Will capitalism collapse?

[dmcauliffe09]

Honestly, no, at least not under is own weight. Russia collapsed because it was the biggest socialist economy in the world but it stood alone and had no backing from other large socialist economies. The United States is not the only capitalist nation in the world, and it therefore has something to fall back on. Capitalism now is indeed in a weakened stage, and now is the time that we must force it to collapse.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

Capitalism will collapse.
Maybe not now, but it will.

[Red Solidarity]

The only way to destroy capitalism is by way of global revolution. At least change has happened in Latin America and that should inspire us all.

[dmcauliffe09]

Capitalism will collapse.
Maybe not now, but it will.

That's easier said than done.

[Scary Monster]

Down with capitalism! As youve all said, capitalism will eventually fall. And im sure you all know what Karl Marx said (not a direct quote), put simply- Capitalism will go through many crises before it eventually collapses, no matter what is done to try to prevent this..
This is the second crisis. And with every crisis, it will get worse until the working class becomes aware and gets stirred up enough to revolt and take control. Socialism is the only way to go!

[Q]

It will never collapse under its own weight. Instead it'll try to find ways to "solve" its internal contradictions. That is, by making working people pay the price.

If capitalism would just crash and dissolve under its own failure, what would then be the point of being a socialist? The crisis only points out why it is evident to change the system.

[coda]

no, it will be averted this time, albeit to a weak teetering Capitalism which will later be taken down by a communist revolution.

[cyu]

Capitalism is just a social structure. It is propped up by people who support capitalism and it is shaken by people who oppose capitalism. The more people trying to prop it up, the more likely it will go on. The more people shaking it, the more likely it will topple over.

...the same is basically true of any social structure

[Psy]

It will never collapse under its own weight. Instead it'll try to find ways to "solve" its internal contradictions. That is, by making working people pay the price.

A near perfect storm of crises are forming on the capitalist class, really all this missing is large scale militant workers. Capitalism is melting down at a alarming rate mostly on its own, capitalism has gotten so rotten it probably won't really take much from workers to bring capitalism to its knees.

If capitalism would just crash and dissolve under its own failure, what would then be the point of being a socialist? The crisis only points out why it is evident to change the system.

That assumes capitalists won't form a new system in the evet capitalism completly fails them.

[Niemand]

The question of whether or not capitalism will collapse in the United States, at least, is a very valid one. The Dow recently closed at an 11 year low. What this means is that capitalists in the U.S. are treating Obama's bailouts and stimulus as death knells of modern capitalism and therefore we will see a crisis that will make the thirties look like a picnic. Even leading capitalists are realising this trend. George Soros said that this crisis resembles something more along the lines of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and will be far more severe than the Great Depression.

Of course, the Soviet Union wasn't anywhere near socialism at the time of its demise, but it was still scrapped entirely for what seemed much more stable at the time. Now, as the material conditions, according to Mr. Soros, are ripe for such a change in the U.S. as there is no concievable bottom for this catastrophe, should it not follow that socialism should replace our feudal capitalism? Perhaps. Things are looking so bad that even, master of inflation Paul Volcker is speculating that this crisis may well be worse than the Great Depression.


But what does all this mean to the common working man and to the prospects of real socialism in the foreseeable future? While this site is a mere microcosm of the socialist movement, it is quite simple to see that we don't appeal much to the average worker. We're all hung up on dead Russians and just spout theories and essays formulated and written almost a century ago. This appeals to the average American far less than the lies and crimes committed by the ruling class as it all seems a little too Russian and smells of Soviet oppression. What we need, in short, is a makeover.


We need to stop arguing over the same old, drawn out arguments, and focus on today. For a moment, let's forget about Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin and Kerensky. Let's focus on today. Let's formulate our own theories and ditch the old and totalitarian fantasies of long dead Leninists and Stalinists. We need new ideas because the time is now ripe for agitation. I think we'd all be surprised at just how radical the average American is becoming now that the illusion of upward mobility is gone and most are drowning in debt.

