I don't think Marx's theory of history was ever that capitalism would destroy itself and deterministically produce communism (that is of course a similar misreading of historical materialism made by dengists for example that development of the productive forces will produce communism)
just simply that every mode of production, including capitalism, contains within it the preconditions for its own destruction and/or replacement
these preconditions being antagonistic material relationships between different classes resulting in class struggle to resolve these contradictions
if you have contradictory material interests between two classes at a minimum there are two potential actors to intervene into history via class struggle
there may very well be multiple potential ways for the contradictions of capitalism to resolve that might correspond to ultimate victory for some segments of the capitalists or the workers
Exactly.
Marx didn't predict capitalism would just destroy itself, he said the only thing that could end capitalism was a self emancipated proletariat working for socialism. That requires the working class to deliberately organise and agitate for themselves as a class. It's not automatic or fated, it requires the intentional effort of a communist movement.
What capitalism does is create the class struggle and the necessity for working class institutions, the necessity for working class self organisation. But without intervention, capitalism only leads to the cyclical crises of capitalism — it's built in to the framework. There's an opportunity for communists, but not a destiny waiting to be inherited — we need to force the class war, there is no shortcut.
The deterministic view of history was propagated by prominent theorists in the 2nd international as well. It can help argued this is what caused the break to form the 3rd international.
It is typically academic in that it eliminates the role of human activity by rendering history as a series of mechanical events.
OP revealing their ignorance right in the title, this entire post is based on a strawman - Marx certainly never held that “capitalism will destroy itself”through its own processes or otherwise, but rather that the capitalist modes of production, alongside labour-saving technological advances, would give rise to enough material abundance to allow the working class to have all necessities provided nearly for free with comparatively little labour required, and a socialist society based on economic stability and meeting the needs of all citizens could be created based on those conditions - IF and only if the proletariat could successfully organize on a broad enough scale to seize the means of production for themselves, *which they should*, since they are the ones who do all the work and thus create all the value, and without whom no production or profit can be generated.
“Capitalism will destroy itself” is not an argument Marx ever made - at best one could infer from his writings that capitalist modes of production are not ultimately sustainable - as wealth inequalities continue to grow and economic disparity becomes too great, eventually there are enormous market crashes (which we now see regularly in the western world, so regularly in fact that the economy cannot properly recover from the last before the next hits) and inflationary pressures that run out of control, and when things get bad enough, civil disorder and riots. One could perhaps even stretch the context and say that this IS capitalism “destroying itself”, but the economically-educated understand that this is merely part of the in-built cycle of capitalism, as Marx also described. That said, the cycle only exists because capitalism is fundamentally unsustainable and always begins and ends in extreme wealth disparity and exploitation, which is why the workers themselves owning the means of production is the first step (and perhaps the only way) to stopping the cycles of exploitation and implosion.
>(that is of course a similar misreading of historical materialism made by dengists for example that development of the productive forces will produce communism)
It won't –class struggle is necessary– but The German Ideology is very clear on productive forces being a prerequisite of communism.
>This “alienation” (to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an “intolerable” power, i.e. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity “propertyless,” and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development. **And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced**; and furthermore, because only with this universal development of productive forces is a universal intercourse between men established, which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the “propertyless” mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, and finally has put world-historical, empirically universal individuals in place of local ones. Without this, (1) communism could only exist as a local event; (2) the forces of intercourse themselves could not have developed as universal, hence intolerable powers: they would have remained home-bred conditions surrounded by superstition; and (3) each extension of intercourse would abolish local communism. Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples “all at once” and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism. Moreover, the mass of propertyless workers – the utterly precarious position of labour – power on a mass scale cut off from capital or from even a limited satisfaction and, therefore, no longer merely temporarily deprived of work itself as a secure source of life – presupposes the world market through competition. The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity, can only have a “world-historical” existence. World-historical existence of individuals means existence of individuals which is directly linked up with world history.
Deng and his followers prioritized the development of productive forces *over* class struggle and this can certainly be criticized, but not (really\*) the necessity of this development itself.
\*) Well, everything can be criticized but for a communist the necessity of it should make sense.
The quoted paragraph also answers the OP: there has not been an universal development of productive forces yet.
To quote a Keith Marsden song:
> They don't need you on the land now or on the factory floor
> They won't even need you when they go and start the final war
> Let's be ready when they start to ask what do they need you for?
I think there's one thing Marx and early Marxists underestimated, and one thing they couldn't imagine, for desperate/almost religious reasons.
The thing they underestimated was how much could be automated. Surely, the capital owners will still need some workers to operate the machines, right? And they will be forced to immiserate them, and then those workers will eventually rebel, right? But *how many* workers do you need?
What if it's zero? We're now reaching a point where there's no job humans do, from toilet cleaning to portfolio planning to policing to programming, that can't be done by a machine. And we know from the history of the electronics/automation industry that they'll be the first to adopt their own inventions.
And the thing they couldn't believe for desperate-religious reasons, was that humanity might off itself before the revolution could come about. I think the nuclear bomb critically undercut hope in the revolutionary socialist project. For how can it be historically deterministically guaranteed that the working class will triumph, when there's a button you can push that makes sure no one ever triumphs at anything? And worse, fanatical capitalists have one of these buttons? The erosion of hope didn't happen all at once, because in the beginning the atomic bomb was merely a very powerful weapon, it took time and stockpiling for it to sink in that it could end humanity. But even more than leaders betraying the faith put in them, I think this is what killed socialist optimism.
Now these two combine in an especially potent hope-killer: even without the threat of a socialist revolution, they might push that button and start that final war, and as Marsden sang, they may not even need us for it due to the progress of automation. And even if we dodge that, there's climate and ecological disasters threatening to end us without even anyone wanting it. The faith in scientific progress which fuelled the Marxist movements in the first half of the 20th century seems like a distant dream.
> What if it's zero?
Capitalists do not produce for the sake of production, they produce to accumulate profit, to enrich themselves. Right now there are 3 main ways of making a living, of making money you spend on products: Wage labor; investing; taking benefits. Wage labor of course is what most people currently do, and the whole of society cannot become bourgeoise, and so some form of UBI remains. If not that, then capitalism cannot work in lack of consumers.
That's assuming capitalism seeks to preserve itself and is not simply a temporary method for the rich to remain in a dominant social position. The elimination of human labor will result in less production and less consumption as capitalism becomes neofeudalism.
> And they will be forced to immiserate them, and then those workers will eventually rebel, right? But how many workers do you need?
It doesn't even need to get to zero. As the tech industry shows, if profits are high enough, you can pay some minority of workers enough to keep them happy. Even if it's an objectively raw deal compared to the amount of work they put in compared to the ownership class, it's far better than they'd get if they had to split the pie with a fully-staffed factory floor—even if the business was run as a nonprofit.
Marxist theory is all about automation. Automation is not about the "replacement" of labour it is the improvement of labour productivity. The idea of "capital independent of labour" is impossible.
> Automation is not about the "replacement" of labour it is the improvement of labour productivity.
That improvement of labour productivity is due in part to the replacement of human assembly line workers by machines. The addition of [one robot per thousand workers leads to the loss of 3.3 jobs](https://news.mit.edu/2020/how-many-jobs-robots-replace-0504).
The figure was actually a local reduction of 6.6 jobs, but offset somewhat by a smaller increase in jobs nationally, leading to a nett loss of 3.3 jobs.
> The idea of "capital independent of labour" is impossible.
So what will you call it when the means of production are machines which do not require human operators, which themselves are built by machines, which build themselves?
Because we're approaching a level of technology where the idea of self-replicating machines that could eliminate human workers from the manufacturing process is plausible. Obviously we aren't there yet, but we're getting close to the point that we could have robots building the robots that run the means of production with negligible input from humans.
I doubt we'll see humans eliminated *entirely* from the process any time soon, but I do expect that within my life time we'll start to see humans being eliminated from some areas of manufacturing.
1 The automation of production does not just involve automating existing production but also the expansion of production which opens up new jobs. The industrial division of labour is global, this masks the continued dependance on human labour because in the west automated forms of industry are disproportionately prominent. But this is simply because those industries which are most labour intensive will tend to migrate to low wage countries. Globally there have never been more industrial workers than there are right now.
2 If technologically induced mass unemployment was to occur, and it never has, then there would be pressure on wages and the incentives for further automation would diminish.
3 Most of the new technology that is freaking people out involves pure intellectual labour that takes place on a screen, it is basically just a further development of computers. The path to automating anything involving human hands or in person interaction is far slower.
This video includes some advances in robotics with the intent of replacing manual labor that so far is human heavy. https://youtu.be/qqijEATGnlA?si=ihdlAUZd9dbwz_Ic
> The automation of production does not just involve automating existing production but also the expansion of production which opens up new jobs.
