The Highest Stage of Capitalism

[Lyev]

I've been thinking about a possible flaw in Marxist theory although I haven't really found any statistics to back it up. Communist theory upholds, what with the Marxist cycle, that, in theory, we want a revolution at the highest stage of capitalism, which contrasts with Russia or China which were fairly backward at the time of revolution. The cycle is:

Primitive Communism >
Immature Autocracy >
Feudalism >
Capitalism >
Socialism >
Communism

Is it possible, that because of things like globalisation and the employment, by big corporations, of foreign labour (it's cheaper) that powerful countries (at the height of capitalism) will have higher standards of living? That the majorities of those countries get along rather comfortably under capitalism? Because of this the majority won't want a revolution. They won't want their comfortable lives disturbed. I'm talking about places like the UK and the USA. Maybe I'm talking out of my ass, I dunno, what does everyone else think? Thanks for any replies. Oh, also, if anyone has any statistics relevent to this that would interesting to look at. :)

[Yehuda Stern]

Possible? It already happened. All of the imperialist countries have created a better-off layer of the working class, called the labor aristocracy, which has an interest in imperialism. The point, however, is that the capitalists cannot buy off the entire working class, and must attack it in times of capitalist crisis. We see this now everywhere: in Europe, the USA, and even Israel, which where there is already very little to attack in terms of workers rights and gains.

[JJM 777]

I think you hit bull's eye AGW, it helps the Capitalist cause a lot to have the world separated in "nations", so that the poorest slave classes in Asia or Africa are totally faceless and nameless foreigners to the population of Europe and USA.

There is enough compassion and enlightenment in modern European (but not exactly so much in American) mainstream population not to tolerate extreme poverty, without calling the government to do something about it. BUT the political fragmentation of the world into small independent nations is a handy tool for focusing any and all attention of the VOTERS to agendas that exclusively discuss the economical problems of the small region where each person lives.

When did you last time hear a European or American election campaign explain what should be done to the problem of Dengue fever in third world, or what should be done to the slums of Cairo, etc.?

This is a handy setting for Capitalists, that the richest countries have also richest and most powerful armies, able to control the entire world, and the political attention of population in these countries can be easily framed to local national concerns only, without any essential mention of any problems in other countries.

[Comrade Tom]

I think Marx may have been talking about it within a society, not the whole country. As the countries interests is mainly the bourgoise's and the government's. Eventually the working class and the proletariets will become aware of thier self-alienation and form a revolution.

[el_chavista]

Is it possible, that because of things like globalisation and the employment, by big corporations, of foreign labour (it's cheaper) that powerful countries (at the height of capitalism) will have higher standards of living?
Advanced countries exploit the world market, i.e. the backward countries's raw materials and cheaper labour, for bigger profits. So the capitalists counteract to the "falling of the profit rate" law.
Even the very existence of the socialist countries during the cold war induced capitalists considering high standards of living as an anticommunist political measure.

[scarletghoul]

Yes, this has already happened. Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism. The process hasn't been completed yet though, there is still a lot of poverty in the first world, and I think first world revolution is still possible.

It's possible that in the future maybe, the increase of imperialist exploitation will fully develop the 'labour aristocracy' into a comfortable class which loses all revolutionary potential and joins the global bourgeoisie in exploiting the third world (maoism-third worldism come true).

Will be interesting to see how things turn out

[Luís Henrique]

I think the problem with the OP is that it fails to understand that the highest stage of capitalism is not the United States/Europe as opposed to Africa/Latin America (which would be a lower stage of capitalism). The highest stage of capitalism is a system that encompasses both first world and third world countries, and maximises profits in each of them by concentrating different kinds of industry and labour in each one.

Luís Henrique

[Lyev]

I think my point still stands though. I've been thinking about this a lot recently and I think it's very wrong to force your beliefs onto someone else. Even if you do think those beliefs are the right way to go or however stupid and dogmatic those other person's opinions seem.

In a country like the UK or USA mostly everyone isn't going to want a revolution. The current state of things seems to instill a sense of pessimism in people and generally just drives them into the ground. Any revolutionary movement in the public eye, at the moment, would be bastardized intensely in the media and destroyed by NATO soldiers.

[ckaihatsu]

In a country like the UK or USA mostly everyone isn't going to want a revolution. The current state of things seems to instill a sense of pessimism in people and generally just drives them into the ground. Any revolutionary movement in the public eye, at the moment, would be bastardized intensely in the media and destroyed by NATO soldiers.


I don't think your pessimism is warranted. From where we stand it may look as though "a watched pot never boils", but I think that just means that the person's viewpoint is too constrained.

With the Information Revolution the people of the developed economies have the whole Internet at their fingertips -- the slightest notion of wondering what 'socialism' is about can be answered with a web search or two -- and they might even come across *this* website....

And, politically, I think what we're seeing, in general, in these post-Bush months, is a solid *global* popular sentiment *against* the imperialism of nationalistic desperation. As the U.S. imperialist hegemon slowly weakens over the post-WWII decades it becomes easier for the general population to be more openly political in a critical way.

This past cycle of aggression against foreign countries, mainly Iraq, was *much* briefer than the Vietnam War, and the U.S. has been constrained since the '70s to relatively petty bullying actions against the *slightest* of rivals -- Nicaragua, Haiti, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Somalia, etc.

