ICC international online public meeting, 25 January
- This topic has 41 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 1 month, 2 weeks ago by
.
-
Posts
-
That’s fair enough. But “Decadence” and “Decomposition”, with their connotations of decline, rotting or falling apart, seem over the top as a descriptions of this situation
I’m not sure it’s possible to be over the top in this period tbh.
In terms of accumulation and its connection to decadence I tend to see them as interrelated but separate aspects. The question of Luxemburgs view of overproduction is about what the main economic heart of the crisis is; that is a different question to ascendancy and decadence.
Personally I see the tendency towards overproduction as an underlying problem which capitalism as a whole is getting to the final limits of now buy which started as soon as capitalism became a world system. How exactly this connects to imperialism and the tendency for the rare of profit to fall is a question that needs further discussion and elaboration.
That’s fair enough. But “Decadence” and “Decomposition”, with their connotations of decline, rotting or falling apart, seem over the top as a descriptions of this situation
I’m not sure it’s possible to overstate the extremity of the situation tbh. I get that things can seem ‘under control’ in certain ways but the directional tendency is undisputably towards chaos and collapse. The bourgeoisie have amassed almost ‘god(demonic)like’ powers of control and manipulation BUT they won’t work forever and often their attempts at control only make things worse.
The question of overproduction, Luxemburg etc is an interrelated question to that of decadence but they are separate to a degree.
Personally I see the problem of overproduction and the problem of capitalisms need for an ‘outside’ to expand into as an underlying tendency which we are now at the extreme limits of but the precise manner in which this connects to imperialism, the tendency for falling rates of profit etc is a discussion which needs further development.
Personally I see the problem of overproduction and the problem of capitalisms need for an ‘outside’ to expand into as an underlying tendency which we are now at the extreme limits of
This is what I always understood to be the basic ICC position, based on Rosa Luxemburg’s mistaken underconsumptionist theory that capitalism needs external markets to expand and in fact to exist.
Luxemburg imagined that she had found a flaw in Marx’s analysis but it was her who was mistaken in claiming that, because capitalism did not generate enough purchasing power within itself to buy what was produced, it needed buyers from outside the system to buy the surplus.
The mistaken conclusion that follows from this mistaken view is that, when these external markets have been exhausted, capitalism will begin to collapse. The ICC does not hesitate to draw this conclusion and in fact is arguing that these outside markets have now been exhausted or, as you put it, are at “the extreme limits” of being and as this recent text on their site claims:
https://en.internationalism.org/content/17536/crisis-going-be-most-serious-whole-period-decadence
“This crisis is going to be the most serious in the whole period of decadence”. That’s some claim. I think that’s what they said last time.
Whatever the exact causes capitalism needs constant expansion and can no longer achieve this on the planet earth. Besides Musks delusions of fucking off to Mars capitalism can no longer expand. That is going to have serious consequences.
I don’t think the icc have one opinion on the question of Luxemburgs theory.
As far as I understand Luxemburg saw that Marx was too hasty in brushing aside the issue of underconsumption as being merely an ‘abstract’ problem. As capitalism gets to its limits of expansion and becomes the sole social relation it becomes more and more of a real problem. When this point of reaching the limits of expansion happens is difficult to say but I don’t see any reason to think it will never happen/hasn’t basically already happened.
“This crisis is going to be the most serious in the whole period of decadence”. That’s some claim. I think that’s what they said last time.
Quite a few bourgeois economists are saying this too nowdays.
Isiah said “Anyway, this is why decomposition is linked to phenomenon like Trump. The naked idiocy, amoralism and nihilism as well as the decline in the ability of any bourgeois faction to put forward anything like a coherent plan are all an expression of this underlying crisis of capitalism”
Why is Trump a phenomenon linked to decomposition anymore than any raft of capitalist politicians from any period of the capitalist system. Is Trump any more of amoral idiot than James Buchanan, Calvin Coolidge, Warren Harding or even Richard Nixon?
You also imply that there has really ever been a “coherent plan” for capitalism. If you could let me know details of this plan and when it was put together, I’m sure we would all be fascinated.
