Capitalism may not survive 2020 global crisis, which will cut deeper and last longer than many predict
The
current global crisis triggered by Covid-19 is the third capitalist
crash in this century. And governments’ incapacity to consider
non-capitalist solutions threatens to keep deepening this crisis into
capitalism’s worst.
by Richard D. Wolff
Part 1
The current global crisis triggered by Covid-19 is the third capitalist crash in this century. And governments’ incapacity to consider non-capitalist solutions threatens to keep deepening this crisis into capitalism’s worst.
The first was in early 2000. Because it was triggered by the absurdly high prices of dot-com stocks, it got named the “dotcom crisis.” In 2008, the trigger was widespread subprime mortgage default in the US and the crash was far more serious, one of the worst in capitalism’s history, second only to the crash of the 1930s. And now, in 2020, the trigger was a viral pandemic, and we have a far deeper crash than in 2008.
Because capitalism’s periodic downturns (crashes, recessions, depressions, crises, business cycles, busts, etc.) occur on average every four to seven years, attributing each one to its different trigger has the effect of distracting attention from the system’s inherent instability.
It also distracts from other basic problems that global capitalism has never solved. Those have now exploded together, converging on this capitalist downturn to make it extreme.
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