IMF体制の崩壊と戦後資本主義の構造転換 : 価値・再生産法則貫徹の現代的形態
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概要
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This treatise is intended to assess the present dollar crisis in connection with the general crisis of capitalism and, at the same time, to analyze various characteristic features of the form of movement of new contradictions that changes in the form of the economic crisis has brought about since the Second World War. In the introductory chapter, it is argued that at the stage of free-competition capitalism of the 19th century, the world market crises fully played the function of uniformly resolving contradictions that accompanied the development of capitalism and thereby restoring the lost equilibrium. Following the establishment of monopoly capitalism, however, it is stated, the mechanism of resolving, automatically and within the framework of economy itself, the contradictions of capitalism as it developed, was lost with the result that different types of business cycles emerged, the development of economy became uneven from country to country, changes in the pattern of the crisis and the cycle appeared, and, on top of all this, the political crisis-the world war, in particular-was now inevitable. This is a manifestation of the fact that capitalism has gone through the stage of its development and entered the stage of its extinction or the stage of a crisis engulfing its entire system. The first chapter is devoted to an analysis of fundamental contradictions of the present international monetary system (International Monetary Fund system). This system is, it is argued, a reserve system of dollar exchange as inconvertible paper money, erected on the basis of control for gold price. It is clarified, then, that this unprecedented system has the following new contradictions : (1) The demand for the adjustment of exchange rates between various countries is unavoidably raised "periodically" and "in explosive forms." (2) The preference for gold or the goods purchasing hysteria has to grow strong as if it were a "law" or a "trend." And it must be stated that the IMF system is created as the highest, final form of intervention in economy and of management of currencies under global rule by imperialism and, consequently, that the system's crisis and disintegrating process will lead to a change in the mechanism of postwar development of capitalism and bring about a further deepening of the general crisis of the capitalist system. The third and fourth chapters are designed to analyze the differences between the movement of postwar world capitalism and that of prewar world capitalism in fuller details. Particularly, they are intended to show that the high-rate growth of world economy was sustained by the system of cold-war confrontation and the system of cold-war scattering of dollars but that such a mechanism has now reached the limit. While the prosperity following the First World War was a creation by excess capital in dollars that flowed out of the U.S. and via Europe back to the U.S. again. The development of economy following the Second World War was possible on the basis of cold-war scattering of dollars that flowed out of the U.S., but never to return. It was a peculiar development stemming from the cold-war, the world-wide control of economy and the "unity of terror" among the advanced countries. In other words, it has formed a political and economic crisiscycle the system's disintegrating process, starting with the Korean War and ending with the Vietnam War. Besides, the continuous inflation of postwar economy, accompanied as it is by a high-rate growth, has been daily undermining the holiness of private property while realizing full employment. This, in turn, demolishes the system of values and the principles of morality and order, on which capitalism rests, and thus creates conditions under which the masses of people indict State power day by day. If the social revolution could be argued as a world-crisis revolution in the stage of Karl Marx in the 19th century, and if the social revolution could be taken up as a world-war revolution in the stage of V.I. Lenin at the beginning of the 20th century, then the social revolution in the present advanced capitalist countries ought to be raised as the question of an continuous inflation revolution. A basic analysis of this problem in economic terms is made in the two chapters. The fifth chapter is devoted to an analysis of historical changes in the way of disposing and absorbing excess capital that inevitably arises in the course of development of capitalism. In the 19th century, it took the form of destruction of capital in crises; in the early 20th century, it manifested itself in capital exports to the colonies. After the destruction of capital by the First World War, excess capital was absorbed by way of the flow of capital from the U.S. to Europe and the extension of credit for the purchase of durable consumer goods. Following the Second War, excess capital went for military spending and foreign assistance and, furthermore, resulted in a huge amount of direct investments by private U.S. capital. The very fact that excess capital was in the main disposed and absorbed by way of military spending and foreign assistance, offers a vivid proof that capitalism is running out of its energy of development. To insist that capitalism is about to finish exploring the last possibility of its development, is the responsibility of economics as a science of history : This is the conclusion of this treatise.
- 政治経済学・経済史学会の論文
- 1969-01-20