Capitalism Is Breaking Everywhere At Its Weakest Links

[Rakhmetov]

Something Politically Huge is going to Climax very soon! Like a volcano erupting on a bad day--- booom!!!!

The serious representatives of Capital understand the seriousness of the situation in Europe. Hans Jörg Sinn, one of the main bourgeois economic analysts in Germany is warning of a civil war in Greece. In the long run such a perspective is possible, not only for Greece, but for other countries, especially in southern Europe.

Lenin said that with the Russian Revolution capitalism had broken at its weakest link. That is entirely logical. It is not likely that the breakdown of capitalism will commence in its strongest link – the United States of America. The cracks first began to appear in Latin America – in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. Now new and even deeper fissures have appeared in North Africa and the Middle East. But the movements in Europe are part of the same revolutionary ferment and stem from the same cause.

The same process that we see on a world scale is replicated in Europe. The crisis began in the weakest link, which was Greece. That was followed in quick succession by Ireland, Portugal and Spain. Some imagined that Germany and its satellites could isolate themselves from the general decline. But that is impossible.

After Spain come Italy and Belgium. And that spells a crisis of the euro so profound that Germany will not be able to come to their rescue and will be dragged down together with them. This is what they mean by “contagion”. Like a group of mountaineers tied together by the same rope, if one falls, they must all fall.

http://www.marxist.com/europe-in-crisis-italy-and-belgium-next.htm

[CesareBorgia]

How can you take anything Alan Woods says seriously?

[redhotpoker]

The question; is the working class in these countries prepared to take state power or at least resist the crisis?

Greece, Venezuela, and Spain have showed promising results but so did Germany prior to 1933.

[robbo203]

Sheesh. Am I the only one here but doesnt anyone else get just a wee bit pissed off with all this breathless over-exited capitalism-is-in-its-death-agony tosh from the likes of Alan Woods? Like much of what he writes, its just so much hot air signifiying very little. All this bollocks about capitalism breaking everywhere at its weakest link. I mean, come on - get a grip, for fucks sake.Is Greece or Spain really just about to get rid of capitalism? Instead of actually helping the process of building up a serious revolutionary alternative to capitalism, it gets in the way. It leads gullible individuals to think capitalism is at the point of collapse and when that doesnt happen - and I can assure you it won't happen that capitalism will simply implode of its own accord - they come to the "realistic" conclusion that system is just too entrenched and too ingrained to budge. Might as well settle for a cushy 9-5 job, a mortgage and 2.4 kids. You aint gonna change anything, see.


This is what I really object about the over-romanticised over-the-top take on current affairs peddled by the likes of Woods. Buying into it is a sure fire recipe for disappointment and disillionment a few years down the line. Barring a meteor impacting on earth or some other unforeseen disaster, capitalism is not going to obligingly collapse for our benefit. It has to be consciously and politically overthrown by a working class that has a clearly worked out and understood alternative to put in its place.

Unfortunately we are nowhere near that point as yet and pretending that capitalism is on the verge of unravelling before our eyes even while the the mindset of the great majority of workers is still basically pro-capitalist, is utterly delusional and dumb

[Tommy4ever]

I'd thank you ten times for that post robbo, if I could. This is exactly how I feel.

These problems are just straining the system and showing us some of its great flaws. It should be a way of showing people that there is indeed an alternative as they become disillusioned by the capitalist system. But its not going to collapse any time soon. Barring something unbelievable happening.

This is a chance to build class consciousness and try to introduce people to the socialist alternative.

[DaringMehring]

Respectfully but strongly disagree, Robbo and Tommy. Karl Marx showed that the development of capitalism was an objective process beyond subjective control. Like all modes of social organization, capitalism will mature and fall based ultimately on the progression of the forces and relations of production.

Put it another way -- capitalism is now or will be beyond the ability of the capitalists or anyone else to save.

