The SELF-‘‘‘Contradiction’’’ ThAt Is CAPITAL[ism]:
Capitalism’s Fatal Flaw.
-- Part 11: Seldon’s Worldview Series.
Dear Reader,
It
is my pleasure,
and my honor, as an elected member
of the Foundation Encyclopedia
Dialectica [F.E.D.] General Council, and as a voting member of F.E.D., to share, with you, from time to time, as they are approved for public release, by the F.E.D. General Council, key excerpts from the internal writings, and from the internal sayings, of our co-founder,
Karl Seldon.
The eleventh release in
this new such
series is posted below
[Some E.D.
standard edits have been applied, in the version presented below, by the editors
of the F.E.D. Special Council for the Encyclopedia,
to the direct transcript of our co-founder’s
discourse].
In this 11th installment, Seldon explicates perhaps the most import predictive
passage in Marx’s «Grundrisse» manuscript,
one with the most prescient and vital content for today.
Seldon –
“Capitalism has an inherent, built-in, immanent tendency to violate
its own inherent, immanent “law of value”, which is also its law of surplus-value
-- its law of the source of profits.”
“This is
its tendency to overinflate the capital-assets/capital investments denominator
of its return rate ratios, due to “capitals” that are not producing their share
of surplus-value/profit, but which claim at least the same general rate of
profit also claimed by more profit-contributory capitals.”
“This
happens by way of fictitious capital assets, created via debt and speculative “bubbles”,
etc.”
“But this
also, and more fundamentally so, happens by way of capitalism’s failing to
curtail -- under curtailed competition in the context of increasing
concentration, centralization, and consolidation of capitals -- the value of
its profit-rates’ capital-investment denominators, whenever productive-force
growth – productivity-growth – should, per capitalism's competition-enforced law of value, induce obsolescence
depreciation of some of the fixed-capital asset parts of its profit-rate ratios’
denominators.”
“The joint
result of these two main sources of “fictitious capital” over-valuation of these
profit rate ratios’ denominators is that both real and “fictitious” capital “investments”
are expecting and demanding, as profits, more surplus-value than is actually
being produced, from the surplus-labor of the majority class.”
“These
tendential and, in the “boom” phase, rapidly proliferating/accumulating
violations of the capital-relation’s own law of value are aperiodically
and violently checked and reversed, in the form of world-market depression-crises
– ever-worsening in terms of the ever-vaster numbers of people harmed by them,
worldwide.”
“These recurring
depression-crises suddenly and violently destroy and contract the
capital-values of those profit-rate ratios’ capital-invested denominators, bankrupting
and otherwise obliterating both fictitious capital “investment” values and real
capital investment values.”
“This also provokes a
fight within the capitalist class over which capitals will bear the brunt of
these capital losses, and, especially, over how to foist the bulk of these
losses onto the backs of the, profits-producing, majority class.”
“These
depression-crisis-induced devaluations of the capital-value denominators of the
capitalists’ profit-ratios go on until those capital-asset denominators shrink
enough to make the rates of profit ratios, overall, that these denominators
form together with the surplus-value/profits numerators of these return-rates
ratios, large enough to attract renewed capital investments, and, thus, a “recovery”
of majority-class employment, etc., from the depths of that global-market
depression-crisis.”
“But this recovery-phase
also restarts the tendential violations process vis-a-vis the capital
law of value once again – the fictitious elephantiasis of the profit-ratios’
capital-investment denominators. Those
denominators are ballooned by “capital”-values that are not contributing their
share to those ratios’ profit/surplus-value numerators, and thus not contributing
enough to sustain the attractive general rate of profit that they still demand
for themselves, i.e., from out of the surplus-value elicited from workers,
surplus-labor-time by other capitals.”
“This thus sets the
stage for the next world-market depression-crisis, a crisis of even greater amplitude
than the last one, harming even more human beings, since the capital
world-market has expanded, e.g., during the boom-phase, and proletarianized new
millions of human beings from the capital world market’s “hinterland”, e.g.,
those driven out of yeoman farming, etc., into wage-labor, producing
surplus-value for capitalists via their surplus-labor-time.”
“Meanwhile, the “think-tank”,
foundation, university, mass media, etc., ideology-engineering operations of
the capitalist ruling class seek to ever-more-minutely divide the majority
class into inter-mutually warring camps, with a view to ultimately convincing
that majority class that something like Orwellian, Fascist state-capitalism is the “new”
system needed. Such is really not a new system at all, but just the terminal
worsening of the capitalist system itself.”
“The
funereal repetition/worsening of these world-market depression-crises, despite
that ideology-engineering, may convince more and more of the world’s citizens
that there is something deeply, fundamentally, fatally wrong with the
capitalist system, and that a new, higher, better system of human-societal self-expanding
self-re-production is desperately needed.”
