>Capitalism over the past ten years or so has produced a technological >revolution in its means of production involving the transformation of >information technology. Over the same period it has succeeded in >recomposing the working class. This has led to deskilling of traditional >trades, unprecedented flexibility of labor power and mass casualisation >of labor power. To achieve this an ideological and political offensive >was successfully launched against the working class. This has led to a >significant weakening of the organized working class.
Capitalism has evolved through various stages and phases in its 700 or so years of history. Lenin describes the current stage of capitalism - capitalist imperialism, as the domination of financial capital. Under Section VII, Imperialism, as a special stage of capitalism Lenin speaks of capitalist imperialism as a distinct stage, "when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres." Yet, today we are clearly within a new phase in the decay of capital different from the time of Lenin Finance capital as a distinct stage of the decline of capitalist property relations has entered a new phase of accelerated decay. The application of a host of new technologies, spanning from roughly the 1970s to the mass marketing of the personal computer in the 1980s, to the emergence of partial digitalized production processes, fiber optics and their increasing married with laser processes was highlighted in the USNA Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Alan Greenspan January 11, 2002 report on the state of the economy. Mr. Greenspan attributed the increased productivity of labor during the mid-90s to the partial application of these technologies. The distinct economic features of this phase of decay of capital are revealed in an examination of current technology application, its impact on labor and the ability of the worker to sell his labor power. The distinct political features of this phase of decay of capital is reveal in an examination of the dominate sector of capital that writes the agenda for the world total social capital. It is acknowledged that the economic and political - social, are inseparable in real life but distinct categories in our effort to grasp the logic of the moment. Arising from within finance capital, the speculative sector - which is increasingly divorced from the means of production, writes the agenda for the world total social capital. In as much as class society moves in antagonism, the speculative sector of capital - which is increasingly divorced from the means of production, exist in an interactive relationship with its polar opposite, a sector of the proletariat - which is increasingly divorced from the means of production. >Many corporations >can now successfully establish plants in the imperialist heartlands on >the condition that trade unions are excluded from the workplace. On the >whole the reformist leadership of the trade union movement are quite >willing to cooperate with anti working class policy in the interests of >supporting capitalist investment. Indeed the prevailing leadership of >the working class has been a decisive factor in contributing to the >success of the capitalist attacks on the working on the ideological, >political and economic levels. These changes have brought about an >enormous increase in the intensity of the exploitation of labor power >together with its rate of exploitation. The result is a corresponding >fall in the value of labor power. >These changes have exercised strong counter tendencies offsetting the >tendency of the general rate of profit to fall. This has led to the >economic recovery and boom experienced by capitalism over the recent >past. Technological innovation under private property relations makes it possible for a previously existing amount of labor to produce a greater quantity of commodities, and is one of the laws of impoverishment and polarization of the working class. When a previous existing magnitude of labor creates more commodities in the same amount of time, the value of labor fall and consequently the worker is compelled to sell their labor power for less than previous. Within the world total social capital, the application of electronics to the production process is uneven but establishes the direction of change in society. Electronic production is labor replacing technology with a growing capacity to record the functions of the worker, store these functions outside the body living labor and play these functions back in the absence of the worker. The societal direction (note the word "direction") is the production of commodities without the previous amount of living labor and with increasing less living labor in the absolute - or less value and fewer wages for the same amount of commodities produced. As capitalist compete in the market for shares and the sell of their product, the anarchy of capitalist production is revealed as a crisis of overproduction - production without regards to the limitation of the purchasing capacity of the laboring classes. The unyielding competitive drive between individual capitalist groupings compels them to invest more of the world total social capital into advanced technology and machinery and alters the ratio that is the allocation of a portion of capital for machinery (dead labor) versus allocation for wages (living labor). In as much as living labor is the source of value, there arises the law of the tendency of the rate of profit (surplus value) to fall because less value is embodied in the totality of capitalist commodity production. Following every partial recovery of profitability is an increased polarization of wealth and poverty or rather partial stabilization takes place on the basis of impoverization of the working class. The reduction of the standard of living of the working class takes place on the basis of polarization and the growth of that sector of the working class increasingly divorced from production. Partial recovery of profitability is expressed as the thirty-year increase in homelessness, less medical benefits and coverage of the world proletariat, the world growth of hunger, the outbreak of disease, and the tearing of society from its foundations. >However capitalism is now experiencing recurring economic decline. This >time the economic downturn may be on a scale not experienced since the >early seventies. Capital's problem is that the aforementioned counter >tendencies have been progressively exhausting themselves. Consequently >capital has been over producing itself on the basis of the current rate >of exploitation of labor power. The only conditions that can lead to >economic recovery is an increase in the technical composition of capital >on a scale that produces a corresponding increase in the organic >composition of capital that leading to an increase in the rate of >surplus value on a scale sufficient to compensate for the fall in the >general rate of profit. Given the degree to which the technical >composition of capital has been increased as a result of the recent >technological revolution in the means of production it is highly >unlikely that this can be followed by a revolution on a scale large >enough to restore profitability. Consequently the bourgeoisie will be >forced to mount a large-scale offensive against the working class in >order to create the political conditions that facilitate pushing the >price of labor power well below its current value. To achieve this an >enormous deterioration in the wages, conditions of work and social >existence of workers will be a necessary feature of this process. >Mounting such an offensive against the proletariat can only mean the >sharpening of class contradictions. