jdhoch
19th February 2012, 00:15
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Marx communism was not to be the goal for ethical reasons; rather, Marx viewed the transition from capitalism to socialism as being justified on historical grounds -- with full communism being the end of humanity's historical progression leading into history proper.
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For Marx, the crux of capitalism's doom is a concept known as the tendency for the rate of profit to fall (TRPF). This concept may be foreign to some, but the TRPF finds a fitting sibling in the law of diminishing returns discussed in mainstream economics. For Marx, the TRPF is the key for why capitalism is an unsustainable system. In order to deal with the TRPF, capitalists would use countervailing influences such as bailouts, credit expansion, foreign trade, and reducing wages in order to postpone the inevitable collapse of capitalism -- in other words, capitalists would use counteracting tactics to effectively kick the can down the road
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To say the least, one might argue that Marx did not foresee the great lengths that capitalists would go in ingeniously crafting innovative countervailing influences to deter the TRPF. One might also argue that the capitalists found their respective "thermonuclear device" of countervailing influences in the form of Keynesian monetary policy. Keynesianism is pretty much the atomic bomb of counteracting influences to the TRPF. Whereas Marx may have viewed capitalism's collapse as a superstructural phenomenon as being near in the future, arguably Keynesian monetary policy, overpopulation, credit expansion, and foreign trade have extended capitalism's course for decades -- in the words of economist Nouriel Roubini, delaying the "final day of reckoning".
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Even then though, for Marx capitalism does not collapse thereby necessarily bringing about socialism; Marx did recognize alternatives to socialism in the historical progression; I've previously mentioned alternatives including barbarism and extinction. In theory, for Marx capitalism could endure to such a point where by virtue of man's desire to survive, the capitalist system becomes impractical. The severity of crises increases over time to a breaking point. At that point, the capitalist superstructure has become so weakened that it is a mere frail shell of what it once was.
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One may contend that the history and collapse of the USSR and free-market reforms in China and Cuba suggest that Marx was wrong. However, in considering the historic superstructural progression from ancient society to feudalism to capitalism going forward to socialism, the spearhead of the developing transition from capitalism to socialism would probably not occur in Russia or China, but rather in the US and Western Europe...the cutting edge of the historical process. If it is true (per Marx's theory) that no superstructure collapses until all the productive forces of the superstructure have been developed, then it makes sense to say that the revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism would be expected to occur more so in the US and Western Europe, rather than in Russia or China. That being the case, the completion of such a superstructural transition may not occur for hundreds of years into the future
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Systemic Capital .com
Marx communism was not to be the goal for ethical reasons; rather, Marx viewed the transition from capitalism to socialism as being justified on historical grounds -- with full communism being the end of humanity's historical progression leading into history proper.
...
For Marx, the crux of capitalism's doom is a concept known as the tendency for the rate of profit to fall (TRPF). This concept may be foreign to some, but the TRPF finds a fitting sibling in the law of diminishing returns discussed in mainstream economics. For Marx, the TRPF is the key for why capitalism is an unsustainable system. In order to deal with the TRPF, capitalists would use countervailing influences such as bailouts, credit expansion, foreign trade, and reducing wages in order to postpone the inevitable collapse of capitalism -- in other words, capitalists would use counteracting tactics to effectively kick the can down the road
...
To say the least, one might argue that Marx did not foresee the great lengths that capitalists would go in ingeniously crafting innovative countervailing influences to deter the TRPF. One might also argue that the capitalists found their respective "thermonuclear device" of countervailing influences in the form of Keynesian monetary policy. Keynesianism is pretty much the atomic bomb of counteracting influences to the TRPF. Whereas Marx may have viewed capitalism's collapse as a superstructural phenomenon as being near in the future, arguably Keynesian monetary policy, overpopulation, credit expansion, and foreign trade have extended capitalism's course for decades -- in the words of economist Nouriel Roubini, delaying the "final day of reckoning".
...
Even then though, for Marx capitalism does not collapse thereby necessarily bringing about socialism; Marx did recognize alternatives to socialism in the historical progression; I've previously mentioned alternatives including barbarism and extinction. In theory, for Marx capitalism could endure to such a point where by virtue of man's desire to survive, the capitalist system becomes impractical. The severity of crises increases over time to a breaking point. At that point, the capitalist superstructure has become so weakened that it is a mere frail shell of what it once was.
...
One may contend that the history and collapse of the USSR and free-market reforms in China and Cuba suggest that Marx was wrong. However, in considering the historic superstructural progression from ancient society to feudalism to capitalism going forward to socialism, the spearhead of the developing transition from capitalism to socialism would probably not occur in Russia or China, but rather in the US and Western Europe...the cutting edge of the historical process. If it is true (per Marx's theory) that no superstructure collapses until all the productive forces of the superstructure have been developed, then it makes sense to say that the revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism would be expected to occur more so in the US and Western Europe, rather than in Russia or China. That being the case, the completion of such a superstructural transition may not occur for hundreds of years into the future
...
Systemic Capital .com