A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

tious capital of the first degree to fictitious capital of the second degree),
then towards solvent loans (the primes), before the bursting of the bubble
of the instruments linked to the housing mortgages contaminated
the other sectors of the financial markets and from there, the actual
money market.
And thus the whole financial system of the economy became blocked.
b. The devaluation of capital had a real dimension through the credit
crunch, the disappearance of credit, particularly of loans for consumption.
The economies entered into depression conjointly as from 2007,
but also for structural reasons, in a world where the peak had been
reached for certain strategic natural resources (with oil being in the forefront)
and where the search for new sources of energy poses objective
limits to growth – giving rise to pressures to wage wars).
As a result the economic indicators have been affected: falls in the rate
of growth, in trade and household consumption, losses of exploitation
in industrial companies, unemployment, losses in housing, savings, etc.
c. A very worrying aspect of this crisis, finally, is the indebtedness of
the public authorities, particularly the States (who have partially ‘nationalized’
the private debt) and the consequence difficulties in public finances,
including local authorities, particularly as regards social budgets
(education, health, pensions). Hence the restructuring (through repurchasing
and regrouping) of sovereign debts that is currently being discussed.
B. And then there is war …
a. Crisis and war are very closely linked. First because war is integrated
into the cycle, economically, as an extreme form of the destruction of
capital, but also politically, for reproducing the maintenance of control
by the leading segments of the dominant classes – high finance – over
the world system.
During the Cold War, the growth of productive forces was partly stimulated
in the United States by military expenditure and the military-industrial
complex, through the arms race and related technical advances (IT
systems, robots controlled by computers, internet, etc.) These days, military
expenditure remains high (a fifth of the federal budget, more than
95