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels described the law system that underlies the commercial crisis (the recurring economic decline) and polarization of the working class in the Communist Manifesto. "It is enough to mention the commercial crisis that by their periodical return put on trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society. In these crises a great part of 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 overproduction . . . and why? . . . . .The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them." Economic recovery is not possible under this stage of capitalist property relations, rather partial recovery of profitability - during our current phase of decay, sets the stage for cycles of intensified commercial crisis. Each cycle witness the further polarization between the concentration of wealth in the hands of individuals and an absolute increase in poverty and swelling of that sector of the working class increasing divorced from the production process. This phase of the decay of capital brings to the fore a "new polarity" that supercedes the old polarities that existed as imperialist and the colony, capitalist and employed workers, between imperialist powers, socialism and imperialism - although these conflicts and the antagonism that gives rise to them still exist. The main polarity that has arisen is between the speculative sector of capital and the majority of the world population that is increasingly divorced from production with little or no tie to capitalist property relations. The movement and shifting of polarity - as a feature of antagonism, was described as a general law in the Communist Manifesto. "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 laborers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital. These laborers 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." "In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat," or in proportion as capital is polarized, in the same proportion is the proletariat polarized. Here is the movement of antagonism, which renders a given set of trade union leaders - and other leaders in the working class, obsolete. >Together with sustained attacks on the working class growing capitalist >contradictions will tend to generate increased inter-imperialist >rivalry. Such rivalry developing into conflict can explode into >lnter-imperialist war in which the future of humanity becomes >questionable. Under these conditions the working class, in its own class >interests and in the interests of all future humanity, must organize >itself on a communist platform if it is to successfully meet these >challenges and turn them around into an attack on the bourgeoisie >leading to the establishment of world communist social relations. >Karl Carlile <So, how does this sad world get from here to the inter-bloc nightmare envisaged <by the likes of Karl, Lenin and Orwell? Or are we talking a medium- to long- <term single-hegemonic-driven integration? And if so, where lie the salient <contradictions in the process? Any thoughts? <Or shall we wrap the old list up and slip her quietly into the dustbin? <Cheers, <Rob. Capital's historic reality has been the creation of the world market that has evolved from an inter-connection, to interdependency to inner-dependency to an emerging phase of interactivity in "real time." As a "hegemonic-driven-integration" social force, its salient feature must be grasped on the basis of Marx conception of antagonism as movement of contradiction, or the manifestation of polarization. Antagonism and contradiction are not the same. Antagonism can be abolished, while contradictions are transformed and cannot be abolished as such. Lenin speaks of "the salient feature" in the most general sense in describing capitalist imperialism as a distinct stage, "when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres." "Transition to a higher economic system" means transition to a new mode of production. Today we can witness the boundary of capitalist commodity production. As a self-expanding system of reproduction, capitalism cannot exist under conditions of increasingly value-less production. This phase of the technological advance establishes the material boundaries of the end of value as a social force mediating human relations. The epoch battle of transition on a planetary scale has opened. Contradictions within private property relations are expressed as labor and capital in their prominent feature. Other contradictions exist, like the contradiction between those sections of the bourgeoisie who existence has become an impediment to the advance of industry. However, all class society moves in antagonism. That is the contradiction between productive force and relations of production - how people are organized using a specific technology and instruments, move in antagonism. Antagonism means the polarization of the basic components of a contradiction - which establishes its unity and strife, and the emergence of the basic components as relatively independent of one another - externalization, and the method of resolution is the abolition of the conditions that allowed the previously dominant pole to exist. Polarization means externalization of the basic components. Contradictions that do not move in antagonism are sublated and in the process of development, each new partial qualitative development is the process of resolution. An antagonistic contradiction cannot move beyond partial resolution until the previously dominant pole is "destroyed" - that is the conditions for its existence are abolished or private property relations, and this allows the once subordinate pole to develop on its own basis. The working class does not become a "new bourgeoisie" but destroys bourgeois property relations. At this time the phenomenon called inter-imperialist war has given way to polarization and externalization within labor and capital. War on the basis of imperial blocks of states and multinational states over a re-division of the world has been superceded by a war by capital against its own sectors that have become antagonistic to the further advance of industry. Interactivity of the world market renders obsolete the old "national" framework of the world market and what has unfolded is a modern war without borders. George Bush Jr. as the representative of the speculative sector of capital, agenda calls for the borderless war and his junior partner Tony Blair has stepped up to the "task." This is the perspective at this time and subject to change with intensification of the crises. The nightmare contains the material of the total dream and within the total dream is the resolution leading to a vision of a happy future. Argentina expresses the emergence of the new polarity - salient feature, with an emerging alignment of poverty-stricken masses, workers living at and below the margin, a large sector of recently unemployment industrial workers, organized workers and the petty bourgeoisie be pulled in the wake of this current fight directed against the speculative sector of capital that writes the agenda for the world total social capital. The fight must evolve along a trajectory that is the abolishing of all forms of capital. Melvin _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