It is correct, that we do not know what post-capitalist alternative will replace capitalism. It seems that the most natural development of capitalism is into fascism. The ruling class prefers fascism to socialism. Only the dispossessed class can win the battle for socialism. So you are right in saying, that we need to build a revolutionary alternative. The reformist alternative (ie proceeding under the stern eye of the bourgeoisie) is fascism. Just look at how reformist once-Left parties such as Labor now direct Imperialism and austerity. Or see how in the USA, our left-reformism which operates under the aegis of the Democrats is leading us down the road of neoliberalism and Citizens United.

But you are wrong if you think that the end of capitalism is not an inescapable historical point to which we are coming and which is, as the original poster said, a possibility of the current period we entered in 2008 and most realistic in the weaker capitalist countries. And you magnify your error by taking on the role of the multitudinous bourgeois bobbing heads who endlessly affirm the robust health of capitalism. Let them proselytize their system; we should make people aware that they are lying and the sick old man capitalism will die whether they like it or not.

The battle for a new world is on and the spirit of the OP reflects that while yours do not. Think about that...

[robbo203]

Respectfully but strongly disagree, Robbo and Tommy. Karl Marx showed that the development of capitalism was an objective process beyond subjective control. Like all modes of social organization, capitalism will mature and fall based ultimately on the progression of the forces and relations of production.

Put it another way -- capitalism is now or will be beyond the ability of the capitalists or anyone else to save.

It is correct, that we do not know what post-capitalist alternative will replace capitalism. It seems that the most natural development of capitalism is into fascism. The ruling class prefers fascism to socialism. Only the dispossessed class can win the battle for socialism. So you are right in saying, that we need to build a revolutionary alternative. The reformist alternative (ie proceeding under the stern eye of the bourgeoisie) is fascism. Just look at how reformist once-Left parties such as Labor now direct Imperialism and austerity. Or see how in the USA, our left-reformism which operates under the aegis of the Democrats is leading us down the road of neoliberalism and Citizens United.

But you are wrong if you think that the end of capitalism is not an inescapable historical point to which we are coming and which is, as the original poster said, a possibility of the current period we entered in 2008 and most realistic in the weaker capitalist countries. And you magnify your error by taking on the role of the multitudinous bourgeois bobbing heads who endlessly affirm the robust health of capitalism. Let them proselytize their system; we should make people aware that they are lying and the sick old man capitalism will die whether they like it or not.

The battle for a new world is on and the spirit of the OP reflects that while yours do not. Think about that...

Certainly Marx showed that the development of capitalism was an objective process. What he did not sho however was that its demise would be one that would bypass human intentionality and political action. And that is the whole point I was getting it.

Material conditions shape our understanding and fuel our motives but material condition on their own do not overthow existing society and install a new one. Human beings doing that. If the end of capitalism is an "inescapable historical point to which we are coming" then, equally inescapably, that end can only be brought about by workers consciously seeking to bring capitalism to an end and to replace it with something else.

You deny this. You assert that "capitalism is now or will be beyond the ability of the capitalists or anyone else to save" and that we do not know what we will replace capitalism with. This, in stark contrast to my view that if you dont know what to replace capitalism with, you will be lumbered with capitalism. In short, you believe capitalism will collapse.

People have been predicting this for at at least two hundred years. Every crises in capitalism's history has been accompanied by confident assertions that its end was near. Various theories have been elaborated to show why its end was near. Underconsumptionism. The Falling Rate of Profit. You name it. Its all been said before. But on every single occasion capitalism has confounded the Jeremiahs and doom-mongerors.

You mention Marx but Marx was the one who showed that every crisis, every recession, serves to create the conditions in which growth is eventually restored. Marx was the one who showed that capitalist development takes the form of a continuous trade cycle. Marx was the one who argued that to bring capitalism to an end workers need to win the "battle of democracy" and dispposess the capitalists of their class ownership of the means of production. There is nothing in Marx to warrant the view that capiltalism would collapse of its own accord and irrespective of the subjective outlook of workers - though his comrade Engels did, it seems , believe for a while that the Great Depression of the 1880s was a chronic one from which the economy would never extricate itself. Engels was proved wrong as have other before and since.


