Young corporate executives in Mumbai, who may never have read Marx, were recently circulating by e-mail portions from Karl Marx's 150-year-old writings which lucidly talk about a stage in capitalism where banks would throw ever larger doses of cheap debt for consumption until there is a crises of repayment and the state would step in to take over the banks. Indeed, Marx had even said the original proponents of free trade will be forced to turn protectionist at some stage of globalisation!
So it was only appropriate that the G-20 leaders should have met so close to Marx's grave. In fact, there are many other warning signals the G-20 leaders can take from the writings of Marx, undoubtedly one of the greatest thinkers of the 19th century.
Seen in Marxian terms, the G-20 leaders represent the global bourgeoisie which wants to find new ways of revolutionising the instruments of production to take global capitalism to a higher level from what seems like a deep stagnation in large parts of the world today. In this context, Marx had specifically spoken about periods of commercial crises in advanced capitalist societies which are visited by an epidemic of overproduction
The epidemic of overproduction creates total disorder in bourgeois society, threatening existing property and productive forces at large.