Letter to the Editors from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard
Marx and Inflation
Would you please quote me chapter and verse from Marx and Engels’s writings where permanent inflation which seems universally prevalent in all 1st world countries today, is predicted? To answer successfully this paramount question, you should appreciate in itself will constitute a monument to the prestige of Marx and Engels’s writings!
May I take the liberty of asking why your committee or other of your scribes object to, or else fail to compose, aphorisms accentuating hundreds of aspects of Marxian doctrine? I have repeatedly offered my work (to your brother body the WSP also) in this connection, but have been inevitably revolted by your wilful omission to put the cause of Socialism first and foremost, under the characterless excuse bound up with your passion for the pseudo-democratic that you don’t take writing from non-members.
T. K.
Northants
(name & address supplied)
Reply:
There is no “chapter and verse” predicting permanent' inflation. What Marx provided was a detailed analysis of capitalism, including explanations of why unemployment, crises and inflation take place. Inflation is not a permanent condition; it results from government policies adopted to try to overcome other problems, and is ended by further government action. It would have been impossible for Marx to predict this. His analysis of the cause of inflation—the result of the excess issue of an inconvertible paper currency—is the only correct one; but present-day economists do not want to know about it because it points to the insolubility of the problems of capitalism.
Contributions to the Socialist Standard are accepted only from members of the SPGB and its companion parties because the Socialist Standard exists to propagate their views and no others. If you are so determined to "put the cause of Socialism first and foremost”, what about your "wilful omission” to become a member of the Socialist Party?
Editors.
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