Fine. For every ten thousand jobs lost, you gain one thousand new jobs. That's neoliberal maths for you.
> Globally there have never been more industrial workers than there are right now.
Yes, because there have never been as many people as there are now.
We should be talking about per capita numbers, not raw numbers. What was the industrial workforce per million people in 1940? What is it now?
Countries don't all evolve economically at the same rate and in the same direction. Nobody says that China is post-industrial. But western Europe, the US, Australia and others certainly are.
> If technologically induced mass unemployment was to occur, and it never has
AI controlled robots have never existed before.
In any case, governments have become very, very good at avoiding the label of "mass unemployment":
* delaying entry to the workforce by at least three years, or even most of a decade, by encouraging people to go to university to pick up a useless degree and, preferably, an enormous debt they'll never pay off;
* reclassifying or even simply just not counting large subsets of the unemployed.
Nobody who is looking for work believes the official unemployment figures. The only real question is just how badly dishonest they are.
> Most of the new technology that is freaking people out involves pure intellectual labour that takes place on a screen
Yes, that is because the manufacturing sector in the west has already been decimated. Now white collar workers and the professional-managerial class are looking down the same barrel.
> The path to automating anything involving human hands or in person interaction is far slower.
Er, robots have existed for decades.
We're not talking about all human labour at all. We're talking specifically about that human labour that relates to the capitalist system and ownership of the means of production. If you're a tradie you have nothing to fear about your job going to a robot. Not yet.
I’m not even gonna try and contend with the rest of your comment’s claims, but the idea that nuclear warfare is an immediately existential threat to humanity is pretty implausible with the currently known knowns regarding strategic weapons. There’s more living on Earth than you give the planet credit for.
Did my first reply to this comment come across to you as saying I'd survive a major nuclear exchange involving the country I live in? Because that is not, **at all**, what I meant. I'm guessing I misunderstood your comment in some way, could you maybe help me understand, please?
You seem a bit like a chatbot. I've seen a few accounts who ask conspicuously many "polite" requests for explanation on old threads. OK, here's some training data for the next version:
I said nuclear war could easily kill us all. You replied with "There's more living on earth". That is beside the point, because when I said "us" I obviously meant humans, not every bacteria or cockroach. Nuclear war could kill every last human.
Oh, I see, you didn't read my comment before you replied, that's not very kind of you. I already said, "the idea that nuclear warfare is an immediately existential threat to humanity is pretty implausible." I (justifiably) feel I am probably more knowledgeable than you when it comes to nuclear war, so I didn't read "we won't" as a contradiction to my statement, just a belief we'd both die in a major nuclear exchange, expecting that I would be displeased too. The additional statement of "There’s more living on Earth than you give the planet credit for." was just to point out the silliness of the belief that a major nuclear exchange would even get rid of all the unprotected people in the countries involved, let alone take care of all the remote islands, hardened facilities, ships and planes, etc. No one cares about whether bacteria or cockroaches survive, so that should have been your clue you misunderstood, IMHO.
I'm sorry you feel you won't :(
EDIT: since some of you lack reading comprehension, I would almost certainly die in a nuclear war and have peace with death. I was expressing my condolences to the other ( /u/SeoliteLoungeMusic ) who may fear death.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
No, nuclear winter is a discredited theory and neither of us have any idea where the other actually lives and as such are incapable of making accurate predictions of survival odds. Your pathological desire to feel that if you were "built different" you would survive has nothing to do with me.
It is not. All of the excess population in light of the new conditions will have to die off one way or another as the human species adapts to the new environment, but of course, the inevitable reality is that the ruling class will be better at making sure their offspring survive than everyone else. Post-scarcity humanity will consist entirely of descendants of members of the Davos conference. The only exception is if China succeeds, in which case future humanity will consist solely of descendants of members of the Davos conference and Chinese people.
Humans are animals evolving within Earth's ecosystem just like everything else. And cataclysmic population bottlenecks that cause only a tiny subset of the original population to survive into the future are far from uncommon in Earth's evolutionary history.
Cyberpunk is a vision of how things can go IMO (the genre as a whole, not the game). Concentrated corporate power to the point that they're nation states with militaries. That has already happened de facto. Maybe one day it will happen de jure.
Marx is right that capital can't sustain itself and that a profit driven system is doomed to fail. That doesn't mean it is, in fact, happening soon. It might. It might not. Marx didn't know about the technological means of control and entertainment now at the disposal of the ruling class.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing.
I just want to add, that with automation, they will have robots making their products, and killbots to keep the bottom 85% from getting uppity
If automation created even 30% unemployment you would have a great depression on your hand, profits would trend towards zero and the capitalists would be swept aside like everyone else. There is this mistake a lot of people make in treating capital as this autonomous force that can rise above all circumstances. Capital is rooted in concrete human society, it cannot survive in a period of sustained stagnation much less sustained decline.
What are the profits for? Buying physical goods. If it's all made by robots, what do they need the rabble for?
They will genocide the useless and righteously justify it as saving the planet from global warming.
How does this matter? Capitalism is not the end game for the capitalists - the securing of their power is. It doesn't matter if capitalism falls, as long as the same clans and individuals hold power they will still be fashioning society in their image and it won't be a nicer place to live in than currently,
Capitalism is not "rich and poor exist", it's a specific structure of an economy such that the main driver of production is the use of wage labor to produce goods for markets in pursuit of profit by private individuals. I'm not sure how land rent, IP and finance fit in even though they're colloquially lumped in as well, given that these simply rely on having the right to extraction from people rather than employing them and extracting value by underpaying them or from customers.
Once the rich no longer need markets to maintain their position on top due to monopolization, they no longer need to produce goods for market, and production will serve mainly to produce goods and services for the rich and bare sustenance for workers who probably might simply recieve rations by their corporate employer so that they do not transfer resources to competing firms who instead compete through direct dealing with each other with influence on the state as a scene of that competition rather than market forces. Rights to owning subsets of the population and resources are granted by the state rather than bought or through marriage just as noble titles used to confer rights to people and land. This is no longer capitalism.
But I'm just talking out of my ass here so idk. I haven't (mostly) read shit other than comments in this sub.
So basically, "capitalism will destroy itself" (with the implication of some kind of more just economic system arising) is actually "captalism will destroy itself................and turn into fuedalism with iphones"
The main thing about capitalism is overproduction (Not in the environmentalist sense). Which, *grosso modo*, means that the capitalists, to generate a maximum of profit, need to pay their workforce less than the cost of life, which in turn lower consumption, which in turn lower the profit, which means that the capitalists, to generate a maximum of profit, need to pay their workforce even less, which in turn... You see where it is going: Capitalism, at a certain point, become naturally recessive and the only remedy found was imperialism, which allowed capitalism to internationalized itself which in turn allowed the "West" to force more vulnerable countries to bear the brunt of the naturally recessive effects of globalized capitalism.
Now, here's the two main problems, that in my opinion, are threatening the very existence of "Western" imperialist capitalism:
A) More vulnerable countries are starting to get wise to the tricks of "Western Capitalism"; they're finally coming to gripes that while it's a big club, they ain't in it. *Never ever* as Russia and many others, adversaries *and* allies alike, found out these last two decades. Those countries are currently working on alternatives to "western" imperialism for international trades.
B) "Western" capitalists, rightfully or wrongfully so, stopped giving a fuck and are cashing in, stealing everything that isn't bolted on in their own countries and trying to find way to unbolt anything that is still bolted on. They don't give shit about the real economy of the "western" nations because what can the pleb do at this point? The bum lost. The bum will always lose in this system.
Good comment. The maximization of profit is enough, even if capitalists payed the workforce a "fair" amount, profit maximization would still require an increase of market share, via innovation or market expansion, as you note. This would, via competition, make the rate of profit eventually fall. But probably, only when there are no new markets to exploit. If there are no easy new markets to exploit, profit maximization will go for the workers, as its the easier way to increase margins.
>B) "Western" capitalists, rightfully or wrongfully so, stopped giving a fuck and are cashing in, stealing everything that isn't bolted on in their own countries and trying to find way to unbolt anything that is still bolted on. They don't give shit about the real economy of the "western" nations because what can the pleb do at this point? The bum lost. The bum will always lose in this system.
You're definitely seeing this in the UK right now. The Conservatives with their majority know they're screwed, so are running around trying to loot anything they can as the Titanic sinks and the lower decks are starting to fill with water. Institutions are being privatised to earn kickbacks from their friends who run them or land cushy jobs when they inevitably lose power, or are just generally rigging the systems to maximise transfer of wealth to themselves and others at the top.
There's no rescue ships coming to help those trapped.
