Capitalism - Capitalism

[Turnoviseous]

Capitalism

The socio-economic system where social relations are based on commodities for exchange, in particular private ownership of the means of production and on the exploitation of wage labor .

Wage labor is the labour process in capitalist society: the owners of the means of production (the bourgeoisie) buy the labour power of those who do not own means of production (the proletariat), and use it to increase the value of their property (capital). In pre-capitalist societies, the labour of the producers was rendered to the ruling class by traditional obligations or sheer force, rather than as a “free” act of purchase and sale as in capitalist society.

Value is increased through the appropriation of surplus value from wage labor. In societies which produce beyond the necessary level of subsistence, there is a social surplus, i.e. people produce more than they need for immediate reproduction. In capitalism, surplus value is appropriated by the capitalist class by extending the working day beyond necessary labour time. That extra labor is used by the capitalist for profit; used in whatever ways they choose.

The main classes under capitalism are the proletariat (the sellers of labour power) and the bourgeoisie (the buyers of labour power) . The value of every product is divided between wages and profit, and there is an irreconcilable class struggle over the division of this product.

Capitalism is one of a series of socio-economics systems, each of which are characterised by quite different class relations: tribal society, also referred to as “primitive communism”, ancient or “slave” society, and feudalism. It is the breakdown of all traditional relationships, and the subordination of relations to the “cash nexus” which characterises capitalism. The transcendence of the class antogonisms of capitalism, replacing the domination of the market by planned, cooperative labour, leads to socialism and communism.

Historical Development: Capitalism develops through various stages. Since capital is both a pre-condition and outcome of capitalism, a period of primitive accumulation marks the beginning of capitalism; this may involve outright theft and plunder, and in particular the creation of a class of people who no longer own any means of production — a proletariat.

By freeing the labour process from traditional forms and expanding labour cooperation through world trade, capitalism initiates a rapid transformation in the labour process and promotes the development of science and technology. Meanwhile, religion and kinship ties are continuously undermined. Capital is built up in a few countries at the expense of other countries which are used as sources of cheap labour and raw materials.

The competition between millions of small-scale producers which is characteristic of the early days of capitalism, leads to the concentration of capital in the hands of just a few as a more efficient means of production. At a certain point (the beginning of the 20th-century), the entire globe has been divided up between a few great powers. Thus begins the final stage in the development of capitalism, imperialism, characterised by the domination of the banks, the formation of large multi-national corporations, by war and revolution.

The free market that had been envisioned by Adam Smith was shown impossible by the late 19th and early 20th century, when monopolies dominated nations causing massive Economic collapses in the 1890s, a world production crisis during World War I, and the worldwide depression in the 1930s. Thereafter national, and later international, regulation of the capitalist marketplace became necessary (SEC, International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, etc.); while the growth of militarization remains a necessity to expend excess production. For example, the United States having overspent the Soviet Union in militarization, in the last decade of the 20th century continued to create wars throughout the world — Panama, Iraq, Bosnia, etc. — unleashing double and triple the firepower in all of World War II. After the incredible expenditure of vast munitions and weapons (over $300 billion per year), the subjugated and destroyed nations are then offered contracts and infiltrated by capitalist business for the process of "rebuilding".

The Destruction of Capitalism: In capitalist society the working-class continues to grow, and ownership over the means of production continually dwindles into fewer and fewer hands. One example of this is the stock market, where the finance banks emphasize that "all workers" can own a piece of various companies. In fact, through offering "ownership" of these companies to more people, financial oligarchies are able to gain greater control over these companies by diluting the ownership amongst an unorganized group while also extracting capital from this large group for further investment. For example, a bank need only own 10 or 15 percent of a certain company to have an enormous controlling interest over that company, so long as the vast majority of stocks in that company are owned by thousands and tens of thousands of different people, people who do not have the time to attend shareholder meetings and are not united and unorganized on how to exert control over the company.

