http://www.iccr.gr/site/en/issue1/the-communist-party-face-to-face-with-the-capitalist-crisis.html

This is just the first part of this article - it kicks ass! The rest is at the site above...


Characterisation of the Crisis and Changes in the Model of World Domination

The tendency of the profit rate to fall, as Marx explained, is the weak point of capitalism, to the extent that profit is the aim, the motive and the finality of capital. Its effective fall, conditioned by the rise in the organic composition of capital, is at the end of the day the cause of the paralysis of the process of accumulation of capital, sharpening the basic contradiction of capitalism between the social character of the process of production and the private, capitalist form of appropriation of its results.

The crisis is the consequence of the huge increase in productivity of the labour force, of human labour exploited in factories and fields, which in turn produces an increase in capital, in surplus-value and in commodities, capital which cannot be re-accumulated at a suitable rate of profit.

The problem is not the abundance of unsold commodities, but the abundance of commodities unsold at a given rate of profit. The cause of the crisis is in no way a crisis of under-consumption. The working class exists for capitalism as producer of value, not as consumer.

Pursuing higher profits or the maintenance of the average profit rate, on the other hand a tendency for the profit rate to fall occurs because the real limit of capitalist production is capital itself. To overcome these inherent limits to the capitalist mode of production, the following lines of action have been adopted in the last decades.

* Political intervention to organise the valorization cycle at world level:

A) Producing and realising surplus value on a world scale through a boundless increase in productivity. Extending capitalist production relations to the entire world.

B) Territories and markets are annexed, the price of labour force, agricultural products and raw materials becomes cheaper, etc.

* The increase in productivity has been accompanied by a lowering of wages – devaluing the price of labour force as a commodity. To compensate for this there has been an exaggerated increase in fictitious capital and in credit. Financial and speculative capital have soared to face up to the stagnation of the profit rate while parasitism increases as a result of capitalist development in its imperialist phase.

The crises of overproduction of capital as of commodities, exclusive to capitalism, make the irrationality of the system violently explicit. The present crisis has struck capital with a violence difficult to measure and to dominate, revealing the historic limits and the caducity of capitalism.

In this sense, in the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties held in Athens from 18 to 20 November 2005, on the subject “Current tendencies of capitalism and their economic, social and political impact. The Communist alternative”, our party gave the following warning in its contribution:

“The risk of a world economic collapse is increasing each day. The global economy demonstrates that, in spite of the high concentration of capital, profits represent an ever decreasing percentage of the millions bandied by the big transnational companies. The operations of financial engineering, with the aim of “doctoring” the accounts of the results of the big firms, are everyday practice to try to cover up the situation, but they can in no case slow it down. Capital is encountering ever greater difficulties in completing its cycle of increased reproduction. Extremely high levels of speculation and having recourse to financialization not only cannot solve the problem, but complicate even more the panorama.”

Other factors linked to the crisis of overproduction interact dialectically and come in conflict in their turn with the limits of capitalism and the production of surplus-value and capital. Among these:

- The oil production peak and its consequences for models of production, transport, urbanism, life etc. The International Energy Agency declares that the developing countries could increase their demand by 47% to 121 million barrels daily in 2030 and that the oil companies and the producing countries will have to spend around

100 000 million dollars annually (76.500 million euros) to develop new sources in order to keep up this pace.

We can analyze this article in light of our own study and reading of Capital and the Manifesto, but the thing I see here is that it treads heavily on theory but perhaps without the analytical rigor that is required to pull it off

"Overproduction", "underconsumption", "tendency of profit rate to fall", and so on..

Are we sure we know what all of those concepts mean and how they interconenct together?

Its really not enough to write something that sounds good or worse "sounds correct"

EDIT: I'll highlight an example:


The problem is not the abundance of unsold commodities, but the abundance of commodities unsold at a given rate of profit.

How do we interpret this in light of our discussions of "debt"/credit as the result of the lag between production and sale? How do we fit that in to the above sentence that starts with "The problem is.."