If you want to know why capitalism will not collspe then I suggest you check out a landmark pamphlet published by the SPGB in 1932 called precisely this - "Why capitalism will not collapse" . Here is the link http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pdf/wcwnc.pdf


You make a number of other highly questionable claims. Like this one for instance

It is correct, that we do not know what post-capitalist alternative will replace capitalism. It seems that the most natural development of capitalism is into fascism. The ruling class prefers fascism to socialism


The implication here, unless Ive read you incorrectly, is that fascism is in some sense not capitalist or post capitalist. If that is your view than it is mistaken. Fascist regimes are no less capitalist for being so . Similarly the belief that the ruling class prefers fascism to socialism and that the most natural develiopment of capitalism is into fascism. I question that completely. Fascism to me is an aberrant form of capitalism, a product of unusual circumstances and not typical of capitalism at all. It there is a form to which capitalism is naturally tending it would probably be the bourgeois democratic liberal form. Certainly that model has far stronger grounds for claiming to be the natural end game of capitalist development than fascism. How many fascist regimes can you count that are still extant? How many multiparty regimes are there in the world today comapred with 20 years ago. A lot more

Dont misunderstand me. I dont bob my head in sync, as you claim , with the multitudinous bourgeoisie who , you say "endlessly affirm the robust health of capitalism". What the capitalist call robust health refers to the economic environment in which they can invest their capital and expect a handsome profit in return. That enviable state of affairs as far as the capitalists are concerned will come and go in tune with the capitalist trade cycle.

But what is robustly healthy for the capitalist may be nothing of the sort for the workers and this is an important distinction that you ve failed to grasp. Saying that capitalism will not collapse does not mean that the conditions it throws up are congenial for the workers or that the workers as a result of these far-from-congenial conditions might not take it into their heads and their hands to overthrow this rotten system once and for all

[Psy]

Sheesh. Am I the only one here but doesnt anyone else get just a wee bit pissed off with all this breathless over-exited capitalism-is-in-its-death-agony tosh from the likes of Alan Woods? Like much of what he writes, its just so much hot air signifiying very little. All this bollocks about capitalism breaking everywhere at its weakest link. I mean, come on - get a grip, for fucks sake.Is Greece or Spain really just about to get rid of capitalism? Instead of actually helping the process of building up a serious revolutionary alternative to capitalism, it gets in the way. It leads gullible individuals to think capitalism is at the point of collapse and when that doesnt happen - and I can assure you it won't happen that capitalism will simply implode of its own accord - they come to the "realistic" conclusion that system is just too entrenched and too ingrained to budge. Might as well settle for a cushy 9-5 job, a mortgage and 2.4 kids. You aint gonna change anything, see.


This is what I really object about the over-romanticised over-the-top take on current affairs peddled by the likes of Woods. Buying into it is a sure fire recipe for disappointment and disillionment a few years down the line. Barring a meteor impacting on earth or some other unforeseen disaster, capitalism is not going to obligingly collapse for our benefit. It has to be consciously and politically overthrown by a working class that has a clearly worked out and understood alternative to put in its place.

Unfortunately we are nowhere near that point as yet and pretending that capitalism is on the verge of unravelling before our eyes even while the the mindset of the great majority of workers is still basically pro-capitalist, is utterly delusional and dumb

Capitalism is facing its worse crisis since World War II, that doesn't mean capitalism will justcollapse it means we are approaching the point where it either is socialism or barbarism. The way things are going Capitalists eventually will have to resort to far more barbarism to prop up the capitalist order. Capitalists in Europe moving away from bourgeoisie democracies and towards military juntas ruling in the interest of the bourgeoisie is not out of question if it capitalists are blocked by increasing worker militancy that doesn't manifest itself in successful worker revolutions.

[Pretty Flaco]

How can you take anything Alan Woods says seriously?
How can you take all the dumb topics he makes like this seriously?

[robbo203]

Capitalism is facing its worse crisis since World War II, that doesn't mean capitalism will justcollapse it means we are approaching the point where it either is socialism or barbarism. The way things are going Capitalists eventually will have to resort to far more barbarism to prop up the capitalist order. Capitalists in Europe moving away from bourgeoisie democracies and towards military juntas ruling in the interest of the bourgeoisie is not out of question if it capitalists are blocked by increasing worker militancy that doesn't manifest itself in successful worker revolutions.