Furthermore in capitalist society, the value of labor increases while laborers continually receive a smaller portion of that value they create. The selling of labor itself is continually reduced from something that is sold on a monthly or yearly basis to something that is sold day by day, and hour by hour, peace-mail or in short term contracts. As a result, the income gap grows continually larger. For example in the United States, from 1988-1998, income for the poorest 20 percent of the population rose a meager $110 to $12,990. For the richest 20 percent it increased by $17,870 to $137,480 — a dollar increase 162 times greater. (Data according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute, checked with U.S. Census data; January, 1999).

Capitalist ideology attempts to refute Marxism on the basis that the biggest class in capitalist society is the "middle-class". This class conception however is based purely on economic wealth (two cars in the garage, an income of x amount of dollars, etc.) and not on that person's actual relations to the means of production (See definition on class ). The enormous majority of the population in a capitalist society is proletarian — however through imperialism some highly specialized proletarians (from executive officers to autoworkers, information technology workers to industrial foremen, etc.) are paid very well (not by the full value of what they actually produce, but by a higher percentage of that value when compared to unskilled workers and workers in nations subjugated to imperialist exploitation).

In order for capitalism to function correctly, the petty-bourgeois class must be in existence. This is one of the great contradictions in capitalist society, because on the one hand while capitalist production continually pushes small-business people out of the market (for example, the owner of the general store, vegetable shop, small grocery store owner — all are wiped out by corporations who establish enormous shopping centers to meet a large variety of consumer needs, with products of higher quality at a cheaper price); while on the other hand capitalism cannot survive without a class of people establishing new businesses to fill new consumer needs; and from a very select few of those businesses to recruit new bourgeois, forming large corporations (in United States this is referred to as the "American dream").

The ultimate failure of capitalism is brought about by capitalist production itself — the further technology advances, the more expensive and powerful are the machines needed for production, while at the same time, as a result of technological advances, products produced by more efficient machines become cheaper and cheaper. This has the effect of firstly driving the petty-bourgeoisie into extinction (who cannot afford to constantly upgrade their productive forces, while their products continually become cheaper (the reason they are heavily subsidized by advanced capitalist governments); and further the creation of larger corporations, which in turn must not only shrink internally to maintain "efficiency", but must also merge with other companies, forming multinational conglomerates, etc. The further this process continues, production becomes increasingly centralized, and when controlled by the capitalist, the more oppressive and backward production becomes (Microsoft at the end of the 20th century). These technological advances will inevitably lead to either the common destruction of humanity (a third world war) or socialist revolution, a democratic society where the means of production and distribution will be controlled by the majority.




(Edited by Turnoviseous at 1:37 am on Sep. 3, 2002)

[Turnoviseous]

Class

A group of people sharing common relations to labor and the means of production.

"In the process of production, human beings work not only upon nature, but also upon one another. They produce only by working together in a specified manner and reciprocally exchanging their activities. In order to produce, they enter into definite connections and relations to one another, and only within these social connections and relations does their influence upon nature operate — i.e., does production take place.

"These social relations between the producers, and the conditions under which they exchange their activities and share in the total act of production, will naturally vary according to the character of the means of production.

Karl Marx
Wage Labour and Capital
Chpt. 5: The Nature and Growth of Capital

The notion of class, as it is used by Marxists, differs radically from the notion of class as used in bourgeois social theory. According to modern capitalist thinking, class is an abstract universal defined by the common attributes of its members (i.e., all who make less than $20,000 a year constitute a "lower" class); categories and conceptions that have an existence prior to and independent of the people who make up the class.

For dialectical materialism however, the notion of class includes the development of collective consciousness in a class — arising from the material basis of having in common relations to the labour process and the means of production.