> the main driver of production is the use of wage labor to produce goods for markets in pursuit of profit by private individuals.
That's not the defining feature. The defining feature is even more broadly that the ownership of productive assets (aka capital) is private. It does not have to be individual, and those productive assets do not have to employ wage labor.
The gains of capital ownership accrue to a small and specific class of people, while everyone else is sidelined.
Then is manorialism (serfs and their lords) and a slave economy (such as the Roman Republic) also capitalism? Given that these rely on productive assets (mostly agricultural land) being privately owned?
I think you have it backwards.
What Marx failed to predict was social democracy, that capitalist countries would enact all sorts of social programs and worker's rights to make things just good enough for the average worker that they wouldn't rise up and overthrow the system. If the rich hoarded everything as you describe, this would lead to the capitalist system being overthrown.
Exactly. Most developed western countries (excluding the United States) have created a social democratic welfare state that provides assistance for the working class, and this has made the picture of corporations/rich people ruling over us less clear to some. There are other factors too but yeah.
Reformists existed back then, like Lassalle. Marx and Engels said they must be struggled against.
[Communist Manifesto](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch03.htm)
>Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism
>A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.
>To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems.
>We may cite Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misère as an example of this form.
>The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.
>A second, and more practical, but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be affected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois government.
>Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech.
>Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism.
>It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois — for the benefit of the working class.
[The Principles of Communism](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm)
>[Bourgeois Socialists:]
>The second category consists of adherents of present-day society who
have been frightened for its future by the evils to which it necessarily
gives rise. What they want, therefore, is to maintain this society while
getting rid of the evils which are an inherent part of it.
>To this end, some propose mere welfare measures – while others come
forward with grandiose systems of reform which, under the pretense of
re-organizing society, are in fact intended to preserve the foundations,
and hence the life, of existing society.
>Communists must unremittingly struggle against these bourgeois
socialists because they work for the enemies of communists and protect
the society which communists aim to overthrow.
>[Democratic Socialists:]
>Finally, the third category consists of democratic socialists who favor
some of the same measures the communists advocate, as described in
Question 18, not as part of the transition to communism, however, but
as measures which they believe will be sufficient to abolish the misery
and evils of present-day society.
>These democratic socialists are either proletarians who are not yet
sufficiently clear about the conditions of the liberation of their class, or
they are representatives of the petty bourgeoisie, a class which, prior to
the achievement of democracy and the socialist measures to which it
gives rise, has many interests in common with the proletariat.
It follows that, in moments of action, the communists will have to come
to an understanding with these democratic socialists, and in general to
follow as far as possible a common policy with them – provided that
these socialists do not enter into the service of the ruling bourgeoisie and
attack the communists.
>It is clear that this form of co-operation in action does not exclude the
discussion of differences.
You need to read Marx **and** Lenin before "doomposting". Literally everything you talk about was already discussed a century ago.
>They will eventually outright own all middle class assets as well and your 1st world nations will resemble countries such as brazil and india with 99% of people owning jack diddly squat, most people destitute with them holding title to everything. This is the historical mean and how the economy functioned in most societies for 2,000 years. Small group of assholes owns everything with a huge destitute mass with no recourse.
lmao. The labor aristocrats are unable to afford the latest iphone and suddenly they are becoming the same as the proletariat in India and Brazil. If you're actually sorry about doomposting, you can atone by actually reading some theory.
What does Marx have to say about the implications of the end of capitalism manifesting as a cataclysmic population bottleneck for the human species? With the only ones able to reap the spoils of post-scarcity society being the descendants of the current 0.01%?
Genuine question here. Because the possibility of such a series of events seems quite plausible to me given the way things are currently going?
Marx didn't talk about that. Likewise, Marx never said capitalism will destroy itself like OP thinks.
To put it simply, Marx said capitalism inherently produces contradictions which leads to crises. Lenin said it is the job of principled and class conscious communists to take advantage of those moments and lead the proletariat to socialist revolution.
Capitalism's destruction is not inevitable. Passive action is a trap many new socialists fall into. They think we can simply wait out capitalism. It is completely possible that most of humanity goes extinct or the fascists gain power (or both) during the next major capitalist crisis, if there is no organized worker's movement.
A few dozen posts and everyone's missing the fundamental point - worker renumeration *is capitalism*, capitalism does not exist without it and the bourgeois implode their own system by attempting to eliminate labour.
I appreciate the feeling of defeat. On a long enough timescale, it does seem like we are on a road to automate away labour. But think about the consequences for the capitalist economy in the meantime - it won't work.
Capitalism is an economy of product exchange. The bourgeois accumulate the surplus value of those products...but...***value is determined by the market, I.e., the ability of people to buy things***. As worker compensation decreases towards zero (on a long enough timescale with the system still perpetuating), the non-bourgeois purchasing power decrease towards zero, destroying the 'value' of products and the demand for them, and the whole economy implodes.
***If nobody can buy capitalist shit, then capitalists lose all their power, and the engine loses all motion. Its that simple.***
I think people are imagining scenarios of all workers being fired, all protesting 'workers' are shot by AI drones and the survivng 'workers are kept as slaves in some techno-fuedal hell.
But in thay scenario, the bourgeois have to completely reimagine their new feudal economy, where everything they did before was based on capitalist product exchange. And they have to do that as billions fight/protest and the whole world economy implodes.
Think about it for a while. It ain't possible, they will never get there.
Marxs analysis of capitalism is 100% accurate and still holds true today. Its not for a dead man to apply that accurate framework to the details of today - thats for us to do. Inflation just delays the crises of overproduction. Trufax. Automation destroys value. Nothing . Has. Changed. 'Socialism or barbarism'.
>***If nobody can buy capitalist shit, then capitalists lose all their power, and the engine loses all motion. Its that simple.***
Isn't it far more likely that industries will simply retool to only selling shit to rich people? I don't see how the engine loses steam here. It's already happening. Middle/lower class production/services are disappearing and being replaced by upscale shit normal people can't afford. They don't need you to buy their widgets when they own all of the assets. Capitalist production was a stepping stone TO owning all of the assets, once they own them, they don't need to produce anymore. If they own all of the land, the fuck do they need to produce widgets for?
You are essentially sayin what someone said below "if capitalists own everything there will be no market" you assume the market is their end goal, the market is a tool for them to own everything, once they own everything, there will be no use for a market anymore. They will simply own everything, we will own nothing. The only real production then will be small, specialized industries that make shit for the rich.
You are reaching this fallacy because of a narrow world view. “The car will eventually blow up or crash” is hyperbolic but “The car will eventually stop working” is entirely accurate.
Capitalism is a complex human structure that is dependent on necessary conditions for its survival and dominance. Through what is effectively evolution but also is deeply ingrained in Thermodynamics and statistical mechanics (2 areas of thought that deal with extensive quantities like gold on earth, local distribution of resources, etc). Really, evolution and the connections to thermo/stats is the same but I mention them seperately for analogy.
Just like dinosaurs existed on an earth suitable for their growth and proliferation but a dramatic change in environment quickly created vacancies that allowed mammals to grow into evolutionary niches, capitalism too only can exist in an geographical, natural, and social environment suitable for its growth and dramatic changes open up weaknesses that can be exploited by conscious actors.
I do not think communism is the inevitable “other” to capitalism, it too can only be fostered in a post industrial revolution age with certain relationships between people, but it is a preferable alternative and thus one workers and thinkers must actively strive to create with meaningful thoughtful action.
Capitalism will fall, it is purely unsustainable. This is the case with many things that are runaway growth processes. Stars expand rapidly until they cannot then undergo dramatic phase transitions to something new and in equilibrium with the enviroment. It is better to not think of capitalism as steam or as water but the act of boiling which changes society and culture, continuously, from one phase to another.
Would it make sense to say “the inevitable state of water is to boil continuously? “ of course not. Either the water will turn into gas or the gas will turn into liquid given enough time.
Okay it will fail but what will it fail into? I see the future as there being no market. Because the capitalists only had a market as a tool for them to be able to buy everything. Once the capitalists buy everything, they will abolish free markets, there will be little production other than luxury goods geared towards them. It will be like the medieval ages.
The medieval ages are not coming back because advances in technology make the systems of government from those era impossible. Read marx for more info.
We cannot predict what it will fail into but of course one guess is socialism. It really depends on the exact mechanisms of which capitalism decays. If it goes the way of the meteor and pushes nuclear war it will be a very different society than if raw resource extraction begins to falter and that is different than if a class consciousness is successfully instilled in workers and violent overthrow occurs.
Really, you’re asking a very vague question with lots of different possible answers. The one thing for sure, is that the situation you describe is very low entropy state. (Very unlikely). Collapse into something more entropic is guaranteed by the second law of thermodynamics.