Unfortunately there he been a long line of Trotskyists and Leninist who have been trying their hand at some kind of political soothsaying, I remember “leading member” of the then then Militant Tendency explaining that Roy Hattersley winning the Labour Party Deputy Leadership election over Tony Benn, would be “the high water mark of the Labour Right wing”. Yeah and that worked out well, didn’t it.
The Left Communists and their fellow travellers are like a third rate version of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, prophesying the “end is near”
Rosa Luxembourg tried to blame the problem on Engels by saying that probably, he changed everything on Volume 2 and 3 of Das Capital.
Engels published those two volumes because the daughter of Marx asked him to do that, and he was one of the few person able to understand Marx handwriting and Marx was a very disorganized person, but Engels was a very organized writer
He published exactly what was written on the manuscripts, he did not alter anything, the problem is that Rosa Luxembourg was mistaken and trying to question Marx she created more problems for herself, and it has been proven that the collapse theory is completely wrong and the main cause of the capitalist crisis is not the fall of the rate of profits, it is overproduction
Frantz Mehring who is one of the best biographers of Marx said that Engels was completely faithful to everything that Marx wrote including his unfinished works. Engels has been the scapegoat on many distortions made on Marx theory
Rosa Luxembourg was mistaken and trying to question Marx she created more problems for herself, and it has been proven that the collapse theory is completely wrong and the main cause of the capitalist crisis is not the fall of the rate of profits, it is overproduction
==========================As I understand it, Luxemburg did not think capitalism would collapse as a result of the falling rate of profit. That would have been Henryk Grossman, I think, whose views she opposed. Nevertheless, she did believe capitalism would collapse but from a quite different standpoint of underconsumptionist theory or a particular version of it based on the idea of the non-capitalist world being incorporated capitalism via imperialism and so providing the system no more room for expansion
I did not say that Luxembourg said that , I have added the two wrong conceptions into one message
——————————————————————-
Henryk Grossmann was the first Marxist economist that proposed a theory of crisis based on the Marxian law of the falling rate of profit due to the increasing organic composition of capital. This view, while initially disappointingly minotirarian, has become very popular nowadays
within Marxist Political Economy.
—————————————————————————-
Rosa Luxemburg’s theory of capitalist collapse is the idea that capitalism is unsustainable and will eventually collapse due to its own contradictions. She believed that a revolution was necessary to transform capitalism into socialism.
Explanation
Social Reform or Revolution
In her 1899 pamphlet, Social Reform or Revolution?, Luxemburg argued that capitalism’s inner contradictions would lead to its collapse. She believed that trade unions and reformist political parties could not create a socialist society.
The Accumulation of Capital
In her 1913 book, The Accumulation of Capital, Luxemburg argued that capitalism’s constant expansion through trade with non-capitalist countries was necessary. She believed that once this expansion was no longer possible, capitalism would collapse.
The inevitability of collapse
Luxemburg believed that capitalism’s destructiveness would herald its defeat. She believed that the working class would eventually revolt against the rule of capital.We and the ICC both agree that capitalism has long since created the material basis for a world socialist society in which the needs of everybody can be met; and that therefore capitalism has no reason, as far as the interest of humanity is concerned, to continue to exist.
We express this by saying that it is obsolete, past its sell-by date and, if we are being philosophical, has fulfilled its historic role and is no longer progressive. And that therefore establishing socialism is at the top of the agenda.
The ICC, on the other hand, ties this to an economic theory that this means that capitalism is incapable of further developing the means of production and is in a state of economic decline, decadence and decomposition and so can no longer offer social reforms as it previously could and that economic crises will get worse and worse until —- unless the working class act – the final big one that will bring about its final economic collapse.
But not only is there no reason in theory to conclude that, having fulfilled its historic role by creating the material basis for a world socialist society, capitalism can no longer function as it did in the 19th century, but the facts also show that it has. Since 1914 capitalism has immensely developed the forces of production (making socialism even more practicable) but has also offered more extensive reforms than in the period before.
And of course there were crises in the 19th century including the big one in the 1880s which led Engels to speculate that capitalism had entered into a period of permanent stagnation.