The passage above is
from Seldon’s explication of the following passage – perhaps the most important
‘prognosticatory’ passage of all – in Marx’s «Grundrisse»
manuscript –
[Seldon:]
“…it may be useful to scrutinize a key passage of the Grundrisse,
wherein Marx sketches out his view of the interconnection between the
phenomenon of capitalist crisis and the predicted revolutionary transition to
out of and beyond the capitalist system… –”
[Marx:] “...the development of the productive forces brought about by the historical
development of capital
itself, when it
reaches a certain stage, suspends [i.e., ‘‘‘«aufhebens»’’’ -- K.S.] the self-realization of capital itself, instead of positing
it.”
“Beyond a certain point, the development of the powers of
production becomes a barrier for capital [i.e.,
a barrier for capital’s essence, namely profitability --
K.S.]; hence the
capital relation a barrier for the development of the productive powers of labor.”
“When it has reached this point, capital, i.e. wage-labor, enters into the same relation towards
the development of social
wealth and of the forces of production as the guild system, serfdom, slavery, and is stripped off as a fetter.”
“The last form of
servitude assumed by human activity, that of wage labor
on one side, capital on the
other, is thereby cast off like a skin, and this casting-off is itself the
result of the mode of production corresponding
to capital; the material and mental conditions of the [K.S. -- «aufheben»-]negation of wage labor and of capital, themselves already the
[ «aufheben»-]negation
of earlier forms of unfree social production,
are themselves the result of its [K.S.: i.e., of capital’s self-re-]production process.”
“The growing incompatibility
between the productive development of society
and its hitherto existing relations of
production [i.e., its capital-social-relation-of-societal-self-re-production
-- K.S.] expresses itself in bitter contradictions,
crises, spasms.”
“The violent
destruction of capital [thereby reducing the profit-rate ratios’
capital-value investment denominator, thus raising the rate of
profit ratio as a whole toward a level attractive for renewed
investment and continued capitalist operation, even despite a relatively
reduced mass of profit in the numerator -- K.S.], not
by relations external to it,
but rather as a condition of its self-preservation [via restoration/raising
to a profit-rate sufficiently attractive for renewed investment and, thus,
continued capitalist operation -- K.S.], is the most striking form in which advice is given it to be gone and to give
room to a higher state of social production [i.e.,
Marx sees recurring, worsening capitalist crises – depressions,
“great recessions”, etc. -- as gradually delegitimizing the
capitalist system, and thus as the eventual driver of the revolutionary transition
to what we call ‘Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY:
K.S.]...”
“Hence the highest development of productive power
together with the greatest expansion of existing wealth will
coincide with depreciation of capital [suddenly,
due to depression-crisis-induced capital ‘de-value-ation’, after a prolonged
period of pre-crisis, partially-hidden, partially-blocked, gradual
technological obsolescence depreciation, or productive-force-growth-induced
depreciation, of fixed-capital plant and equipment, in the period prior to the
open, overt outbreak of that depression-crisis -- K.S.], degradation of the laborer,
and a most straitened exhaustion of
his vital powers.”
“These contradictions
lead to explosions, cataclysms, crises, in which, by momentaneous suspension of all labor
and annihilation of a great portion of capital the
latter is violently reduced [e.g.,
by crisis-induced reduction of the [fixed] capital-value investment denominator
of the capitalist return on investment ratio, thereby elevating that
profit-rate ratio as a whole, even despite a reduced profits
value numerator, e.g., a net profits numerator
also typically reduced, by crisis-enforced, ‘netted-out’ write-offs
of ‘techno-depreciated’, technologically-obsolescent fixed capital plant and
equipment, as well as of speculative fictitious “capitals” -- K.S.] to the
point where it can go on fully employing its productive
powers without committing
suicide.”
“Yet
these regularly recurring catastrophes
lead to their repetition on a higher scale
and finally to its violent overthrow.”
--Karl
Marx, «Grundrisse» [Foundations [of
the Critique of Political-Economy]], Nicolaus translation,
pp. 749-750; bold,
shadowed, italic, underscored, and
colored emphases added
by K.S.
[Seldon]:
“When Marx and Engels participated, personally and signally, in the
European continent-wide revolutionary uprisings of 1848, Europe was ruled largely by violently-repressive
monarchical police states.”
“Marx
and Engels thus then saw no way forward for humanity’s evolution other
than by way of violent revolution.”
“But
the progress of capitalist representative democracy during Marx’s lifetime led
him later to revise his views regarding the necessity of violent revolution for the supercession of
capitalism --”
[Marx:]
“Someday the worker must seize political
power in order to build up the new organization of labor; he must overthrow the
old politics which sustain the old institutions, if he is not to lose Heaven on
Earth, like the old Christians who neglected and despised politics. But we have not asserted that the ways to
achieve that goal are everywhere the same.”
“You
know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of various countries must be
taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries -- such
as America, England, and if I were more familiar with your institutions, I
would perhaps also add Holland -- where the workers can attain their goal by
peaceful means.”
--Marx,
8 Sep. 1872, Amsterdam, Address after
the Fifth Congress of the International Working Men’s Association [“First International”].
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¡ENJOY!
Regards,
Miguel
Detonacciones,
Voting Member, Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.];
Elected Member, F.E.D. General Council;
Participant, F.E.D. Special Council for Public Liaison;
Officer,
F.E.D. Office of Public Liaison.
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