Global financial crisis of 2008-2009: The left was wrong again

Authors:
José Alberto López Rafaschieri and Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net

At this point of the international economic crisis, leftists imagined that the United States would already be immersed in a desolation like that of Terminator Salvation, with the new T-800 robot wreaking havoc in the human resistance.

They said that the United States was crumbling, that capitalism had reached its end, that Marx was right, that the free market was unsustainable, that private companies should be nationalized, that this crisis will be worse than the Great Depression, that more bankruptcies will happen, that the dollar was finished, that we had to withdraw money from the United States, etc, etc, etc. Trying to turn the current financial crisis in evidence to prove the inviability of capitalism.

But unfortunately for the left, Marxist thought was wrong again. By late 2009, experts agree that the crisis that led to the Chrysler and General Motors bankruptcy will begin to overcome in the developed world, as we said here last year.

With this recovery, the free market will maintain its place as the best economic model known since it was born in the seventeenth century. While socialism, due to its irreparable defects, has not endured 100 years anywhere in the world.

Since the nineteenth century, Marx and the socialists have been making failed prophecies, incorrectly trying to link every economic problem with the end of capitalism. “It will end now, it will end now” they say in each crisis, but they always end up disappointed because the facts again and again are unfavorable to socialism.

So the 2008-2009 economic crisis will become another memory in the album of the obstacles conquered by capitalism. Its destination will be to accompany other remembrances like the Bolshevik revolution, the Great Depression, the Two World Wars, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the collapse of gold standard, the Arab oil embargo, the Asian crisis and the September 11 attacks. Events that, although ideologically shook the world, did not do to the free market what the fall of the Berlin Wall did to socialism.

At the end of the day, history's scoreboard is altered, as ever, in favor of the model with better results. By overcoming the 2008-2009 financial crisis, democracy and free market economy score another point, whereas socialism and the left are still losing the game.

Related articles:

- The 2008 U.S. financial crisis: Origin & ideological implications

- The Hispanic vision of the U.S. financial crisis

- The 2008-2009 crisis: Criticism of financial hypertrophy theory