David Graeber Explains It All For You -- and Charlie Rose

I have a fairly high opinion of Graeber's thought, though one could say he doesn't really present well on the television machine.

(I remember one of the disputes I engaged in with another Occupy supporter was over teevee appearances by people who don't do television well; she was outraged that someone who was interviewed about a protest action against Monsanto that was going on at the time didn't speak well enough or in the appropriate and expected sound bites, and therefore wasn't communicating. I pointed out that the interviewee did touch on all the important aspects of the protest and said what needed to be said. Expecting everyone who goes on teevee to "speak in teevee-ese" is unproductive. Would the complainer suggest that everyone who doesn't do teevee well should refuse to be interviewed? How would she make that judgement? Needless to say, the person I was arguing with was offended. I pointed out that I know from bitter experience that I don't do television well, and so I personally refuse to do television interviews. But I don't think there should be a general ban on non-telegenic people granting interviews.)

Graeber makes his points -- perhaps a bit quickly and superficially -- in the video above with regard to Debt and Occupy, the nature of the struggle and the death knell of Capitalism (of course we've heard that before!) and he seems to make an awful lot of sense. The problem, of course, is that Our Rulers simply deny it all.

Thus the mess we're in.

Railing Against the "Left" in America

At some point I will have to acknowledge the uselessness of continuing to beat the long dead horse of what passes for the "left" in American politics.

In point of fact, there is no real Left active in the American political system and there hasn't been one for many years. There are a few (very) fringe parties that take leftist, even revolutionary, positions on some issues, but they have no political influence at all -- some would say by the design and intention of the political system itself and by these fringe parties in cahoots with their own marginalization. They do seem to be oddly content outside the system, come to think of it.

In the mainstream of American politics, what's called the "left" functions as a slightly mitigating version of the ever-dominant American Right. I've pointed out that even St. Franklin Roosevelt was no "leftist," and the New Deal programs and policies that actually survived (like Social Security and Unemployment Insurance) are NOT leftist by any stretch of the imagination. They are basically survivalist policies of the Right intended to buy off the masses and keep the tumbrils and guillotines at bay for a while longer.

Now, however, since the Crash of 2008, the Right is going for complete control without the troublesome and burdensome necessity of carving out some benefit for the masses. They've been busying themselves with taking economic benefits as well as civil liberties away from the masses, selling off public assets at fire sale prices, destroying public education, reducing and/or eliminating pension benefits, making access to health care ever more difficult and expensive and setting up system after system of automatic revenue payments to corporate entities, many of which are now behaving like taxing authorities and private governments.

The so-called "left" in American politics and governance merely operates as if it were a helpful critic of Rightist policies. The "left" has no policies of its own except maintaining bits and pieces of the status quo and delaying and mitigating (somewhat) the more radical policies of the Right.

That's it. At one time, when there was something of an active Left in American politics, instead of reducing benefits and raising retirement ages, we would have been treated to arguments proposing to lower the retirement age and substantially increasing benefits. We would hear arguments to collectivize, nationalize industries and services and implement a broad-based public sector economy on democratic principles. Instead of ignoring Marx and other cogent critics of capitalism, we would have long ago explored and demonstrated alternatives to the kind of rampant crony capitalism we endure today -- a capitalist system that is depriving whole generations of a future.

If we had a real Left in our politics, the possibilities for the Future would be seen as unlimited.

But we don't have one. No, Occupy is not "the Left," not even close; it's not at root a political entity; it's more of a philosophical one. It may give rise to a political entity, but it hasn't yet. It has only given rise to ideas, opportunities, and demonstrations of alternatives to the current downward spiral.

The election will only have an effect on how fast and how harshly Rightist programs and policies -- most of which we are already familiar with -- will be implemented going forward. Neither major party is in any way interested in backing off from those Rightist programs and policies, any more than most of the governments around the world are going to suddenly jettison neoliberalism. It's not going to happen.

The only way to accomplish that end now is through efforts conducted outside the standard political system, and we've already seen that if those efforts show signs of succeeding, they will be violently shut down by the corpro-government.

If a genuine political Left is ever revived on the other hand, what might we see? What wonders might await?

A rational argument for not voting. [Note: a repost of the material at the link was disappeared at FDL because a moderator didn't want to "promote" the idea of not voting. It is obviously considered a dangerous concept that must be kept away from the masses.]

The Sadism and Cruelty of the Greek "Bailout"

Brussels is supposedly closing in on an acceptable framework for the so-called Greek Bailout that will formalize the harsh, indeed sadistic, cruelties of the latest round of austerity measures being imposed on the Greek People to satisfy the demands of the Gods of Finance.