In other words, despite being past its sell-by date, capitalism as an economic system has continued to operate as it always did, extracting surplus value from the working class and going through cycles of boom and slump without the succeeding slumps being necessarily worse than the previous one. So there is no reason to conclude that the next slump will be worse than that of the 1930s as the ICC is predicting and presumably hoping for as an assumed spur to get the working class to end capitalism.
As it happens, there is an article on this in this month’s Socialist Standard:
I think it is better to refer to Luxemburg‘s theory of crises as saying they are caused by underconsumption rather than by overproduction.
Of course her theory that capitalism doesn’t generate enough purchasing power to buy all that it produces does assume that there is overproduction (in relation to paying demand) but she is saying that this is permanent, built into to the system.
The crises of capitalism are caused by overproduction but this only occurs from time to time when during a boom capitalist firms assume that the boom is going to be permanent.
It is the difference between saying that capitalism has a permanent tendency to overproduction and saying that capitalism has a tendency to permanent overproduction.
“The Left Communists and their fellow travellers are like a third rate version of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, prophesying the “end is near”
The spgb would then be the church of England: “Don’t worry, one day everyone will believe” without the need for any struggle.
….obviously this is inaccurate and needlessly offensive but perhaps it is as true as your anti-left-communist nonsense…
“You also imply that there has really ever been a “coherent plan” for capitalism. If you could let me know details of this plan and when it was put together, I’m sure we would all be fascinated”
Capitalism has always been irrational and from a certain view insane as a system BUT the contradictions of the system don’t stay the same. Capitalism can only travel in one direction “more and more and faster and faster”… Things don’t stand still, especially not capitalism. I mentioned the climate crisis as the clearest expression of this but imperialism also follows a similar logic of necessarily increasing destructiveness and complexity as more and more imperialist nations have more and more destructive weapons.
Anyway, dialectical thinking has to include directional tendencies in its view of things. Capitalism has no solution to these existential problems. The effect on the ability of the bourgeoisie to root its plans in any ‘reality’ is intimately linked to this inability. Either denialism or techno-cratic nightmares (and in most cases both) are their only options with their technocratic means of control/plans for war, by necessity becoming more and more insane.
While I would agree that the icc in the past at least tended to combine the economic and the historic ‘decline’ of capitalism too closely, giving the erroneous impression that they’re the same thing.
However, there are important differences in the way the economies function in the 19th and 20th and 21st centuries.The resorting to state capitalism and the more recent deep descent into the reliance on debt to keep the system going suggest there are deep underlying problems. There is also the unprecedented consistent low growth of the ‘advanced economies’since at least the mid 2000s and the fact that the 2008 crisis has never ended and has instead been “put off” with more debt.
“So there is no reason to conclude that the next slump will be worse than that of the 1930s as the ICC is predicting and presumably hoping for as an assumed spur to get the working class to end capitalism.”
As I said I think it’s clear that the recourse to debt as a solution to the debt crisis would suggest there must be a cumulative aspect to the crisis. Whether this means it will be “deeper” than the 30s is very difficult to judge but it does seem likely to be more universal/international than 2008 or the 30s.
“The Left Communists and their fellow travellers are like a third rate version of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, prophesying the “end is near”
The spgb would then be the church of England: “Don’t worry, one day everyone will believe” without the need for any struggle.
….obviously this is inaccurate and needlessly offensive but perhaps it is as true as your anti-left-communist nonsense…
——————————————————————————
We should listen to the point of view of others organizations. That is one of the reason why the SPGB has been called sectarian by others groups, and we should try to bring more organizations to this forum and peoples from other nations and treat them properly . I do publish articles from other organizations including the CCI. I think I am going to attend this meeting
Debt crisis? Whose debt crisis? In any case this is a quite different theory of capitalist crisis and collapse than we have been discussing up to now. It’s financial rather than economic.
You talk about “the recourse to debt as a solution to the debt crisis” but a state finds itself in trouble precisely when it can no longer do this. Those with money are not going to lend it to a state they know or suspect won’t repay it. A state in this situation has either to declare itself bankrupt or drastically reduce its spending.
What are you expecting? For the US or Britain to go bankrupt?
This article from a recent Socialist Standard deals with the view that capitalism is supposedly based on unsustainable debt:
This is another article on the so called national debt:
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.