Capitalism is the “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, torment, slavery, brutalization and moral degradation at the other…” Capitalism, Marx says, "converts the laborer into a crippled monstrosity. by forcing his detail dexterity at the expense of a world of productive capabilities and instincts…. The individual himself is made the automatic motor of a fractional operation."
Karl Marx may not have referred to the 1% and the 99% when he wrote of those extremes in the 19th century, but he certainly captured the essence of the Occupy Movement. Marxism is not just another school of economics analysing the ills that plague the present society but it a theory of how to end them. Capitalism is not a place (‘financial centres’) nor a thing (‘multinational corporations’ ), it is a social relationship dependent upon wage labour and commodity exchange where profit is derived from capital’s theft of unpaid labour.
Marx was not familiar with hedge funds, mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), credit default swaps (CDSs), and all the other derivatives that are now part of the global financial system. But Marx studied and wrote extensively on money and banking and credit yet how convenient it is to forget his conclusion that it is the entire capitalism system not simply individual aspects of its functioning that is the problem. He became familiar with generalised crises, and tried to explain financial turmoil in terms of what is now referred to as "the real economy": i.e., a crisis in the accumulation of capital. In his view, such crises were inevitable in capitalism, because it is a system of production not for human need but for profit. It is only by obeying the command of capital to constantly grow or die, that a capitalist survives. The entire system must be indicted . As each capitalist battles for resources, labor, and markets for its goods, every community, every nation, and eventually the entire planet itself, is consumed by the system. Capital therefore creates a global system, organized by the incessant requirement of accumulation. The entire system must grow. Should capitalism ever cease growing, a crisis would necessarily develop. And as Marx emphasized, this happens over and over again, through the commercial crises
Theorists seem to forget that the capitalist system remains, in all essentials, the same as it was when Marx studied in the British Museum. Lest we forget, the source of all rent, interest and profit is the unpaid labour of the working class. It’s not a revolution if you’re only taking out the bankers. The bankers are not wicked finance capitalists against whom the anger of workers should particularly be directed, just capitalists with their capital invested in a particular line of business, no more and no less reprehensible than the rest of the blood sucking parasitical capitalist class. Recessions are inherent in the boom bust cycle of capital. “Greedy bankers” are a scapegoat distracting from the fact that this will happen again and again and again. Blaming them alone implies you could have a nicer capitalism with good bankers. Pinning the blame on “greedy bankers” lets the rest of the culprits off the hook. This is not just a financial crisis, but a crisis of the whole capitalist economy in which the whole business and political class are fully implicated.
Growth is capitalism’s reason for being. Without growth, capitalism would wither and die. Capital is nothing but the movement of money into a larger amount of money, producing profit. Only by constantly finding and exploiting investment opportunities can capital accumulate, and thereby, survive. This ever-present need to grow therefore compels each individual capitalist to maximize profit. capital is like a shark – it must keep moving in order to breathe. If it were to stay still, it would quickly suffocate. Marx explains that capital’s need for growth determines the actions of each individual capitalist, such as a wealthy financier, or the modern example, a multi-national corporation. Suppose a capitalist/corporation failed to create growth, either mistakenly, or somehow purposely abdicated their role in the system. What would happen? Very simply, capital would work its way around them. Another capitalist would come along, a competitor, to take advantage of the situation, and inevitably put the first capitalist out of business. Marx names this competition between capitalists “the industrial battlefield.” This war of competition makes it impossible to simply blame BP for its shoddy safety standards which led to the poisoning of the Gulf. If BP prioritized safety over profit, the company would lose a competitive edge to its rivals, Exxon-Mobil or Chevron-Texaco.
The crisis will end and the rate of profit will be restored only after a massive devaluation or destruction of capital, accompanied by large-scale unemployment and a fall in wages, had taken place. Eventually, another crisis will come along, of course. The economist David Harvey has explained that the losses of the crisis are finally distributed between factions of the capitalist class, and between the working and capitalist classes, and whatever the power struggle that ensues, the necessary result will be the destruction of value (closure of workplaces, the laying off of workers, destruction of surpluses, defaulting on debt, cutting of state services, and so on) so that a new round of capitalist accumulation can begin. People might be homeless while properties remained unsold, jobs would be lost while factories remained idle; businesses would go bankrupt and their assets would be taken over by others, leading to a centralisation of capital. The crisis would end and the rate of profit would be restored only after a massive devaluation or destruction of capital, accompanied by large-scale unemployment and a fall in wages, had taken place.
The sad but inevitable reality of capitalism but it is the nature of capitalism
Some have suggested that this crisis is the end of capitalism, but the notion that the divided, confused and demoralised working class of the world are ready to take over and the run the world economy sounds highly unrealistic. The working class is not unfortunately currently in a position to put forward its own solution. This is primarily because the working class does not support a solution in which it rules as a class and capitalism and its state are removed in the process. That’s why we must learn the secrets of this barbaric system and learn how to fight its oppression. We need to study our working conditions. Study the power relationships at our own job. We must start thinking about and wrestling with ideas that closely impact our everyday lives. A central point is that there is no real democracy on the job, where it is most important. Workers are compelled to leave their rights at the door of their workplace as they enter it. There is little or no free speech, right to assembly, right to privacy, right to petition for the redress of grievances (given the collapse of unions in many places). Over the past two decades, many major retailers went from 70 to 80% full-time staff to at least 70% part-time. The zero-hour contract has begun to spread, a contract under which an employer does not guarantee the employee a fixed number of hours per week. Rather, the employees is expected to be on-call and receive pay only for hours worked. If they are unavailable when called in at the last minute, they risk losing their job. Today, capitalism is a part of our everyday life, yet we are so naïve and so apathetic to protest against it. Schools, prisons and factories are under the general imperative to make their subjects both productive and docile. Capitalism has failed us. We must recognise that capitalism has failed and struggle practically and intellectually for an alternative.