Among the bourgeoisie there's already talk in the mainstream of shifting away from the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency -- *that's* an indicator of a solid "peg-down" for the world's leading imperialist power, the exact same way that happened after its failure in attacking and subduing Vietnam. The U.S. had to go off of the gold standard in 1971, and now the bourgeois world is talking of sidelining the U.S.'s overextended currency in the present period.





I think my point still stands though. I've been thinking about this a lot recently and I think it's very wrong to force your beliefs onto someone else. Even if you do think those beliefs are the right way to go or however stupid and dogmatic those other person's opinions seem.


Beliefs are *mutually exclusive* from *knowledge* -- if you *know* something, you don't *have* to "believe" it. And, likewise, if you "believe" something, then you're not really 100% sure that you *know* it.

As revolutionaries we have the strength of veracity and humaneness on our side -- I've *never* seen *any* revolutionary on RevLeft or outside "force their beliefs" on anyone else, because there's no point. Our politics happen to be in the company of the best traditions of science -- any claims about the past, present, or future have to be backed up by solid evidence and reasoning or else they will fail the test of rational inquiry. There are no beliefs, dogma, or opinions to sell.

[More Fire for the People]

The highest stage of capitalism will only be known in retrospect once it has been abolished.

[ckaihatsu]

I think the problem with the OP is that it fails to understand that the highest stage of capitalism is not the United States/Europe as opposed to Africa/Latin America (which would be a lower stage of capitalism). The highest stage of capitalism is a system that encompasses both first world and third world countries, and maximises profits in each of them by concentrating different kinds of industry and labour in each one.

Luís Henrique


Yeah, we *know* that the advanced economies, like the U.S., UK, and Western Europe, have *imported* the Third World *into* the geography of their *own nations*. The *truly* wealthy, being such a numerical minority, can *always* find some comfortable prime real estate somewhere in which to live, leaving the worse parts of the land to be the workplaces for poverty-trapped, hyper-exploited immigrant labor.





Yes, this has already happened. Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism. The process hasn't been completed yet though, there is still a lot of poverty in the first world, and I think first world revolution is still possible.

It's possible that in the future maybe, the increase of imperialist exploitation will fully develop the 'labour aristocracy' into a comfortable class which loses all revolutionary potential and joins the global bourgeoisie in exploiting the third world (maoism-third worldism come true).

Will be interesting to see how things turn out


The labor aristocracy has a smaller and smaller base of organized labor on which to rest, but it's made up for this loss by getting *much* cozier politically with the bourgeoisie and also by going financial. The UAW's takeover of its members' health care fund is the shining example of this process:





By Jerry White

8 January 2008

A US district judge in Detroit has imposed a gag order to block retired auto workers from scrutinizing the details of a new multi-billion-dollar retiree health care trust fund being set up by the United Auto Workers union.

The UAW was given control of the fund—known as a Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association, or VEBA—in exchange for massive concessions it granted to the Big Three auto makers, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, in labor agreements signed last year.

The VEBA deal generated widespread opposition from rank-and-file retirees because it relieves the employers of their obligation to provide medical benefits for former workers and their spouses, a right won by auto workers in the 1940s and 1950s. The auto companies will pay $52 billion to rid themselves of $88 billion in future health care costs for 750,000 current and future retirees and their dependents, making it all but certain that the fund will be depleted, leading the UAW to impose future benefit cutbacks.

[...]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jan2008/veba-j08.shtml


Chris





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-- Better than all the rest in humility --

[revolt4thewin]

There has always been greed but what is around today is a few tiers above any thing seen previously.

[Luís Henrique]

Yeah, we *know* that the advanced economies, like the U.S., UK, and Western Europe, have *imported* the Third World *into* the geography of their *own nations*. The *truly* wealthy, being such a numerical minority, can *always* find some comfortable prime real estate somewhere in which to live, leaving the worse parts of the land to be the workplaces for poverty-trapped, hyper-exploited immigrant labor.

Maybe, but that certainly was not what I meant in my post.

I meant certain branches of industry (namely those that are technologically advanced and capital intensive) are concentrated in First World countries, paying relatively high wages and producing an enormous amount of surplus value due to their high productivity, while other branches (namely those that are technologically less advanced, and consequently labour intensive) are "exported" to the Third World, paying low wages and producing a huge surplus value due to high labour intensity.

Luís Henrique

[debase89]

capitalism will never be good for enough people that they'd want to keep it. look at the usa we're all crushed under capitalism's iron foot

-debase

[Lyev]

I meant certain branches of industry (namely those that are technologically advanced and capital intensive) are concentrated in First World countries, paying relatively high wages and producing an enormous amount of surplus value due to their high productivity, while other branches (namely those that are technologically less advanced, and consequently labour intensive) are "exported" to the Third World, paying low wages and producing a huge surplus value due to high labour intensity.

Hence why in 21st century, first world countries the standard of living is generally quite high. There are, obviously, those with a lower standard of living in those countries but it seems that a capitalist country won't want revolution, on the whole, because not enough people in that said country wants it. So, in this sense, there's a mismatch with Marxist theory and it's application in modern, developed countries. Does anyone get what I mean? Maybe I'm talking out of my ass, I dunno, what does other people think?