I sincerely doubt this. Where is your evidience of any trend that suggests the possible abandonment of bourgeois democracy and the installation of military juntas as the eventual outcome?

If anything i think the evidence points firmly in the opposite direction . Bourgeois democracies are becoming the norm rather than the exception they were in the 19th century. Country after country in Latin America , Africa, Asia and now the Middle East and North Africa too, are capitulating to the bourgeois democratic model of running capitalism rather than old fashioned dictatorships or one party states and with good reason. Bourgeois democracies are, quite simply, more effiecient at coopting workers into supporting the state quo and diffusijg dissent. It allows them to feel that they have a stake in what goes on however illusory. It is much more sophistcated and effective than the crude propaganda of some military despot


Dont misunderstand me . Bourgeois democracy is in many a respects a sham and a fraud. It is barely democratic at all. Its more a plutocracy that we get to vote for every 4 years and thats about it. It is, though, unquestionably preferable to a bourgeois dictatorship. Not only that, it is Capitalisms achilles heel - its weak link since we are talking about "weak links" on this thread. Capitalism more and more needs bourgeois democracy as a means of legitimising power and maintaining its ideological hegemony but this comes with a cost. Sickening though it may be, the more that hypocrties and humbugs like Obama and Cameron go on about democratic rights and the need to protect defenceless citizens against the brutality of regimes like Libya and Syria the more constrained or imprsioned are they by their own rhetotic and the more unlikely is the scenario you paint

I say let the poliiticans thus paint themselves into this corner. We workers have nothing to lose by them doing that and much to gain in terms of ensuring that precisely the kind of scenario you are talking will not happen. In the name of democracy we will consign their bourgeois democracy to the scrap heap of history

[Minima]

You can all come to china and live in the future! capitalism with Asian values! we're exporting!


"There is chaos under heaven, the situation is reeaaaaallly shitty" - mao ze dong.

[robbo203]

You can all come to china and live in the future! capitalism with Asian values! we're exporting!


"There is chaos under heaven, the situation is reeaaaaallly shitty" - mao ze dong.


China will capitalute to the bourgeois democratic model sooner or later too. You mark my words. Already it is a hothouse of worker militancy. Sooner or later tensions will manifest themselves in the ruling elite that will necessitate the formation of a multiparty system

[Minima]

China will capitalute to the bourgeois democratic model sooner or later too. You mark my words. Already it is a hothouse of worker militancy. Sooner or later tensions will manifest themselves in the ruling elite that will necessitate the formation of a multiparty system

I have thought this too, but truly do not know what to hope for in our current situation. I would not stand a second for the current state of affairs but I fight any step towards such a direction towards a 'liberal democracy'. Ideally, I wish to be able to hope in a new left for china.

[Tim Finnegan]

Capitalism is facing its worse crisis since World War II, that doesn't mean capitalism will justcollapse it means we are approaching the point where it either is socialism or barbarism. The way things are going Capitalists eventually will have to resort to far more barbarism to prop up the capitalist order. Capitalists in Europe moving away from bourgeoisie democracies and towards military juntas ruling in the interest of the bourgeoisie is not out of question if it capitalists are blocked by increasing worker militancy that doesn't manifest itself in successful worker revolutions.

China will capitalute to the bourgeois democratic model sooner or later too. You mark my words. Already it is a hothouse of worker militancy. Sooner or later tensions will manifest themselves in the ruling elite that will necessitate the formation of a multiparty system
I think that it is simplistic to pose the question as one between dictatorship and liberal democracy. Those have been the primary historical options, yes, but options produced by material circumstances and by the form of the ideological sphere, neither of which are immutable. The place to look to for the potentially authoritarian future of China, and, perhaps, of all capitalism, is not in some unstable, Bonepartist junta, but in the stable pseudo-democracy of Singapore, where a single party, the People's Action Party, has governed the city-state barely opposed since decolonisation half a century ago. Nominally democratic, and arguably just enough so to keep the PAP from going overboard, but not even offering the grim choices open to American voters.
Simply hoping for some explosion of para-Chartism is, while not quite as baseless as the liberal faith in a democratising market, ultimately an assumption based on historical tendencies within particular economic and ideological conditions, rather than any truly inevitable result of a certain level of capitalist development. Liberal democracy may have enjoyed its decades or so in the sun as the only feasible political system, the various "Marxist-Leninist" alternatives having thrown in the towel, but the twin blows of 9/11 and the market crash have shaken liberalism deeply enough to put the international primacy which it enjoyed in the 1990s into serious question. There's reason to assume that people across the world are going to throw themselves behind a system quite honestly does not appear to be working, simply because they did so a century and a half ago in France, a century ago in Romania, or even twenty years ago in Russia.