Gender and Race: Gender and race issues are often compared to class, but gender and race struggle have their own material bases in society distinct from class, but exist within the class structure. The existence of the working class is created by the capitalist mode of production — capitalism could not survive without wage labor — therefore the political emancipation of the working class as a whole can only be achieved through revolution. Capitalism can survive, and in fact necessitates the need for completely free labor, with equality between workers of all races and genders; thus women and minorities, through tremendous and painful struggles, slowly gain political emancipation through reformist movements ("women's liberation", "civil rights", etc.). The struggle of gender and race are critical political and social issues, because without these struggles and victories there can be no real unity between workers. Unity is imperative for workers to free all humanity from exploitation, so long as workers are divided, we will continue to be conquered. For further readings see the subject section on Marxism on Women.

Class Struggle: Classes emerge only at a certain stage in the development of the productive forces and the social division of labour, when there exists a social surplus of production, which makes it possible for one class to benefit by the expropriation of another. The conflict between classes there begins, founded in the division of the social surplus, and constitutes the fundamental antagonism in all class. As capitalism was just beginning to create itself, Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels explained the processes they had witnessed:

"Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of laborers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army, they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois state; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, in the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.

"The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (trade unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.

"Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lie not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by Modern Industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralize the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes.

Karl Marx
Manifesto of the Communist Party
Chpt 1: Bourgeois and Proletarians

What is the breaking point? When does the class struggle reach such a height that the increasingly backward structure of capitalist production is overthrown?

"Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past, the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that, by their periodical return, put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity -- the epidemic of over-production.

"Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand, by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

"The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labor. Wage labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.

Karl Marx
Manifesto of the Communist Party
Chpt 1: Bourgeois and Proletarians

Marx showed that all class struggle will be resolved in communism , which can be achieved only after a period of a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Class struggle underlies most political struggle. But class struggle certainly is not the only form of struggle in society! Race and gender related oppression and struggle are some of the foremost examples of struggle that is not based on class. While these struggles happen in a definite class environment, race and gender oppression is not always based on economic reasons, but also can exist as a result of archaic social understanding. For example, in the 18th-century United States, Negro slavery was imperative for the survival of the cotton and tobacco industry in the south — thus, racial discrimination had a definite class basis: the maintenance of a class of slaves. In the struggle for their emancipation, a Civil War was necessary to break Negroes out of slavery and into proletarian existence. Continuing racial discrimination in the 21st century in the United States, no longer based on economic necessity, stems from deeply ingrained social racism of the past.

Historical Overview: In “primitive communism” there may be a highly developed social division of labour and even social inequality, but no classes, because each appropriates the product their own labour in its entirety, and division of labour and distribution of the product is determined by kinship relations.

In Slave Society, the productivity of labour is such that a slave-owning class is able to hold in bondage another class of slaves who are themselves the property of the slave-owners. The status of the main class of producers themselves as property, is the characteristic of slave society; slaves are not citizens, have no rights and are not regarded in slave society as human beings at all.

In Feudal Society the Nobility expropriate a definite proportion of the product of the producing classes, such as the Serfs, according to a system of traditional obligations, which define the rights and responsibilities, most particularly in relation to the land, of all classes in feudal society. Although the peasantry own their own land, and are recognised as citizens with rights, they are not free to change their station in life which is determined by traditional systems based on kinship. The producers in feudal society own the product of their own labour, except labour given under a specific requirements determined by traditional obligations, such as having to work the Duke's estate every second Saturday, give one-tenth of their crop to the priest or fighting in the army when there's war, etc., etc.

In bourgeois society the producing class, the Proletariat, are “free labourers” in the sense that they are free from any compulsion on the part of any other person as to how, where and when they work. However, the means of production are the private property of the Bourgeoisie (or Capitalists), while the Proletariat (or Working-class) has nothing to sell but its own capacity to work (unlike the peasantry of feudal society who labour on their own land), and must sell their labour power to the capitalists in order to live. The slave-owner was obliged to feed his slaves even when he had no work for them; the peasant always had his own land to work; but the proletariat is entirely free of these restraints, and if there is no work or if wages are too low, she must starve.

