Worker & Community Struggles and Protests Madrid Police "Dumbfounded" After Amazon Called The Cops On Striking Workers 22:31 Nov 27 0 comments George Soros’ Open Society Foundation unmasked in a major leak 22:31 Aug 24 1 comments Shell in court over major Corrib gas refinery flaring events. 23:32 Jul 28 0 comments Eddie Hobbs: Largest act of larceny against Irish people 23:22 Jun 02 0 comments CHASE Fundraising Events Calendar for June 23:10 Jun 01 0 comments more >>Blog Feeds
Anti-EmpireThe Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian M... Sat Apr 20, 2024 01:38 | Anti-Empire Ukraine Now Producing 10 Self-Propelled ... Fri Apr 19, 2024 06:15 | Anti-Empire Russian Firms Rush to Buy Anti-Drone Def... Wed Apr 17, 2024 08:58 | Bloomberg Ukraine Buys Huge Amounts of Russian Fue... Fri Jan 20, 2023 08:34 | Antonia Kotseva Turkey Has Sent Ukraine Cluster Munition... Thu Jan 12, 2023 00:26 | Jack Detsch
Human Rights in IrelandA Blog About Human RightsUN human rights chief calls for priority action ahead of climate summit Sat Oct 30, 2021 17:18 | Human Rights 5 Year Anniversary Of Kem Ley?s Death Sun Jul 11, 2021 12:34 | Human Rights Poor Living Conditions for Migrants in Southern Italy Mon Jan 18, 2021 10:14 | Human Rights Right to Water Mon Aug 03, 2020 19:13 | Human Rights Human Rights Fri Mar 20, 2020 16:33 | Human Rights
Lockdown Skeptics
News Round-Up Sat Apr 20, 2024 01:23 | Toby Young
Fifty Ways to Leave the European Convention on Human Rights Fri Apr 19, 2024 17:28 | Dr David McGrogan
Pupil Suspensions Reach Record High as Experts Blame Effect of Lockdowns on Behaviour Fri Apr 19, 2024 15:30 | Will Jones
Up to Half of Excess Deaths in U.S. Nursing Homes Were Due to Lockdowns and Mitigation Measures Fri Apr 19, 2024 13:19 | Will Jones
Woke Activists Need to Read Their David Hume Fri Apr 19, 2024 11:16 | Dr James Allan
Voltaire NetworkVoltaire, international editionThe cost of war, by Manlio Dinucci Wed Apr 17, 2024 04:12 | en Angela Merkel and François Hollande's crime against peace, by Thierry Meyssan Tue Apr 16, 2024 06:58 | en Iranian response to attack on its consulate in Damascus could lead to wider warf... Fri Apr 12, 2024 13:36 | en Is the possibility of a World War real?, by Serge Marchand , Thierry Meyssan Tue Apr 09, 2024 08:06 | en Netanyahu's Masada syndrome and the UN report by Francesca Albanese, by Alfredo ... Sun Apr 07, 2024 07:53 | en |
An Outline Of A Model of the Capitalist Industrial Cycle
international |
worker & community struggles and protests |
opinion/analysis
Thursday December 22, 2011 10:28 by Paddy Hackett paraichackett at gmail dot com
The General Rate Of Profit The capitalist crisis can provide the working class with the opportunity to forcefully take power. An Outline Of A Model Of The Capitalist Industrial Cycle
The capitalist economic system is a system of periodic interrupted reproduction of wealth. The interruption has a cyclical character. It is this disturbance that is known as the economic crisis or depression. Constant and variable capital invested is significantly reduced. There follows a significant decline in the scale of the reproduction of wealth and thereby the consumption of wealth by humanity. The result is increased poverty. Capitalist crises tend to have an inherently periodic character entailing the indefinite sequential expansion and contraction of the reproduction of capital. The capitalist economic cycle involves sequential phases that regularly repeat themselves. This is the necessary and contradictory form by which capitalism regulates itself indefinitely. It is a form of regulation that is inherently unstable tending to generate political crises, wars and social revolution. Consequently capitalism’s sustained existence of capitalism cannot be guaranteed. Crises have a unique form peculiar to capitalist society. Under capitalism the material destruction of the elements of production occur not as the cause but as the result of crisis. It is not because there are fewer workers engaged in production that a crisis breaks out. Instead fewer workers are engaged in production as a result of the break-out of a crisis. What appears to be the case is not the case. Reality is reversed. A capitalist crisis is a crisis of overproduction of exchange-values in the form of capital. On the market commodities fail to find buyers thereby rendering them unsaleable. Full employment is the exception rather than the rule under capitalism. At best full employment tends to have a cyclical character. Capitalist crises are general and have a global character. The intrinsic contradiction of the commodity, the contradiction between use-value and exchange-value, is externalised in the form of the splitting of the commodity into the commodity itself and money. The split creates the general possibility of capitalist crises. This contradiction means that to appropriate use-values one has to be able to buy them. To buy or sell one has to be a buyer or seller. Individuals exist, then, in the form of a buyer or a seller. They need only exist in this narrow abstract form. Power resides in one’s existence in the context of the constraining narrow abstract forms of buyer or seller. The consumption form plays a role in determining the character of the working class and the capitalist class. In this way individuals are reified as the personifications of buying, selling and consumption. Consequently success is circumscribed by the constraints of the narrow forms of buyer, seller and consumer. The worker as seller of labour power is only conceived from within that narrow form. This is why s/he is so summarily disregarded by the ruling class. His/her more humanist nature is thereby precluded, except marginally, from conceptions based on this socio-economic. One’s commercial value or status is significant not one's kindness, say, towards others. Consequently one is celebrated as a musician or artist because of one’s commercial success but not for one’s virtuosity and creativity. Since the worker’s existence is exclusively grounded on this constrained form, seller of labour power, his existence concerning every aspect of his being is conditioned by this narrow reified form. In past societies this was not necessarily the basis of economy. The separation between the commodity and its money equivalent facilitates the emergence of the systems of trade, credit and eventually capitalism. Accordingly these systems of reification conditioned the development of social being in such a way that they indelibly inscribe themselves on existing human conduct........................ Full text of this article can be found at the link below |