Reasons that capitalism will end?

[oneday]

Why did Marx believe capitalism would eventually end?

1) Absolute immiseration theory (Communist Manifesto)
2) Tendency of the rate of profit to fall (Capital)

What else?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Why did Marx believe capitalism would eventually end?

1) Absolute immiseration theory (Communist Manifesto)
2) Tendency of the rate of profit to fall (Capital)

What else?

The conscious political agency of the working class

[DOOM]

The conscious political agency of the working class

This. Even if there's a limit to the self valorization process in the form of falling rates of profit or immiseration we really shouldn't hope that such a development will bring us emancipatory change. If 1) or 2) actually happens we better hope that the working class is ready because if it isn't we're all doomed.

[Rafiq]

Why did Marx believe capitalism would eventually end?

It is not that capitalism would eventually 'end' as such, but that it would change. This is important to distinguish.

By all accounts, the theoretical conclusion we find in Marx is that capitalism is the last historical epoch wherein there existed a social antagonism, encapsulates the final tension between the private and common interests, science and superstition, and whatever you like and so on.

However as others point out, the precise nature of this finality of 'history' as such, lies in the conscious agency of those who constitute capitalist society itself. The only reason capitalist society is the last society of the social antagonism, is not because the precise nature of the social antagonism will remain fixed, or unmoved. Let us be frank: The past 500 years of capitalism, never mind that, the past two hundred years or so of modern capitalism there have never been two decades where the social antagonism was even similar to the previous two.

Capitalism is the word for the last epoch of wherein there exists a social antagonism, only because for the first time the process of capital accumulation and the social relations which constitute it, have laid the groundwork for a society that is socially self-conscious, where the universality of that society is now embodied in its particular individual constituents. Why is this? It is because the universality of production, finds expression in what stands for the universal commodity, money. Money is no longer that which merely represents commodities (being a commodity itself), money is now its own ends. No longer do society's constituents have any fixed place in society, now every single person is an ethical subject in pursuit of money. The religion of money, is universal - because money stands for the measurement not of commodities but of the measurement of ones fulfilling of their ethical obligation in the reproduction of the existing order. To have more money, in other words, means you have more access and more of a stake in embodying the productive capacities of society as a whole as well as in relation to nature.

In all societies that preceded capitalism, money was an instrument which facilitated the reproduction of fixed, patriarchal, or whatever you like, wherein the relationship to nature was fixed. All money did was represent a fixed relation to nature. Money was not its own ends, because society was differentiated in a 'caste-like' way: each person had their own particular role, and particular place in the reproduction of society and fulfilling this role was its own ends.

In all pre-capitalist societies, production as it existed - literally - not simply the relations of production but the actual objects of production (commodities) was fixed. The relationship between human society and the natural world around them was a fixed relationship. Before capitalism, more or less, new discoveries as they pertained to the natural world were more or less congruent with changes in the whole sphere of life, including the relations of production. Each relation to production, each social relation, corresponded to a more or less fixed and definite relationship to the natural world.

With the rise of money as its own ends, and not simply as the representation of the 'tangible' (i.e. the representation of produced commodities), ushered in the rise of natural science, for with money as its own ends, no longer are men and women enslaved by patriarchal, fixed, or unmovable bonds in relation to nature, now there are no limits to the transformation and subduing of empirical, natural processes in the pursuit of capital accumulation, and in the pursuit of money. Again, money only exists in relation to capital, only exists in relation to the productive capacities of society and the manipulation of them for the higher pursuit of money. Money as its own ends, it abstractly stands for the productive capacities of men and women as such, unbound. The alienation that is money is not with regard to commodities but with regard to the productive capacities of men and women in the manipulation of nature (in other words, the production of the commoditeis itself). Communism is where production, unbridled by anything except that which is empirically necessary, is its own ends. Money MEDIATES production, it is alien because it is a middle man that stands for the absence of social ('productive) self-consciousness itself.

What Communism means IS NOT THAT we simply go straight to tangible commodities instead of the 'money' which supposedly represents them. Let me be frank: We go from money, to its even higher abstract spiritual transcendence: The aufhebeng of capitalist society, means that no longer do we need money, because now human life as such, bounded by nothing but that which is temporarily empirically necessary (i.e. natural limitations) is its own ends. The fulfillment of social life justified superstitiously, is not its own ends, now, human social life which is as bare as that which is empirically necessary is its own ends. Communism is atheism, literally, atheism in practice. The abdication of money is not the abdication of its 'abstract' aspect, but on the contrary the further transcendence and completion of its 'abstract' essence as now being embodied in the conscious will of men and women themselves, who no longer need money to embody social production unhinged by (a superstitious relation to) nature.

So we now return to the 'end' of capitalism. There is no 'end' of capitalism as such, because capitalism is regularly dying and re-constituting itself with each passing epoch of technological innovation, political developments, and so on. Because capitalism is the last social epoch of the social antagonism, there is more historical movement in the 'epoch of capitalism' than in all 200,000 years of human existence. The point of capitalism being the last epoch of the social antagonism is that it really isn't a last 'epoch' - it is not a single epoch but an epoch which contains within it a multitude of always emerging, mutating and dissoluting epochs. So when Marx speaks of the 'end' of capitalism, he does not mean it in the sense that capitalism will eventually end by its own devices, but that each distinct epoch of capitalism will necessarily end and bring forth a new epoch of capitalism. But the next epoch of capitalism, is inevitably linked to the political struggle - the struggle for its permanent destruction. The past 200 years of capitalism were wrought not at the expense of the political struggles but because of them. We are at the point we are at because of those.

