But what of Marx? Lanchester speculates about what the great man might have made of recent events from his redoubt in the British Library reading room. He would surely have been astounded, not just at the level of material prosperity we enjoy in the West, but at the social welfare programmes which have brought child mortality down from the eye watering levels endured in 19th c. Britain.
He might also have asked whether the economies of the West have merely outsourced their proletariat to the Far East, getting dollar-a-day wage slaves in China to do the dirty work that used to be done down mines by nine year old children here. Of course the Chinese may well have the last laugh, lending us the money to buy their goods and getting affluent on the proceeds, as well as getting the West by the financial short and curlies, borrowing from China the money we need to pay back the money we'd borrowed from them previously.
Lanchester records the recent outrage at revelations about Apple's manufacturing plants, admitting that Western revulsion had led to a 25% increase in wages overnight. He might have commented that even before the dramatic pay-hike many Chinese still thought they were better off making iPads for you and me than labouring in the paddy fields.
Personally I think we are living through a crisis in capitalism, rather than a crisis of capitalism. We have had the boom, and must now endure the bust. Seen in larger terms, capitalism is only doing what it does so well, enabling people who are prepared to make things cheaper to get prosperous, and punishing those who have become affluent and complacent. That is no comfort to those losing their jobs in the West, but that's where we are. In time the Chinese will start demanding higher wages and the pendulum will begin to swing the other way.
I wonder if I'm the only person to notice that there's a contradiction in asking for both better living standards and more jobs. The higher our wages are, the less we'll export and the fewer jobs there'll be. If we paid ourselves less, exports would go up and there'd be more jobs to go round. Thank God we are not enduring the kind of internal devaluation membership of the Euro has forced upon Greece et al; but what is a wage freeze but a de facto internal devaluation? In a typically British way, we are having a mild external and internal devaluation. Moderation in all things!
The real crisis of capitalism will come - and here's where I read Lanchester at last with relief - when there are too many people and not enough resources to go round. Where will the growth come from then?
