DR. DOOM AND DR. MARX

You don't often hear of university professors praising Karl Marx or this business journal reporting it, but we must give credit where credit is due. "Economist Nouriel "Dr. Doom" Roubini, the New York University professor who four years ago accurately predicted the global financial crisis, said one of economist Karl Marx's critiques of capitalism is playing itself out in the current global financial crisis. ..."Karl Marx had it right," Roubini said in an interview with wsj.com. "At some point capitalism can self-destroy itself. That's because you can not keep on shifting income from labor to capital without not having an excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand. We thought that markets work. They are not working. What's individually rational ... is a self-destructive process." (International Business Times, 13 August) Being a university economic professor he couldn't get it all correct of course. Marx never claimed that capitalism would "self-destroy itself". That destruction can only come about by the political action of the working class. RD