Despite all the artifices to neutralize the trend of decline of profit rates in the world capitalist system as predicted by Karl Marx in his great work The Capital, will not prevent its collapse over time because the political and social cost would be immense for humanity with its maintenance. Before the collapse, the world capitalist system will be ruined by the economic depression for many years resulting in his climbing the bankruptcy of many companies, the economic unfeasibility of the highly indebted nation states and mass unemployment on a global scale. Given the existence of the chaos that already dominates the world economy that is getting worse, it is time for each country and humanity provide themselves as urgently as possible tools necessary to take control of their destiny. To take control of his destiny humanity must take to end the world capitalist system to exercise governance of the world economy. This is the only means of survival of the human species.

1. 1
WORLD CAPITALIST SYSTEM TOWARDS DEBACLE?
Fernando Alcoforado *
Faced with the problems encountered by capitalism in the productive sectors, to "survive"
to its own contradictions, capitalists have developed a massive financialization of the
economy, by exchanging the money directly for more money and without going directly
for the production merely running for speculative considerations (D D'). But
financialization of the economy is limited, however, by the real productive economy that
is generating of wealth. In other words, financial or fictitious capital that does not generate
wealth cannot become autonomous in relation to productive capital.
Although fictitious capital follows the development of capitalism from its beginnings, the
peculiarity of their behavior in today's world is in its dynamism, in its specific weight
within the financial capital in general and in their ability to penetrate all spheres of
economy. The main drivers of fictitious capital are the government bonds, the nature of
any debt securities, shares traded on stock exchanges and own credit money issued by
banks without ballast in their deposits. Figure 1 shows that the financial assets far
outweigh the world GDP 1980-2006.
Figure 1- Global financial assets as a percentage of world GDP
Source: CHESNAIS. François. As dívidas ilegítimas - quando os bancos fazem mão baixa nas políticas
públicas (Illegitimate debt - when banks make low hand in public policy). Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores,
2012.
Subtitle: PIB mundial (trilhões de US$) = World GDP (trillion US$); Ativos finaceiros = Financial assets.

2. 2
No other sector of the economy can boast rates of return as high, or even any one of the
largest production companies can even match the record profits of the financial system.
Banks manage their biggest profits ever facilitating the concentration and centralization of
capital (operations called "mergers and acquisitions"), charging lucrative fees for
"advising" and endorsing the financing of mergers and acquisitions. The second source of
profits is speculating in general, including on debt trading countries and investing in
global securities markets, particularly in energy where Goldman and Morgan have made a
fortune in recent times.
In addition to developing their speculative activities, banks are increasingly important
shareholders in non-banking sectors. They have played the main role in reducing labor
costs and reducing long-term investments in scientific and technological research as a way
to maximize short-term profits. Finally, the most lucrative source and the most dynamic of
speculative profits are in its expansion abroad, particularly in Europe and especially in
Asia. It is therefore a process logically structured from the law of value and commodity
production under the command of capital in general. It turns out that at this stage of
"development" of capitalism, is the financial capital that expresses the fusion of the
dominant fractions of industrial capital, agricultural, commercial and banking, and guides
and submits the profitability of capital as a whole.
In essence, the financial capital includes all capital, although it differs from all. It cannot,
for structural reasons and on the logic of reproduction and capital in general, find shielded
to crises. In its full configuration, the capital valuation process incorporates the presence
of the money category, which is the most general form of wealth, presenting, therefore, the
possibility of the emergence of difficulties when changing the value of the commodity
form to the money form in the capital of the circuit (D-M-D'). At the same time, this
valuation movement, manifest as profit (or interest) in circulation plan, given the existence
of credit and loan capital, creates the illusion of extracting more value of money in itself.
(D - D'). Of course, in practical terms, a similar result would be equivalent to needlessness
of commodity-producing activity, which totally contradict and contradictorily, the law of
value, which shows that more value production only occurs in directly productive
activities, so in the industrial and agricultural sectors.
The denial of the sphere of production appears as the basis on which emerges the
"financial capital or fictitious" and introduces the possibility of empowerment of finance.
However, again, it is a contradictory procedure. If the ideal of finance capital is the
"contempt" complete and utter of the production processes and even the sale of goods, it
also originates in those sectors, unable therefore to emancipate really of them. Its multiple
natures are more than ambiguity. Their apparent independence endures for a while due to
its particular cycle of much shorter profitability than the other capitals. But because of its
links with other specific forms of capital, to bumping into the crisis of the productive and
commercial sectors, the financial capital also turns out to transmit to them the
consequences of their collapse. It is therefore an explosive symbiosis. Therefore, the
domination of finance capital, which it is, in turn, dominated by the fetish of immediate
profit, is dependent on the production of goods and the inherent contradictions of
extraction of surplus value and its distribution between the fractions of capital in
permanent and endless process of seeking the capital appreciation as the engine of
accumulation.