Europe should have some genetic memory about these things, as it wasn't that long ago that the futile attempts to meet the demands of the Gods of Finance plunged Europe into devastating wars.

What is wrong with these people that they can't see the patterns repeating? What is wrong with Europe's Rulers that they mindlessly revert to sadism and cruelty when imposing Victor's Conditions on the Vanquished? And why is it always about Money -- specifically feeding the Insatiable Maw of Finance.

What is wrong with them?

It's as if they cannot help themselves; meanness is built in to their DNA. When it comes to the "Periphery," they can't seem to keep their snotty contempt in check -- which appears little different from the historic racism of the past.

Of course none of the Greek "bailout" is bailing out the suffering and drowning Greeks, it is all going to the Gods of Finance, to pay off their gambling debts. Of course it won't be enough. By now, everyone should know there isn't "enough," ever, to satisfy that Gaping Maw.

The cruelty of the extractions from the Greek People to shovel into the Maw is mindboggling and soul-searing. What do the Rulers of Europe think will be the benefit of raging disease, increasing child mortality, suicide, destruction of livelihoods, expropriation of public utilities and infrastructure, and what amounts to a re-colonization of Greece by some distant imperial power?

What is the benefit?

Having had Empires in the past, the Rulers of Europe should know there isn't one. Yet they appear to have learned nothing.

At least now, the tragic nature of what is being done to Greece by their cruel masters is being recognized more widely. That's... good... but the lessons don't seem to be learnable among the European Ruling Classes. That failure to learn will have much greater consequences than merely sucking dry and disposing the empty husk of Greece.

I'm told the German People are cheering Frau Merkel for her "strength" in this matter. Do they realize that what is being done to Greece will be done to them whenever the Maw needs more feeding? Do they have any clue?

No?

Have they never seen Prometheus Bound?

PROMETHEUS BOUND from Manatee Idol on Vimeo.

Richard Wolff Explains It All to the Sweet People of Occupy Marin

January 7, 2012:



For those of you who don't know much about California's political, economic, and social geography, you might miss some of the frequently delightful ironies of Wolff's talk on this fine, sunny January afternoon in San Rafael, CA.

Marin County (big, slow-loading pdf; be warned) is just north of San Francisco on the opposite side of the Golden Gate Bridge. It's hilly country, and remarkably rural still. At one time it was mostly ranches and resort communities like Tiburon and Sausalito, and much of the spirit of ranching and resorts continues among the couple of hundred thousand who live in Marin County today.

For many years, Marin County was home to some of the wealthiest people in California -- as it still is -- and people who lived in San Francisco aspired to one day be able to afford to live in Marin. The per capita income in Marin County in 2007 was the highest in the Bay Area and in fact it was the highest in California. Marin County is the country seat of California's "1%". Keep that in mind while listening to Wolff's talk and you will see what I mean about the ironies of his observations. Does he know where he is? OMG. "11 shares of GM that your grandmother left you?" "Working people?" "Wages?" Hello?!!

It's a lovely area, relatively unspoiled, "like California used to be," and its people are fiercely protective of its natural beauty and the legacy of its rural past.

The thing about Marin is that despite the overall wealth of its inhabitants, it's politically and socially far more (academically) leftist than practically any place else in California. Make no mistake, this is the leftism of the elites and the bourgeoisie, not the gritty and radical working class leftism of the East Bay, centered in Oakland. The people of Marin do not, how you say, engage in The Class Struggle.

They are, however, great supporters of those who do! Bless their hearts.

Will "Vulture Capitalist" Have Legs?

I'm enjoying the spinning and skewering going on over Romney's Bain Capital Thing. It's a remarkable development so early in the political season. I can't help being a little cynical about it, though, because it feels like the entire Republican Establishment and their media handmaidens are trying like anything to defuse the issue for the general election by getting it out in the open now -- and then "pushing back".

This is a time-honored political tactic, and the Rs are sometimes brilliant at it. Say an R candidate has some sort of weakness -- they did it with Bush the Lesser all the time -- and have some other R point it out ("He cain't tawk that English so good..."). Or make a big deal out of his many failed businesses. Whatever. The point is to bring these perceived weaknesses into the discussion early and then transform them into strengths: "He's a Man of the People! He's someone I could have a beer with!" Yadda, yadda. And it works; well, it works well enough to snow some of the people some of the time (and of course all of the Haute Media all of the time) and that's good enough to gain enough votes to steal an election.