In a future Communist Society private property in the means of production will be non-existent and will be used in common by the producing class, marking the dissolution of all classes. This is not, of course, to say that there would be no differences or conflicts or that there would be no division of labour — on the contrary. But the means and products of labour would not be private property, and consequently, the conflicts between different people and groups of people would not be antagonistic.

In all these social formations (and there are others, only the most classic forms are basically mentioned above) there are other classes apart form the two basic classes — the Owners of the Means of Production, and the Producers. These other classes may be intermediate between the two basic classes or may be dependent upon one or the other.

[Turnoviseous]

Marxism on Women:

http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/index.htm

[Turnoviseous]

Crisis of Capitalism

The word “crisis”, used in reference to the economic system, may be in connection with (i) a conjunctural crisis, (ii) the cyclical crisis or “business cycle”, or (iii) the historic crisis of capitalism.

A conjunctural crisis can only be discussed in connection with the specific conditions involved in the given case, and generalisation is impossible. For example, such crises can be caused by defeat in war, or by being overtaken economically by a rival power, or as a result of a weak or incompetent government, or as a result of the loss of the natural conditions for production, such as where the environment has been destroyed by industry.

It is, however, particularly the cyclical and historical crises of capitalism which have absorbed the attention of Marx and other revolutionaries over a long period of time, and have been the subject of important theoretical debate down the years.

In the opening chapters of Capital Marx explains why cyclical crises are characteristic of capitalism:

“If the interval in time between the two complementary phases of the complete metamorphosis of a commodity become too great, if the split between the sale and the purchase become too pronounced, the intimate connection between them, their oneness, asserts itself by producing - a crisis. The antithesis, use-value and value; the contradictions that private labour is bound to manifest itself as direct social labour, that a particularised concrete kind of labour has to pass for abstract human labour; the contradiction between the personification of objects and the representation of persons by things; all these antitheses and contradictions, which are immanent in commodities, assert themselves, and develop their modes of motion, in the antithetical phases of the metamorphosis of a commodity. These modes therefore imply the possibility, and no more than the possibility, of crises. The conversion of this mere possibility into a reality is the result of a long series of relations ..” [Capital, Volume I, Chapter 3]

and in one of the last fragments of Volume III:

“... production relations are converted into entities and rendered independent in relation to the agents of production, ... the interrelations, due to the world-market, its conjunctures, movements of market-prices, periods of credit, industrial and commercial cycles, alternations of prosperity and crisis, appear to them as overwhelming natural laws that irresistibly enforce their will over them, and confront them as blind necessity. ...” [Capital, Volume III, Chapter 48]

It is also said that capitalism is in permanent crisis, as capitalism is constantly transforming the labour process and revolutionising the relations of production, driven by the unresolvable contradiction between capital and labour. Or, to put it another way, capitalism is unsustainable development by its very nature.

crisis of capitalism, cyclical

The cyclical crisis of capitalism, or “business cycle” is the oscillation between boom and slump, between inflation and recession, which runs through the capitalist economy roughly every ten years.

The business cycle arises from the “distance” that opens up between the production and the consumption of a commodity, bridged by debt, and the huge mass of fictitious capital which builds up on the basis of the credit system. As this mass of paper value and speculative capital grows, the system becomes more and more unstable, the recession more devastating. Tweeking the interest rates and money supply to stave of this crisis is like driving a Formula One racing car; the central bankers of the capitalist powers are very skilled at the art, but the task of avoiding a crash gets harder and harder and fictitious capital circulates around the world in greater and greater masses.

crisis of capitalism, historic

The historic crisis of capitalism is the tendency, played out over decades and centuries, for life under capitalism to become more and more untenable, and for the social forces opposing capitalism to gradually build up.