[Psy]

I sincerely doubt this. Where is your evidience of any trend that suggests the possible abandonment of bourgeois democracy and the installation of military juntas as the eventual outcome?


Simply the risk of proletarian parties getting elected, bourgeois democracies only works if capitalist parties dominate as soon as you have proletarian parties having power in a bourgeois democracy it falls apart as the bourgeois democratic institutions becomes soap boxes for the proletariat. Even though the state apparatus is entrenched in the interests of the capitalist class, proletarian parties that win elections have access to the media if they are even the official opposition which is why the NPD becoming the official opposition in Canada has scared the Canadian bourgeoisie even though the NDP is a reformist labor party and not a revolutionary labor party, as it shows a polarization of voting trends and means the range of debate has officially widened.

What is the point of a bourgeoisie democracy when the choice boils down to voting for the capitalists party or the workers party, in such a polarized environment there is no point in maintaining the facade of democracy as in the current environment the bourgeoisie doesn't even want labor reformists parties being a viable option as that would mean within bourgeois democracy austerity becomes a debated topic.

[TheLeftStar]

I'd be happy with Capitalism's misery and ultimately its death. Someone should start the website www.capitalismisdead.com

[robbo203]

I sincerely doubt this. Where is your evidience of any trend that suggests the possible abandonment of bourgeois democracy and the installation of military juntas as the eventual outcome?




Apropos the above, here's something i came across of relevance to the discussion...

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/downloads/FP2P/FP2P_Democracy_Bldg_Pol_Voice_%20BP_ENGLISH.pdf


2 Trends and dynamics: how has multiparty democracy spread over the past 100 years?
In 1991, Samuel Huntington identified three major ‘waves’ of democratisation that have swept through the modern world. The first began in the 1820s with the widening of suffrage in the United States, continuing for nearly a century and leaving 29 democracies in its wake. After a ‘reverse wave’ reduced the number of democracies back down to 12 with the rise of fascism in the 1920s, a second wave began after the Second World War, bringing the number of democratic states in the world back. up to 36 by 1962. Huntington’s ‘third wave’ began in Portugal in 1974, spreading first to Greece and Spain and subsequently to Latin America where elected civilian governments replaced military rulers in nine countries between 1979 and 1985. The mid-1980s and early 1990s saw democratisation in the Philippines, Korea, Taiwan, Bangladesh and Nepal. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 prompted competitive elections in most of Eastern Europe, whilst Benin and South Africa opened the floodgates to the wave in Africa in 1990. By 1997, most African states had legalised opposition parties whilst only three could have been classed as democracies at the beginning of the decade (Diamond, 2003).
Huntington’s third wave of democracy has been the longest and most powerful yet, with 121 countries classed as electoral democracies by Freedom House in 2005 compared to only 76 in 1990. This is an increase from 41 to 61 percent of the world’s nation states (Freedom House, 2006). Fukuyama (1992) has suggested that this global democratisation represents the ‘End of History’, with liberal democracy being universally accepted as the only viable and sustainable political system. However, some commentators have identified a current backlash against democracy, with countries such as Russia, Belarus, Venezuela and Ethiopia placing restrictions on foreign agencies involved in the promotion of democracy and condemning democracy aid programmes as aggressive foreign policy interventions by the West, aimed at regime change in the interests of donors (Carothers, 2006). There is thus a danger of a third ‘reverse wave’ of democracy undoing achievements made over the last thirty years, with semi-authoritarian leaders making policy that encroaches on democratic freedoms in the name of maintaining domestic stability and resisting imperialism (ibid)

