Reflections on the Current Crisis and Its Effects

The crisis of capital at the present juncture when capitalism is deeply financialised is extremely difficult to resolve. The main structural problem of the system is the downward pressure on the rate of profit, but further financialisation is no longer a sustainable solution. The demands of fictitious capital to be remunerated can only be fulfilled by the transfer of an ever greater surplus of productive capital, and this is possible only through an ever-increasing rate of exploitation of labour. The relaunch of a fresh cycle of expansion however requires the destruction of gigantic amounts of fictitious capital, but such devaluation risks pushing the capitalist system towards collapse. Clearly, it is time for the left to come up with radical proposals and, in this respect, the most difficult questions to deal with are those concerning money and finance.