3. 3
François Chesnais, professor emeritus at the University of Paris 13, notes that the
functioning of the world economy since the early 2000s was based on two pillars: growth
regime driven by debt, adopted by the United States and Europe, and the growth regime
driven by global exports, in which China is the main industrial base and Brazil, Argentina
and Indonesia are the key providers of natural resources. In its view, the crisis is the dead
end, the absolute impasse of the regime guided by debt. The second pillar is slightly better,
but growth based on global exports may not work for long without a strong external
demand, especially from the United States and the European Union (See the article by
François Chesnais Les dettes illégitime. Quand les banques font main basse sur les
politiques publiques. Paris: Editions Raisons d´agir, 2011). This means that the demand
for commodities from China will not be able to offset the drop in demand from the US and
the European Union.
The world financial system is showing losses on a scale that no one ever predicted. The
world capitalist system is broken and it is unclear what will replace it. The current crisis is
a product of changes taking place in the West for several years. Half a century ago, the
banking appeared to be a relatively simple art. The banks have gone through a process of
transformation in its core business, leaving behind its classic function of intermediary
between savers and lenders. Benefiting from the opening of the world economy from the
1990s, these institutions have become diversified financial groups and conglomerates
whose profits come mainly from credit creation, which has become the main means of
money creation. In this process, the central banks of countries lost control completely. The
values of global transactions cited by Chesnais illustrate the size of the financial sector: in
2002, world GDP was 32.3 trillion dollars, while financial transactions amounted to
1,140.6 trillion. At the beginning of the crisis in 2008, while the world GDP was 60.1
trillion, financial transactions reached 3,628 trillion.
Chesnais states that, from the 1980s, decreases the share of wages in GDP formation and
increases the tax exemption on the higher income sectors. Reductions in the tax rate on the
highest income between 1986 and 2007 give us a sense of these measures: in France, was
reduced from 65% to 40%; in England, from 60% to 40%; in Italy, from 62% to 43%; the
Netherlands, from 72% to 52%; Belgium, from 72% to 52%. Access to loans by issuing
bonds in specialized markets became the main instrument of budgetary financing of the
countries. The titles of public debt have become part of the assets traded by banks and
application of funds speculative (including companies). Banks and application of funds,
making use of a procedure known as leverage effect, they carry out loans with much
higher values to their own capital, increasing the system's weakness and the risk of
payment.
The cycle of expansion and accumulation of global financial capitalism bumped into huge
global financial crisis and the synchronized slowdown in economic activity. It is
impossible at this point to know where the world capitalist system is going. The great
possibility of financial collapse combination with huge recession, if not something worse
such as depression, will certainly change the world. From the outbreak of the global crisis
in 2008, governments around the world have become hostages of the financial system by
adopting fiscal policies and restrictive monetary favorable to the banks to save them from
bankruptcy and contrary to the interests of their populations. This is a time of beginning of
the uprising of the masses around the world opposed to the austerity policies of
governments and cutting social benefits. Chesnais says that in 2008, the threat to global
finance came from US investment banks and big insurers. The next largest financial

4. 4
episode will happen when a banking system segment in Europe collapse in Greece, Spain
or Italy which is ongoing.
According to François Chesnais there will be no end to the global crisis while banks and
financial investors are in charge of the world economy, with governments adopting
policies fully addressed the interests of rentiers and to give survival of the regime guided
by debt as is currently happening. According to Chesnais, to retake economic growth in
the United States and Europe, it would be necessary to restore the purchasing power of
low and middle classes, recreating and expanding the capacity of governments to make
social and environmental investments needed and the establishment of a system stable
international monetary, not subject to financial capital. The conditions for this will include
the cancellation of much of the sovereign debt considered illegitimate as well as much of
the domestic debt, the restoration of a correct tax to the income of finance and capital, the
restoration of a real public control of credit system, a strict control of capital flows and an
effective fight against tax havens. This means that governments should no longer be
subordinated to the dictates of finance capital and to suspend payment of its debts even
lead some banks to bankruptcy whose resources that would be allocated to them are
applied in public investment for the retake of economic growth.
Despite all the artifices to neutralize the trend of decline of profit rates in the world
capitalist system as predicted by Karl Marx in his great work The Capital, will not prevent
its collapse over time because the political and social cost would be immense for humanity
with its maintenance. Before the collapse, the world capitalist system will be ruined by the
economic depression for many years resulting in his climbing the bankruptcy of many
companies, the economic unfeasibility of the highly indebted nation states and mass
unemployment on a global scale. Given the existence of the chaos that already dominates
the world economy that is getting worse, it is time for each country and humanity provide
themselves as urgently as possible tools necessary to take control of their destiny. To take
control of his destiny humanity must take to end the world capitalist system to exercise
governance of the world economy. This is the only means of survival of the human
species.
* Fernando Alcoforado, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor of Territorial
Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, a university professor and consultant
in strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of
Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial
(Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os
condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,
http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São
Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era
Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social
Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG,
Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora,
Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global
(Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do
Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012) and Energia no Mundo e no Brasil-
Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015).