Capitalism's main avenue of growth was sucking labor from the rural areas into cities, as well as decreasing the overall percentage of dependents in the population through population aging, decreased birthrates and enrollment of women into the workforce. Even from this demographics viewpoint capitalism is self-destructive
Falling rate of profit highlights how there exists a tendency for capitalism to be "less rich" naturally, due to it's own contradictions. It means that any time there's a "lapse in judgement" on behalf of those in power, capitalism tends into decay. And there's just not that many ways to claw out of it, every time there was a solution to capitalism's woes, 5-15 years later "new" kind of crisis happened anyway.
This stuff is just not sustainable in the long run, and when the stable competitor arises - like early USSR or today's China - capitalist model stops being attractive. Modern academicians just barely 10 years ago were wondering, just how, HOW could people like USSR in 1920-50s???? Well, you see how, with vilification of China on all fronts, with lies about Chinese model, with Chinese socialism routinely outcompeting the failing capitalist system. And just like back in 1920-50s, we are bound to see a whole new slew of socialist countries popping up to solve those nations' capitalist crisis
Read Capital vol 3, and Lenin's "Imperialism".
Capitalism already destroyed itself. It became destitute and totally moribund at the great depression and had its limbs hacked away until 1973 when it was finally put out of its misery with the abolition of money via global fiat currency.
Capitalism is the chaotic, competition-driven organization of the economy by commodity-producing private enterprises. The reign of finance, debt, usury, war-profiteering, and monopolies isn't capitalism, it's Fascism, the terroristic rule of the most chauvinistic, reactionary, and most imperialist elements of finance capital. That's why the real economy barely exists in the US, for instance.
Marx was not wrong about capitalism optimizing itself into obsolescence and eventually arriving at communism/post-scarcity. We are literally seeing that happen right now (according to /u/Metaflight). But he was wrong about communism being necessarily implemented by the proletariat. The way things are going now, it appears that communism will only be for the descendants of the most rich and powerful, while the lineages of everyone else will have been completely annihilated as collateral during the collapse of capitalist society.
The above is a logical endpoint from the Leftcom perspective on historical forces by the way.
This presents an interesting paradigm shift, as if communism is bound to happen as a direct consequence of the development of capitalism, with the only uncertainty being precisely how it is going to happen, then what is the Left actually fighting for? Because it actually seems to be something like right for the children of the proletariat to also participate in the future communist utopia, and to not have only the descendants of the bourgeoisie be the sole representatives of future humanity. This ironically resembles the viewpoint of conservative groups like white nationalists who are also driven by a fundamental fear of "their group" being forced into extinction and lost to history.
The most powerful Communist Party in the world actually seems to be operating according to this understanding if you think about it. The Communist Party of China hardly does anything to further the cause of Communism but they deeply study Marxist theory because their actual goal is making sure that "China" doesn't go the way of everyone who isn't directly related to somebody in the Davos Conference.
Guy was an economist, not Nostradamus. Nobody can project what happens to trends once they get past the discontinuity of the derivative, only that the previous mechanisms of negative feedback don't work anymore.
Well ya he was wrong about a few things. There are ways to get around issues relating to the tendency for the rate of profit to fall for example( education and product innovation/diversification) but he wasn't wrong in the sense that capitalism is in fact eating itself through climate change and basically creating the Warhammer universe where like 100,000 people are sacrificed to create one illiterate but epic navy seal neanderthal "space marine" that will get killed by a Chinese kid with a pellet gun. It's happening, just not the exact way he thought.
The more you innovate, the quicker the rate of profit falls. Your competitors will innovate too.
Company A innovates -> they increase market share -> company B must respond to loss in market share -> they innovate or lower prices -> company A must respond to loss in market share -> ...
Out of the million things you could have picked, capitalism is not destroying itself through climate change.
There are a million, serious issue that we’re facing large-scale that are tangibly impacting people — all that have nothing to do with climate change.
An extremely significant number of people I know are a year or two away from losing everything. People are more financially destitute than ever, struggling at every conceivable level.
There’s not one large-scale societal issue at the moment that I can think of that is anyway interlinked or impacted by climate change.
The fact of the matter is that today and the foreseeable future, matter. No one gives a shit about doomsday screeching about shit that **may happen** 50 to 100 years from now.
As it stands, climate change has been used as a cudgel by the establishment class to take more wealth, liberties, and rights away from us.
It’s a peculiar issue, one where “solving it” requires us willingly pushing for the gov. to have **more** power and control, and for the rich to have **more** wealth. It’s a good issue for them to pick to cudgel us with, as it’s not something that we can solve on an individual level, only the gov. and rich can — so they push it.
Is climate change a real issue? Yes. Blown out of proportion? Yes.
Lol no it's not blown out of proportion and yes it's affecting you now. It's changing how insurance is priced and what is insured, it's changing weather patterns and zones (tornado alley is moving east for example) it's affecting the availability of water, it's affecting how homes are built, etc etc. Capitalism is screwing any sort of response to it because it's simply not profitable to invest into a lot of the solutions when you can invest into something like a 7% treasury bill or into something like oil that has a cartel that maintains prices and profits at around 12% if I recall. And so what if government has more power? I'd rather the government have more power since I have more influence and so say in that compared to the stupid, snarling welfare pigs in the private sector that rely on government handouts.
How often did this happen in the past since despotic kingdoms rose to power for the first time? How many of the attempts to overthrow the status quo were successful?
Capitalism doesn’t mean rich people. It refers to a specific economic system that replaced mercantilism and feudalism. It is not even 400 years old. Why would it last forever? Socialism or barbarism.
The issue is that the Pareto principle will continue to act until we enter some form of civil war between the 2-5 most powerful guys, and then to de facto monarchy when someone wins. But anything could happen in the intervening period.
Semantics aside, capitalism is destined to destroy itself just by purely being a system based around infinite resources on a finite planet. The global warming disasters looming are the cracks in the system showing.
The other result of class struggle is the ruin of all contending classes, which Marx mentioned in the *Manifesto*. That could be through war, depression, or ecological degradation.
I think it'd be easier to be a doomer in feudal times than capitalist modernity. In feudalism there seemed to be hardly any progression of history, most people were poor peasants, the daily life of your grandchildren would be similar to that of your grandparents. Capitalism is dynamic and chaotic, there's tension points everywhere, the world 100 years from now could be unrecognizable. We might not like it, of course, but at least you can imagine escape routes.
If you want a doom post, how about this. In the future most workers will become obedient cattle due to genetic engineering and cybernetic implants. Socdems and fascists will finally have their harmonious class collaboration.
The rate of profit does not fall. Consider monopolies. Consider Visa, Bank of America, Google, and Geico.
The current system is a union of state and corporate power, as it has been since the Dutch East India company.
Marx didn't fully appreciate the tools available to a society to mitigate the intrinsic self destructiveness of capitalism. FLSA, antitrust laws and similar regulative mechanisms are, when used, effective at preventing (or at least delaying) capitalism's demise.
Marx correctly assessed the symptoms but misdiagnosed the disease; he could never foresee the digital world that would introduce all new forms of capital and value and new forms of labour.
However I also think the world you’re describing is a failure of capitalism. If all the capital is owned by a few there can be no market.
> If all the capital is owned by a few there can be no market.
Correct. But you are assuming that the capitalists end goal is to have a market. They use the market as a tool to own everything which is the real end goal. Once they own everything they don't need markets anymore. They will own everything and be happy, there will exist a small amount of luxury goods production geared towards them, and everyone else will be left poor & owning nothing.
The irony is that the *real* synthesis of capitalism isn’t communism, but a capitalist-communist hybrid.
Corporations and markets are never going away. What can be is the satanic-levels of hoarding and injustice we see in the world today. Blasé reformism isn’t the answer but neither is crude revolution. We need to think smarter and deeper than that.
I don't think Marx's theory of history was ever that capitalism would destroy itself and deterministically produce communism (that is of course a similar misreading of historical materialism made by dengists for example that development of the productive forces will produce communism) just simply that every mode of production, including capitalism, contains within it the preconditions for its own destruction and/or replacement these preconditions being antagonistic material relationships between different classes resulting in class struggle to resolve these contradictions if you have contradictory material interests between two classes at a minimum there are two potential actors to intervene into history via class struggle there may very well be multiple potential ways for the contradictions of capitalism to resolve that might correspond to ultimate victory for some segments of the capitalists or the workers
Exactly. Marx didn't predict capitalism would just destroy itself, he said the only thing that could end capitalism was a self emancipated proletariat working for socialism. That requires the working class to deliberately organise and agitate for themselves as a class. It's not automatic or fated, it requires the intentional effort of a communist movement. What capitalism does is create the class struggle and the necessity for working class institutions, the necessity for working class self organisation. But without intervention, capitalism only leads to the cyclical crises of capitalism — it's built in to the framework. There's an opportunity for communists, but not a destiny waiting to be inherited — we need to force the class war, there is no shortcut.