[red flag over teeside]

Capitalism simply won't collapse and anyone hoping it will will be in for a long wait. The problem for the working class globally is that while capitalism won't collapse but will continue going on until the working class overthows it the consequences of the prolonged economic crisis will be further human suffering and ecological decay. To overthrow capitalism requires a conscious working class struggling for our rights irrespective of whether capitalism can afford it. For this to happen we need both a revolutionary party and the existence of a network of workers councils which will sweep aside reformist political parties and trade unions. This aint going to happen soon but we can start today to build the nucleus of such an organisation.

[DaringMehring]

Robbo-- it depends on how you conceive of capitalism. For instance, if there was a social breakdown and major capitalist countries became like worse Mexicos or pre-revolution Chinas, that is to say, government impotent, power in the hand of drug lords and warlords, breakdown of the mass market due to a collapse in the purchasing power of the masses, you could argue that would still be capitalism but it would also be possible to classify it as a form of semi-feudalism.

Similarly, you call fascism capitalism, which it is based on the classical Marxist definition of capitalism. At the same time, fascism appears as a distinct qualitative stage of capitalism. Lenin called Imperialism the highest stage of capitalism, but he might have revised his assessment if he had lived longer.

Both of these results can come out of capitalism's natural self-destructive tendency. At a certain moment, the masses will refuse to be governed in the old way and all possibilities will be opened. It will be a contest of living forces to determine the outcome. That moment can be organized for and somewhat aided in arrival by socialists, but is well outside the power of any one agent or organization to determine. Its arrival is a historical inevitability. What we can fight for is the outcome.

[DaringMehring]

To everyone who is arguing for capitalism's ongoing resilience --

Seriously?

What about the falling rate of profit?

What about the concentration of capital?

These are features of how capitalism works as a system that are above and outside the "business cycle." It means that capitalism does not revert to any kind of equilibrium. It grows. Corporations become larger and larger. Today, there are corporations with revenues on the same scale as those of nations (eg Citi and Sweden were at one point comparable). They are increasingly squeezed by the falling rate of profit based on the rising organic composition of capital. They fight to the degree they can to make up the difference by reducing labor's share of output, but no matter how successful they are this is a self-destructive, non-permanent solution. There is nothing eternal or stable about these conditions.

[Tommy4ever]

@ DaringMehring: The rate of profit is falling and the capitalist system seems to be slowly reaching the end of the level at which it can continue its never ending growth.

But we are a long way off from the final collapse. As robbo said earlier, breathless excitement about an immenent collapse is just going to get people's hopes up and when it doesn't collapse they will become disillusioned, we will look like a joke, again, (how many times has the left predicted the immenent collapse of capitalism only for nothing to happen?) and the whole damnable system will keep rolling on.

I believe that it is continuing to move towards its eventual collapse, I just don't think that's any time soon.

[Psy]

@ DaringMehring: The rate of profit is falling and the capitalist system seems to be slowly reaching the end of the level at which it can continue its never ending growth.

But we are a long way off from the final collapse. As robbo said earlier, breathless excitement about an immenent collapse is just going to get people's hopes up and when it doesn't collapse they will become disillusioned, we will look like a joke, again, (how many times has the left predicted the immenent collapse of capitalism only for nothing to happen?) and the whole damnable system will keep rolling on.

I believe that it is continuing to move towards its eventual collapse, I just don't think that's any time soon.

I don't think capitalism has a final collapse, capitalism will just keep destroying fixed capital till it can grow again.

That said the system has never just kept on rolling, each "solution" to crisis has planted the seeds of ever greater crisis as markets have become more and more unstable. The markets today are less stable then the market of the 1990's that were less stable then the market of the 1980's that was less stable then the market of the 1970's that was less stable then the market of the 1960's.

Something has to happen, as there has never been a economic crisis were the status quo was maintained.