One of the central concerns of Marx, in his study of the capitalist mode of production, was to identify and understand its inner contradictions, the source of the historic crisis which would eventually create conditions for its overthrow and replacement by a more humane and rational system of production. Marx did not come to a definitive answer on this question, and nor could he, for the answer to this question must be the work of all of humanity, not one person. Nevertheless, the search for the essential contradictions within the capitalist mode of production is a theme underlying all of Marx’s work, and he identified a number of contradictions and distinct visions of the historic crisis of capitalism.

These include: (i) the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, (ii) the concentration of capital, (iii) the growth of the proletariat; given the falling rate of profit, an historic crisis may be manifested as (iv) a crisis of realisation (underconsumption); Lenin added to these (v) war and revolution (imperialism), and in the post World War Two period, by extension of Marx’s analysis of the cyclical crisis of capitalism, we should add (vi) a catastrophic collapse of credit.

(i) the tendency of the rate of profit to fall

The tendency of the rate of profit to fall is a theory put forward by Marx to the effect that the rate of profit enjoyed by capitalists will get smaller and smaller over time. This is because capitalists use more and more developed materials and machinery in their production as the labour process becomes more and more socialised over time, and use smaller and smaller amounts of wage-labour per unit output. Thus, the “value added” is necessarily smaller in each stage of the process of production, since it is only labour-power which adds value, not machinery or materials.

(ii) the concentration of capital (or elimination of small capital)

The concentration of capital is the historical tendency for capital to be gravitate into fewer and fewer hands, or as the saying goes — “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”.

Left to itself, this process would bring about a situation where a handful of immensely rich capitalists would find themselves contronted by a vast mass of proletarians with nothing in between. Consequently, capitalists governments have long had “anti-trust” laws to protect capitalism from itself. Likewise, the US, Japan and Europe use tariffs and subsidies to protect small farmers even though cheaper food could be imported from overseas.

(iii) the growth of the proletariat

As capitalism grows, not only are there more and more workers, but the workers are increasingly involved in organising and managing every aspect of social life; increasingly, the capitalists and their hangers-on are redundant, and there is nothing to stop the workers taking over.

After the Roman Empire collapsed, it took centuries for the feudal system to establish itself in Europe and regain what had been lost in the collapse of the Roman Empire, because slave society did not generate any class capable of overthrowing the old system and rebuilding society anew. Capitalism however, not only creates the proletariat, but organises and educates the proletariat for the task of destroying capitalism itself.

This conception of the crisis of capitalism is most clearly expressed in the Communist Manifesto:

“We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.

“Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class.

“A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past, the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that, by their periodical return, put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity - the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand, by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

“The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

“But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons - the modern working class - the proletarians.

“In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed - a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.” [Communist Manifesto, Chapter 1]

and Marx and Engels conclude:

“The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labour. Wage labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.” [Communist Manifesto, Chapter 1]

As a result of the conditions of postmodern capitalism, every worker today is as much as organiser of production as a producer as such. Never has capital been as unnecessary as it is today.

The Marxist perspective should be contrasted with conception of capitalism as a system which necessarily leads simply to universal immiseration and pauperism, with growing unemployment as a result of mechanisation and automation. As most clearly expressed in the Communist Manifesto, Marx saw capitalism as a system which would revolutionise the world, and foremost among its achievements was the creation of the proletariat: “its own grave-diggers”.

“The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.” [Engels, Principles of Communism]

(iv) crisis of realisation “stagflation”

“Contradiction in the capitalist mode of production: the labourers as buyers of commodities are important for the market. But as sellers of their own commodity — labour-power — capitalist society tends to keep them down to the minimum price.

“Further contradiction: the periods in which capitalist production exerts all its forces regularly turn out to be periods of over-production, because production potentials can never be utilised to such an extent that more value may not only be produced but also realised; but the sale of commodities, the realisation of commodity-capital and thus of surplus-value, is limited, not by the consumer requirements of society in general, but by the consumer requirements of a society in which the vast majority are always poor and must always remain poor.” [Capital, Volume II, Chapter 16]

(v) imperialism — epoch of wars and revolution

Imperialism is the specific stage in the development of capitalism beginning roughly from the beginning of the 20th century, characterised by the dominance of finance capital over industrial capital and by inter-imperialist wars over markets, sources of raw materials and cheap labour.

