Capitalism's Inevitable Collapse

[Ilyich]

I am confused. What, according to Marx, are the internal contradictions within capitalism that will lead to its inevitable collapse?

[Broletariat]

Capitalism will not inevitably collapse. It can only occur out of a working-class revolution, a conscious revolution to seize the means of production and institute Socialism.

Now, as for the contradictions within Capitalism (I like to refer to them as antagonisms, contradictions can't exist.), there are quite a few. I would recommend reading Kapital to get a full understanding of them, as I feel that if I tried to explain them it would be a bit lacking.

[Dumb]

Every economic system has collapsed and been replaced by something else. While the rise of socialism is far from guaranteed, the fall of capitalism is inevitable. We haven't reached the saturation point yet with regards to industrialization and trade, and it's kind of hard to maintain a system predicated on constant growth once one has run out of new areas for said growth.

That being said, I agree that socialism can only rise out of a working-class revolution. I just think it's a false dichotomy to say that we will only have either capitalism or socialism; capitalism could fall on its own without working class revolution, and we could end up with a new economic system that's even worse.

[Broletariat]

Every economic system has collapsed and been replaced by something else. While the rise of socialism is far from guaranteed, the fall of capitalism is inevitable. We haven't reached the saturation point yet with regards to industrialization and trade, and it's kind of hard to maintain a system predicated on constant growth once one has run out of new areas for said growth.

That being said, I agree that socialism can only rise out of a working-class revolution. I just think it's a false dichotomy to say that we will only have either capitalism or socialism; capitalism could fall on its own without working class revolution, and we could end up with a new economic system that's even worse.

So what economic class would impose this new economic society? What would the property form look like?

In Feudalism it was pretty clear the burghers were the next ruling class, and we saw their property form already.

[Tim Finnegan]

I am confused. What, according to Marx, are the internal contradictions within capitalism that will lead to its inevitable collapse?
The conflict between labour and capital- that is, the drive to dominate and exploit labour on the part of capital, and the resistance to this drive by labour- which, according to Marx, must inevitably reach such a point that labour can only advance itself by making a revolution against capital, and in doing so dissolving the social relations that constitute capitalism. When compromise with the capital becomes impossible, labour must necessarily seize the means of production or fall, and in seizing the means of production as a class- that is, through the establishing of direct and democratic management of production, and not simply by deferring management to a "workers' party"- must dissolve the social relations of capitalism, social relations which exist to allow the exploitation of labour by capital, and establish new, communist social relations in their place.


Now, as for the contradictions within Capitalism (I like to refer to them as antagonisms, contradictions can't exist.)
Contradictions can't exist within a stable system, yes, but the Marxian conception of capital is explicitly an unstable one.

[Dumb]

So what economic class would impose this new economic society? What would the property form look like?

In Feudalism it was pretty clear the burghers were the next ruling class, and we saw their property form already.

I don't know.

However, let's posit a hypothetical society in which production is mechanized and automated to the point that most workers become redundant to the productive process. The new automated productive forces are still owned by the bourgeoisie - maybe held in common, maybe not. (The way they like to keep things in the family, common ownership within the bourgeois class wouldn't surprise me).

You might have the stray worker supervising machinery, maybe driving product from one place to another, but these workers only comprise about 1-10% of the population. Their services are a convenience that the bourgeoisie (themselves about 1% of the population) could live without, but would rather not out of sheer laziness. Meanwhile, the remaining 90%+ survive as servants to the bourgeoisie - maybe keeping their homes clean, getting them dressed, etc. - and they do this work in return for housing and food (both produced by the new automated productive forces).

Because the 90%+ aren't paid in currency anymore (de facto, perhaps even de jure slaves), there's no consumer base sufficient to support a capitalist market - so production, run by the bourgeoisie, is directed based on need. This eliminates profits, prices, markets, and surplus value, and therefore is no longer capitalism - and yet it's not communism.

Basically, automated production + anarchy or communism for the bourgeoisie + slavery for everybody else.

