American Capitalism and the Financial Crisis (1929-33)

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Great Depression in the United States of America from the viewpoint of the financial crisis. As is generally known, the economic crisis of 1929 spread out on an international scale, and after that there was the very long depression in the 1930 s. In this paper, I examined the process from the following views. First of all, this economic crisis was brought on at the highest stage of capitalism. For that reason, the development of this crisis was brought under the conditions of the economic structure over which monopoly capital had control. Secondly, I considered how this crisis was influenced by the structural characteristics of American capitalism which had the industrial development in the North and the underdeveloped agriculture in the South. And the following decisions were led by these views. (1) The essence of the financial crisis, which meant that the production based on the credit was broken up by the dullness of sale, was in existence during the Great Depression in the United States of America. (2) And the crisis is classified into two types. These are the financial crisis caused by the conflicts of monopoly capital accumulation and reproduction (type A) and the one caused by the conflicts of small capital accumulation and reproduction (type B). The stock market crash (1929), the decline of bond prices (1931-32) and the banking crisis (1933) come under the former. The failures of small businesses and the suspensions of small banks through the Great Depression come under the latter. In other words, the financial crisis (type A) was fundamentally caused by the overproduction of heavy industries, and appeared as the financial disturbances around the securities exchanges. The financial crisis (type B) was fundamentally caused by the overproduction of light industries, and appeared as the financial disturbances around the money markets which were subordinate to the finance capitals. Such developments were the important characteristics of the financial crisis (1929-33) in the United States of America.