In Marx’s day, capitalism was still in its phase of expansion, spreading from Europe to the rest of the world, conquering new markets and finding new sources of raw materials and cheap labour. Although large cartels had grown up and banks grown to significant proportions, industry was still the dominant sector of capital.

By the turn of the century, there was no more room for expansion for any capitalist in search of new markets or resources, except at the expense of competing colonial powers. In those days, colonialists jealously guarded their exclusive right to exploitation of their own colonies, and the exhaustion of new opportunities meant war between the imperialist powers and every time the balance of power changed for one or another reason, a new war would have to be launched for a redivision of the markets.

The new epoch which opened up under these conditions is called Imperialism. See Lenin’s Imperialism — the latest stage of development of capitalism for the first comprehensive analysis of the nature of imperialism. As an epoch of wars and revolution, imperialism now expresses a new form of the crisis of capitalism:— “Mutually Assured Destruction”.

Many people argue that sometime in the last few decades a new phase in the development of capitalism — beyond Imperialism — has begun; the fact that there is only one dominant imperialist power, the collapse of the USSR, the rise of communications and information technology, the services sector and “knowledge work” are cited as the basis for such theories.

(vi) catastrophic collapse of credit

A catastrophic collapse of credit is an event, like the Wall Street Crash of 1929, when a tidal wave of bankruptcies sweeps across the world, throwing millions out of work and paralysing production.

The post-War boom from 1945 — 1968 was the longest boom in history, and was based on the accumulation of vast amounts of fictitious capital. This accumulation of fictitious capital now continues on a greater scale than ever before with 98% of financial transactions on the world market not including any actual good or service.

Many people believe that the kind of analysis Marx makes of the cyclic crisis of capitalism, just as it led to the Great Depression of 1929-39, could lead to another catastrophic collapse, and that such a crisis would be of such a scope that it would take on the character of an historic crisis and stimulate not just a New Deal, but provide the social impetus for the overthrow of capitalism and reconstruction on the basis of new social relations of production.

(Edited by Turnoviseous at 5:02 am on Sep. 3, 2002)

[Chiak47]

Capitalism is one of a series of socio-economics systems, each of which are characterised by quite different class relations: tribal society, also referred to as “primitive communism”, ancient or “slave” society, and feudalism. It is the breakdown of all traditional relationships, and the subordination of relations to the “cash nexus” which characterises capitalism. The transcendence of the class antogonisms of capitalism, replacing the domination of the market by planned, cooperative labour, leads to socialism and communism.


How is a society that uses barter to gain wealth a "primitive form of Communism"?

People still get rich.They own the land they work and classes evolve.

(Edited by Chiak47 at 7:01 am on Mar. 25, 2003)

[synthesis]

How is a society that uses barter to gain wealth a "primitive form of Communism"? The Polynesian tribes - still around today - have no concept of material ownership, let alone private ownership of the means of production. I fail to see how there couldn't be any other societies which operated in the same fashion.

[Chiak47]

Your talking about tribes that have no outside relations with the free world.

Unless...ahh your thinking on a global scale.
Time to thin the herd a bit.
I can just Imagine the people in Chicago having to resort to that type of governing.

[Chiak47]

The concentration of capital is the historical tendency for capital to be gravitate into fewer and fewer hands, or as the saying goes — “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”.

I call bullshit on this one.It's all about using your smarts at the right time and the right place.

Even if this was true-the logic at hand is take it away from everyone and only let a few ride to the top?
Elitism pure and simple


(Edited by Chiak47 at 7:26 am on Mar. 25, 2003)

[sc4r]

Fantastic posts turno. :-)