More of the same from Michael Hudson. How finance, not production, dominates US economy.
https://thesaker.is/finance-capitalisms-self-destructive-nature/
Finance Capitalism’s Self-Destructive Nature
10568 Views July 20, 2022 18 Comments
Posted with Michael Hudson’s permission
Transcript of Interview on The Left Lens with Danny Haiphong May 25th, 2022
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MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, most people think of all kinds of capitalism as being the same and the assumption is that industrial capitalism of the nineteenth century somehow was always financialized because there were always banks but financial capitalism is you just pointed out is a political system and as a political system it’s very different from the industrial capitalism dynamic. In industrial capitalism, the whole aim or the hope of the industrial capitalists in the late nineteenth century, especially in Germany and central Europe was that banking would no longer be just usury, it wouldn’t be just consumer lending to exploit labor, and it wouldn’t be lending to the government somehow.
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In other words, finance capitalism instead of trying to promote overall economic growth for the 99 percent, instead of financing the industrialization of an economy with rising productivity and rising living standards, is now cannibalizing the industrial sector, cannibalizing the corporate sector. As you’re seeing in the U.S., finance capitalism is the economic doctrine of deindustrialization that has occurred in America in England and is now occurring in Europe.
Well, the problem is how do you survive if you’re not industrializing, if you’re not producing your own means of subsistence and how are you going to get this from other countries? Well, the answer is you don’t go to war with them like countries used to go to war with each other to grab their money and their land, you use finance as the new means of war so finance capitalism is the tactic of economic warfare by the United States against Europe and the global south to sort of draw all of the economic surplus of these countries in the form of debt service and the debt service is supplied by basically economic rent seeking from land rent, natural resource rent, and just plain interest charges on economy. So, none of these are really the result of industrial profits that are made by employing labor and uh selling its products at a markup.
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I read most of this today. From what I understand, Hudson is advocating for socialism .....as most of us don't understand what socialism really is.
Do I have that right
I do not know what Michael Hudson is advocating. I have never heard him lay out any plans.
I recall he may have advocated a tax on land but am not sure.
I do not believe he has some secret subversive plan up his sleeve.
I do know he has visited some countries including China and they listen to him.
He believes that China, and maybe Russia(?) have taken steps to prevent the financial interests from taking over the govt. That means internal AND foreign financial interests. Financial globalists want into those countries.
From memory, he has described how the rich avoid paying taxes by taking out loans against capital?
He can go into great detail.
Socialism? If we had capitalism in this country all the major Wall Street big banks would have been wiped out in 2008, with Goldman Sachs being the last one to go. NN Taleb said that in France the govt took over the banks but in the US the banks took over the govt.
It would be a mistake to call him nasty names until you have paid a lot of attention. He mentioned once how he quit some place because it was a bunch of left wing flakes. Some low rent places he spoke at had lefty posters on the wall, like Marx or Lenin, but I would not put much weight in that. He worked for Citibank, Standard Oil, etc. .
If you have the time, there is a video below where describes his interesting life. I watched this more than once. He has other videos.
https://youtu.be/hH9pzzIIEj4 Michael Hudson - Life and Thought 20180507
83,052 views Jul 11, 2018 The interview with Professor Michael Hudson was conducted on 7 May 2018 in Beijing, by Professor Lau Kin Chi and Professor Sit Tsui Jade.
He is big into Vol 3 of Marx's Capital, whatever that means. He says no one reads that volume.