[Coggeh]

As much as I hope capitalism will collapse (and better today than tomorrow!) I don't think so. Maybe this type of capitalism will collapse but I'm sure the liberals will do their best to hold capitalism alive, even if they have to restrict it a little bit. But still, it would be capitalism again.

I don't see why people would hope on this forum that capitalism would simply collapse , their is a lack in many countries of a real socialist movement . Which poses the question Socialism or Barbarianism . Which is more likely if capitalism collapsed tomorrow .

[Greenman]

The danger, as stated above, is that a collapse of the current form of capitalism might at the current time, (with the current balance of class forces in the most important economies and lack of development of alternatives, and the deterioration of social conditions brought on by the rapacious nature of nihilistic late capitalism) lead to a relapse across wide parts of the globe to pre-capitalist conditions of feudalism or barbarism - as seen in some "failed states" at the moment. The narrative of history is not uniformly linear or progressive.

Alternatively, particularly in the advanced economies where the bulk of the global ruling class have their homes, families and material assets the temptation to exploit the fascistic tendencies of distressed elements of the other classes might prove too strong for those keen to protect their privileges, and lead to a new, technologically advanced and hyper-exploitative totalitarian form of statist neo-capitalism. When the technological means of control are available, but economic conditions lead to a serious threat to continued bourgeois rule, will the ruling class rely on the soft power controls that suffice most of the time today?
The other question is as someone raised above, about the need of the system for destruction of "surplus" elements. We know how this has been achieved in the past!
We had better hope that it is only a "war on climate change" that the governments are going to use to try and refloat economies. The question of whether either the economies or the problem of climate change will be positively or negatively affected by this likely strategy is another one.
As Rosa said, the question of Socialism or Barbarism raises its head.

[cyu]

"Socialism or barbarism?" The answer is easy: get off your butts and do something about it. We shouldn't be here speculating or predicting, we should be promoting leftist thought, discussing strategies, propaganda, and actions - saying "barbarism" is just defeatism - if you're going to be a defeatist, you might as well not come to this forum.

[Glorious Union]

It will colapse! That is my hope anyway. Whoever said we cannot hope?

[Q]

A near perfect storm of crises are forming on the capitalist class, really all this missing is large scale militant workers. Capitalism is melting down at a alarming rate mostly on its own, capitalism has gotten so rotten it probably won't really take much from workers to bring capitalism to its knees.

That assumes capitalists won't form a new system in the evet capitalism completly fails them.

Capitalists have indeed, under heavy pressure, tried another system. That was fascism. And they too don't long back to those days, albeit for different reasons. In fact, this is one of the bigger reasons why the more serious currents of the bourgeoisie warn against protectionism (there are many more links).

[Bilan]

I should have probably specified American liberals, who are the equivalent of social democrats of Europe. The US liberals usually compromise a little towards social programs, while the conservatives are brazenly supportive of capitalist interests.

They can't just "save" capitalism from its crisis. Neither can conservatives, free market lunatics, protectionists, or anyone else.

[Bilan]

For those who want a more indepth answer on this contemporary crisis, see this: The most serious economic crisis in the history of Capitalism.

Can the state save the capitalist economy?

When an individual becomes bankrupt, he loses everything and is thrown out onto the street. A company locks its gates. But a state? Can a state become bankrupt? After all, we have never seen a state shut up shop. Not exactly. But being in cessation of payment, yes!
In 1982, 14 deeply indebted African countries were forced to officially declare themselves in cessation of payment. In the 1990s, countries in South America and Russia were also in default. More recently, in 2001, Argentina crumbled in its turn. Concretely, these states did not cease existing, and the national economy didn't just stop either. On the other hand, each time it happened there was a sort of economic earthquake: the value of the national currency fell, the lenders (in general, other states) lost all or part of their investment, and above all the state drastically reduced its expenses by laying off a large number of civil servants and by temporarily ceasing to pay those who remained.



