HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK
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The only way to stop capitalism plunging the world even deeper into the
mire is for the working class to look beyond the confines of the profit
system.
All systems of private property society pass through periods of
ascendancy or progression and then through a period of decadence when
they have outlived their usefulness. Socialists contend that having
created the material conditions for its replacement by socialism — a
society of free access to abundant and available wealth — capitalism is
now a politically decadent social system. Given the level of productive
potential in society, it is now obsolete, being the real cause of
poverty amid opulence, economic crises of overproduction for the market
but not for need, and never-ending wars over economic and political
power.
Indeed, its development is now such that having extended its tentacles
into every aspect of human existence, the market economy is eating away
at the very fabric of collective life, extolling the virtues of
competition, aggression and an 'every man for himself' culture the like
of which has never been experienced before. This has resulted in
massive waves of crime, drug abuse, corruption, violence and spreading
ideological poisons like religious fundamentalism and ethnic cleansing.
Even in the so-called "democratic" and "advanced" heartlands of world
capitalism, the market economy is exhibiting real signs of what can be
termed social decadence as well as political obsolescence. As
capitalist society appears to rot on its feet under the pressure of its
own competitive economic momentum, the very gains of centuries of
civilisation are put into question. The onset of this period of social
decadence has been the product of the working class's inability to put
an end to capitalism — it has certainly not been inevitable, any more
so than periods of social decadence in earlier systems of society were.
Economic decadence?
As well as the type of social decadence that now characterises world
capitalism, other private property systems have gone through a period
of pure economic decadence too. This occurs when the pace of growth of
the productive forces slackens and then finally comes to a halt; in
other words, when the limits to growth of an economic arrangement in
society have been reached and a social system can develop the forces of
production no more.
The notion of economic decadence or limits to growth has led many
theorists astray — including some allegedly in the Marxist tradition.
No system of society ever collapses like a pack of cards, and the
predictions of those like the old Communist Party and Independent
Labour Party who thought it would were dashed time after time. Likewise
today, Trotskyist and Left Communist groups who have long given up any
hope of a majority working class revolution dream up fantasies of
capitalism collapsing, with the vanguard of the working class rising
like a phoenix out of the flames to build a new society on the ashes of
the old.
Notwithstanding such infantile fantasies, it is certainly true to say
that all societies have had economic limits beyond which they have been
unable to progress and that this situation has generally been reached
when the way in which society is organised has become a pure economic
fetter on the forces of production. This factor undoubtedly influenced
the decline and eventual supersession of previous societies like
Ancient Rome and feudalism.
These systems did not collapse but stagnated until the forces capable
of sweeping them away were able to do so. In the example of feudalism,
that system was not superseded by capitalism until the new productive
methods and organisation of the capitalist class were consolidated,
heralding an era of unprecedented economic growth based on
industrialisation and the wage labour/capital relationship that went
with it, a relationship which succeeded in sweeping away the stagnant
and inefficient old feudal lord/peasantry ties.
Capitalism has been the most dynamic social system in the history of
humankind and if limits to capitalist growth are ever reached it will
be because the working class has been unable to replace the global
market economy with world-wide common ownership and production for use.
Capitalism will not collapse, it will simply reach a point whereby
eventually it cannot expand the productive forces any further.
Given the internal dynamic of capitalism there can only be one cause of
this should it ever be reached — a halt to growth will occur only if
there is no longer a sufficient mass of the system's lifeblood, profit.
In turn this situation is only likely to come about as a product of
technological progress and all it brings with it in terms of developing
the productive potential of society.
Capitalism has developed production over the last two centuries and
more through the extraction and expansion of profit. The sole source of
profit in capitalism is, of course, human labour but no matter how much
the intensity of exploitation is increased so that more unpaid labour
is given, there has to reach a point where, because of continuing
automation and replacement of labour in the production process, this
can no longer be sufficient to ensure a growth in total value
production, of socially necessary labour inputs.
The volume of unpaid labour turned into surplus value would no longer
be able to rise sporadically as at present, but would halt and even
start falling if the process was carried far enough. As a result, the
mass of profit available for reinvestment in production would halt and
eventually enter into a downward long-term spiral rather than an upward
one.
Such a development would have serious consequences for all those
components of the market economy which are particularly dependent on
capitalist economic growth — state finance and welfare provision,
rises in wages, maintenance of social cohesion and environmental
conditions to name but the most obvious. It would be a much more
serious and damaging set of circumstances than the current difficulties
associated with the current squeeze on the rate and mass of profit
after tax — similar in consequence but more devastating in impact.
Pure economic decadence and its attendant limits to capitalist growth
may be a situation that is never reached. If capitalism goes on long
enough, though, it is a definite possibility, even a likelihood. Just
as the onset of political decadence was followed eventually by the
development of social decadence, so — eventually — economic decadence
could follow unless something is done.
Our message to the working class is that capitalism's time has gone.
The choice before us is now "socialism or barbarism", a progressive
move to the next higher stage of social evolution, or a regression from
which we may never recover. The choice is yours — but don't spend a
lifetime thinking about it.
jt
www.worldsocialism.org
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