Capital Has No Where To Turn
Oct 18th, 2008 by Donagh
Klassekampen: To what can capital turn now? Will it generate another bubble in even “safer” areas, such as natural resources? Food? I must admit that western financial capital does not seem to be very geographically expansive at the moment, but could this change?
JBF: I don’t think capital has anywhere to turn in the immediate situation, that is, there is no hope for restarting accumulation right now. One hears all the time about the creation of new bubbles, and certainly since financialization is how capital in the monopoly-finance phase has sought to combat stagnation, this is a natural enough question to ask. But it is often treated as though bubbles, i.e. major speculative episodes within the more ongoing financialization process, can be based on anything whatsoever. Historically, however, such speculative bubbles in the advanced capitalist economies are based in the stock market and real estate. Neither is likely to be expansive at present. We are in a period in which a massive wiping out of value is taking place, which will eventually, as in all such occasions in the history of capitalism, create the basis for renewed accumulation. But the process has to work its way out first.
JBF is John Bellamy Foster, by the way, and the above is from an interview for Norwegian Daily, Klassekampen.