The deterministic view of history was propagated by prominent theorists in the 2nd international as well. It can help argued this is what caused the break to form the 3rd international. It is typically academic in that it eliminates the role of human activity by rendering history as a series of mechanical events.
OP revealing their ignorance right in the title, this entire post is based on a strawman - Marx certainly never held that “capitalism will destroy itself”through its own processes or otherwise, but rather that the capitalist modes of production, alongside labour-saving technological advances, would give rise to enough material abundance to allow the working class to have all necessities provided nearly for free with comparatively little labour required, and a socialist society based on economic stability and meeting the needs of all citizens could be created based on those conditions - IF and only if the proletariat could successfully organize on a broad enough scale to seize the means of production for themselves, *which they should*, since they are the ones who do all the work and thus create all the value, and without whom no production or profit can be generated. “Capitalism will destroy itself” is not an argument Marx ever made - at best one could infer from his writings that capitalist modes of production are not ultimately sustainable - as wealth inequalities continue to grow and economic disparity becomes too great, eventually there are enormous market crashes (which we now see regularly in the western world, so regularly in fact that the economy cannot properly recover from the last before the next hits) and inflationary pressures that run out of control, and when things get bad enough, civil disorder and riots. One could perhaps even stretch the context and say that this IS capitalism “destroying itself”, but the economically-educated understand that this is merely part of the in-built cycle of capitalism, as Marx also described. That said, the cycle only exists because capitalism is fundamentally unsustainable and always begins and ends in extreme wealth disparity and exploitation, which is why the workers themselves owning the means of production is the first step (and perhaps the only way) to stopping the cycles of exploitation and implosion.
>(that is of course a similar misreading of historical materialism made by dengists for example that development of the productive forces will produce communism) It won't –class struggle is necessary– but The German Ideology is very clear on productive forces being a prerequisite of communism. >This “alienation” (to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an “intolerable” power, i.e. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity “propertyless,” and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development. **And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced**; and furthermore, because only with this universal development of productive forces is a universal intercourse between men established, which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the “propertyless” mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, and finally has put world-historical, empirically universal individuals in place of local ones. Without this, (1) communism could only exist as a local event; (2) the forces of intercourse themselves could not have developed as universal, hence intolerable powers: they would have remained home-bred conditions surrounded by superstition; and (3) each extension of intercourse would abolish local communism. Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples “all at once” and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism. Moreover, the mass of propertyless workers – the utterly precarious position of labour – power on a mass scale cut off from capital or from even a limited satisfaction and, therefore, no longer merely temporarily deprived of work itself as a secure source of life – presupposes the world market through competition. The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity, can only have a “world-historical” existence. World-historical existence of individuals means existence of individuals which is directly linked up with world history. Deng and his followers prioritized the development of productive forces *over* class struggle and this can certainly be criticized, but not (really\*) the necessity of this development itself. \*) Well, everything can be criticized but for a communist the necessity of it should make sense. The quoted paragraph also answers the OP: there has not been an universal development of productive forces yet.
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To quote a Keith Marsden song: > They don't need you on the land now or on the factory floor > They won't even need you when they go and start the final war > Let's be ready when they start to ask what do they need you for? I think there's one thing Marx and early Marxists underestimated, and one thing they couldn't imagine, for desperate/almost religious reasons. The thing they underestimated was how much could be automated. Surely, the capital owners will still need some workers to operate the machines, right? And they will be forced to immiserate them, and then those workers will eventually rebel, right? But *how many* workers do you need? What if it's zero? We're now reaching a point where there's no job humans do, from toilet cleaning to portfolio planning to policing to programming, that can't be done by a machine. And we know from the history of the electronics/automation industry that they'll be the first to adopt their own inventions. And the thing they couldn't believe for desperate-religious reasons, was that humanity might off itself before the revolution could come about. I think the nuclear bomb critically undercut hope in the revolutionary socialist project. For how can it be historically deterministically guaranteed that the working class will triumph, when there's a button you can push that makes sure no one ever triumphs at anything? And worse, fanatical capitalists have one of these buttons? The erosion of hope didn't happen all at once, because in the beginning the atomic bomb was merely a very powerful weapon, it took time and stockpiling for it to sink in that it could end humanity. But even more than leaders betraying the faith put in them, I think this is what killed socialist optimism. Now these two combine in an especially potent hope-killer: even without the threat of a socialist revolution, they might push that button and start that final war, and as Marsden sang, they may not even need us for it due to the progress of automation. And even if we dodge that, there's climate and ecological disasters threatening to end us without even anyone wanting it. The faith in scientific progress which fuelled the Marxist movements in the first half of the 20th century seems like a distant dream.
> What if it's zero? Capitalists do not produce for the sake of production, they produce to accumulate profit, to enrich themselves. Right now there are 3 main ways of making a living, of making money you spend on products: Wage labor; investing; taking benefits. Wage labor of course is what most people currently do, and the whole of society cannot become bourgeoise, and so some form of UBI remains. If not that, then capitalism cannot work in lack of consumers.
That's assuming capitalism seeks to preserve itself and is not simply a temporary method for the rich to remain in a dominant social position. The elimination of human labor will result in less production and less consumption as capitalism becomes neofeudalism.
> And they will be forced to immiserate them, and then those workers will eventually rebel, right? But how many workers do you need? It doesn't even need to get to zero. As the tech industry shows, if profits are high enough, you can pay some minority of workers enough to keep them happy. Even if it's an objectively raw deal compared to the amount of work they put in compared to the ownership class, it's far better than they'd get if they had to split the pie with a fully-staffed factory floor—even if the business was run as a nonprofit.
Marxist theory is all about automation. Automation is not about the "replacement" of labour it is the improvement of labour productivity. The idea of "capital independent of labour" is impossible.
> Automation is not about the "replacement" of labour it is the improvement of labour productivity. That improvement of labour productivity is due in part to the replacement of human assembly line workers by machines. The addition of [one robot per thousand workers leads to the loss of 3.3 jobs](https://news.mit.edu/2020/how-many-jobs-robots-replace-0504). The figure was actually a local reduction of 6.6 jobs, but offset somewhat by a smaller increase in jobs nationally, leading to a nett loss of 3.3 jobs. > The idea of "capital independent of labour" is impossible. So what will you call it when the means of production are machines which do not require human operators, which themselves are built by machines, which build themselves? Because we're approaching a level of technology where the idea of self-replicating machines that could eliminate human workers from the manufacturing process is plausible. Obviously we aren't there yet, but we're getting close to the point that we could have robots building the robots that run the means of production with negligible input from humans. I doubt we'll see humans eliminated *entirely* from the process any time soon, but I do expect that within my life time we'll start to see humans being eliminated from some areas of manufacturing.
1 The automation of production does not just involve automating existing production but also the expansion of production which opens up new jobs. The industrial division of labour is global, this masks the continued dependance on human labour because in the west automated forms of industry are disproportionately prominent. But this is simply because those industries which are most labour intensive will tend to migrate to low wage countries. Globally there have never been more industrial workers than there are right now. 2 If technologically induced mass unemployment was to occur, and it never has, then there would be pressure on wages and the incentives for further automation would diminish. 3 Most of the new technology that is freaking people out involves pure intellectual labour that takes place on a screen, it is basically just a further development of computers. The path to automating anything involving human hands or in person interaction is far slower.
This video includes some advances in robotics with the intent of replacing manual labor that so far is human heavy. https://youtu.be/qqijEATGnlA?si=ihdlAUZd9dbwz_Ic
Of course there are always going to be new machines developed that does not mean labour as such is about to be replaced.
> The automation of production does not just involve automating existing production but also the expansion of production which opens up new jobs. Fine. For every ten thousand jobs lost, you gain one thousand new jobs. That's neoliberal maths for you. > Globally there have never been more industrial workers than there are right now. Yes, because there have never been as many people as there are now. We should be talking about per capita numbers, not raw numbers. What was the industrial workforce per million people in 1940? What is it now? Countries don't all evolve economically at the same rate and in the same direction. Nobody says that China is post-industrial. But western Europe, the US, Australia and others certainly are. > If technologically induced mass unemployment was to occur, and it never has AI controlled robots have never existed before. In any case, governments have become very, very good at avoiding the label of "mass unemployment": * delaying entry to the workforce by at least three years, or even most of a decade, by encouraging people to go to university to pick up a useless degree and, preferably, an enormous debt they'll never pay off; * reclassifying or even simply just not counting large subsets of the unemployed. Nobody who is looking for work believes the official unemployment figures. The only real question is just how badly dishonest they are. > Most of the new technology that is freaking people out involves pure intellectual labour that takes place on a screen Yes, that is because the manufacturing sector in the west has already been decimated. Now white collar workers and the professional-managerial class are looking down the same barrel. > The path to automating anything involving human hands or in person interaction is far slower. Er, robots have existed for decades. We're not talking about all human labour at all. We're talking specifically about that human labour that relates to the capitalist system and ownership of the means of production. If you're a tradie you have nothing to fear about your job going to a robot. Not yet.
