Video of the talk by Mike Treen of Unite Union in Aotearoa/New Zealand at the Ecosocialism 2023 conference.
Today we are facing a renewed global recession that threatens a return of a great depression. The weak recovery after 2008 required an enormous explosion of debt.
Marx identified the essence of the periodic crises of capitalism as crises of overproduction very early on, even in the Communist Manifesto in 1848. This crisis can only happen because production periodically exceeds effective demand, which is ultimately determined by the existing size and growth rate of the global hoard of the money commodity — gold.
Overproduction as the underlying cause of crisis, which is based on Marx’s concept of money as the universal equivalent, has been — especially since the end of what remained of the international gold standard in 1971 — all but forgotten, including by most of those claiming to be Marxist.
Mike Treen uses the latest crisis to illustrate how it confirms Marx's crisis theory.