Marv: Thanks for your these remarks. You rightly put the question right back - "What in your view accounts for Western capitalism’s resilience? Why hasn’t it exhausted its historic capacity for growth and produced immiseration of such depth and breadth that the masses would of necessity have to overthrow the system, as Marx and Engels and every successive Marxist generation has predicted?"
This is a large brief, and I can only speculate. So I am not an economist as you well know, nor have I pretended to be such. However, I did try to summarise what I saw as a fundamental relatively new strand - the split between industrial capitalists and finance capitalists, in a book on Trump about 10 years ago. I think that division, and the exuberant growth of the financial (vs industrial) markets since around the Thatcherite-Reagan-Friedman period 1976-1980s. That did seem to me a fundamental break. To my eye it seems to have continued till now. The postponement of the most intense 'immiseration' depths of the well-resourced countries - that is to say imperialist countries - I think is well explained in your own second paragraph about the various reforms. You also in large measure answer your own next question I think. Namely - "But where did the surplus required to support these reforms come from?" Your answers are surely - to me they seem spot-on - in large measure correct: "Imperialism? Rapid technological advance in the workplace and in transportation, communications, agriculture and other sectors which greatly expanded markets and lowered the cost of production? A vast increase in military production which played a central role in recovery from the Great Depression and still provides essential support to the US economy?" You have not said intensification of exploitation of the under-developed world/ex-colonial world - though you mean it I think under the rubric "imperialism". Export of industrial manufacture to those countries, merely exacerbates the contrast of excess good capacity vs the ability of the international working class to 'sop' up those products. In general this dilemma should remind us of the dilemma many in the Left felt about defining - "When *did* capital supplant feudalism? In other words the whole Dobbs vs Sweezey debates. There are plenty of passages in both Marx and Engels, that talk of long interregnums and passages. Yet modern scholars jump up and down saying - "Ah but Marx ignored the presence of capitalists in ancient Rome etc etc". This is very intently ignoring those passages and the major thrust they were making. That is another topic. So far - we likely, I think - agree. But doubtless you nor many others, will at all like this next proposition: The collapse and take-over of the socialist economy of the USSR from revisionism and imperialist attack - removed a huge barrier and threat to international capital. That collapse happened in 1953 - and not with the Hail Mary of Gorbachov's dissolution in 1991. FWIW I think the USSR was the only socialist economy to be established. Before I am mis-understood to be arguing also that this includes the 'socialist' China - I do not believe that it can be shown that China ever established 'socialism'. Finally - and I apologise for being wordy - Michael your views on climate. I fully agree this is a huge and epic threat to humanity. But it is I think, still a part and parcel I think of the general, rapidly evolving and gigantic overall crisis. Namely the divide between the capitalist class and the toilers of the world. Am I mistaken - but surely your are not somehow saying that it is apart from that? Be Well, H -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#29112): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/29112 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/104479559/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
