysis of capitalism and crisis and have a number of other significant disagreements with them, on the narrower question of banking myths you might find some easier to read and understand short articles in the list under 'Banking' from the spgb:

Try:

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/subject/banking

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Noa Rodman
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Apr 29 2013 17:26

Good link spikymike, but we haven't addressed the specific question. Perhaps it's because we know that the delineated conception is found in marxism (of course not in so vulgar form), with special thanks to Hilferding. To quote Bukharin; imperialism is the policy of finance capitalism. Whereas Kautsky then is (supposedly) the advocate of a peaceful ultra-imperialism. I think this entire episode (basically the theoretical foundation for the split of marxism into social-dem. and communists) has been in vain. There is also a neglect of the many good polemics Kautsky held against the national-socialist wing of the SPD on imperialism during the war (in Die Neue Zeit,online, or e.g. in this book, which is also completely neglected).