ICC leaflet on the economic crisis

[Alf]

The International Communist Current has published an international leaflet on the economic crisis.
That means that we will be trying to dsitribute it as widely as possible in a number of different languages and countries.
The PDF can be downloaded here:
http://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2008/10/crisis_leaflet. Feel free to print copies and help us distribute it!

[Bilan]

Thanks, ALF!
Feel free to post any other ICC (or other) articles, videos, etc. on the economic crisis in the economics thread (Link is in my signature)

[Die Neue Zeit]

At least there's no mention of 1914 and the usual ICC rant on "decadence."

[Devrim]

At least there's no mention of 1914 and the usual ICC rant on "decadence."

Actually Jacob, the concept of decadence is not an invention of the ICC, but was part of the theoretical basis of the Comintern, and was seen as an integral part of revolutionary Marxism

Devrim

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ I'm aware of its origins with Rosa Luxemburg, actually. I'm also aware of its influence on Trotsky's woefully flawed "transitional" program. On the other hand, "decadence" as a phenomenon, if I were to agree with it, would be more applicable to the dawn of neo-liberalism (falling rates of profit and economic growth causing the abandonment of the gold standard, the turn to monetarism, the turn to privatization for that little extra $$$, the de-regulation of financial markets for more of the little extra $$$, etc.). The post-war boom discredited the notion that "decadence" started in 1914.

[Pogue]

Did anyone get any of that?

[black magick hustla]

^^^ I'm aware of its origins with Rosa Luxemburg, actually. I'm also aware of its influence on Trotsky's woefully flawed "transitional" program. On the other hand, "decadence" as a phenomenon, if I were to agree with it, would be more applicable to the dawn of neo-liberalism (falling rates of profit and economic growth causing the abandonment of the gold standard, the turn to monetarism, the turn to privatization for that little extra $$$, the de-regulation of financial markets for more of the little extra $$$, etc.). The post-war boom discredited the notion that "decadence" started in 1914.

Actually, I discussed with some ICC people the post-war boom. It does not disprove "decadence", it was just a little bump in the road. The tendency has always been decadence, and this can be seen from the failure of national liberation movements in Africa, to the global economic crisis today.

Decadence existed even before the COmintern. Marx had a theory of decadence - it was called the falling rate of profit.

[Leo]

Here's a bit of quotes to give an idea on Marx and Engels' historical contributions on this question. I leave it to the reader to judge where the notion of decadence originates from.


Communist Manifesto, Marx & Engels: “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 (…) Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society”.


Neue Rheinische Zeitung, May-October 1850, Marx: “While this general prosperity lasts, enabling the productive forces of bourgeois society to develop to the full extent possible within the bourgeois system, there can be no question of a real revolution. Such a revolution is only possible at a time when two factors come into conflict: the modern productive forces and the bourgeois forms of production (...) A new revolution is only possible as a result of a new crisis; but it will come, just as surely as the crisis itself”.


Correspondence to Engels in Manchester, 8 October 1858; Marx: “The proper task of bourgeois society is the creation of the world market, at least in outline, and of the production based on that market.”


Das Kapital vol 1, Marx: “The economic structure of capitalistic society has grown out of the economic structure of feudal society. The dissolution of the latter set free the elements of the former (…) Although we come across the first beginnings of capitalist production as early as the 14th or 15th century, sporadically, in certain towns of the Mediterranean, the capitalistic era dates from the 16th century. Wherever it appears, the abolition of serfdom has been long effected, and the highest development of the Middle Ages, the existence of sovereign towns, has long been on the wane (...) The prelude of the revolution that laid the foundation of the capitalist mode of production, was played in the last third of the 15th, and the first decade of the 16th century”


Das Kapital vol 3, Marx"Here the capitalist mode of production is beset with another contradiction Its historical mission is unconstrained development in geometrical progression of the productivity of human labour. It goes back on its mission whenever, as here, it checks the development of productivity. It thus demonstrates again that it is becoming senile and that it is more and more outlived"


Das Kapital vol 3, Marx: “But each specific historical form of this process further develops its material foundations and social forms. Whenever a certain stage of maturity has been reached, the specific historical form is discarded and makes way for a higher one. The moment of arrival of such a crisis is disclosed by the depth and breadth attained by the contradictions and antagonisms between the distribution relations, and thus the specific historical form of their corresponding production relations, on the one hand, and the productive forces, the production powers and the development of their agencies, on the other hand. A conflict then ensues between the material development of production and its social form”


Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx: “The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies, can be summarised as follows.

