The prospects for revolution and the end of capitalism: An exercise in historical materialism (original) (raw)
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C 1 e Lack of Marxist analysis of the causes of the power of the capitalist
Lack of Marxist analysis of the causes of the power of the capitalist, 2022
On the occasion of the publication of the book "The Choice of Civil War, Another History of Neoliberalism", this article first offers a brief history of Marxist discourses on Capitalism: starting from Marx's first speeches, it mentions the Marxist speeches extending his analyses of value, surplus value, its extraction and hoarding. He then points out the tendency of current Marxists to consider "neoliberalism" (current capitalism) only through the prism of the state and the political sphere in general: like the work cited, the manifesto of the dismayed economists shows the same tendency by focusing only on finance vs. the state (and Europe), and more militant works such as that of B. Friot ("vaincre Macron") or ATTAC ("l'imposture Macron") illustrate this same tendency. To sum up, Marxist discourses describe and denounce what the power of the capitalist allows (the subjugation of populations and the state in order to "make money") but neither describe nor denounce the laws and procedures that ensure this power. Of course, the subjugation of the population and the state to "make money" reinforces and increases this power, but sufficient power is a prerequisite for these subjugations. By considering only the perspective of the capitalist to "make money", the chapter "Genesis and perpetuation of capitalism" tells a past and present story to show that the state and its organisations are only instruments in the hand of the power of Capital, whether this state is right or left. It also shows that the exploitation of workers and the monopolisation of surplus value is only part of the monopolisation: the main monopolisation is the exclusive monopolisation of the means of production, and it is this exclusive monopolisation which founds the power of the capitalist over the political as well as over those who only have their labour power. The chapter "Exit from capitalism" tells a possible future history, a "resolutely left" history since it breaks the capitalist's exclusivity to possess the means of production, a legal exclusivity which founds his power. Both stories are based on what we consider to be THE main characteristic of capitalism: the processes of appropriation of the means of production "for profit" by the shareholders alone, processes which make them the exclusive owners of these means whatever their contributions to them. It is therefore not the ownership of the means of production that is called into question but the exclusivity of this ownership. This article includes an analysis of the manifesto of the dismayed economists and the common theses mobilised in many articles of our research notebook, including this one.
The Transformation to Capitalism
University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2019
The transformation to capitalism in Britain and the world over is a spectacularly historic discourse that several scholars have examined from different perspectives. For hundreds of years scholars have produced works that explain how the transformation unfolded, what induced it and the effects it produced. This essay is an attempt to examine how a specific set of scholars examine the centrality of the state, labor, class, capital formation and the aspect of 'proto-industrialization'. It seeks to demonstrate how these scholars are in conversation to each other and how they complement or somewhat challenge conventional and ongoing interpretations on the topic. Some of the scholars give a more global perspective while others confine their analysis to specific countries like Britain and South Africa. Jack Goldstone argues that the seventeenth and not necessarily the eighteenth century crisis fundamentally marked a turning point in the history of capitalism in the east-west geopolitical economy. 1 He studied the English Revolution of 1640, the Anatolian rebellions in the Ottoman Empire, and the fall of the Ming dynasty in China. He argues that the political rebellions in China and the Ottoman Empire were as fundamentally transformative as those of 18 th century Western Europe. 2 He further argues that the Eastern rebellions had far reaching consequences that transformed class structure and state power. 3 He concludes that the nature of socioeconomic and political change in the 17 th century should be viewed as worldwide crisis of agrarian 1 Jack A. Goldstone, East and West in the Seventeenth Century: Political crises in Stuart England, Ottoman Turkey and Ming China,
A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Philosophy, 2019
This chapter discusses the philosophical side of Marx's thought as well as some of the major debates about it in the secondary literature. It is organized into three sections. The first examines Marx's early writings, focusing, in particular, on his views on religion, the limitations of political emancipation and the dehumanizing conditions of work under capitalism. The second examines Marx's materialist theory of history, the view that history is characterized by the development of productive power to free people from material scarcity. The third examines the problematic area of Marx's ethics. Marx's remarks on this topic are scattered and unsystematic. Consequently, they generate a number of difficult questions about how, and in what way, he criticizes capitalism. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Marx's vision of the good life under communism.