What does Marxism teach us
about inflation ?
The inflationists are shifting the capitalist world crisis onto the exploited and oppressed classes.
"Fight the inflationists of the imperialist
Global Monetary System!"
Rising prices for food, fuel and energy are cited as the main causes of inflation. Adverse global weather conditions such as floods, fires and droughts, which are becoming more frequent due to climate change, are blamed for much of the increase in food prices. Stock market speculation is also cited as a cause. But while money creation through speculation exacerbates economic crises, it is not the sole cause of inflation.
Inflation (as a rise in the general price level) is the inevitable consequence of an oversupply of non-convertible paper money.
Inflation is part of the general crisis of capitalism and is characterised by an excess of paper money in the channels of circulation, the devaluation of which generates greater capitalist profits and higher incomes for landowners. Inflation often brings additional profits to exporters who buy goods at home for devalued money with a low exchange rate and sell the goods abroad for hard currency. Inflation reinforces the general trend of centralisation and concentration of world capital.
The culprits of inflation are the capitalists, especially the monopolies, who steal wages and dictate prices, especially the monopolies of finance capital.
Inflation has serious global consequences for the broad masses of the population, such as the skyrocketing of prices, the reduction of real wages and the ruination of the poor peasants. This reduces purchasing power and increases the cost of living. The poorest are hit hardest by inflation.
Inflation is a means to accelerate the redistribution of world income in favour of the world monopolies and to cover the expenses of the world imperialist state system, especially the armament expenses for preparing or waging imperialist wars. The burdens of the monopolist price policy, imperialist armament and the consequences of war are passed on to the exploited and oppressed classes with the help of inflation, especially through usurious interest rates, through tax increases and through the "freezing" of wages.
Today's world imperialism uses inflation as a tool to fight the world crisis, as a weapon in the trade and economic wars and to conquer new markets for sales and raw materials, in short to intensify exploitation and oppression, to finance war and fascism and ultimately to maximise profits.
Currency crises contribute to the shaking of the whole imperialist world economic system. Inflation means a sharpening of the antagonistic contradictions in capitalist society. In terms of world revolution, inflation contributes to breaking the chains of capitalist relations of production. One hundred years ago, in 1923, inflation in Germany led directly to the uprising of the Hamburg working class led by comrade Ernst Thälmann. Only through the betrayal of the revisionists was the German bourgeoisie able to prevent the national spread of the uprising and thus the outbreak of the socialist revolution in Germany.
Governments around the world spend their time propping up the capitalist system with unprecedented state support. But these desperate measures are dynamite for the antagonistic contradictions in the world capitalist economy - measures that will inevitably lead to the explosion of capitalism.
The global capitalist state system is a global instrument of bourgeois class domination and always uses money in a way that maximises the profits of the bourgeoisie and drives the world proletariat into destitution. The endless printing of money is tantamount to an organised attack on the working class, because the bourgeoisie can always raise prices effortlessly, but the working class has to overcome many obstacles to even go on strike to put enough pressure on the bourgeoisie.
This does not mean that the struggle of the working class against inflation is futile, but only means that capitalism cannot be transformed into socialism through ("currency") reforms.
Price controls, minimum wage laws or any control mechanisms over capitalism at all do not and cannot exist under the conditions of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie as long as the law of capitalism to maximise profit remains untouched. Without serious coercion, the capitalists will not submit to control from below. This is only possible under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The solution is not to tinker with the money supply (MMT), but to globally expropriate the global expropriators, create world socialist property and build world socialism based on the needs of the people and not on the profit maximisation of a few parasites.
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