Capitalism Collapse?

[Tablo]

eDgya5clTCY

What do you think of his conclusions? Do you think we really are on the brink of either Socialism or Barbarism? Also, what do you think of his criticism of Marx? Is he right in his reasoning for the collapse of economic systems being internal contradictions?

I personally think he has a lot of valid points. I'm unsure about the future of capitalism. I don't really know if it can continue to keep itself alive or not.

[Jimmie Higgins]

eDgya5clTCY

What do you think of his conclusions? Do you think we really are on the brink of either Socialism or Barbarism?Brink? No. But ultimately these are the two likely results of this system.


Also, what do you think of his criticism of Marx? Is he right in his reasoning for the collapse of economic systems being internal contradictions?I can't watch the video, can you summarize or paraphrase?


I personally think he has a lot of valid points. I'm unsure about the future of capitalism. I don't really know if it can continue to keep itself alive or not.I'm at the end of my first trip abroad right now and typing this a few blocks from constitution square in Athens Greece. Many people here as well as economists and bankers think/know that default/bankruptcy of some kind is inevitable in the very near-term. They capitalists don't desire this, but can live with it and still profit in general if it happens on their terms. So they pushed massive and rapid austerity on the population WHILE knowing they'd eventually go bankrupt anyway, they are trying to manage the collapse by disorienting and demoralizing people and removing democratic means of popular resistance (such as now allowing cops to go into campuses or allowing international banking institutions to over-ride local laws). In other words, crisis is inevitable in capitalism, but self-destruction is not. Where the subjective comes in is how workers and radical workers respond and if they allow the crisis to be managed on their backs or if they fight in their own interests. That is not automatic and is why we need to try and build movements, class-consciousness, and the ability of our fellow workers to fight back and run society democratically from below.

[CAleftist]

I'm at the end of my first trip abroad right now and typing this a few blocks from constitution square in Athens Greece. Many people here as well as economists and bankers think/know that default/bankruptcy of some kind is inevitable in the very near-term. They capitalists don't desire this, but can live with it and still profit in general if it happens on their terms. So they pushed massive and rapid austerity on the population WHILE knowing they'd eventually go bankrupt anyway, they are trying to manage the collapse by disorienting and demoralizing people and removing democratic means of popular resistance (such as now allowing cops to go into campuses or allowing international banking institutions to over-ride local laws). In other words, crisis is inevitable in capitalism, but self-destruction is not. Where the subjective comes in is how workers and radical workers respond and if they allow the crisis to be managed on their backs or if they fight in their own interests. That is not automatic and is why we need to try and build movements, class-consciousness, and the ability of our fellow workers to fight back and run society democratically from below.

Bolding is mine. To expand upon this point, the social relations of capitalistic society will not "automatically" wither away-if anything, the tendency is the expression of exponentially more reactionary ideologies during times of intense crisis. It is up to us to help organize and agitate for revolutionary goals.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

To add to CAleftist Wallerstein says that change in capitalism so far has been due more to changes within the system, immanent to the system than outside it. He said 1968 was more important than 1917-the Russian Revolution was rolled back while 1968 is still with us.

Wallerstein says that we are entering a period which is different. The question isn't whether capitalism will end, it's ending no matter what we do, but the system is in a period of what he calls "bifurcation", a branching of possibilities.The system has been in crisis since the 1970s, with the "world revolution of 1968" being a harbinger of this.W would like to move to a society which is "more or less egalitarian" but there could be another alternate for a post-capitalist world (he doesn't say this but he seems to imply it would be a deeply authoritarian world). In such a situation a small push from outside can have large effects on the direction the system moves in.

W said he respects Marx greatly but felt some of his thinking is now outdated. He disagrees w/Marx in saying all change is necessarily internal to the system.He says capitalism is doomed within the next 40 to 50 years (if I remember).What happens next is up to us.

This video made a stir on Leftist Trainspotters.

[Tablo]

I can't watch the video, can you summarize or paraphrase?
Well, he said Marx believed the shift from one economic system to the next is the result of enlightenment. Like, that capitalism will be destroyed because people will realize there is a better option. The professor being interviewed says that capitalism will collapse because of internal contradictions.

Sorry, I can't explain the video better. I might not be accurate at all in my description. I'm doped up on opiates and can't think straight.

[Le Rouge]

I see no hope for communism/socialism. Maybe anarchism or something new.
The reason is since media has been bashing communism for so long, almost nobody support this. Sad but true.

[$lim_$weezy]

Ehhh his criticism of Marx is very odd. Marx was too deterministic yet put too much emphasis on conscious revolution? As far as I know, Marx did not really expound a fully developed theory of capitalist breakdown in any case...

[Jimmie Higgins]

I see no hope for communism/socialism. Maybe anarchism or something new.
The reason is since media has been bashing communism for so long, almost nobody support this. Sad but true.They've been bashing anarchism for just as long and it was a much bigger "bogeyman" than socialism in the late 1800s. The difference is the cold war and that anarchist organizing has been a shadow of its former self since the time after the Spanish Civil War.