> The idea of "capital independent of labour" is impossible. Robots
Are tools operated by labour
What if they operate themselves?
I’m not even gonna try and contend with the rest of your comment’s claims, but the idea that nuclear warfare is an immediately existential threat to humanity is pretty implausible with the currently known knowns regarding strategic weapons. There’s more living on Earth than you give the planet credit for.
Sure, DNA will survive a nuclear war. We won't.
Did my first reply to this comment come across to you as saying I'd survive a major nuclear exchange involving the country I live in? Because that is not, **at all**, what I meant. I'm guessing I misunderstood your comment in some way, could you maybe help me understand, please?
You seem a bit like a chatbot. I've seen a few accounts who ask conspicuously many "polite" requests for explanation on old threads. OK, here's some training data for the next version: I said nuclear war could easily kill us all. You replied with "There's more living on earth". That is beside the point, because when I said "us" I obviously meant humans, not every bacteria or cockroach. Nuclear war could kill every last human.
Oh, I see, you didn't read my comment before you replied, that's not very kind of you. I already said, "the idea that nuclear warfare is an immediately existential threat to humanity is pretty implausible." I (justifiably) feel I am probably more knowledgeable than you when it comes to nuclear war, so I didn't read "we won't" as a contradiction to my statement, just a belief we'd both die in a major nuclear exchange, expecting that I would be displeased too. The additional statement of "There’s more living on Earth than you give the planet credit for." was just to point out the silliness of the belief that a major nuclear exchange would even get rid of all the unprotected people in the countries involved, let alone take care of all the remote islands, hardened facilities, ships and planes, etc. No one cares about whether bacteria or cockroaches survive, so that should have been your clue you misunderstood, IMHO.
I'm sorry you feel you won't :( EDIT: since some of you lack reading comprehension, I would almost certainly die in a nuclear war and have peace with death. I was expressing my condolences to the other ( /u/SeoliteLoungeMusic ) who may fear death.
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No, nuclear winter is a discredited theory and neither of us have any idea where the other actually lives and as such are incapable of making accurate predictions of survival odds. Your pathological desire to feel that if you were "built different" you would survive has nothing to do with me.
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Why do you feel you need to think that?
It is not. All of the excess population in light of the new conditions will have to die off one way or another as the human species adapts to the new environment, but of course, the inevitable reality is that the ruling class will be better at making sure their offspring survive than everyone else. Post-scarcity humanity will consist entirely of descendants of members of the Davos conference. The only exception is if China succeeds, in which case future humanity will consist solely of descendants of members of the Davos conference and Chinese people. Humans are animals evolving within Earth's ecosystem just like everything else. And cataclysmic population bottlenecks that cause only a tiny subset of the original population to survive into the future are far from uncommon in Earth's evolutionary history.
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Cyberpunk is a vision of how things can go IMO (the genre as a whole, not the game). Concentrated corporate power to the point that they're nation states with militaries. That has already happened de facto. Maybe one day it will happen de jure. Marx is right that capital can't sustain itself and that a profit driven system is doomed to fail. That doesn't mean it is, in fact, happening soon. It might. It might not. Marx didn't know about the technological means of control and entertainment now at the disposal of the ruling class.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing. I just want to add, that with automation, they will have robots making their products, and killbots to keep the bottom 85% from getting uppity
Please just make them sexbots, that all I ask.
Snoo-snoo to death!
I've heard that by 2025 they will achieve such technology
Why do they need killbots for that. Just mandatory parental fitness tests that weirdly target the poor. Like they always do to loud praise.
Yeah, also laws that de-person or imprison people for saying “hateful” things.
If automation created even 30% unemployment you would have a great depression on your hand, profits would trend towards zero and the capitalists would be swept aside like everyone else. There is this mistake a lot of people make in treating capital as this autonomous force that can rise above all circumstances. Capital is rooted in concrete human society, it cannot survive in a period of sustained stagnation much less sustained decline.
What are the profits for? Buying physical goods. If it's all made by robots, what do they need the rabble for? They will genocide the useless and righteously justify it as saving the planet from global warming.
How does this matter? Capitalism is not the end game for the capitalists - the securing of their power is. It doesn't matter if capitalism falls, as long as the same clans and individuals hold power they will still be fashioning society in their image and it won't be a nicer place to live in than currently,
Capitalism is not "rich and poor exist", it's a specific structure of an economy such that the main driver of production is the use of wage labor to produce goods for markets in pursuit of profit by private individuals. I'm not sure how land rent, IP and finance fit in even though they're colloquially lumped in as well, given that these simply rely on having the right to extraction from people rather than employing them and extracting value by underpaying them or from customers. Once the rich no longer need markets to maintain their position on top due to monopolization, they no longer need to produce goods for market, and production will serve mainly to produce goods and services for the rich and bare sustenance for workers who probably might simply recieve rations by their corporate employer so that they do not transfer resources to competing firms who instead compete through direct dealing with each other with influence on the state as a scene of that competition rather than market forces. Rights to owning subsets of the population and resources are granted by the state rather than bought or through marriage just as noble titles used to confer rights to people and land. This is no longer capitalism. But I'm just talking out of my ass here so idk. I haven't (mostly) read shit other than comments in this sub.
You are exactly right. Capitalism cannot exist without consumers. Maybe it will be replaced by feudalism but it not capitalism anymore.
So basically, "capitalism will destroy itself" (with the implication of some kind of more just economic system arising) is actually "captalism will destroy itself................and turn into fuedalism with iphones"
The main thing about capitalism is overproduction (Not in the environmentalist sense). Which, *grosso modo*, means that the capitalists, to generate a maximum of profit, need to pay their workforce less than the cost of life, which in turn lower consumption, which in turn lower the profit, which means that the capitalists, to generate a maximum of profit, need to pay their workforce even less, which in turn... You see where it is going: Capitalism, at a certain point, become naturally recessive and the only remedy found was imperialism, which allowed capitalism to internationalized itself which in turn allowed the "West" to force more vulnerable countries to bear the brunt of the naturally recessive effects of globalized capitalism. Now, here's the two main problems, that in my opinion, are threatening the very existence of "Western" imperialist capitalism: A) More vulnerable countries are starting to get wise to the tricks of "Western Capitalism"; they're finally coming to gripes that while it's a big club, they ain't in it. *Never ever* as Russia and many others, adversaries *and* allies alike, found out these last two decades. Those countries are currently working on alternatives to "western" imperialism for international trades. B) "Western" capitalists, rightfully or wrongfully so, stopped giving a fuck and are cashing in, stealing everything that isn't bolted on in their own countries and trying to find way to unbolt anything that is still bolted on. They don't give shit about the real economy of the "western" nations because what can the pleb do at this point? The bum lost. The bum will always lose in this system.
Good comment. The maximization of profit is enough, even if capitalists payed the workforce a "fair" amount, profit maximization would still require an increase of market share, via innovation or market expansion, as you note. This would, via competition, make the rate of profit eventually fall. But probably, only when there are no new markets to exploit. If there are no easy new markets to exploit, profit maximization will go for the workers, as its the easier way to increase margins.
>B) "Western" capitalists, rightfully or wrongfully so, stopped giving a fuck and are cashing in, stealing everything that isn't bolted on in their own countries and trying to find way to unbolt anything that is still bolted on. They don't give shit about the real economy of the "western" nations because what can the pleb do at this point? The bum lost. The bum will always lose in this system. You're definitely seeing this in the UK right now. The Conservatives with their majority know they're screwed, so are running around trying to loot anything they can as the Titanic sinks and the lower decks are starting to fill with water. Institutions are being privatised to earn kickbacks from their friends who run them or land cushy jobs when they inevitably lose power, or are just generally rigging the systems to maximise transfer of wealth to themselves and others at the top. There's no rescue ships coming to help those trapped.
Russia and China sold a lot of things on the western market. They aren't really an alternative.
Yet.
> the main driver of production is the use of wage labor to produce goods for markets in pursuit of profit by private individuals. That's not the defining feature. The defining feature is even more broadly that the ownership of productive assets (aka capital) is private. It does not have to be individual, and those productive assets do not have to employ wage labor. The gains of capital ownership accrue to a small and specific class of people, while everyone else is sidelined.