(and actually that is not terribly hard to reconcile this particular example, but the point is so much is being blithely glossed over)

The first thing to realize is that this essay is dealing primarily with the situation in Europe and Spain, particularly, but also the world in general. I do not think that this article is error free, but I think that the approach is better than some you see. Let's look at what these concepts mean and how they interconnect.


Here's a part I liked:
"The capitalist crisis will not be overcome by reformist means or Keynesian recipes. Only by means of increasing exploitation, plunder and drastic restriction of all democratic rights can the capitalist system overcome the crisis. Marx and Engels, in The Communist Manifesto asked themselves “How does the bourgeoisie get over these crises?” and they replied “On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.”

Either the bourgeoisie will consolidate its exit from the crisis by toughening capitalist dictatorship and introducing growing levels of violence to guarantee the process of accumulation of capital, or the great majorities of working people will opt for a solution in terms of a popular counter-offensive which will benefit the social majority and not the plutocracy.

Modern society is built in tune with the contradiction labour/capital in the sense that all the contradictions existing in society come up against the increase in the value of capital. The food crisis, the energy crisis, the environmental crisis, the hydrologic crisis, gender discrimination through patriarchal hierarchy, the destruction of the land, urban speculation, racial and ethnic discrimination, famines and pandemics, etc. All the struggles generated in these fields must be directed against the power of monopolies, in the perspective of revolutionary overcoming of capitalism."

I guess my hackles just raise when I start reading so much jargon ("contradictions")

the essentials of this capitalist crisis we are living through. So I will readily accept that my "analysis" is subject to serious correction.
One of the things that puzzles me is the amount and extent of the mutation and relational changes that Marx and Engels talk about in the "Manifesto". One of the things that they seem to really drive home is the constant change that the bourgeoisie and its expropriations, systems and exploitations undergo.

This is from Chapter one:

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.

I would appreciate any light.

The quote holds until they run out of world... after that it is a little controversial. The motive force remains the same but the outlet cannot be the same ("capitalism in space" doesn't arrive on schedule).

At this point, the resulting movement is controversial. Either capitalism constantly "reconfigures" the world, with the same result but new players, OR, you get unending stagnation punctuated by ever more frequent "booms" and "busts".

Personally I think both things happen, perhaps alternately.

We are describing a relative "running out of world", but no instant "solutions", even of modest duration, exist any longer.

This is Lenin and Bukharin's "Final Stage" discussion, and there was a LOT of discussion about it just before WW2... but it is a much cleaner view which we get 80 years later.

Some of those discussions jumped the gun a bit, but it was largely because people understimated what capitalism could do.

There is NOTHING that Capitalism isn't willing to do.

"Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation" means there is nothing beneath Capitalism...destroyer worlds, again...

they were trying to explain how capitalist prosperity appears in some places while only immiseration and subsistence prevails elsewhere. They had a term for the disparity between the developed countries and the so-called Third World but I forget what it is at the moment.

This was a great source of debate and consternation for Lenin, Bukharin, Luxemborg and many others.

of reality in their heads at once. They are "national" or "local" as they manage competition with other bourgeoisie - both "local" and "foreign"; while at the same time they are global in their exploitation of working class/poor and in their search for, and exploitation of, markets. It is like leaving footprints in constantly plowed ground - they don't last long.
The problem "economists" and capitalists in general have with dealing with capitalism is directly proportional to the extent to which they wish to defend or justify the outcome of capitalism in action. And all of this "justification" and lying is solely in order to maintain the continued acquiescence of the working class. The more these crises occur and the more severe they become, the more difficult it will be to maintain the fictions. Capitalism is kind of like the Picture of Dorian Gray - and that portrait is about to go on display...

The truth of it though is that the "problem" changes with perspective.

For the Germans, Italians, etc. in WW2, it was simple: get rid of the British Empire, "reintegrate Russia", and so on. For Japan, it was get the U.S. out of the neighborhood.

For the EU, the problem is pretty simple today as well.

the biggest oversights I have. And something I have to try harder to keep in mind all the time.

Is the EU's problem surviving the US empire?
And, also, as a side note, I have found that many, otherwise educated people, will categorically refuse to see that the World Wars were crises in capitalism - why would that be?