This is admittedly a far-fetched scenario. Then again, capitalism as we know it today would probably seem very far-fetched to Julius Caesar, and the Roman Empire would likewise seem very far-fetched to Lucy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(Australopithecus)). I'm not saying that the scenario I posit is what we'll end up with should capitalism fall without a working class revolution; I just want to point out that, without knowing what direction productive forces will go over the following decades, centuries and millenia, there are many possibilities as to what economic systems we might see in the future. It's not just capitalism vs socialism.

EDIT: If you want, scratch that whole idea of that 1-10% still being working-class. You can also say those drivers, machine supervisors etc. are also de facto slaves - it works either way.

[Broletariat]

Contradictions can't exist within a stable system, yes, but the Marxian conception of capital is explicitly an unstable one.

No, contradictions can't exist in reality.

You cannot be a dog and not be a dog at the same time.

[Dumb]

No, contradictions can't exist in reality.

You cannot be a dog and not be a dog at the same time.

No, but you can require a dog and prohibit a dog at the same time.

Perhaps a better term would be "paradox of capitalism," but alas Marx gave us "contradiction."

[Broletariat]

No, but you can require a dog and prohibit a dog at the same time.

Perhaps a better term would be "paradox of capitalism," but alas Marx gave us "contradiction."


I know what he meant, an antagonism is the best word to describe it. I'm just nitpicky >_>

[Tim Finnegan]

No, contradictions can't exist in reality.

You cannot be a dog and not be a dog at the same time.
"Contradiction", in this case, does not refer to a logical contradiction, such as an illogical taxonomical categorisation, but to the fact of two contradictory forces, such as the collision of two continental plates moving in opposite directions, which must necessarily resolve themselves in some manner

[28350]

...like an antagonism

[Klaatu]

I know this is just a simple-minded response to the question of "capitalism's collapse," but I would suggest looking closely at current events, especially in the USA: the molestation of workers' rights; the wholesale theft of the nation's wealth by the opulent class; the endless manipulation of facts by those in power (especially such originating at Fox News); the forceful propaganda of the juggernaut war-machine (under the guise of international 'terror' threats); and so on...

This, in my opinion, will lead to the downfall of the capitalist system, because there will be sufficient numbers of enlightened people that will finally demand change.

[Tim Finnegan]

...like an antagonism
Both words are useful, in different situations. "Antagonism" refers to the relationship between labour and capital, "contradiction" refers to the fundamental presence of that antagonistic relationship in capitalism.

[ZeroNowhere]

Marx on the falling rate of profit:


Beyond a certain point, the development of the powers of production becomes a barrier for capital; hence the capital relation a barrier for the development of the productive powers of labour. When it has reached this point, capital, i.e. wage labour, enters into the same relation towards the development of social wealth and of the forces of production as the guild system, serfdom, slavery, and is necessarily stripped off as a fetter. The last form of servitude assumed by human activity, that of wage labour on one side, capital on the other, is thereby cast off like a skin, and this casting-off itself is the result of the mode of production corresponding to capital; the material and mental conditions of the negation of wage labour and of capital, themselves already the negation of earlier forms of unfree social production, are themselves results of its production process. The growing incompatibility between the productive development of society and its hitherto existing relations of production expresses itself in bitter contradictions, crises, spasms.

[...]

These contradictions lead to explosions, cataclysms, crises, in which by momentaneous suspension of labour and annihilation of a great portion of capital the latter is violently reduced to the point where it can go on. These contradictions, of course, lead to explosions, crises, in which momentary suspension of all labour and annihilation of a great part of the capital violently lead it back to the point where it is enabled [to go on] fully employing its productive powers without committing suicide [this first sentence seems to have been repeated]. Yet, these regularly recurring catastrophes lead to their repetition on a higher scale [eg. with a higher composition of capital], and finally to its violent overthrow. There are moments in the developed movement of capital which delay this movement other than by crises; such as e.g. the constant devaluation of a part of the existing capital: the transformation of a great part of capital into fixed capital which does not serve as agency of direct production; unproductive waste of a great portion of capital etc. (Productively employed capital is always replaced doubly, as we have seen, in that the positing of value by a productive capital presupposes a counter-value. The unproductive consumption of capital replaces it on one side, annihilates it on the other. That the fall of the rate of profit can further be delayed by the omission of existing deductions from profit, e.g. by a lowering of taxes, reduction of ground rent etc., is actually not our concern here, although of importance in practice, for these are themselves portions of the profit under another name, and are appropriated by persons other than the capitalists themselves.