Today, numerous countries are at the edge of this abyss: Ecuador, Iceland, Ukraine, Serbia, Estonia... But how goes it with the great powers? The governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, declared at the end of December that his state was in a "fiscal state of emergency". The richest of all the American states, the "Golden State", was ready to lay off 235,000 of its public employees (and those who are left are going to have to take two days of unpaid holiday a month starting on 1st February).



Presenting this new budget, the ex-Hollywood star warned that "everyone will have to agree to make sacrifices". This is a very powerful symbol of the profound economic difficulties of the world's leading power. We are still far away from a cessation of payments by the American state but this example shows clearly that the great powers' economic room for manoeuvre is today very limited. World debt seems to be reaching saturation point (it stood at $60,000 billion in 2007 and has swollen by several trillion dollars since); obliged to continue in the same direction, the bourgeoisie is thus going to provoke devastating economic shocks. The FED has lowered lending rates for 2009 to 0.25% for the first time since its creation in 1913. The American state is thus loaning money almost for nothing (and even at a loss if you take inflation into account). All the economies of the planet are calling for a "New Deal", dreaming about Obama as the new Roosevelt, capable of re-launching the economy, like in 1933, through an immense programme of grand public works financed... by credit[28]. The bourgeoisie has been regularly launching plans based on state debt equivalent to the New Deal since 1967, with no real success. And the problem is that such a policy of forward flight can lead to the collapse of the dollar.

Today there are many countries who doubt the ability of the US to repay their loans and are being tempted to withdraw all their investments. This is the case with China which, at the end of 2008, threatened, in very diplomatic language, to stop propping up the American economy by buying Treasury Bonds: "Every error about the gravity of the crisis will cause problems both for lenders and borrowers. The country's apparently growing appetite for American Treasury Bonds does not mean that they will remain a profitable investment in the long term or that the American government will continue to depend on foreign capital". And this, in a few words, is how China threatened the American state with cutting off the flow of Chinese dollars which has been feeding the US economy for several years. If China carried out its threat[29], the international currency chaos that would ensue would be apocalyptic and the ravages on working class living standards gigantic. But it's not only China which is beginning to have doubts: on Wednesday 10th December, for the first time in history, the American state had all sorts of difficulties in finding a loan of $28 billion. And since the coffers of all the great powers are empty, staggering under the weight of interminable debts and ailing economies, on the same day the same problem hit the German state: for the first time since the 1920s, it had the greatest difficulty in finding anyone willing to loan it 7 billion euros.
No doubt about it: debt, whether household, company or state, is just a palliative and it doesn't cure capitalism of the disease of overproduction. At best it allows the economy to get out of jail but only by preparing ever more violent crises. And yet the bourgeoisie is going to carry on with this desperate policy because it has no choice, as was shown, for the umpteenth time, by Angela Merkel's declaration on 8th November 2008 to the international conference in Paris: "There is no other way of struggling against the crisis except by accumulating a mountain of debts", or again by the IMF's chief economist Olivier Blanchard's latest statement: "we are in the presence of a crisis of exceptional breadth whose main component is a collapse in demand (...) It is imperative to re-launch private demand if we want to prevent the recession turning into a Great Depression". How is this to come about? "Through an increase in public expenditure".
But if not through these recovery plans, can the state still be the saviour by nationalising a good part of the economy, such as the banks or the car industry? Once again, no. First, and contrary to the traditional lies of the left and the extreme left, nationalisations have never been good news for the working class. At the end of the Second World War, there was a big wave of nationalisations aimed at putting the apparatus of production on its feet again after all the destruction and at increasing the tempo of work. We should not forget the words that Thorez, General Secretary of the French Communist Party, and then vice president in the De Gaulle government, threw at the working class in France, especially those in the nationalised industries: "If miners have to die at their post, their wives will replace them", or "Roll up your sleeves for national reconstruction!" or again "strikes are the weapon of the trusts". Welcome to the wonderful world of nationalised enterprises! There is nothing surprising about any of this. Since the experience of the Paris Commune in 1871, revolutionary communists have always shown the viscerally anti-proletarian role of the state:
"The modern state (...) is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head.".[30]
The new wave of nationalisations will bring no benefit to the working class. Nor will it allow the bourgeoisie to return to long-term growth. On the contrary! These nationalisations presage ever-more violent economic storms on the horizon. In 1929, the American banks that went bust took with them the savings of a large part of the American population, plunging millions of workers into poverty. After that, to avoid such a debacle happening again, the banking system was divided in two: on the one hand, business banks which financed companies and worked in all kinds of financial operations; on the other hand, savings banks which took the money of their customers and put them in relatively safe investments. Now, swept away by the wave of bankruptcies in 2008, these American business banks no longer exist. The American financial system has gone back to what it was like before 24th October 1929! When the next storm breaks, all the banks which have so far been kept going thanks to partial or complete nationalisations risk disappearing, but this time taking with them the meagre savings of working class families. Today, if the bourgeoisie nationalises, it's not to put through a new economic recovery plan but to avoid the immediate insolvency of the mastodons of finance and industry. It's a matter of avoiding the worst and saving the furniture[31].
The mountain of debts that has been building up over the last four decades has become a veritable Everest and nothing can now prevent capital from sliding down its slopes. The economy is truly in a disastrous state. That doesn't mean that capitalism will collapse overnight. The bourgeoisie will not let its world disappear without reacting: it will try desperately and with all possible means at its disposal to prolong the agony of its system, without concern for the ills that this will inflict on humanity. Its mad flight into debt will continue and here and there may still be short moments of growth. But it is certain is that the historic crisis of capitalism is changing its rhythm After forty years of slowly descending into hell, the future will be one of violent convulsions, of recurrent economic spasms shaking not only the countries of the Third World but also the US, Europe, Asia...[32]
The slogan of the Communist International in 1919 is more relevant today than ever: "for humanity to survive, capitalism must perish!"