...or, at least, nudging out a little "living space". They have to do that before the North/South divide in EU becomes a real problem. Also, if someone new shows up, they have a defensive problem.

The "new" isn't a longshot, either. 45 years before WWI, there was no such thing as a Germany or Italy, and Japan was a feudal artifact.

There is a pretty broad admission that WWI was caused by "economics and empire". I think the sheer extremeness of the Nazis blots out the underlying narrative in WW2. If you look just at Japan, the narrative is very clear.

Because you have to start with a perspective that even considers the "EU" as one entity, which it is in only a very narrow sense.

What could their problem really be except the epicenter of Empire and that fact that it ain't them.

problem with its over-all stance. There are little "problems" that jumped out at me. One kept coming back and I couldn't shake it. Near the top of the article the author states that, "(t)he working class exists for capitalism as producer of value, not as consumer." That worried me all through the rest of the article. I think that the author is saying that this is one of the errors or "contradictions", but he doesn't make that clear.

The only reason that the working class sells its life to the capitalist is so that we can consume. If we weren't consuming we'd tell the bosses to fuck off. So, if the capitalist class does not view the working class as consumers, but only as sources of value (if I am structuring this right), then is this one of capitalism's inherent flaws? Or is this new? In the Manifesto, it says, "No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc. " So, the prole is most definitely a "consumer".

So, (let me work this out) capitalism demands that the laborer be paid for his/her labor as little as is possible with total disregard for the consumption capacity or even possibility of consumption for the laborer. The laborers who are unemployed should, as far as capitalism is concerned, die - for they are of no use. Then capitalism (in the personification of the system) views consumers as distinct from workers - almost as though there were two separate classes, workers and consumers. The idea that there is some kind of connection between working and consuming is only a factor on the proletarian end of the struggle and that is where the rubber meets the road.

So, here's a question that sort of ties back in with the article: Is the current crisis in capitalism the product (at least in part) of this inability of capitalism to take this dichotomy into account?

If I am way off, just throw something at me.

even a problem with some of its more theoretical, um, forays. The point I wanted to make was the entire article and the stance it takes could've been written without traipsing into issues that are quite hairy and also too important to become flip with. Maybe I am just overly leery of these things because there are so many insane Trots out there who trigger my spidey sense.

Its not really quite correct to call humans consumers in the first place: we *produce* the means of our own reproduction which is the fundament of everything else. In some ways its six of one, sure, but I suppose you could say one subsumes the other as a category. Haven't really thought that through all the way though as it relates to "use value" and so on.

I guess what I would most like to say is that its possible "theory" is becoming a digression here or possible an indulgence on the part of the author. Talking about theory is a good idea, but we did quite a bit of work already to establish a basis we could start from and operate with, so its kind of backsliding to start fielding every extraneous statement some guy can throw out there without first grounding ourselves on the foundation we've already established and working to expand that basis.

It may be that I am really commenting on "method" here, more than anything else.

Its not quite "might as well be talking about crystals" but rather "lets make sure we're not talking about crystals"

as crises in Rulership/Ownership, its just the little leap to capitalism that it's hard for them to see...the propaganda is pretty entrenched here.(in this country, I mean...)

The movement is restoring itself. There are many differing "trends" at work, from Eurocommunist to the Balkan parties (including the KKE) who have "restored Stalin" (obviously thinking that anti-Stalinism went too far and helped to sow the seeds of dissolution). These early pronouncements may well be written by committee and contain conflicting theoretical bases. They almost invite reading in the same way as Papal documents from the Vatican - more important for what changed from the last time than anything else...

I read the thing and dug it, not so much for its theoretical sharpness as for the fact that "Revolution" is on the way back. There is a call to arms in every other paragraph.

That's progress.

It is more like the inevitability that Capitalism will cause this dichotomy, no?

