/marx/ - Marxism

>>1896

>I don't know what you mean by "evaporation." Surplus-value is a fundamental aspect of exploitative society.

And Marxist economics dictate that the progressive replacement of human labor by machine capital (in the pursuit of a midterm comparative advantage on the part of the business) progressively reduces the amount of surplus value which can be extracted during business operation. Capitalism ends when profit margins have shrunk to the point where it is no longer worthwhile to invest money in a commercial enterprise rather than simply sit on the wealth, or place it into increasingly abstract financial games. Capitalism evaporating its own pool of surplus value is what kills it; nothing else can

>You haven't really addressed anything I wrote beyond just assuming that the development of capitalism in places like Africa will just be a carbon-copy of the Industrial Revolution, when it obviously hasn't been.

This is a cop-out. The post you responded to (>>1827)

contended that the marooning of various peoples and territories in their development by imperialism/globalism proves that national, provincial and local economic bases are more potent than their transnational rivals. Yet I responded in >>1827 that we see the same thing in the histories of industrialized countries; heck, even to this day. Look no further than West Virginia, the Rust Belt cities or the Deep South.

I stopped responding back in January when I saw this because it was far beneath you to shrug off my points with an appeal to the "obvious". Map it out.

But hey, let's consult the words of the K.M. himself. I quote selectively from the final two paragraphs of Das Kapital, Chapter 32:

>''What is now to be expropriated is not the self-employed worker, but the capitalist who exploits a large number of workers. This expropriation is accomplished through the action of the immanent laws capitalist production istelf, through the centralization of capitals. One capitalist always strikes down many others. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by a few, other developments take place on an ever-increasing scale, such as the growth of the cooperative form of the labour process [...] the trans formation of the means of labour into forms in which they can only be used in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as the means of production of combined, socialized labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and, with this, the growth of the international character of the capitalist regime.

>Along with the constant decrease in the number of capitalist magnates [...] the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation and exploitation grows; but with this there also grows the revolt of the working class, a class constantly increasing in numbers, and trained, united and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist process of production.

Without imperialism and globalism, there is are no "workers of the world" to unite. There are rather "workers of worlds", and the multiplicity of nationally confined capitalist magnates stands in obstruction to the future socialist world order.

>>2835

You are talking about the falling rate of profit, which is an inherent tendency of capitalism. It's not something that comes about when the entire world is as industrially developed as the USA, UK, France and any other imperialist powers.

At this point I don't really understand your argument. Capitalism has fulfilled its historic mission. Every country on earth is capitalist, and any feudal holdouts that still exist are producing for capitalist markets.

Due to the nature of the capitalist system and its highest stage (imperialism), the struggle of indigenous peoples, the anti-imperialist struggle in the third world in general, and the struggle of workers both in those areas and in industrialized countries are all connected. An indigenous activist who thinks that his people can "escape" capitalism is wrong, the same way a hippie who thinks he can "walk out" of capitalism by starting his own commune is wrong, but the solution is to struggle for socialism, not to wait for capitalism to spend the next 300-500 years maybe raising a place like Chiapas to the same level of development as Paris or whatever it is you're trying to argue.

>>2845

Yet the falling rate of profit is an inherent tendency only because of the replacement of human labor with machine capital. To research, develop and deploy ever more sophisticated machine capital is dependent on an ever more concentrated supply of financial capital. And this is achieved by the expansion and centralization of the productive enterprises. So the question is whether we can realistically expect machine capital to have been fielded in all the necessary qualities and quantities (as to extinguish the profit margin) at any point prior to such global integration.

The world doesn't have to achieve the same standards of living across the board; there merely needs to be a truly global proletariat. A "feudal holdout producing for capitalist markets" is just that, and not capitalist. So long as labor is connected to transnational capital via a feudal intermediary, that feudal intermediary organizes in a feudal fashion (even if for capitalist designs) and has thus not provided the thesis for which the proletariat are the antithesis.

>the transformation of the means of labour into forms in which they can only be used in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as the means of production of combined, socialized labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and, with this, the growth of the international character of the capitalist regime.

> a class constantly increasing in numbers, and trained, united and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist process of production.

The anti-imperialist struggle in the Third World is not simply "socialist activism, just in the tropics". It has been, since the days of Lenin, about happily supporting national bourgeoisie against transnational bourgeoisie. That is not a workers' movement; socialism comes from a global proletariat, and a global proletariat is born out of daily participation in a mode of production embodying the class character of a global bourgeoisie.

Anti-imperialism denotes that there is more going on than (ostensibly) socialist activism, that something other than the locally occurring aspirations of a global proletariat are being represented. It is trying to inaugurate a historical epoch which it has not reached; since revolutions modify superstructures to accord with the already existing reality of the base, such a struggle is simply an attempt at time travel.

The EZLN fighting for socialism in the Chiapas is no less anachronistic than contemporary French noblemen fighting to restore the manorial system. Sorry to say, but if the day comes that the Mexican government and transnational interests strive to wipe out those little beaner communes, the South African mercenary gunning down women and children would be doing more for our cause than the well-read college student defending her fellow exploitees.

>>2848

The idea that so long as pre-capitalist societies exist in the world one cannot speak of a "truly global proletariat" is silly. Marx and Engels wrote of the potential for proletarian revolution in the 19th century when even imperialist countries such as France had substantial peasant populations.

A global proletariat already exists, which is able to lead the peasantry of each country in overcoming feudalism, bypassing the development of capitalism and constructing socialism. This was the historical experience of the USSR in regards to regions within it where feudal or even pre-feudal relations existed.

The anti-imperialist struggle can only be completed when it is led by the working-class. When it is led by the national bourgeoisie it eventually reaches a stage when the latter compromises with and capitulates to imperialism, which in turn means the continued underdevelopment of the country.

Once again you are talking about the historically progressive nature of capitalism and confusing it with capitalism as it exists today. You talk about a global proletariat but for whatever reason you can't actually envision a socialist revolution in a place like Mexico both incorporating the desires of indigenous farmers to avoid peculiar national and economic exploitation and at the same time serving the socialist cause in nearby countries either materially or morally.

You seem to be proposing that capitalism is still, basically, a progressive system. Such a view is no more valid now than it was when the Mensheviks and other opportunists in the Second International used it to justify a policy of supporting the bourgeoisie in Russia and "socialist colonialism" in the other imperialist countries.