[Qayin]

So if capitalism fails,what are we up against?

capitalism 2.0?
or
globalized fascism?

as the leaders of the anglo-american elite rush to establish their order once more

[ckaihatsu]

What we need, in short, is a makeover.

We need to stop arguing over the same old, drawn out arguments, and focus on today. For a moment, let's forget about Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin and Kerensky. Let's focus on today. Let's formulate our own theories and ditch the old and totalitarian fantasies of long dead Leninists and Stalinists. We need new ideas because the time is now ripe for agitation. I think we'd all be surprised at just how radical the average American is becoming now that the illusion of upward mobility is gone and most are drowning in debt.

Just as Americans laugh derisively at the sclerotic bureaucratic culture that characterized the U.S.S.R. in its latter decades, I think we'll be able to judge the downslope of the world capitalist economy through the same kind of cultural indicators.

We saw the birth of the mass countercultural movement as far back as the '60s when the postwar boom gave rise to the existential question of how mass culture should look given the society's historic material abundance. Since that high point nations and capital have been able to fabricate justifications for their existence by spinning in the gray area of the uncertain downslope, well away from the clear-cut reality of the '60s economic pinnacle.

The anti-Bush opinion that welled up around 2005 -- solidified with the administration's pathetic indifference to the Katrina disaster -- is the best indicator of current popular sentiment. We need to continue to monitor the relationship between the official political culture and that of public responses to it to get the best sense of how independently people feel about their own futures.

Right now Obama's upholding of the Bush torture doctrine could be a breaking point for those who decided to hold their breath as the new president took office. As Marxists we've known all along -- and have said as much -- that the new administration would *not* be changing policy in the slightest. Given our current reality of cartoon-like falls of stock charts and profitability, even the most moderate, stay-the-course types will necessarily have to be feeling some beads of sweat breaking out on their skin right about now.

"Collapse" isn't quite the right word, except maybe for the economic component. We have to emphasize that the economy -- in whatever form -- is the circulation system and lifeblood of the politics and makeup of society itself. The economic crisis precipitates a profound *existential* crisis for *every person* in society because the meltdown of the conventional economic framework throws into doubt *every* component of our roles and material dealings with each other, since they are normally mediated through this nation- and currency-based apparatus.