Anthropologist Peter Rigby said, “Capitalism is the most opaque form of oppression known to mankind, because in capitalism, people are convinced they are free, when, in fact, they are in chains.”
In the opening lines of the “Communist Manifesto” Marx declares, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” People do not choose to be poor or oppressed, although the rich would like us to believe otherwise. The powerless are kept that way by those in power. And they are struggling to end that poverty and oppression, to the best of their individual and collective ability. The “bourgeoisie” are those who own and control the “means of production,” or basically, the land, factories and machines that make up the economy. Today we know them as the Donald Trumps, the Warren Buffets, (although most of the ruling class tries to avoid public scrutiny.) In short, the ruling class in capitalism are the wealthy elite, who exert control over society (and government) through their wealth. Opposing them is the working class, the "proletariat"– "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”. The working class for Marx is everybody who has to work for a wage and sell their labor in order to survive. In today's world the workers are under normal conditions compelled to common action far more than any other class of society; and that, in fact, the very conditions of life of the modern industrial proletarian, develop in him the spirit of solidarity.
The rich rule society and they design it for their own benefit through politics, the media, schools, etc. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer and for Marx there can only be one solution — revolution: “This revolution is necessary not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew”
How will it happen? Marx gives an answer: “the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.” This comes from the Preamble of the International Workingmen’s Association (also known as the First International). The International was an organisation made up of workers from around the world and its goal was the solidarity of workers across national boundaries, becoming united and empowered so to lay siege to the capitalist system in class war. Through acquiring “class consciousness,” the workers would become aware of their “historic mission,” to expropriate the expropriators and through organisation, they would build the means to accomplish it. Marx believed that change has to come from below for it is impossible to decree socialism from above.
It is for Marxists to educate working people about these facts. Once the workers are aware of the true origin of the wealth of the world they will take steps to end their own exploitation and in so doing the exploitation of humanity in general. No-one, not even the greatest thinker, can foretell the march of the working class in detail. We know not how many struggles still lie ahead, nor how many will have to perish before the goal of the movement is reached; but the grave-stones of our fallen are the stepping-stones of the progress of the movement, and fill us with a certainty of its triumph in the future.
One of Marx’s crucial discoveries in the field of political economy was that the working class of wage and salary earners gets paid less than the value of the goods it creates, the difference being a surplus value which accrues to the owning class in the form of ground rent, interest and profit. Capitalism turned human labour power into a commodity – something bought and sold. When capitalists buy a worker’s labour they buy the worker’s capacity to work for a full day. Wages are set, however, like every other commodity, by the value of labour-power needed to reproduce them, which in the case of labour is the value of food, clothing, etc. needed to keep the worker in a fit condition to work. But the value of ‘labour power’ is different from the value created by the worker’s labour and this difference, called surplus value, belongs to the capitalist. The working day under capitalism therefore divides into two parts; ‘necessary labour’ when the workers actually earns what they are paid in wages, and ‘surplus labour’ which is the time spent producing ‘surplus value’ for the capitalist employer. The aim of capitalist production is the production of surplus value. The new value added by labour in the process of production to the previously existing value of the raw and other materials is divided into wages and surplus value, which goes to the capitalist employer and is the source of profit. Profits are made in the sphere of production but only “realised” in the market. What is so vital about profit that makes this necessary? It is the source of the capitalist’s capital. The more capital they can accumulate out of the profits accruing to them the more effectively can they compete – by investing in more productive technologies to undercut their competitors – and thus claim a larger share of the market for themselves. If they did not do this then their competitors could, and would knock them out of business. Economic competition between enterprises fuels the drive towards capital accumulation. This in turn necessitates profit maximisation which expresses itself as a continuous downward pressure on wages (reinforced by competition between workers on the labour market).
We’re the ones who build things, make things, make things work, provide the services, provide the ideas. But though we build the world around us, it does not belong to us. Everything that has been built around us is the result of our work and yet we don’t work for ourselves. We produce not for ourselves, but at the behest’s and whims of others. The worker is compelled to labour to satisfy the wants of others who, holding the things necessary for his life, thereby control him. He is, therefore, still a slave. We are the ones who are told what to produce, how to produce it, how much, and how fast. We are the ones who receive a pay-cheque, be it high or low, not for selling what we produce but for selling our power to work. With that pay-cheque we try to buy back what we make. The source of someone else’s profits comes from our work.
Marx laid bare all the tricks of capitalist exploitation of the workers. We are so use to how the market operates under capitalism, how prices fluctuate, commodities rise and fall in prices, the working people naturally just think that values (which they don't differentiate from prices) are products of the natural world. This is why "supply and demand" seems to be the basis of the value of things. They don't see it's all really the result of the socially necessary labour time expended in the labour process that is the determining factor in value
No comments:
Post a Comment