F.E.D. Dialectics: Part 10: Marxian Theory Series. ‘DescendEnce-Phase’ Capitalism. GLOBAL STRATEGIC HYPOTHESES.

Part 10: Marxian Theory Series.

‘Descendence-Phase’

Capitalism.

GLOBAL STRATEGIC HYPOTHESES.

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, Foundation discourses on key elements of Seldonian Psychohistorical Theory.

The 10th text 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].

Seldon –

“As We often say, ‘dialectic is the cause of time’ – hence also of natural history as a whole, to-date, and, therefore also, of Terran human history as a “natural”, and ‘foreseeable-in-retrospect’, extension thereof.”

“As We also often say, ‘intra-duality – starting with the ‘intra-duality’, we hypothesize, of “Dark Energy” physical space self-expansion, versus the “Dark Matter” opposition to that expansion – is the cause of dialectic’.”

“Moreover, we conjecture that this initial, «arché»-ic ‘intra-duality’ –

“Dark Energy” # “Dark Matter”

-- continually begets new, lower-scale, local, derivative, subsidiary and more complex ‘intra-dualities’, that further extend the progression of ‘natural-historical’, including of ‘human-natural-historical’, dialectics.

“This extension has, by now in natural history, extended all the way to the ‘intra-duality’ of the capitalist system of ‘human-societal self-reproduction’, and to its two-sub-epochs’ historical-dynamical destiny, i.e., of its self-development, followed by, and leading to, its ‘concrete self-transcendence’, as the ‘“eu-catastrophic”’ branch of its possible outcomes.”

“The ‘intra-duality’ of the capitalist system, that gives rise to its two-sub-epochal historical dialectic, is the internal duality of capital as “self-expanding value” [Marx], versus capital ‘self-contracting value’ – the latter being the theoretically neglected side or pole of capital’s ‘intra-duality’, neglected to an extent even by Marx himself.”

“The two historical sub-epochs of the capitalist system, into which the history of capitalism “naturally” divides itself, are what we call its initial, ‘ascendence phase’, followed by its, final, ‘descendence phase’.”

“The essence of these two phases is as follows.”

“The ‘ascendence phase’ of capitalism is the historical sub-epoch, from circa 1500 C.E./B.U.E. to circa 1913-1918 C.E./B.U.E., in which the ‘capital as self-expanding value’ pole of capitalism’s ‘intra-duality’ is dominant over its opposite, ‘capital as ‘self-contracting value’ pole, and in which, therefore, the world market rate of profit on capital is tendentially and predominantly rising.”

“The ‘descendence phase’ of capitalism is the historical sub-epoch, since »1913 C.E./B.U.E., in which the ‘capital as self-contracting value’ pole of capitalism’s ‘intra-duality’ is dominant over its opposite, ‘capital as ‘self-expanding value’ pole, and, therefore, the world market rate of profit on capital is tendentially and predominantly falling.”

“During the ‘ascendence phase’ of capitalism, social productivity – the level of the “social forces of production” [Marx] – are low relative to what comes later in the self-development of capitalism.”

“A lot of the “means of production” and “fixed capital” of capitalist, e.g., mining and manufacture, consist of pick axes, shovels, hammers, and other hand-held tools.”

“Now, suppose a competing capitalist applied to ‘s production an invention of a more-productive and/or cheaper shovel.”

“Suppose further that this capitalist’s capitalist competitors were forced, in order to keep their output competitive against ‘s output on price, to scrap their old, more-expensive/less-productive shovels, and buy the new, more competitive shovels, subtracting the undepreciated portion of the original cost of the old shovels from their current profits.”

“Well, most likely, the old shovels were just not that expensive, hence the resulting lowering of profits not that taxing for those competitors.”

“However, as capitalism – as humanity’s incarnation of “the capital-relation” as predominant ‘social relation of human-societal self-re-production’ – self-develops during that ‘ascendence phase’, tools become progressively more productive, more complex, more massive, and more expensive, especially as motor-powered, not just human-muscle-powered, machinery takes an expanding role in mining, in manufacture, and even in agriculture.”

“Consequently upon that rising productivity – i.e., due to that rising “productive force” [Marx] – the part of the working day in which workers produce products whose value covers their wages shrinks.”

