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> We live in a world now where incredible amounts of capital are chasing returns because of zero and negative interest rate policies. The only solution will be

> We live in a world now where incredible amounts of capital are chasing returns because of zero and negative interest rate policies. The only solution will be regulation. The counter and historically more persuasive argument from the left is that the falling rate of profit will lead to more war and colonization. It’s hard not to see what’s happening in Yemen and the Saudi’s investment in SoftBank through this lens.

pas 6y ago
I haven't encountered this argument before. Could you expand on this a bit? Or point toward some articles on the topic? Thanks!
- staplers 6y ago
  Not OP, but they might be alluding to the fact resource scarcity often leads to war
- vidarh 6y ago
  The argument dates back to Marx. Marx explicitly (already in the Communist Manifesto) argued that as capitalists run out of new markets to conquer, competition will force them to find their savings elsewhere, and that would inherently mean lowering costs of raw materials or lowering manufacturing costs, and that this this ultimately leads to conflict over property rights and driving down labour costs. He further predicted that this eventual pressure to drive down labour costs would push capitalism into a series of worsening crises on the assumption that driving down labour costs would drive down the market, and leave the market with over-capacity, and so intensify conflict. Basically Marx assumption was to take capitalists on their word that the free market will drive profit margins towards zero, coupled with the assumption that a lot of people have a lot of vested interest in preventing their profits from going towards zero and will do almost anything to prevent that from happening.
nickik 6y ago
That people still peddle this Leninist garbage is just unbelievable to me. Saudi have been fighting off and on with the people of that region of 500+ years. Now they have more money. They have always tried to influence what going on there. What is happening there is part of a larger conflict between Saudi/US and Iran as well. How it related to falling interest rates or whatever is beyond me. And SoftBank simply has to do with the Saudis knowing that Oil money will go away and they are not capable of correctly reorganizing their state, so they think they can just buy stock to finance their nonsense government polices in the long run. All of this is explained 100x better with an incompetent government that happens to sit on natural resources, rather then some Marxist critic of Capitalism.
- claudeganon 6y ago
  > Saudi have been fighting off and on with the people of that region of 500+ years. The Saudi nation-state did not exist 500 years ago and the regional conflicts have more to do with the recent history of British and American imperialism in the region than any ahistorical, Orientalist casting of eternal conflicts in the Middle East. Should we understand the Nazi's assault on Britain primarily through the lens of Saxon raiding during the Middle Ages? > And SoftBank simply has to do with the Saudis knowing that Oil money will go away and they are not capable of correctly reorganizing their state, so they think they can just buy stock to finance their nonsense government polices in the long run. This is literally a vulgar form of the Leninist argument?
  - nickik 6y ago
    I didn't not claim that the modern war was directly related to some historical deterministic path. Just that regional power trying to control other weaker regional powers is not at all new in Arabia. It is pretty much standard politics that happens during all political systems, and thus can not be blamed on some theory of capitalist overproduction. While the Saudi state didn't exist 500 years ago, the roots Saudi power is older then 1744. My point was more that influence politics in the region is very old and thus any explanation that is derived from some set of economic relations that exist now can not explain most of it. > This is literally a vulgar form of the Leninist argument? Leninist argument is about Capitalism, where based on the Marxist theory of over production countries go out to expand the market for their product. They have to do this because on Marxist cycle theory, capitalist production leads to overproduction, and then those products can fall in price so much that there is no more profit, so you need to find new markets. First of all, this does not apply to Saudi Arabia because that cycle theory really doesn't make much sense for their economy. Saudis do the opposite where the artificially limit the production at all times, so their is no element of a market over-producing constantly. Saudi does not go to Yemen to buy raw resources, turn them into product and sells them back to the Yemeni, that is how Lenin envisioned it. If you wanted to make a Leninist type of argument, even if doesn't really fit, you could argue that Saudis invade Yemen so Yemenis had to buy their product. However that makes no sense as Yemen does not consume much oil and are a marginal costumer. Really the point here is that all these things have been explained 100x better by academc of economics and political science but instead people keep repeating 100 communist propaganda and apply it to ever situation even if it is pretty far removed from the theory of those communists.