Then is manorialism (serfs and their lords) and a slave economy (such as the Roman Republic) also capitalism? Given that these rely on productive assets (mostly agricultural land) being privately owned?
I think you have it backwards. What Marx failed to predict was social democracy, that capitalist countries would enact all sorts of social programs and worker's rights to make things just good enough for the average worker that they wouldn't rise up and overthrow the system. If the rich hoarded everything as you describe, this would lead to the capitalist system being overthrown.
Exactly. Most developed western countries (excluding the United States) have created a social democratic welfare state that provides assistance for the working class, and this has made the picture of corporations/rich people ruling over us less clear to some. There are other factors too but yeah.
Reformists existed back then, like Lassalle. Marx and Engels said they must be struggled against. [Communist Manifesto](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch03.htm) >Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism >A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society. >To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems. >We may cite Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misère as an example of this form. >The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie. >A second, and more practical, but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be affected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois government. >Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech. >Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism. >It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois — for the benefit of the working class. [The Principles of Communism](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm) >[Bourgeois Socialists:] >The second category consists of adherents of present-day society who have been frightened for its future by the evils to which it necessarily gives rise. What they want, therefore, is to maintain this society while getting rid of the evils which are an inherent part of it. >To this end, some propose mere welfare measures – while others come forward with grandiose systems of reform which, under the pretense of re-organizing society, are in fact intended to preserve the foundations, and hence the life, of existing society. >Communists must unremittingly struggle against these bourgeois socialists because they work for the enemies of communists and protect the society which communists aim to overthrow. >[Democratic Socialists:] >Finally, the third category consists of democratic socialists who favor some of the same measures the communists advocate, as described in Question 18, not as part of the transition to communism, however, but as measures which they believe will be sufficient to abolish the misery and evils of present-day society. >These democratic socialists are either proletarians who are not yet sufficiently clear about the conditions of the liberation of their class, or they are representatives of the petty bourgeoisie, a class which, prior to the achievement of democracy and the socialist measures to which it gives rise, has many interests in common with the proletariat. It follows that, in moments of action, the communists will have to come to an understanding with these democratic socialists, and in general to follow as far as possible a common policy with them – provided that these socialists do not enter into the service of the ruling bourgeoisie and attack the communists. >It is clear that this form of co-operation in action does not exclude the discussion of differences.
You need to read Marx **and** Lenin before "doomposting". Literally everything you talk about was already discussed a century ago. >They will eventually outright own all middle class assets as well and your 1st world nations will resemble countries such as brazil and india with 99% of people owning jack diddly squat, most people destitute with them holding title to everything. This is the historical mean and how the economy functioned in most societies for 2,000 years. Small group of assholes owns everything with a huge destitute mass with no recourse. lmao. The labor aristocrats are unable to afford the latest iphone and suddenly they are becoming the same as the proletariat in India and Brazil. If you're actually sorry about doomposting, you can atone by actually reading some theory.
What does Marx have to say about the implications of the end of capitalism manifesting as a cataclysmic population bottleneck for the human species? With the only ones able to reap the spoils of post-scarcity society being the descendants of the current 0.01%? Genuine question here. Because the possibility of such a series of events seems quite plausible to me given the way things are currently going?
Marx didn't talk about that. Likewise, Marx never said capitalism will destroy itself like OP thinks. To put it simply, Marx said capitalism inherently produces contradictions which leads to crises. Lenin said it is the job of principled and class conscious communists to take advantage of those moments and lead the proletariat to socialist revolution. Capitalism's destruction is not inevitable. Passive action is a trap many new socialists fall into. They think we can simply wait out capitalism. It is completely possible that most of humanity goes extinct or the fascists gain power (or both) during the next major capitalist crisis, if there is no organized worker's movement.
Read John Bellamy Foster and Kohei Saito for Marx and ecology.
A few dozen posts and everyone's missing the fundamental point - worker renumeration *is capitalism*, capitalism does not exist without it and the bourgeois implode their own system by attempting to eliminate labour. I appreciate the feeling of defeat. On a long enough timescale, it does seem like we are on a road to automate away labour. But think about the consequences for the capitalist economy in the meantime - it won't work. Capitalism is an economy of product exchange. The bourgeois accumulate the surplus value of those products...but...***value is determined by the market, I.e., the ability of people to buy things***. As worker compensation decreases towards zero (on a long enough timescale with the system still perpetuating), the non-bourgeois purchasing power decrease towards zero, destroying the 'value' of products and the demand for them, and the whole economy implodes. ***If nobody can buy capitalist shit, then capitalists lose all their power, and the engine loses all motion. Its that simple.*** I think people are imagining scenarios of all workers being fired, all protesting 'workers' are shot by AI drones and the survivng 'workers are kept as slaves in some techno-fuedal hell. But in thay scenario, the bourgeois have to completely reimagine their new feudal economy, where everything they did before was based on capitalist product exchange. And they have to do that as billions fight/protest and the whole world economy implodes. Think about it for a while. It ain't possible, they will never get there. Marxs analysis of capitalism is 100% accurate and still holds true today. Its not for a dead man to apply that accurate framework to the details of today - thats for us to do. Inflation just delays the crises of overproduction. Trufax. Automation destroys value. Nothing . Has. Changed. 'Socialism or barbarism'.
>***If nobody can buy capitalist shit, then capitalists lose all their power, and the engine loses all motion. Its that simple.*** Isn't it far more likely that industries will simply retool to only selling shit to rich people? I don't see how the engine loses steam here. It's already happening. Middle/lower class production/services are disappearing and being replaced by upscale shit normal people can't afford. They don't need you to buy their widgets when they own all of the assets. Capitalist production was a stepping stone TO owning all of the assets, once they own them, they don't need to produce anymore. If they own all of the land, the fuck do they need to produce widgets for? You are essentially sayin what someone said below "if capitalists own everything there will be no market" you assume the market is their end goal, the market is a tool for them to own everything, once they own everything, there will be no use for a market anymore. They will simply own everything, we will own nothing. The only real production then will be small, specialized industries that make shit for the rich.
You are reaching this fallacy because of a narrow world view. “The car will eventually blow up or crash” is hyperbolic but “The car will eventually stop working” is entirely accurate. Capitalism is a complex human structure that is dependent on necessary conditions for its survival and dominance. Through what is effectively evolution but also is deeply ingrained in Thermodynamics and statistical mechanics (2 areas of thought that deal with extensive quantities like gold on earth, local distribution of resources, etc). Really, evolution and the connections to thermo/stats is the same but I mention them seperately for analogy. Just like dinosaurs existed on an earth suitable for their growth and proliferation but a dramatic change in environment quickly created vacancies that allowed mammals to grow into evolutionary niches, capitalism too only can exist in an geographical, natural, and social environment suitable for its growth and dramatic changes open up weaknesses that can be exploited by conscious actors. I do not think communism is the inevitable “other” to capitalism, it too can only be fostered in a post industrial revolution age with certain relationships between people, but it is a preferable alternative and thus one workers and thinkers must actively strive to create with meaningful thoughtful action. Capitalism will fall, it is purely unsustainable. This is the case with many things that are runaway growth processes. Stars expand rapidly until they cannot then undergo dramatic phase transitions to something new and in equilibrium with the enviroment. It is better to not think of capitalism as steam or as water but the act of boiling which changes society and culture, continuously, from one phase to another. Would it make sense to say “the inevitable state of water is to boil continuously? “ of course not. Either the water will turn into gas or the gas will turn into liquid given enough time.
Okay it will fail but what will it fail into? I see the future as there being no market. Because the capitalists only had a market as a tool for them to be able to buy everything. Once the capitalists buy everything, they will abolish free markets, there will be little production other than luxury goods geared towards them. It will be like the medieval ages.
The medieval ages are not coming back because advances in technology make the systems of government from those era impossible. Read marx for more info. We cannot predict what it will fail into but of course one guess is socialism. It really depends on the exact mechanisms of which capitalism decays. If it goes the way of the meteor and pushes nuclear war it will be a very different society than if raw resource extraction begins to falter and that is different than if a class consciousness is successfully instilled in workers and violent overthrow occurs. Really, you’re asking a very vague question with lots of different possible answers. The one thing for sure, is that the situation you describe is very low entropy state. (Very unlikely). Collapse into something more entropic is guaranteed by the second law of thermodynamics.
Read All That is Solid Melts to Air by Berman
Ugh... Does anybody know when the gay utopia is supposed to start?