That's why I'm not at all convinced that Gingrich and Perry are really trying to stop or bring down Romney -- the Nominee Designate of the Republican Party and Our New Emperor In Waiting -- with all the "Vulture Capitalist" yabbering. No, not at all.

It's still very early in the political season, for example. The "Vulture Capitalist" charge is one that the Dems have made, but not until Romney was the nominee would it make any sense or have any impact. Romney won't be nominated for months and months. So the Rs -- being the marketeers that they are -- bring up candidate weaknesses now so as to counter them and defuse them early, before the Dems can use them.

Romney is said to be pushing back now, defending Capitalism and the Free Market and God and everything else, and also, too, defending Bain Capital, for no matter how bad some of their results were, "That's Free-Market Capitalism, my friends."

And so it is.

If the Dems were a Leftist party, which they are not, they would be hammering away at this kind of Truth Telling relentlessly -- "yes, this is what capitalism is, this is what it does, and this is why we're in this economic pickle now." But they won't do that, first because the Rs are doing it, so they don't have to. Then because the Dem Establishment is right there with Romney. Got his back they do.

The problem for the People brought on by Vulture Capitalism and leveraged buy outs and all the rest of the kit bag of tricks used by the financial cliques are very well known. They have been denounced and celebrated in song and story and endless reporting in the alternative media for decades.

Bush the Lesser was a Vulture, too, you know. We have been down this path before and we know where it leads.

But Dems go to Harvard Business School, too, you know; and they absorb the same predatory notions as the Rs; the Chicago School is no slouch in arguing on behalf of the wrecking crews, either. Putting controls on the activities of Bain or any of the other outfits set up to loot and plunder and wreak economic havoc is not in the policy cards no matter who you put in the Oval Office.

That Romney was/is one of the plunderers and looters may ultimately have no political legs at all; Obama's policies, after all, certainly won't control the likes of them.

But still, it's good to see this stuff out in the open, highlighted in the media, despite all the spin and lies that surround it (NPR).

People have a visceral revulsion to harm this sort of finance capitalism does to them. But it harms everyone. It is what causes the constant Crisis of Capitalism. We know that.

Maybe this time, we'll get furious enough to stop it.

Economic Meltdown Scheduled to Continue Indefinitely

The correct response to the economic/financial meltdown was to provide substantial household debt relief, a real jobs program, and the prompt and effective re-regulation of banks and financial institutions.

Of course, none of this was done. Instead, all the gambling debts of the banks and financial institutions were backstopped (and often paid off, multiple times in some cases) with "created" money, and a few key manufacturers had their debts covered.

There was no household debt relief. In many cases, not even bankruptcy would discharge personal/student/household debt. Instead of a jobs program, there were repeated extensions of unemployment insurance benefits -- for those who qualified, which was never more than half of the unemployed, and in the later extensions, much fewer than half. Typical UI benefits were half or less (often much less) than previous earnings.

Millions and millions of Americans have been forced into poverty; millions and millions face hunger more and more often. Millions and millions of Americans have been forced out of their homes. And the process of impoverishment and eviction of Americans has not relented.

The economy continues to worsen for most Americans as wages and benefits are stagnant or in decline, there is a vicious campaign against public sector workers; pensions are under constant threat. Retirement and other savings of many millions of Americans have vanished.

Yet a handful of international bankers and financiers are doing better than ever, providing nothing of value at all, but successfully extorting governments at home and abroad of every nickel they can extract.

Governments all over the world have yielded to the demands of this handful of extortionists, forcing austerity and poverty onto their people while preserving their "nobles" from even the slightest patriotic requirement.

The People in general have no say in the economic policies of their governments, and governments have no care for their People.

So. There is a global -- and growing -- revolt.

As revolt/revolution proceeds, governments and Peoples are becoming more and more alienated from one another. Part of the demonstration of the Occupy Movement is to show how "another world is possible," and to demonstrate on a small and temporary scale, how to do it. How to live simply in community, in dignity, with justice, and in peace with one another. How to disconnect from the Grid of Control -- and why. So many demonstrations, so much need.

As government and Peoples divorce from one another, "another world" emerges spontaneously. It may not be what any of us had in mind in our utopian reveries, but it is the creation of the Future nevertheless.

The Future we thought we might have had has been stolen from us. The Earth itself is rebelling from the control of the financial elites. The more they seek to secure their own future, no matter what happens to anyone else, the worse their own fate will be.

Another world is possible...