“Therefore, the rest of the working day, the part of the working day in which workers produce products whose value, once sold, are the source of the capitalists’ profit, expands.”

“Thus also, the rate of profit on capital, the ratio of the monetary value of gross profits less costs, i.e., net profits, divided by the cost of the capital invested to produce those profits – principally the cost of the means of production invested and used to produce those profits – tendentially increases.”

“However, this rising profitability incentivizes other competing capitalists, including first-time new-entrant capitalists, to apply inventions of even more productive, and even lower cost-to-produce-and/or-to-operate, higher in “productive force” means of production, machinery, “fixed capital” plant and equipment.”

“Capitalist competitors using the older, less-productive and/or more-costly-to-produce/operate, and now technologically obsolescent fixed capital are soon forced, to remain competitive against the new, higher “productive force” fixed capital, to scrap their old, now-obsolete fixed capital.”

“That, now-obsolete, fixed capital was, by then, likely expensive enough that they had to take out, e.g., 30-year bank loans to afford it, bank loans on which they must continue to pay debt-service for the rest of those 30 years, and, to buy the new fixed capital, forced to take out yet new ~30 year loans, to afford the new.”

“The old competitors are thus at a competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis the new. And further ‘‘‘growth of productive force’’’ continued to deepen that disadvantage.”

“The [theoretically-neglected] side of the ‘intra-duality’ of capital begins to drive a secular fall in the rate of capital profitability in “machine industry” [Veblen].”

“The decrements to fixed capital asset value – the increments of capital’s self-contraction – subtracted out of gross profit in each accounting period in which ‘techno-depreciation’-induced decrements are recognized, tendentially drive down profit rates in each accounting period in which ‘techno-depreciation’ events register.”

“By circa 1870 C.E./B.U.E., and from then through circa 1890 C.E./B.U.E., U.S. industry, and U.S. industrial capitalists, experienced a “Great [Techno-]Deflation” in the competition-deflated prices of consumer and other products of “machine industry”, similar to the fall in unit prices, accompanied by a rapid rise in utility, in just the category of consumer computer electronic devices in the 1970s-1990s”.

“But, in the late 1800s “Great Deflation”, prices dropped broadly across a wide range of commodity categories for commodities produced by “machine industry”.”

“Also, capitalist industrialization was then spreading rapidly across the planet, and into new nation-states, with relatively low wages, little legacy of technologically obsolescent fixed capital, and with ability to adopt the latest, most advanced fixed capital from the start of their capitalist industrializations.”

“The U.S. and U.K. concentrated owners of vast expanses of industrial fixed capital soon realized, from these experiences, and from the studies they ordered their intellectual servants to undertake – studies of new advanced socio-economic theorists such as Marx and Veblen – that they would soon be bankrupted, and therefore dethroned from their power, by the further growth of the industrial “forces of production” in world-market competition.”

“These legacy capitalists reacted violently to this threat to their power.”

“They sponsored new ideologies, like “Social Darwinism” and “Eugenics”, to justify the horrors that they were already planning, to overcome this threat to their power – the threat of the further growth of the “social forces of production” [Marx].”

“They imposed upon the United States the Federal Reserve “Central Bank”, and the Personal Income Tax, both in 1913 C.E./B.U.E.”

“The Federal Reserve then printed the paper money to afford the massive U.S. loans, to the U.K. and France, to finance their fomenting and conduct of the mass-murderous “World War I”, with the aim to reverse the advanced-technology, advanced fixed-capital, meteoric productive-forces rise of industrial-capitalist Germany to capitalist world hegemony, which was ruining, in the process, both the British aristocrat-capitalist hybrid ruling class, and its global colonial slave-empire, and the U.S. capitalist ruling class, especially via the rapid ‘techno-depreciation’ of U.S. and U.K. fixed capital, and the resulting fall in U.S. and U.K. profits on industrial fixed capital. …”

TO BE CONTINUED.

For more information regarding these Seldonian insights, please see --

www.dialectics.info

For partially pictographical, ‘poster-ized’ visualizations of many of these Seldonian insights -- specimens of ‘dialectical art’ – as well as dialectically-illustrated books published by the F.E.D. Press, see –