The Collapse of Capitalism

There is a notion widely held in certain circles that capitalism is in a state of collapse, or at least, that its collapse is imminent; and this is interpreted to mean that the existing system of society will reach a point at which the production and distribution of commodities will cease, and the whole of the mechanism of Society will fail any longer to operate. Those who propagate this conception naturally accept the view that the tactics of the working class organisation must be framed with this collapse always in mind.

The illustration given recently by one of them—Mr. Palme Dutt—was the comparison of the present social order to a house admitted to be in a far from perfect condition. Of the occupants there was a section which considered redecoration and repair to be sufficient, while another section thought that nothing less than demolition and building anew would meet the needs of the situation. These sections represent the reformists and revolutionaries respectively. Now, however, the war and the Russian revolution have brought new factors to bear, and the dispute has been removed to another plane, the only question now being not whether to destroy, but how to rebuild. The house is said, in fact, to have collapsed about the ears of the dwellers through its own rottenness.

This sounds plausible indeed, but argument by analogy is dangerous. Has capitalism collapsed? and to what extent have the war and the Russian revolution altered, apart from having merely intensified, the previous structural defects?

The Third International lays it down that “The present is the period of the breakdown of Capitalism,” but does the evidence support this or do the “Third’s” adherents act as if it were true? The answer is decidedly no.

In America Max Eastman (Communist) says “This statement is not true of the United States in the same immediate sense that it may be true of Europe. We are not in the period of the breakdown of Capitalism . . . ” (Liberator, October.)

He continues: “We (the American Communists) are employing tactics that could never be appropriate in any other period.” Now, the American Communist Party has “gone west,” and it is generally agreed that part, if not all, of the cause of their failure, was their attempt to apply a policy based on a condition of affairs which did not exist. Does that support the view that Capitalism is in collapse?

In Canada, which was wildly alleged to be on the verge of revolution at the time of the post-war Winnipeg strikes, a general election has just taken place which has led to the defeat of the conservative party by avowedly capitalist Liberals; the election having been fought on a tariff issue. There has not, apparently, been one Socialist returned.

In Australia, despite its heavy roll of unemployed, and its wage reductions, the “Proletarian” (Melbourne, 7th November) writes: “But until the full force of the present world depression reaches our shores the Australian working class will not be very susceptible to Communist propaganda.”

In Europe, where the full effect of the trade depression has been felt, does the economic system show any noticeable lack of vitality, or do the capitalists act in any but their accustomed aggressive manner towards the workers? In spite of the enormous amount of unemployment, curtailment of production, and relative overstocking of markets, are there any strikingly new factors to be considered after one has allowed for the expected after-war depression, the destruction of the war and the blockade, the new political frontiers and the chaos of the exchanges, all of them more or less normal phases of capitalism or the usual experiences after previous wars?

The struggle for markets may have been intensified, but does this call for new revolutionary tactics?

What of the Russian revolution? Here, again, the importance has been overestimated. The replacing of Czarist feudal Russia by a capitalistic republic even if the latter remains permanently under the Bolshevik Government, is the net result of the revolution, and it has only loomed so large because of the more or less accidental circumstances that it was the Bolsheviks who were brought into prominence by it.

If capitalism were in collapse would the Bolsheviks be relying on capitalist enterprise to rebuild Russia, a process which they admit will take decades at least? Would our own Communist Party feel the need to ally itself with the Labour Party to get the latter into power? The fact is the capacity of the capitalist system to recover from its depression has been under-rated and the Communists have in practice been forced to discard their theory. From the day when Marx and Engels wrote “There is a spectre haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism” there have continually been people who have under-estimated, as well as others like Hyndman, who never understood, but were always seeing revolution imminent in every momentary pause or set-back in capitalistic development.

In the minds, too, of some of its adherents, this theory of collapse is nothing but a failure to appreciate the Marxian viewpoint. The idea of an actual physical stoppage of production is not Marxian. Societies do not collapse like jerry-built houses. Marx wrote :—”The knell of capitalist private property sounds when the monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with it, and under it,” but as Boudin particularly points out (Theoretical System of Karl Marx) “He does not say that production under the old system must become impossible before a revolution sets in” and again, “as far as the purely mechanical breakdown of capitalism is concerned . . . it is not a physical breakdown, as would be necessary in order to exclude the necessary intervention of conscious human activity, but rather a moral bankruptcy. Certainly there is absolutely nothing in the capitalist system to prevent it from relapsing into a sort of new feudalism or slavery . . .  ” (p. 253). What Marx did mean, therefore, by the idea of the breakdown of Capitalism was the working-out of its inherent contradictions plus recognition by the workers that the continued existence of a system of society based on their exploitation is unnecessary and intolerable and that the class of exploiters no longer performs useful social functions. The moment of that recognition is the moment of the overthrow of class domination.

But it may be said “Capitalism can no longer employ its wage slaves, nor feed the unemployed.” But did it ever? Is unemployment new? and did Capitalism even in its days of most virile expansion and development provide an adequate standard of living for workers, employed or unemployed? Did the capitalists trouble about security for their victims? Everyone knows they did not: and yet the system survived.

It is of no use waiting for the system to collapse, nor preparing a new economic structure to replace it. It will not go until the workers determine that it shall go, and the pressing service revolutionary organisations can perform is to prepare the workers’ minds for the possibility of the immediate establishment of Socialism. To return to Palme Dutt’s analogy, we have not yet reached the stage of convincing the worker that there is anything wrong with the house at all; he still thinks it is the unneighbourliness of the people upstairs or in the house next door.

Edgar Hardcastle