Wrapup on the Summer

Karl Marx sliding puzzle game » sliding block puzzles

Of course, it isn't over yet, but I think we've got the picture: there hasn't been a summer this tumultuous since the 1970's, and there are signs that civil unrest (as well as a number of civil wars still raging) will easily continue into the fall and through the wintertime into next year.

People are refusing, in their multitudes, to sit down and shut up while their lives are being turned upside down (that is, when they don't lose their lives), and what little they've had is being sucked up into the maw of Matt Taibbi's Vampire Squid that actually rules us.

Dylan Ratigan's "Extractive" Rant the other day incoherently encapsulates the fright and the frustration so many middle level "left-behinds" feel.



"Extractive" has become the new "Uncertainty." Extracting wealth is the current economic principle at the Top, "takings" as it were. I suppose "looting" would be an understatement for what The Gods Who Walk Among Us® are doing to the rest of us -- and to one another.

So when we see young people looting stores for cell phones and sneakers in Britain, burning down their neighborhoods in the process, what we're seeing is a minor-league street-side version of what the Highest of the High and the Mighty have been up to for quite a while now, on a titanic scale, globally, "extracting" -- or shall we say "looting" -- all the wealth that they can pillage from entire nations, one by one and in batches, while we look on in horror, just as Decent Brits looked on in horror at the riots and the wilding young in the streets.

Some of them even made the connection between behavio[u]r at the Top of the Heap and what the Young were doing in the streets. Some of the young were even able to make that connection. "It's all the same, man, innit?" The "takings" might be on a different scale -- and what is looted is certainly different -- but the destruction and despair left in the wake of the pillage, the fear and dread injected into the hearts of individuals and communities (and entire nations), the sense of widespread powerlessness and the inability or unwillingness of Authority to intervene appropriately on behalf of the People, all are the same.

In the United States, despite protest demonstrations in numbers we haven't seen in quite a long time, nothing like The UK Riots have yet emerged. They might, and because they might, many people are on edge. But in the United States the Austerity Program is still being debated in the marble halls of our Government Palaces, only so much of it has yet been instituted, and in most cases, the immediate effects have been mitigated through various means in order to keep the People calm in the face of what is to be done to them. So far, it has mostly worked.

In the meantime, though, the Highest of the High and the Mighty have been busy sucking out every bit of wealth they can find in an "extractive" frenzy the like of which I don't think we have ever seen. We see it in the Wall Street gyrations, where every Up and every Down provides yet more profit opportunities, we see it in massive commodity price run ups due to speculation, we see it in endless wage cuts and price increases, constantly high unemployment, ridiculous and ravenous bank policies, endless foreclosures and plans to essentially give the homes away to investors "if they promise to rent them out," and on and on and on and on.

There is no attempt to hide any of it, nor really is there any effort to sugar-coat it. It is what it is. We are being robbed blind, right out in the open, with the full on and very active complicity of Our Public Servants, who only seem capable of serving their constituents at the feed trough and not the Public at all.

We've watched this go on for years, and I for one am fed up with it. And yet, so far, the only popular unrest over what's been happening has focused either on protesting political actions by captive governments (the Austerity fetish in Europe, for example, or the mass protests in Wisconsin and elsewhere), or in Riots -- which aren't so much popular as they are focused expressions of rage and opportunism.

And all of a sudden, Marxist theory -- and actual Marxists (!) -- are being trotted out to explain what's going on. Well of course! Marx was right. Yes! His trenchant analysis of Capitalism is as true today as it was 150 years ago, and we are living through yet another of the inevitable Crises of Capitalism that are basically built in to the economic system and cannot be entirely escaped from so long as the system is in place. (Not that any other System known to man doesn't have its own set of built-in crises.)

"We're all Marxists now!" Well, in an inverted sense, yes, even the Kochs are Marxists. They and their ilk know that Marx was right and they are all about taking advantage of both the strengths and the weaknesses of the Capitalist system. And they know how to squeeze its teats on behalf of themselves.

And it is hugely frustrating for so many of us in the Lesser 99% to know full well what is wrong and what to do about it and to see just the opposite being enacted by Our Rulers, repeating and compounding the same mistakes over and over, making things worse for the many, better and better for the few, and expressing such amazement that this is happening.


Being right too soon doesn't do you any good at all.
http://libcom.org/library/1844-manuscripts-karl-marx

---------------------------------------
At least there have only been a few sharks and missing white women in the news this summer. So there is that.

Even Nouriel Roubini Agrees -- Marx Was Right About Capitalism

[Via dKos poster goinsouth]



Actually, even the Kochs agree.

Perpend: From Marxists.org -- the "Crisis of Capitalism"

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.

Well, surprise, surprise.