IsiahahBlake
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I think the percentage of ‘sectors’ that will be needed/continued post revolution massively depends on when we are talking about and what the specific context of the revolution is.
By post-capitalist society I assume you mean a society emerging from capitalism rather than one which has had time to form itself on its own basis. I say that because I would imagine that in communism any idea of easily definable ‘sectors’ will become more and more meaningless.
In terms of icc material this one cane to my mind but I’m not sure if it is specifically what you’re looking for
https://en.internationalism.org/content/16838/bordiga-and-big-city“The dichotomy of the productive versus unproductive sector of the capitalist economy might be relevant here. People like Fred Moseley have charted the relative growth of the unproductive sector – the non-profit-producing or non-commodity-producing sector of the American economy (in his case). Unproductive labour might not generate profits but is still functional – even vital – to the needs of capitalism. It is financed out of surplus value generated by the productive sector but that, in itself, imposes limits on the extent of this sector vis-a-vis the productive sector. It is significant that we have seen cutbacks in jobs in the unproductive sector in recent years which might be interpreted as an attempt to get the balance right and ensure a healthy flow of profits on which the system depends”
I’m sure that is a big part of it but I would also say that the scale of the unproductive sector has swollen to the extent it has precisely because of decadence. The productive forces have so long ago outgrown the social relations that capitalism needs to invent this globalised unproductiveness to keep the whole mad cycle going.
The question of whether debt ever has to be paid is interesting but ultimately I think its a false question. The fact is capitalism is running into basic realities of nature, in the form of the climate crisis and the raw questions of power and war (as well as the underlying deep social crisis after 500 years of increasing atomisation and destruction of all authentic community forms). These factors are the ones that will bring the ultimate cause of capitalisms destruction (one way or the other).
Once the bottom falls out it will fall out more violently the longer they try to keep it off. Once each nation realises the others cant/won’t pay this will increase this tendency.
The more important question with regard to debt is, I think, the reason for its explosion since the 70s/80s onwards. There is clearly something different about the current crisis to previous ones in this regard. The degree to which companies more and more don’t ‘make profit’, whole economies like Japan’s are basically giving up on basic aspects of ‘growth’ etc…it is clearly not just business as usual
“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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
It was never just an economic theory. It is a basic Marxist positions that societies/modes of production rise and fall. They go through a progressive or ascendant phase in which they grow and develop and offer new possibilities and a decadent period of decline in which they become a barrier to progress or to social existence more generally.
There are various economic explanations / aspects to this but it was never reducible to ‘economics’ alone.
Capitalism being around for as long as it has means it’s ecological destructiveness has reached undreamt of levels and the longer it survives the worse this will get. Imperialist war is very similar. It can do nothing but become mire snd more destructive and more and more of a threat to humanity.
Firstly ‘i dont think so’ isnt much of an argument but here we go: If there is an underlying contradiction between capitalisms need for constant expansion and the finite nature of the earth (for example) then the more capitalism is either curtailed in its expansion or continues to expand (in more and more dangerous and destructive ways) then the results will become consistently worse.
The idea that decadence means ‘things get worse’ is firstly not accurate, secondly such an idea would have to be understood on a historical scale. Decadence means an end to the progressive role of capitalism. Once capitalism is a world system it A) has nothing to be progressive in opposition to B) no longer has a useful role in laying the foundations for communism.
Any’improvements’ that may have occurred in the 20th century the overall trend is for capitalism to become an increasing threat to human survival. This is the historic epoch we are in. Unless capitalism is overthrown in the next century, humanity is very very likely not to survive this century. That seems like a society that has become historically NOTHING BUT a barrier to ‘progress’ to me.
Also, if capitalism is in a position of insoluble contradictions it stands to reason that solutions within that system will become increasingly fraudulent/insane. No?
120 years isn’t that long for a historic era though is it? Also if there are irreconcilable contradictions then it stands to reason these will increase in severity over time, no?
You can split it into as many stages as you want but there is a fundamental difference between capitalism before and after it became THE world system. Seems like 1900s/1914 is a decent place to start . There’s a lot of debates to be gad within this wider scope but I don’t think the points I’ve made can be particularly controversial for Marxists.
As far as I am aware the ICC don’t argue that capitalism will collapse ‘by itself’ (whatever that would mean). BUT the social system is increasingly reaching a point where its internal and ‘external’ contradictions are making it impossible for capitalism to offer a future (of any sort) to humanity. War is one expression, the climate crisis is perhaps the most self evident example of capitalism reaching the literal limits of its own capacity to keep expanding. The economic crisis won’t make capitalism disappear but it will constantly tend towards the exacerbation of these contradictions.
Even more importantly, the tendency for capitalism to destroy human community and to atomise/commodify every aspect of human and non human life has and will always continue to reach such absurd levels as to become a danger even to the functioning of capitalism itself.
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 which can not do anything but get worse over time.