[MarxSchmarx]

The real tragedy if capitalism fails politically in Greece or Spain (which I still rather doubt) is that it will be isolated and will fail. The comparison to even a reformist, semi-anti-capitalist regime like Chavez's Venezuela are really premature.

Chavez's Bolivarian revolution has survived in no small part because Venezuela was a major Latin American economy (he was a "force to be reckoned with" within the region - a similar situation would not be possible, for example, if Suriname became the vanguard of regional anti-capitalism), his example resonated across a region where capitalism has been particularly vicious - perhaps second only to Africa - and his message consciously built upon a long history of reasonably successful leftist insurrections in the last several decades. Finally, Chavez had the army firmly with him and against the national bourgeoisie. The EU, and even southern Europe, does not that history of a comparable institution that can safeguard against a reaction. Moreover, Greece and Spain are not really major economic players in their region, they lack any leverage against the capitalist powerhouses of Northern Europe that control their currency and in any event the left in those countries lacks a serious alternative vision.

[robbo203]

To everyone who is arguing for capitalism's ongoing resilience --

Seriously?

What about the falling rate of profit?

What about the concentration of capital?

These are features of how capitalism works as a system that are above and outside the "business cycle." It means that capitalism does not revert to any kind of equilibrium. It grows. Corporations become larger and larger. Today, there are corporations with revenues on the same scale as those of nations (eg Citi and Sweden were at one point comparable). They are increasingly squeezed by the falling rate of profit based on the rising organic composition of capital. They fight to the degree they can to make up the difference by reducing labor's share of output, but no matter how successful they are this is a self-destructive, non-permanent solution. There is nothing eternal or stable about these conditions.


Capitalism is not going to collapse because of its supposed falling rate of profit. You overlook Marx's counter tendencies to the rate of profit to fall

Check out this

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch14.htm

http://www.worldsocialism.org/articles/introduction_to_marxian_economics2.php

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/aug03/kidron2.html


Nor is capitalism going to collapse because industry is beoming more concentrated (although some would argue here that there are also counteracting tendencies here too in the form of diseconomics of scale). Even if capitalism were to eliminate small and medium businesses altogether (and it shows no sign of doing so) we would still be left with capitalism, albeit a different kind of capitalism populated by a relatively few giant corporations - corporate capitalism

[Hexen]

Well could there be a possibility that Capitalism will eventually destroy/cannibalize/implode on itself given to the individualistic nature of the system?

[robbo203]

Well could there be a possibility that Capitalism will eventually destroy/cannibalize/implode on itself given to the individualistic nature of the system?

How?

What possible mechanism are we talking about?

I find it curious also that you talk about the "individualistic" nature of the system but were are led to believe by some here that capital is becoming more concentrated and presumably therefore less competitive and individualistic - more socialised as it were

If you mean by individualistic simply "greedy" or self centred was there ever time when capitalism did not engender such an outlook? But capitalism is still with us.


Lets face it. Capitalism is not going to collapse. Not ever. It has to be got rid of consciously and politically by workers with a clear and consciously worked alternative to put in its place.

[Rocky Rococo]

Probably my favorite quote from Marx is from the Brumaire:


Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth century, storm more swiftly from success to success, their dramatic effects outdo each other, men and things seem set in sparkling diamonds, ecstasy is the order of the day – but they are short-lived, soon they have reached their zenith, and a long Katzenjammer [cat’s winge] takes hold of society before it learns to assimilate the results of its storm-and-stress period soberly. On the other hand, proletarian revolutions, like those of the nineteenth century, constantly criticize themselves, constantly interrupt themselves in their own course, return to the apparently accomplished, in order to begin anew; they deride with cruel thoroughness the half-measures, weaknesses, and paltriness of their first attempts, seem to throw down their opponents only so the latter may draw new strength from the earth and rise before them again more gigantic than ever, recoil constantly from the indefinite colossalness of their own goals – until a situation is created which makes all turning back impossible, and the conditions themselves call out:
Hic Rhodus, hic salta!