My question, albeit rhetorical, is *not* "Will capitalism collapse?", but "How soon until people start laughing and getting angry at the charade-in-progress being acted out by the White House and Wall Street?"

We saw a brief collective seething at the extortion / "bailout" amounts before the election season asserted itself around the beginning of autumn, 2008, but there may soon be a new, larger political fiasco that could provide the impetus for a renewed round of rightful outrage and turn to independent proletarian consciousness and inter-reliance, away from the bourgeois political circus of farce and distraction.

Certainly the Democratic Party is now walking on eggshells, trying their damndest to keep internal cohesion while also maintaining a calm public face as they engage in continuous back-room negotiations with their right flank, now a shadow of their former selves after the bankruptcy of their "War on Terrorism".

With the internal and external challenges to capital neutralized, the Reagan-Thatcher era saw a sort of post-industrial Restoration of the unchecked dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and laissez-faire capitalism. However, this Restoration period is proving to be short-lived, as the economic nostrums of the 19th century, however appealing they might be to the current generation of capitalists in terms of allowing for a new round of primitive accumulation, simply aren't applicable to the modern, fully globalized, instantaneously financed capitalism of the 21st century.

This is an excellent summation, and now, in the Information Revolution era, politics is starker than ever since more people have ready access to it, and increasingly on their own terms. People will be realizing that no amount of official economic shenanigans can ever hope to overshadow their own, independent political activity as collectively mobilized, militant workers who are focused on factory occupations. Besides the increasing tide of factory actions there's a growing movement of grassroots activists battling home foreclosures and evictions, with the state's enforcement agencies backing away from using their official physical force to keep people out of their homes.

This is the kind of politics we should be looking for, and agitating for -- public opinion can quickly pivot over to mass populist support for the self-activity of workers and activists on the ground, and against the traditional, property-protecting coercive force of the state.


Chris





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-- Of all the Marxists in a roomful of people, I'm the Wilde-ist. --

[peaccenicked]

We need to look at the so-called Law of uneven and combined development. Capitalism
is not a universal, as such. It is the dominant mode of production, in most societies. Yet
imperialism and finance capital have made epochal changes, signified by super-exploitation and fictitious capital.
The latter in its pursuit is destroying the financial basis Imperialist "Big Nations" such as the US and the UK and those who copied them too closely as an economic model. ie Iceland, Ireland.
Fictitious capital became the dominant form of capitalism. In these countries.
In turn countries that have become industrialized such as China, India, or countries that have not deindustrialised, France, Germany, etc have lost export markets, this is causing a global down turn.

The question is not " is capitalism collapsing?" The question is the world decoupling from unipolar imperialism?
What will that look like? Will the world be better off without those "washington bullets''
mowing down people like Che Guevara and Salvador Allende. Out of Iraq and Afganistan. US bases out of the rest of the world.
We are in the throes of witnessing era changing events.
There will be revolutions. We are at the beginning. The Iceland government has moved to the left but it has to severe ties with the IMF and Nato. On Saturday 120,000 people marched in Dublin against the economic recession.
There is no end in sight.
In the UK some economists are saying that unemployment will explode in July which will precede a collapse of the pound.
In the US, Obama is following a Keynes forgetting that Keynes was not a product of
deindustrialization. Leaving the US a prisoner to debt and when todays deflation and inflation are not tied to the economic fundamentals ie the vast increase in the volume of the money supply against huge increases in the drop of production:
(220,000 retailers in the US are on the way to foreclosure)
the stage is set for hyperinflation and the collapse of the US dollar. Is not a matter of if but when.
The manipulation of the market by the US fed cannot change the fundamentals.
This is why the US is becoming like the former USSR every day. Not the USSR had much to do with Market fundamentals, but to-day neither has the US.
We are witnessing the disintegration of an unsustainable entity.
This is worse than collapse. Collapse implies that you can stand up and roughly look the same.
The US will never be the same again.