Ultimately, though, crises are a manifestation of the entire edifice of capitalist contradictions; the separation of purchase and sale (as the form taken by crises is that of overproduction), of value and use-value, of production and consumption, of individual and society (and hence also subject and object) insofar as private labour becomes incapable of being realized as such because it cannot be made social, and of labour and capital (itself simply a specialized form of the previous) insofar as capital develops in a manner independent of the living labour hired, and crises constitute the reassertion of the unity of capital and labour, and the dependence of capital on labour, insofar as they are a result of a decrease in the amount of living labour hired relatively.

In capitalism - a system based on alienation - society and the individual, subject and object and so on take a separated, mutually exclusive and antagonistic form, each alienated from the other, so that the unity of each side must be asserted through crises, where their separation becomes palpable and is manifested as a deficiency. From existing independently in mutually exclusive form, they take the form of an existent contradiction. Only in socialism are these contradictions reconciled practically, as Marx puts it in the 1844 manuscripts, and hence placed in a positive unity rather than a negative one of mutual antagonism. This itself is a result of the fact that, in crisis, the divorce of individual and society, the alienation of object from subject and so on appear to the proletariat in the form of a lack (the feeling of separation is need), and hence the proletariat are forced to reconcile them by positing themselves as society in other words as the state (because 'society' still has an abstract, one-sided form), appropriating the appropriators, and by doing this abolishing the abstractly contradictory form taken by each side.

Incidentally, Marx commented that an advance in production which lead to an absolute and significant reduction in the labour-time employable would end up leading to a revolution, due to its essentially instituting an extreme and accelerated version of the consequences of the falling rate of profit (crisis of overaccumulation). As such, I doubt he would have been particularly interested in the idea of a capitalism which reduces this to an even more drastic degree.


Perhaps a better term would be "paradox of capitalism," but alas Marx gave us "contradiction."I think that comparisons with the old paradoxes could be made, but they aren't equivalent to contradictions, but rather display the insufficiency of abstract opposition, as exists in capitalism until unity is asserted forcefully in crisis.

"In its mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary."


"Antagonism" refers to the relationship between labour and capitalTo be honest, I'm not sure that 'antagonism' is an adequate description of the total nature of the relationship of labour to capital, given that capitalism is simply labour in its abstract form anyway.


Every economic system has collapsed and been replaced by something else.I recall that Henryk Grossman begun his book by pointing out that Sismondi and such had come up with the idea that capitalism would fall and be replaced with another form of society, but based this only on historical analogy and hence no real basis, whereas Marx's achievement was to give this conclusion a scientific basis.


It can only occur out of a working-class revolution, a conscious revolution to seize the means of production and institute Socialism.Technically speaking, there's no real reason why a proletarian revolution would be a conscious attempt to institute socialism, and Marx was quite clear that socialism is an inevitable result of proletarian political dictatorship, which needn't and probably won't have much to do with socialist views from the get-go so much as concrete class interests.


Now as for myself, I do not claim to have discovered either the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me, bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this struggle between the classes, as had bourgeois economists their economic anatomy. My own contribution was 1. to show that the existence of classes is merely bound up with certain historical phases in the development of production; 2. that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3. that this dictatorship itself constitutes no more than a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.

[el_chavista]

Contradictions are the soul of the revolutionary politics:


collective working vs personal appropriation of profits
capitalist want of lowering labour wages and having their workers buying the commodities produced
liberal increasing of profits without risking money in industrial inversions

etc.