ALB
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This summary I found on the internet puts it well:
At the core of Marxist political economy is the idea that capitalism is highly dynamic and inevitably expansionary through accumulation. Exclaiming, “Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets,” Marx (1967), in Volume One of Capital, defined the most important driving force and the inner law of motion of the capitalist mode of production. What makes capitalism tick is not only that capitalists make a profit by exploiting workers, but that they reinvest part of the profit in further production. Capitalists are forced to act in that way as a result of competition. The rule that governs the behavior of all capitalists is, then, “accumulation for accumulation sakes, production for production sakes” (Marx 1967: 595). The inner logic of capitalism is thus not only to “work for profit,” but also to “work for capital accumulation.”
“Just occasionally conspiracy theories are true.”
Precisely. That’s my point. Most of the time they are not. So we need to be sceptical about them.
In any event, scandals involving the ruling class are of no interest to socialists. Even if they were all saints they would still be exploiters and privileged parasites.
It is a bit disturbing that there seem to be members that fall for these conspiracy theories. I remember — I think it was about ten years ago — when allegations emerged about a sex ring involving Edward Heath, Leon Britain, Harvey Proctor, the head of the army and others, that there were some members who believed this. Luckily, we didn’t fall for this in the Standard. The allegations were later found to be groundless and the man who spread them is now in prison.
Yes, they are “servile servants to the system”. As Marx put it is section 3 of chapter 24 of Volume 1 of Capital:
“Except as personified capital, the capitalist has no historical value (…) But, so far as he is personified capital, it is not values in use and the enjoyment of them, but exchange-value and its augmentation, that spur him into action.(…) Fanatically bent on making value expand itself, he ruthlessly forces the human race to produce for production’s sake (…) Only as personified capital is the capitalist respectable. As such, he shares with the miser the passion for wealth as wealth. But that which in the miser is a mere idiosyncrasy, is, in the capitalist, the effect of the social mechanism, of which he is but one of the wheels. Moreover, the development of capitalist production makes it constantly necessary to keep increasing the amount of the capital laid out in a given industrial undertaking, and competition makes the immanent laws of capitalist production to be felt by each individual capitalist, as external coercive laws. It compels him to keep constantly extending his capital, in order to preserve it, but extend it he cannot, except by means of progressive accumulation.”
Prince Charles now? I don’t think we should waste any time on these conspiracy theories. There are more important things to talk about.
It’s not the CEOs either of course, but capitalism and the way it obliges those in charge of capitalist corporations to behave economically.
George Monbiot makes the same misidentification in this otherwise generally ok video.
He correctly identifies that capitalism is committed to infinite growth (infinite capital accumulation) but he doesn’t explain why.
The only reason he seems to give is the greed of the rich but this won’t do. The greed of the rich is only a reflection in their minds of the economic imperative of capital to expand, through the competitive struggle for profits leading to more innovation and investment in machines and processes to keep costs down. Hence the infinite accumulation of capital, the infinite self-expansion of value. He needs to read some more Marx.
Also to say more about the new economic system to replace capitalism he mentions at the end and how it can come about. Even on this seeming view on why capitalism means infinite growth it would have to involve the expropriation of the rich. And the useful projects he envisages can only be implemented if the Earth’s really have become humanity’s “common treasury”.
All in all, though, his video is grist for the socialist mill.
Don’t you mean, at the end if your first paragraph, “unlikely to occur into a Capitalist society”?
Incidentally, here is how that anti-vaxxer site present that article. Typical of their style of arguing.
An anti-vaxxer comrade (unfortunately there are two or three) sent me a link from an anti-vaxxer site about this article in the belief that it backs their case.
In fact, it doesn’t as it supports vaccination but makes the point that having the disease also provides immunity against getting it (in fact part of the current UK government’s current policy to achieve “herd immunity” is based on this).
And that this means that it is unfair to discriminate against those who have had it but have not been vaccinated, eg over travel, entry to mass events, compared to those who have been vaccinated twice. I suppose it costs more to check a person’s anti-bodies than to vaccinate them.
I have been trying to work out exactly what is being proposed but it’s not a payment of $1200 a month to everyone (about £10,000 a year) as the Huff Post seems to be suggesting. That appears to be the maximum amount, the exact amount depending on your other income, even if most people might get something.
A guaranteed income scheme is not the same as UBI of course but a scheme to bring everybody’s income up to a minimum level.
More have been added. These ones show what a despicable lot the leaders of the “Communist” Party were and the lengths to which they were preoared to go in the blind obedience to their masters in state-capitalist Moscow:
The Communist Yes—No—Yes Policy on Colonial Peoples, November 1939
More About the People’s Convention, March 1941
Quick Changes by the Communist Party, July 1941
Communists support for Conservative candidates, December 1941
Communist Arguments for Lifting the Ban on the “Daily Worker”, February 1942
Death of the People’s Convention, February 1942
The Communists and Mr. Churchill, March 1942More on what happened here. Financial mismanagement seems to have a lot to do with it. Quite a few Party members went there.
I think you must mean something like “too much meat-eating” and it would meat-producing not meat-eating as such.
Head office confirm that there is a spare copy for sale (for nothing like £54 !) Just contact them with your address.
The failure of the movements for political democracy (basically for freely elected civilian governments) in Burma, Hong Kong, Belorussia and before that in Egypt and perhaps now even in Tunisia unfortunately bears out our position on the importance of who controls the armed forces. Whoever does is in a position to control the situation, especially if it is the armed forces themselves that control the state. As long as the armed forces are united and obey their leaders then they are going to get their way.
I think it was Trotsky who once pointed out that political regimes had only been overthrown where the army was disunited or went over to the opposition (as in Russia in 1917, Portugal in 1974 or Eastern Europe in the 1990s). In none of the cases mentioned above is this likely to happen (except perhaps in Tunisia where the jury is still out).
I wonder whether this calls into question advising workers to take on even peacefully a government which is in full control of the armed forces, even more so if the armed forces are the government. We have of course always advised against using armed violence in such situations. But it seems that even mass street demonstrations can be dangerous and even counter-productive. I don’t know what those in Hong Kong who organised the trashing of the legislative assembly building thought they were doing. The demonstrations in Hong Kong seem to have resulted in the loss of the elements of political democracy that existed before.
In any event, what interests socialists at the moment about political democracy is not the election of those who make up the government and decide and implement government policies. Even the armed forces can concede that as in Algeria at present and in Turkey in the past, only intervening if the civilian government goes too far from their point of view. In fact the Burmese army did concede this and then changed their mind and seem to be envisaging it again in a couple of years.
It is rather the freedom to organise and to propagate political ideas. That’s what’s in the interest of the working class and the socialist movement as it provides the best framework within which to wage the class struggle. But how separate this from struggles for an elected civilian government of capitalism?
