What Would Karl Marx Think About Financial Crisis of 2007

Full name: Jan Svoboda

Student ID: 139047976

Programme title: Computing with management

Module title: MN1000 Foundations of management

What would Karl Marx think about financial crisis of 2007-08?

The last months of the year 2008 showed to be something what some economists call as the worst financial crisis since the Great depression of the 1930s. All of this started at the end of the year 2007 when most European and US banks showed in their annual reports massive losses on their profits. In September 2008, The Leman Brothers, a 158-year old investment global bank, collapsed and it almost brought down most of the western economies which would lead to the destruction of the whole world economy. This led to 4 US banks declaring bankruptcy on the New York stock exchange, the US government had to infuse hundreds of billions dollars into the banking system to prevent total economic catastrophe. It played a very important role in destroying lot of businesses, losing people wealth and it was the spark which started the global recession from 2008 onwards. This event made many economists think if this is not the end of capitalism what did Karl Marx predicted.

Karl Marx was one of the most influential socialist thinkers in history. He lived in the 19th century, which is a completely different era when compared to ours, but of the many ideas described throughout his books several can still be argued to be relevant in today’s society. Karl Marx was a big critique of capitalism. He thought that capitalism cannot exist for long periods of time and at some stage will end up collapsing. After the collapse the people will establish a fair system for everyone, which is known as communism. So could the financial crisis possibly be the beginning of what Marx described as the last stage of capitalism?

In his books he wrote that capitalism is going to destroy itself because of its contradictions and faults. The main argument what Marx states is that society will be forced to...