In his “Apotheosis of Money”, Robert Kurz makes this statement:
“If State consumption and State credit, crushed together as if by an avalanche, play a central role in this development, this is also due of course, to the fact that the State (unlike a private entity which avails itself of credit) is considered to be a “secure debtor” which means, however, that the State, in the event of a great monetary and credit crisis, will not declare bankruptcy, but will simply expropriate its citizen-creditors.”
The argument Kurz makes here is that the unproductive consumption of surplus value, made possible by the credit extended to the state, is dependent on the state’s ability to repay its debt and must, sooner or later, result
Decreasing federal deficits preceded both the 2001 and 2008 crises. (Source: St. Louis Federal Reserve)
in the state expropriating the owners of capital. I am not especially satisfied with the way Kurz formulates the problem here. My difficulty with Kurz’s formulation is probably best expressed in the words of the bourgeois simpleton, Paul Krugman — for reasons that are not entirely clear to the bourgeois simpletons the long-standing prediction of an impending crisis for Washington’s finances over the last thirty years never finally materialized:
“Fear of a Greek-style fiscal and financial crisis has loomed over much of our policy discourse over the past four years, and has played a significant role in shaping actual policy, constituting the principal argument for austerity in countries that don’t face any current difficulties in borrowing. However, despite repeated warnings that crises of confidence are imminent in floating-rate debtors – mainly the United States, the UK, and Japan – these crises keep not happening.”
Krugman has his explanation for why the predicted crisis “keeps not happening”, but he is a simpleton who thinks the problem is, “as simple and silly” as he is. Labor theory offers a much simpler and elegant explanation for why Washington has never experienced the sort of crisis predicted by bourgeois economists. It is an explanation I will need if I am to finally explain how reduction of hours of labor affects profits in an economy characterized by massive expenditures of unproductive labor time.
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You have to notice what the labor theorist, George Caffentzis, asserts in his essay “Marxism After the Death of Gold“. Although, according to Anitra Nelson, Marx believed the credit system itself “signals the disintegration of capitalist relations”, according to Caffentzis, the final detachment of the credit system from gold refutes Marx. Caffentzis and other labor theorists had two ways of interpreting Nixon’s actions in 1971: the death of capitalism or the death of labor theory.