pas 6y ago

I haven't encountered this argument before. Could you expand on this a bit? Or point toward some articles on the topic? Thanks!

staplers 6y ago
Not OP, but they might be alluding to the fact resource scarcity often leads to war
vidarh 6y ago
The argument dates back to Marx. Marx explicitly (already in the Communist Manifesto) argued that as capitalists run out of new markets to conquer, competition will force them to find their savings elsewhere, and that would inherently mean lowering costs of raw materials or lowering manufacturing costs, and that this this ultimately leads to conflict over property rights and driving down labour costs. He further predicted that this eventual pressure to drive down labour costs would push capitalism into a series of worsening crises on the assumption that driving down labour costs would drive down the market, and leave the market with over-capacity, and so intensify conflict. Basically Marx assumption was to take capitalists on their word that the free market will drive profit margins towards zero, coupled with the assumption that a lot of people have a lot of vested interest in preventing their profits from going towards zero and will do almost anything to prevent that from happening.

nickik 6y ago

That people still peddle this Leninist garbage is just unbelievable to me. Saudi have been fighting off and on with the people of that region of 500+ years. Now they have more money. They have always tried to influence what going on there. What is happening there is part of a larger conflict between Saudi/US and Iran as well. How it related to falling interest rates or whatever is beyond me. And SoftBank simply has to do with the Saudis knowing that Oil money will go away and they are not capable of correctly reorganizing their state, so they think they can just buy stock to finance their nonsense government polices in the long run. All of this is explained 100x better with an incompetent government that happens to sit on natural resources, rather then some Marxist critic of Capitalism.

claudeganon 6y ago
> Saudi have been fighting off and on with the people of that region of 500+ years. The Saudi nation-state did not exist 500 years ago and the regional conflicts have more to do with the recent history of British and American imperialism in the region than any ahistorical, Orientalist casting of eternal conflicts in the Middle East. Should we understand the Nazi's assault on Britain primarily through the lens of Saxon raiding during the Middle Ages? > And SoftBank simply has to do with the Saudis knowing that Oil money will go away and they are not capable of correctly reorganizing their state, so they think they can just buy stock to finance their nonsense government polices in the long run. This is literally a vulgar form of the Leninist argument?
- nickik 6y ago
  I didn't not claim that the modern war was directly related to some historical deterministic path. Just that regional power trying to control other weaker regional powers is not at all new in Arabia. It is pretty much standard politics that happens during all political systems, and thus can not be blamed on some theory of capitalist overproduction. While the Saudi state didn't exist 500 years ago, the roots Saudi power is older then 1744. My point was more that influence politics in the region is very old and thus any explanation that is derived from some set of economic relations that exist now can not explain most of it. > This is literally a vulgar form of the Leninist argument? Leninist argument is about Capitalism, where based on the Marxist theory of over production countries go out to expand the market for their product. They have to do this because on Marxist cycle theory, capitalist production leads to overproduction, and then those products can fall in price so much that there is no more profit, so you need to find new markets. First of all, this does not apply to Saudi Arabia because that cycle theory really doesn't make much sense for their economy. Saudis do the opposite where the artificially limit the production at all times, so their is no element of a market over-producing constantly. Saudi does not go to Yemen to buy raw resources, turn them into product and sells them back to the Yemeni, that is how Lenin envisioned it. If you wanted to make a Leninist type of argument, even if doesn't really fit, you could argue that Saudis invade Yemen so Yemenis had to buy their product. However that makes no sense as Yemen does not consume much oil and are a marginal costumer. Really the point here is that all these things have been explained 100x better by academc of economics and political science but instead people keep repeating 100 communist propaganda and apply it to ever situation even if it is pretty far removed from the theory of those communists.