I heard a muckety muck from a German bank interviewed on the BBC. The interviewer asked him why, when the banks had been given all of this public money, they were not loaning money out to businesses so that the economy could be revived. He said, paraphrasing - "are you out of your mind? What with people out of work, wages down, and all of these austerity measures consumers can't buy anything, so it would be foolish for us to invest in businesses." The interviewer pressed him, saying that in other words the whole thing was a sham and that there was no way to make this system work. The banker admitted as much - "well on an ultimate level, what you are saying is true. But this is the system we have to work within, and unless there is going to be some sort of revolution or something we have to do the best we can with what we have. Most people don't foresee, nor desire, some radical restructuring of society, so we need to do our best to reconcile the seeming contradictions in the system, which has provided great prosperity for a large number of people." A few days later I heard an American banker say the same thing.

So, these capitalists are taking the dichotomy into account, they just don't give a shit and either don't care or can't see that they are in essence saying that Capitalism can't work. They've got theirs, and fuck the rest of the world. I am not sure that anyone cares if Capitalism works or succeeds, so long as they get theirs. So there is no one to care that by crippling the working class that consumers are also crippled.

Does the thief who breaks into a shop think "gee I better not take everything, because that might put them out of business and then there won't be more stuff to steal later by the next thief?"

The owner of a business will extract all that he can as fast as he can from the worker, and the landlord, the shopkeeper and the pawnbroker will do the same to the worker - now called "consumer" or "tenant."

I don't think anyone planned this thing - "installed a system" or made up a plan - and I don't think anyone is running it.

A lot of liberals and progressives have some bureaucratic technocratic middle-management mindset and think that some prince, or board of directors, or conclave of cardinals or rathskeller full of burghers, planned this system out in their great wisdom and installed it and run it, and that if things go bad we need a new prince or congress with a new plan to implement. They see themselves sitting at the feet of the lords giving brilliant advice - "we need instant runoff voting! We need regulated Capitalism!" For them, in their little middle-management alcoves, their little rational worlds, their safe and predictable little existence, the barbarity and chaos of the system is unimaginable. "A little tweak to the rudder, and trim the mainsail, and that should put things aright."

Don't you love it when the assholes challenge us with "oh yeah, if you are so smart what is your plan?? You have no plan!" The people in power now have no plan. No one is steering the ship.

Not perfect, but it is reaching, probing, evolving - Rip Van Winkle coming awake and stretching long unused muscles.

Many inspiring passages, calls to arms as you say -

"The conditions described form a scenario where it is essential to raise the socialist alternative in face of a capitalism which is at death’s door, enlarging the consciousness and the organised struggle of the working class and of growing sectors of working people."

"Conflicts appear between different fractions of the bourgeoisie, which will be more or less decisive depending on the capacity of the working class and its allies to intervene in the class struggle, and to try to transform the economic crisis into a political crisis which will pave the way for the revolutionary overcoming of capitalism."

"The period in which in our country the right-wing 'euro-communist' tendency predominated resulted in a historic defeat for the working class. Today the bad habits and the deviations generated during that period must be definitively rejected, which implies recovering the teachings and the revolutionary spirit of the Bolshevik Party and analysing in a detailed way and defending the experiences of socialist construction during the 20th century."

"The Communist Party, through democratic centralism, must give an impulse to a political intervention which unites and leads the working class, which, in turn, must bring together a whole front of class alliance with different popular social strata confronted with monopoly capitalism. The broad participation of the masses in the class struggle brings with it an extraordinary experience. The role of communists is to make sure that the process of working class and popular struggle fractures and weakens the power of the dominating classes in the perspective of the socialist revolution."

"The Socialist Revolution is not an illusion, it is not the result of a gradual process of reforms. The historic debate between reform and revolution is once again in full force. The reconstruction of the international communist movement in Marxist-Leninist keystones, as at other moments throughout the history of the struggle of the working class, will be a determining factor in giving an impetus to the revolutionary process and the triumph of socialism in the 21st century, which will be the century either of the triumphant proletarian revolution or of barbarity."

"Does the thief who breaks into a shop think "gee I better not take everything, because that might put them out of business and then there won't be more stuff to steal later by the next thief?" I'm stealing this! ;)

That seems like a sensible way to look at it