Re: AUT: The Dark Satanic Mills

["Tahir Wood" <twood@xxxxxxxxx>]

>>> ledpup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 02/23/02 03:34PM >>>
But it still hasn't clicked with me as to how machines benefit the
production of surplus value.

I just got this from another list. I thought it might be of interest to you in the light of your query.
Tahir

ENQUIRY INTO THE SO-CALLED 'TRIUMPH OF CAPITALISM'

RESUME


This study has the goal of defining the historical stage of evolution which
has been attained by the capitalist mode of production. The latter being an
historical and thus perishable system of production, our aim is to discover
if, on the one hand, it is in a phase which contains an adequate margin of
development, leaving its future and disappearance uncertain, or, on the
other hand, if one cannot already begin to discern in outline its objective
limits. The latter perspective re-opens the question of revolutionary
communist politics.

At the end of the post-war boom (1945-1975) received opinion held that
capitalism was once more in 'crisis' comparable, for some commentators, to
the great crisis of the years 1873 1895. Other commentators held that we
were witnessing a phase of the Kondratieff cycle (a long depressive B phase
following a long A phase of expansion). These appreciations have the
characteristic of presenting capitalism as a system subject to depression
leading, however, to inevitable recovery. In these terms, one can say
nothing about the future of the system. lt seems as it were programmed to
last for eternity.

Our outlook is, however, completely different: Our thesis is that capitalism
has entered over the last twenty years, into the phase of the end of its
historical cycle. This phase of instability, giving way to moments of
relative calm, followed by brutal crises of an increasingly chaotic nature,
expresses the historically outdated nature of the system.

What is the foundation for such a thesis? As Marx underlined, the historical
evolution of capitalism is measured by the development of fixed capital
(machines, plant etc.). Such a development was extremely rapid from the
early 1950's onwards. Thus, to take the case of France, fixed capital
represented a value of 87,000 francs in 1950 but no less than 1,030,000
francs in 1993; an eleven-fold increase in value. (see 'Un siècle de données
macroéconomiques' by P. Villa) An increase of this scale in the technical
and organic composition of capital, dead-capital, has outripped the
contribution of live-capital. Since live-capital is the only source of value
(surplus-value), the rate of profit has fallen. Thus in the United States
the rate of profit fell by more than 100%, going from 22% in 1947 to 10,% in
1980, with a slight recovery to 16% in 1994. (see Moseley, 'The Rate of
Profit and the Future of Capitalism', 1994)

And this is far from being the end of the story. Given the spectacular
development of unproductive labour (a non-source of surplus value which is a
consequence of the process of the mechanisation of production) - 60 to 70%
of the active population in the advanced capitalist countries, (1) a massive
share of profits is diverted to maintain a vast improductive sector via the
channel of taxes, profits from commerce or publicity, service sector wages
and so on. This profits destined for the accumulation of capital has thus
been reduced, meaning that the real rate of profit is lower than the one
which is announced in the official statistics.

>From this it follows that for capitalism the rate of profit is less and less
capable of playing the role of goad to capitalist production, its decline is
now tending to become absolute. This signifies a rate of profit at such a
low level that it becomes difficult to remedy by counter-tendencies, the
latter being increasingly difficult to operate.

To be sure, the counter-tendencies are not totally ineffective. The
stagnation of wages, the augmentation of labour productivity (although less
significant than in a previous period), the flexibility of employment, the
development of economic precarity, the relocation of production sites in low
wage areas and the rest, to some extent restored the rate of profit in the
1980's. But all this remains largely insufficient to create a veritable
recovery or a new long wave of expansion. The economic slowdown of the USA
and Europe attests to the arrival of a new crisis.


In fact, if the counter-tendencies to the falling rate of profit are to play
their role effectively, capital has to take draconian measures : 1)
eliminate whole sections of the sphere of unproductive labour which weighs
heavily on profits ; 2) radically throw into question the 'welfare state' in
order to lighten the burden of taxation and 3) utilise a mass of
labour-power at the very lowest level of wages. One can see immediately what
would be the consequences: 1) massive unemployment of workers in the
unproductive sector; 2) an unregulated 19th century-style capitalism with
little or no protection for the working-class and 3) a sharp reduction in
the overall standard of living resulting in the social regression of
wage-earners. All these factors would result in massive social unrest which
puts the very existence of capitalism in the firing line. The capitalists
are, of course, fully aware of the dangers of such measures. But they are
nonetheless necessary to restore the overall dynamism of the system. For
this reason they content themselves with the gradual erosion of the welfare
state, a policy of wage moderation, liberalisation and the privatisation of
segments of the public sector. The relocalisation of production in low-wage
economies, for its part, is already of limited effect: What at first sight
appears as cheap labour suddenly emerges as not so cheap. Witness the case
of South Korea where wages have grown 10% a year! In other words, all this
emerges as piecemeal tampering. Capitalism is caught in an insoluble
contradiction: Either it takes draconian measures to restore the rate of
profit and re-ignites class struggles with a fatal outcome. Or it leaves the
situation more or less as it finds it in order to preserve social peace. In
this case it is condemned to economic stagnation leading eventually to a
brutal economic collapse, the moment of truth. Indeed, this seems to be the
direction taken by the system, witness the tendency towards
disindustrialization suitably masked by the prophets of the 'post-industrial
society'. (After all, why should capitalists invest in the real economy when
the rate of profit is so low?) Consider in this sense the growth of
financial speculation or the illusion that M can become M' without an
immobilisation in the sphere of production. This results in the formation of
fictive capital or the constant formation and bursting of speculative
bubbles. Indeed, such was the case with the so-called 'new economy' of new
communication and information technologies. In this case, however, the Stock
Exchange bubble has already burst.

The truth is that the classical Marxist hypothesis of the growing inability
of capitalism to develop the productive forces beyond a certain point is in
the process of being confirmed. The existing relations of production are too
clearly in contradiction with further development. A capitalism
characterised by a majority of unproductive wage-earners (when the role of
capitalism is precisely the creation of a working-class which creates
surplus value) whilst a minority only produce surplus value, together with
those workers who are increasingly excluded from the productive process and
assisted ; all this provides the portrait of a capitalisrn in its terminal
phase. This is the end of capitalism's historical cycle. To be sure, it will
take some time for this reality to become self-evident but there is no new
phase of capitalism. The game is over!

Claude Bitot

1. As a comparison, consider that in 1931 the class of manual workers in
Great Britain made up 76.8 % of the active population as against a mere 6.96
of white-collar workers. Today the manufacturing sector accounts for 27.7 %
whilst that of services accounts for 70.4 %.








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