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Will capitalism collapse?
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By ATİLLA YAYLA:


The crisis in the financial markets and financial institutions that has affected the US and the UK and has the potential to slowly spread from these countries to other countries throughout the world has given the circles that hate the monster known as capitalism the chance to raise their voices once again.

Opponents of the concept of a market economy, both right wing and left wing, are happily announcing that capitalism, which they tend to identify with a market economy, is finally collapsing. Then states are strongly urged to intervene to settle the crisis. Are free markets or the free economy model the real causes of these crises? Is capitalism dying? Can states solve these crises? Can these crises pave the way for replacing capitalism with a new and more successful model?

First, we need to clarify some concepts. While the term “capitalism” is used by both proponents and opponents of the market economy, both groups understand different things by this term. For proponents of the market economy, capitalism is a competitive free market economy based on private ownership, while its opponents consider capitalism an economic model under the control and guidance of a political authority that is entwined with capitalist groups. Assigning different senses to the same word naturally leads to confusion and conceptual difficulties. For this reason, in order to provide a sound analysis, we need to note that capitalism falls into two broad categories. The first is free market capitalism and the other is state capitalism, also called “crony capitalism.”

The crisis currently under way in the Anglo-Saxon world is the crisis of state capitalism, but not of a capitalism that is synonymous with a free market economy. We can assert that the current crisis is one of Keynesian capitalism. In this type of capitalism, the state assumes the role of being the boss and guide of the economy through various instruments -- particularly monetary and financial tools. The weird thing is that although crises emerge because of this role undertaken by the state, in every crisis the bankrupt corporations (irrationally and parasitically) demand and the taxpayers, lacking sound knowledge of economics (as if to cut their own throats or to implicitly agree to pay more taxes), ask that the state find a solution. This demand, this expectation, is the outcome not of the fact that states can do this, but of the fact that people falsely assume that states can do this, a belief that relies on the dominant culture of economics and politics.

Nature and cause of the crisis

In the US, many financial organizations have failed to fulfill their financial obligations and try to lure more powerful financial organizations to acquire them or merge with them or to be saved by the state. The crisis that first reared its ugly head in the mortgage sector is progressing firmly toward other financial organizations and banks.

The main reason for this financial crisis in the US is not the markets at large, firms’ insatiable desire for profit or any intrinsic tendency of capitalism to undergo periodic crises. Quite simply, the main reason for the crisis is the economic policy of the US government. The US has long been sustaining a budget deficit with the assumption that this will not cause a big problem. High military expenditures arising from an aggressive foreign policy that requires the US to act as the watchdog of the world cause the US government to make excessive expenditures, which in turn lead to budgetary deficits. The US administration has assumed that it can finance this deficit through taxation and open financing. Moreover, in this country, the Keynesian operation of the economy has required continuous and ever-increasing spending by consumers. For this reason, interest rates would be kept low and loans would be made easily available for everyone. Lured by these incentives, US citizens have learned to use abundant and cheap credit and spend more than they would normally be able to afford. In time, this has turned into a habit that cannot be dispensed with, and people continue to obtain more and more credit in order to maintain it. Thus every citizen has become encumbered with credit obligations.

Instead of abiding by the laws of economics, US administrations have continued to issue guarantees to credit institutions. Thus, these institutions have grown bigger artificially and alienated themselves from rational and calculated economic behavior. There were artificial booms in the housing sector and in consumption. These economic policies pursued by the US government have distorted the incentives of capital allocation processes in the country and eventually led to problems in the non-financial economy. While the problems in the non-financial sector represent the main problem, it will take some time before they become visible. As always, the secondary problem was noticed earlier and has caused greater concern. The secondary problem is the crisis in the financial markets. Realizing that their customers have reached the high-risk threshold, credit institutions have put a stop to their practices, but it was already too late.

These developments show that the US must seriously revise the economic policies it has been implementing up to now, draw lessons from its past mistakes and implement more robust policies. It is not possible to escape the crisis without experiencing any pain or undergoing some transformation. States do not have divine powers and they are not capable of solving such crises without sorrow. This applies to super powers, too. In such crises, no intervention made by states to solve the problem will be of any use. In the best-case scenario, such intervention may delay the crisis, which will emerge in the future in an aggravated form. This is what the US is now going through. The interventions, amounting to trillions of dollars, will not be sufficient to solve either the financial crisis or the main crisis in the non-financial sector that will be noticed in future. New firms will join the line of bankrupt financial organizations, and other corporations will have their share in the crisis. The real solution will come in the long run and from the internal dynamics of the economy.

States should not have a monopoly on money

Actually, it is possible to use this crisis as an opportunity to discuss a much more fundamental problem concerning the role of states in the economy in general and in monetary markets in particular. Leaving the former to another article, let me discuss the latter. As is known, states have the power to issue money and, since the gold standard has been made obsolete, they can issue money at will. Indeed, through central banks, states set interest rates and manage credit markets. This is the heart of the current crisis. States must be deprived of the power to issue money, which must be delegated to market players. Also, states must not be allowed to control the credit markets. We must not forget that it is states that deceive people on monetary issues the most. States have many tricks up to their sleeves to deceive their citizens. For instance, states that implement inflationary policies are like permanent thieves that we put up and honor at home.

However, the course of events is not heading in this direction. On the contrary, states are being asked to meddle with the crisis as a savior and inject money into markets. As I have stressed above, this is a strange demand. The poison is statist economic policies, and it is wrongly assumed that the antidote to this poison must be more intervention by the state. But the monetary markets are not what cause the problem. The problem is in the non-financial sector, and the economy must be restructured based on the lessons learned from the errors of the past. States cannot do this. It must be done by market players. For this reason, states must be prevented from thrusting their noses into such issues. If they assume an activist and interventionist position, this will only raise the costs, doing more damage to the weak players victimized by the crisis.

Do not worry or rejoice; capitalism will not collapse

Adam Smith had a friend who was always pessimistic. Even at the smallest economic trouble in the country, he would run to Smith and complain that the UK was on the verge of collapse. Smith would tell him, “Do not worry! The UK will not collapse.” I would say the same thing both to opponents and proponents of capitalism, which is synonymous with the market economy. Dot not worry or rejoice; capitalism will not collapse. In other words, no economic crisis will reset the wealth of a country or the global world. The wealth of a country is the sum of goods and services used to satisfy the needs of the people living in that country. Financial or economic crises cannot destroy this wealth. People will continue to live, produce and consume. Buildings, roads and facilities continue to exist. Crises cannot destroy them. Only they can lead to a new balance and new styles. What destroys the wealth of a country are natural disasters, such as floods and earthquakes, and stupid things such as war. As long as people are prepared against the former and wise against the latter, the world will continue to become a better place.


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*Dr. Atilla Yayla is a professor at Gazi University.

todayszaman
05 October 2008, Sunday