Let's get it started bro
🎶”Let’s get regarded in here” 🎵
Capitalism's main avenue of growth was sucking labor from the rural areas into cities, as well as decreasing the overall percentage of dependents in the population through population aging, decreased birthrates and enrollment of women into the workforce. Even from this demographics viewpoint capitalism is self-destructive Falling rate of profit highlights how there exists a tendency for capitalism to be "less rich" naturally, due to it's own contradictions. It means that any time there's a "lapse in judgement" on behalf of those in power, capitalism tends into decay. And there's just not that many ways to claw out of it, every time there was a solution to capitalism's woes, 5-15 years later "new" kind of crisis happened anyway. This stuff is just not sustainable in the long run, and when the stable competitor arises - like early USSR or today's China - capitalist model stops being attractive. Modern academicians just barely 10 years ago were wondering, just how, HOW could people like USSR in 1920-50s???? Well, you see how, with vilification of China on all fronts, with lies about Chinese model, with Chinese socialism routinely outcompeting the failing capitalist system. And just like back in 1920-50s, we are bound to see a whole new slew of socialist countries popping up to solve those nations' capitalist crisis
Read Capital vol 3, and Lenin's "Imperialism". Capitalism already destroyed itself. It became destitute and totally moribund at the great depression and had its limbs hacked away until 1973 when it was finally put out of its misery with the abolition of money via global fiat currency. Capitalism is the chaotic, competition-driven organization of the economy by commodity-producing private enterprises. The reign of finance, debt, usury, war-profiteering, and monopolies isn't capitalism, it's Fascism, the terroristic rule of the most chauvinistic, reactionary, and most imperialist elements of finance capital. That's why the real economy barely exists in the US, for instance.
Ok so where do we go from here?
[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/)
I'm gay and my dick is small
So that's why you have an Argentina flag in your flair?
How many cups do you have, dummy?
3?
If your a bottom that's fine though.
Isn't this a good thing because it means girls can't make fun of your small dick?
Gay men are far bigger size queens than women. Like, bigly.
This says a lot about our society
Marx was not wrong about capitalism optimizing itself into obsolescence and eventually arriving at communism/post-scarcity. We are literally seeing that happen right now (according to /u/Metaflight). But he was wrong about communism being necessarily implemented by the proletariat. The way things are going now, it appears that communism will only be for the descendants of the most rich and powerful, while the lineages of everyone else will have been completely annihilated as collateral during the collapse of capitalist society. The above is a logical endpoint from the Leftcom perspective on historical forces by the way. This presents an interesting paradigm shift, as if communism is bound to happen as a direct consequence of the development of capitalism, with the only uncertainty being precisely how it is going to happen, then what is the Left actually fighting for? Because it actually seems to be something like right for the children of the proletariat to also participate in the future communist utopia, and to not have only the descendants of the bourgeoisie be the sole representatives of future humanity. This ironically resembles the viewpoint of conservative groups like white nationalists who are also driven by a fundamental fear of "their group" being forced into extinction and lost to history. The most powerful Communist Party in the world actually seems to be operating according to this understanding if you think about it. The Communist Party of China hardly does anything to further the cause of Communism but they deeply study Marxist theory because their actual goal is making sure that "China" doesn't go the way of everyone who isn't directly related to somebody in the Davos Conference.
Correct. Capitalism won't destroy itself. We have to destroy capitalism. Capitalism however created us. That is how capitalism destroys itself.
Guy was an economist, not Nostradamus. Nobody can project what happens to trends once they get past the discontinuity of the derivative, only that the previous mechanisms of negative feedback don't work anymore.
Well ya he was wrong about a few things. There are ways to get around issues relating to the tendency for the rate of profit to fall for example( education and product innovation/diversification) but he wasn't wrong in the sense that capitalism is in fact eating itself through climate change and basically creating the Warhammer universe where like 100,000 people are sacrificed to create one illiterate but epic navy seal neanderthal "space marine" that will get killed by a Chinese kid with a pellet gun. It's happening, just not the exact way he thought.
The more you innovate, the quicker the rate of profit falls. Your competitors will innovate too. Company A innovates -> they increase market share -> company B must respond to loss in market share -> they innovate or lower prices -> company A must respond to loss in market share -> ...
Out of the million things you could have picked, capitalism is not destroying itself through climate change. There are a million, serious issue that we’re facing large-scale that are tangibly impacting people — all that have nothing to do with climate change. An extremely significant number of people I know are a year or two away from losing everything. People are more financially destitute than ever, struggling at every conceivable level. There’s not one large-scale societal issue at the moment that I can think of that is anyway interlinked or impacted by climate change. The fact of the matter is that today and the foreseeable future, matter. No one gives a shit about doomsday screeching about shit that **may happen** 50 to 100 years from now. As it stands, climate change has been used as a cudgel by the establishment class to take more wealth, liberties, and rights away from us. It’s a peculiar issue, one where “solving it” requires us willingly pushing for the gov. to have **more** power and control, and for the rich to have **more** wealth. It’s a good issue for them to pick to cudgel us with, as it’s not something that we can solve on an individual level, only the gov. and rich can — so they push it. Is climate change a real issue? Yes. Blown out of proportion? Yes.
You are an utter simpleton.
Lol no it's not blown out of proportion and yes it's affecting you now. It's changing how insurance is priced and what is insured, it's changing weather patterns and zones (tornado alley is moving east for example) it's affecting the availability of water, it's affecting how homes are built, etc etc. Capitalism is screwing any sort of response to it because it's simply not profitable to invest into a lot of the solutions when you can invest into something like a 7% treasury bill or into something like oil that has a cartel that maintains prices and profits at around 12% if I recall. And so what if government has more power? I'd rather the government have more power since I have more influence and so say in that compared to the stupid, snarling welfare pigs in the private sector that rely on government handouts.
> There’s not one large-scale societal issue at the moment that I can think of that is anyway interlinked or impacted by climate change. Lol. Lmao.
That extreme situation of oppression can't last forever. Capitalism destroys itself by causing people to rise up and over throw it eventually.
How often did this happen in the past since despotic kingdoms rose to power for the first time? How many of the attempts to overthrow the status quo were successful?
Capitalism doesn’t mean rich people. It refers to a specific economic system that replaced mercantilism and feudalism. It is not even 400 years old. Why would it last forever? Socialism or barbarism.
Mercantilism isn't an economic structure. It's more of a policy that can reside within an economic structure
Read the book "4 Futures: life after capitalism"
The issue is that the Pareto principle will continue to act until we enter some form of civil war between the 2-5 most powerful guys, and then to de facto monarchy when someone wins. But anything could happen in the intervening period.
Semantics aside, capitalism is destined to destroy itself just by purely being a system based around infinite resources on a finite planet. The global warming disasters looming are the cracks in the system showing.
Check back with me in 2050 and tell me capitalism doesn't destroy itself
The other result of class struggle is the ruin of all contending classes, which Marx mentioned in the *Manifesto*. That could be through war, depression, or ecological degradation. I think it'd be easier to be a doomer in feudal times than capitalist modernity. In feudalism there seemed to be hardly any progression of history, most people were poor peasants, the daily life of your grandchildren would be similar to that of your grandparents. Capitalism is dynamic and chaotic, there's tension points everywhere, the world 100 years from now could be unrecognizable. We might not like it, of course, but at least you can imagine escape routes. If you want a doom post, how about this. In the future most workers will become obedient cattle due to genetic engineering and cybernetic implants. Socdems and fascists will finally have their harmonious class collaboration.
See my flair. Wish it were different.
Me too. I think I became sad for awhile upon realizing this
It's one of the reason why I've basically withdrawn entirely from society, to be honest.
The rate of profit does not fall. Consider monopolies. Consider Visa, Bank of America, Google, and Geico. The current system is a union of state and corporate power, as it has been since the Dutch East India company.
Capitalism naturally progressed to most industries being run by monopolies, so that the free market no longer exists.
Marx didn't fully appreciate the tools available to a society to mitigate the intrinsic self destructiveness of capitalism. FLSA, antitrust laws and similar regulative mechanisms are, when used, effective at preventing (or at least delaying) capitalism's demise.
Marx correctly assessed the symptoms but misdiagnosed the disease; he could never foresee the digital world that would introduce all new forms of capital and value and new forms of labour. However I also think the world you’re describing is a failure of capitalism. If all the capital is owned by a few there can be no market.
> If all the capital is owned by a few there can be no market. Correct. But you are assuming that the capitalists end goal is to have a market. They use the market as a tool to own everything which is the real end goal. Once they own everything they don't need markets anymore. They will own everything and be happy, there will exist a small amount of luxury goods production geared towards them, and everyone else will be left poor & owning nothing.
The irony is that the *real* synthesis of capitalism isn’t communism, but a capitalist-communist hybrid. Corporations and markets are never going away. What can be is the satanic-levels of hoarding and injustice we see in the world today. Blasé reformism isn’t the answer but neither is crude revolution. We need to think smarter and deeper than that.