At any rate, revolutionary anarchists and socialists both fight for "communism".

[citizen of industry]

Ehhh his criticism of Marx is very odd. Marx was too deterministic yet put too much emphasis on conscious revolution? As far as I know, Marx did not really expound a fully developed theory of capitalist breakdown in any case...

Yeah, it's like this guy starts out rejecting Marxism, then proceeds to build a criticism of capitalism complete with the same internal contradictions already analyzed by Marx.

Then he posits egalitarianism as one possibility, or "something else" as another. Hmm...and how does he see this egalitarian society coming about? Just by magic? Capitalism goes kabloom and there it is? The bourgeoisie hold up their hands and go "oops, it doesn't work anymore. Let's build a society based on human needs in harmony with our environment. Why didn't we think of this before?"

It's going to take a revolution, or something like fascism will come in.

[ZeroNowhere]

Bolding is mine. To expand upon this point, the social relations of capitalistic society will not "automatically" wither away-if anything, the tendency is the expression of exponentially more reactionary ideologies during times of intense crisis. It is up to us to help organize and agitate for revolutionary goals.
To be frank, if revolution is contingent upon the rhetorical and persuasive powers of us revolutionary leftists, capitalism will never be ended.


To the crude conditions of capitalistic production and the crude class conditions correspond crude theories. The solution of the social problems, which as yet lay hidden in undeveloped economic conditions, the Utopians attempted to evolve out of the human brain. Society presented nothing but wrongs; to remove these was the task of reason. It was necessary, then, to discover a new and more perfect system of social order and to impose this upon society from without by propaganda, and, wherever it was possible, by the example of model experiments.
I suppose so.


Well, he said Marx believed the shift from one economic system to the next is the result of enlightenment. Like, that capitalism will be destroyed because people will realize there is a better option.No, Marx was not a Revleft member. What Marx said was:


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. Yet, these regularly recurring catastrophes lead to their repetition on a higher scale, 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.


Do you think we really are on the brink of either Socialism or Barbarism?
I think that 'socialism or barbarism' is a nice slogan rather than something with a concrete theoretical basis.

[piet11111]

I think that 'socialism or barbarism' is a nice slogan rather than something with a concrete theoretical basis.

how so ?

When i look at Greece i can see the reality of that "slogan" playing out where the barbarism is hoisted on the working class as we speak.
I have no reason to assume we will avoid a similar fate.

[Thirsty Crow]

Well, he said Marx believed the shift from one economic system to the next is the result of enlightenment. Like, that capitalism will be destroyed because people will realize there is a better option. The professor being interviewed says that capitalism will collapse because of internal contradictions.

Another confirmation that bashing ol' Karl on grounds that are as firm as air is still fashionable.
No, seriously, it's quite ridiculous how supposedly educated folks can stubbornly foster gross misconceptions.

[MustCrushCapitalism]

I myself don't see Marxism-Leninism as making a comeback, but Socialism in some form will come, more likely the Latin American Socialist Populism kind of thing we're seeing from those like Hugo Chavez.

Capitalism will inevitably collapse in time, however.

[aristos]

Capitalism will inevitably collapse in time, however.

Not necessarily, it could just transform - keeping the repression going.
Unless a devastating natural catastrophe happens.

[Tablo]

Another confirmation that bashing ol' Karl on grounds that are as firm as air is still fashionable.
No, seriously, it's quite ridiculous how supposedly educated folks can stubbornly foster gross misconceptions.
Yeah, I'm not wanting to bash Marx. Also I wrote that while messed up on painkillers because I fucked up my leg. If you want to make a point then type out a real response like ZeroNowhere. I'm never going to learn a thing if you don't try to teach me.

[ZeroNowhere]

Not necessarily, it could just transform - keeping the repression going.
It's transformed a lot. Didn't work.

Well, at least insofar as the aim is to abolish the tendency towards collapse rather than simply staving off the next crisis for some time, which it has done through the development of the credit system and so on.


When i look at Greece i can see the reality of that "slogan" playing out where the barbarism is hoisted on the working class as we speak.
I have no reason to assume we will avoid a similar fate.If you're referring to extensive state measures to cut social and individual wages, and the repression of dissent caused by this, then yeah, 'we' have already suffered such a fate, at least in places like the UK, US and so on. Still, capitalism has always been 'barbaric', no less in its birth than in its senility, so that doesn't really get us very far.

[piet11111]

Well i look at it from the perspective that today is "normal" and we can only expect barbarism of the kind being forced on Greece to be forced on us.

Socialism or capitalist austerity are the options on the table (but barbarism sounds more accurate for what is in store)

As capitalism lacks new markets to conquer it doesn't have anyplace to go to unless it destroys capital so that it can grow anew and to the working class the effect might be similar to the barbarian sackings of rome.

[CAleftist]

I hate the implied argument, "We need to have socialism, or otherwise capitalism will collapse into barbarism."

Capitalism IS barbaric, always has been. And any progressive expressions that capitalism had in the past have transformed into very reactionary expressions.

Just look at the way workers around the world are treated today.