February 20, 2024
Larry Elliott, economics editor of the Guardian, sums it up: “The Marxist perspective, exemplified in a new book by John Bellamy Foster and Robert McChesney, is also useful. This argues that the strong western growth rates in the middle of the 20th century were something of a mirage, caused by high military spending, postwar reconstruction, higher welfare spending and the investment in road networks that allowed the full flowering of the age of the automobile. Since then, a number of things have happened. There has been a concentration of capital but a shortage of profitable investment opportunities. So far, there has not been a wave of innovations like the car, the plane, cinema and TV to give the global economy a shot in the arm, although it is possible that digital, robotics, genetics and green technology could act as a catalyst. The result has been a declining trend rate of growth, and the increased financialisation of western economies as the surpluses have been re-cycled through the banks in a search for yield. Hence the Latin American debt crisis. Hence the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Hence the inability of the global economy to emerge from its torpor.”