For the first time in history we reach a limitation. Let us name those limitations: First, ecology. The infinity of the ability to manipulate nature in pursuit of profit, or 'private interest' has met its finitude. The present relation to nature, which has no consideration for the holistic interests of society, but is instead constituted by 'private interest', i.e. the private pursuit of money, will either lead to the collective death of all living persons, or turn our world into a wasteland.

The next is the so-called 'cognitive revolution'. This includes developments in neuroscience as well as the rise of information technology. We really have reached the end of capitalism right now. Do you know why? Because now, for the first time, we attempt to 'scientifically' isolate the least common empirical denominator that underlies human beings as such - our literal human bodies and our physical brains are now objects of scientific inquiry in a way that allows them to be directly manipulated - nay that will inevitably have them manipulated. What this means? We are getting dangerously close to the spiritual substance that constitutes men and women - their real social being. No matter where the neurosciences take us, it will never actually 'get' to the actual soul of men and women, which is not reducible to anything empirical but which lies in their actively constituted social being. Capitalism eats itself because the active subjectivity of men and women is increasingly denied, and attributed to their physiology: Now capitalist processes seek to manipulate consciousness and subjectivity as such physiologically.

Let me put it this way: For so long capitalism has manipulated nature in the most intricate ways. Manipulated empirical reality. Now we are at the deadlock where the last empirical world to manipulate is the empirical (physical) constitution of actual human subjects themselves. All that remains is social self-consciousness and the manipulation of man by his own self, socially now that all empirical frontiers are being closed. Congruent with this is the rise of information technology which give birth to new forms of rent which completely undermine the logic of traditional capitalism and which give birth to a new aristocracy which increasingly rules by direct violence (private police, military) and the re-introduction of new castes (the excluded, by walls, and the included, within those walls, etc.). That is because the productive capacities of society are no longer even directly congruent with the raw pursuit of profit: Increased automation means information or general intellect is increasingly the only necessary basis for production. This would otherwise liberate us from all social positions and from work, but instead they are being monopolized by a growing aristocracy, these technologies are simply just 'owned', and rented out to society as a whole. Neo-feudalism is taking form because while money remains its own ends, the means by which money is acquired now no longer has its basis in production (or even exploitation) as such, but increasingly in the form of rent, where there are close to zero marginal costs, and all that sustains profit-making is - directly violent monopolies.

What this inevitably leads to is the rise of mass-demographics of 'disposable' life, of people who are excluded from the process of 'production' as such, but who are consigned to slums, to peripheries, whose labor is no longer productive or even useful for processes of capital accumulation and profiteering. It is almost a privilege to have a 'productive' job where you are normally exploited as it was before. Now people work several jobs, for longer hours, in a more chaotic and precarious fashion because their labor is no longer necessary, or it is increasingly unnecessary. There is no steady work life. Anyone who is a proletairan or who knows workers knows this - people must chaotically work from job to job, each are incredibly low paying, and so on. This is creating a new caste, a caste of 'disposable' slum-dwelling people who struggle to find ways of paying different kinds of rent, be that actual housing rent, or access to communicative technologies (internet, software) and even tangible goods produced with zero marginal costs.

I claim these two are inevitably connected because the manipulation of the last common denominator - man himself, brings forth new superstitions about the active social constitution of man which can never be conceivable for the bourgoies ideologue: Now people are 'biologically determined', which means, these new castes which are forming as a result of relations of rent, automation and information technology are superstitiously justified in the same way that castes were previously justified by pretense to gods, cosmic order: "genes", pseudo-scientific evolutionary psychology, and so on. Notice that The Bell Curve was with regard to the ghetto-dwelling American blacks. And notice that IQ and Wealth of Nations was written in the context of globalization in justifying these new global disparities. All of this is linked to capitalism struggling to end and become reborn.

[Jacob Cliff]

What this inevitably leads to is the rise of mass-demographics of 'disposable' life, of people who are excluded from the process of 'production' as such, but who are consigned to slums, to peripheries, whose labor is no longer productive or even useful for processes of capital accumulation and profiteering. It is almost a privilege to have a 'productive' job where you are normally exploited as it was before. Now people work several jobs, for longer hours, in a more chaotic and precarious fashion because their labor is no longer necessary, or it is increasingly unnecessary. There is no steady work life. Anyone who is a proletairan or who knows workers knows this - people must chaotically work from job to job, each are incredibly low paying, and so on. This is creating a new caste, a caste of 'disposable' slum-dwelling people who struggle to find ways of paying different kinds of rent, be that actual housing rent, or access to communicative technologies (internet, software) and even tangible goods produced with zero marginal costs.

A bit off-topic -- this is what is coming to be known as the 'precariat', yes? Does this constitute a new class in itself, or is this simply a "subsect" of the proletariat in a new form of capitalism?

[Rafiq]

A bit off-topic -- this is what is coming to be known as the 'precariat', yes? Does this constitute a new class in itself, or is this simply a "subsect" of the proletariat in a new form of capitalism?

For purposes of linking past traditions with the present, the latter. The precariat is to the proletariat what the new rentier class is to the bourgeoisie. They are necessarily both modern 'subsects', are for all intended purposes different forms of the same essential class. They both result from increased role of general intellect in production.