While triumphalism of the Woods sort is not at all helpful, certainly we are seeing the first signs of an opportunity to at least begin the long agonizing process that Marx describes in that passage in parts of the world where such things have been off the table for generations. And that's good news. The key question is how do these movements educate themselves in this process. do they have the depth to sustain themselves through repression and their own errors and wrong turns. When they suffer setbacks will they have the capacity to rebuild? And for all of us, including, even especially, those of us that are not in the locations of the immediate struggle is what can we do to provide that depth and capacity that will allow movements to learn and grow organically despite the repression the capitalist state always applies.

We can't expect "perfection" from these movements in their infancy, a mass movement means the inclusion of a majority of participants that have never consciously thought through their ideological assumptions. It's that mixed status that leads, necessarily, to the convoluted process Marx described. And there's no guarantee that what we're seeing won't just flicker out under the repressive and cooptive forces. But thank goodness we're finally able to start seeing at least the potential of such movements taking root in places like North Africa and Western Europe.

Patience and solidarity, and participation when possible.

[Hexen]

If you mean by individualistic simply "greedy" or self centred was there ever time when capitalism did not engender such an outlook? But capitalism is still with us.

That's what I meant which would be a ironic failure (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeathByIrony) for the system itself and capitalism will go down as a history lesson of a failed system which inevitably lead us into a better solution.

[Psy]

The real tragedy if capitalism fails politically in Greece or Spain (which I still rather doubt) is that it will be isolated and will fail. The comparison to even a reformist, semi-anti-capitalist regime like Chavez's Venezuela are really premature.

Chavez's Bolivarian revolution has survived in no small part because Venezuela was a major Latin American economy (he was a "force to be reckoned with" within the region - a similar situation would not be possible, for example, if Suriname became the vanguard of regional anti-capitalism), his example resonated across a region where capitalism has been particularly vicious - perhaps second only to Africa - and his message consciously built upon a long history of reasonably successful leftist insurrections in the last several decades. Finally, Chavez had the army firmly with him and against the national bourgeoisie. The EU, and even southern Europe, does not that history of a comparable institution that can safeguard against a reaction. Moreover, Greece and Spain are not really major economic players in their region, they lack any leverage against the capitalist powerhouses of Northern Europe that control their currency and in any event the left in those countries lacks a serious alternative vision.

That doesn't mean Greece and Spain couldn't hold out till revolution spreads. Don't you think like the Russian revolution that a successful revolution in Greece and Spain that leads to workers states would spark worker uprising around the world as workers?

[ArrowLance]

And wasn't the world supposed to end this month? I wonder which will happen first!

[andyok]

As the proportion of fixed capital to variable capital (labor) grows, so grows the proportion of the working class that is unemployed. And this proportion grows as industry advances, technology advances, and the global production system grows. We're at a point now where the global system is so productive that the moment it comes out of crisis and starts producing again, it soon results in another crisis of overproduction.

"The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth, and, therefore, also the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productiveness of its labour, the greater is the industrial reserve army. The same causes which develop the expansive power of capital, develop also the labour power at its disposal. The relative mass of the industrial reserve army increases therefore with the potential energy of wealth. But the greater this reserve army in proportion to the active labour army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated surplus population, whose misery is in inverse ratio to its torment of labour. The more extensive, finally, the lazarus layers of the working class, and the industrial reserve army, the greater is official pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation. Like all other laws it is modified in its working by many circumstances, the analysis of which does not concern us here." - Capital, Vol. 1, Ch. 25

The greater the productive forces of society under capitalism, the more unemployed there will be. And nobody can rise up like the unemployed! Look at the tremendous role unemployed people and youth in particular have played in North Africa.

[DaringMehring]

Thank you andyok. It's amazing how many so-called socialists and Marxists apparently don't believe the fundamentals of the material necessity and inevitability of socialism.

Whether we will see revolutions very soon is open to question -- but given the unemployment rates around the world (near Great Depression levels), the foreclosure rates, the state of constant war by NATO & the USA, the austerity measures, etc. why would any socialist dismiss revolution? -- but certainly if not in the short run, then the long run, capitalism is done. Capitalism is not sustainable or static. It intensifies and morphs. "Capitalism sows the seeds of its own destruction."

[bailey_187]

I think OP has a raging clue

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