In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.

The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or – what is but a legal expression for the same thing – with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.
Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production.

No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the tasks itself arises only when the material conditions of its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.

In broad outlines Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production can be designated as progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production — antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonisms, but of one arising form the social conditions of life of the individuals; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism. This social formation brings, therefore, the prehistory of society to a close.”


Grundrisse, Marx: “Beyond a certain point, the development of the productive forces becomes a barrier to capital, and consequently the relation of capital becomes a barrier to the development of the productive forces of labour. Once this point has been reached, capital, ie wage labour, enters into the same relation to the development of social wealth and the productive forces as the guild system, serfdom and slavery did, and is, as a fetter, necessarily cast off. The last form of servility assumed by human activity, that of wage labour on the one hand and capital on the other, is thereby shed, and this shedding is itself the result of the mode of production corresponding to capital. It is precisely the production process of capital that gives rise to the material and spiritual conditions for the negation of wage labour and capital, which are themselves the negation of earlier forms of unfree social production. The growing discordance between the productive development of society and the relations of production hitherto characteristic of it, is expressed in acute contradictions, crises, convulsions”


Anti-Duhring, Engels: "every historical phase has its period of ascent and also its period of descent"

[Die Neue Zeit]

Communist Manifesto, Marx & Engels: “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 (…) Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society”.

In response:


In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and extended organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some details been antiquated.

The rest of the quotes were talking about either the business cycle or the longer credit cycles (so far always ending in a depression).

Now, as for TODAY's environment, I'm not sure how the bourgeois system can get workers out of this one:

http://linchpin.ca/content/Economy/Debt-Exploitation-Coming-Economic-Crisis


Unless you have been stuck in a cave somewhere over the past few weeks, you have no doubt heard about the financial crisis south of the border. You have also likely heard Canadian officials and business people claim that the Canadian economy is doing just fine and is immune from the US turmoil. We can hardly expect them to say other wise, not least during an election. But in fact there is more than a good chance that Canada will follow the US into a major economic crisis.

If this does happen it will not be just because financial deregulation has allowed the banks to risk our savings on the crisis-ridden financial markets. It will also not be just because investors have created new and high-risk ways to play the global financial casino. It will not even be just because the US market, where most of Canada's exports go, will have closed shop. For sure, financial deregulation and so-called “free trade” shoulder a lot of the blame for this mess. But the fundamental source of the problem goes beyond these policies. We are about to reach the limits of the economic model that has been imposed on us for the past 30 years.

This model can be called the “low wage/high debt” economic model. Beginning in the early 1980s it has come to replace the old “high wage/high production” model.

In previous credit cycles (even in the one of the WWI period), this was NEVER employed:


This brings us to the second part of the “low wage/high debt” economic model. The availability of cheap credit has allowed workers to borrow large sums of money and consume way past their means. This reason, more than any other, explains why the low-wage economy has not yet come to a grinding halt. Low mortgage interest rates, zero-percent car financing, credit cards in every wallet and a “pay day” loan shop at every corner have allowed high levels of consumption to continue even as wages are reduced. For companies this is the best of both worlds. Low wages combined with high sales mean astronomical profits. For workers this has meant insecurity at work and anxiety over soaring debts. None of this is a problem for business as long as it continues. But you don't need a PhD in economics to figure out that eventually people will not be able to make payments on their loans with decreasing wages and rising interest rates.

[Leo]

In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and extended organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some details been antiquated.

They said it as early as 1850, as quoted:


Neue Rheinische Zeitung, May-October 1850, Marx: “While this general prosperity lasts, enabling the productive forces of bourgeois society to develop to the full extent possible within the bourgeois system, there can be no question of a real revolution. Such a revolution is only possible at a time when two factors come into conflict: the modern productive forces and the bourgeois forms of production (...) A new revolution is only possible as a result of a new crisis; but it will come, just as surely as the crisis itself”.

They didn't say something as such will never happen and it's an empty idea, they said that it isn't happening now, and a succesful revolution is not possible without it.


The rest of the quotes were talking about either the business cycle or the longer credit cycles

You sure you actually know how to read? :rolleyes: