2008 CRISIS OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM
Comrade Peter Urban, International Republican Socialist Network
The present economic meltdown occuring in the US requires analysis from a Marxist perspective, so that its more important lessons are sketched for members of the working class. Time will not permit a thorough-going undertaking to be completed at present, but some key lessons to be gleaned from the present crisis can be noted.
First among these, from the perspective of a traditional republican socialist analysis, is the reality driven home by recent moves by the US government to take over or bail out some of the nations leading investment backs, re-sellers of securities, brokerages, and insurers, that the analysis of James Connolly in his writings on the subject of municipalization of certain industries around the turn of the 20th century. That is, his insightful observation that municipalization and, by extension, nationalization of private business entities is not the same thing as socialization of those industries or as socialism. We can go beyond that to the conclusion that neither is the intervention of the state to undertake the planning of the economy the same thing as socialism. This realization allows us to be clear as to what defines the creation of socialist productive relations; the collective ownership by the entire working class of the the means of production, distribution, and exchange and the operation of these industries under the direct, democratic administration of the workers engaged in the various entities comprising the system themselves, with an end to the wage system and its replacement with a system based on average labor time equivilents.
This conclusion is both fundamental and important; the overturning of the system of capitalism and the creation of socialism is not an act that can be undertaken by a given state apparatus, nor by a specific political organization. It is always, at base, an act that can and must only be undertaken by a class; specifically the working class--by which we mean, not merely that part of the working class directly engaged in industrial production of goods, but all those whose livelihood is primarily dependent on the sale of their labor power for wages and who, by the act of selling their labor, create the product of all capitalist production ultimately, commodities. These conclusions are important because they have been misrepresented and falsified for so long it is difficult at times to find a genuinely Marxist analysis within the ranks of the broad Left; but they are conclusions that are readily apparent when the current economic acts of the US government are scrutinized.
As Otto Ruhle and others so well explained in the 1920s, within the Council Communist tendency of which republican socialists Jim Larkin, John MacLean,and Sylvia Pankhurst were all comrades, the intervention of the state through nationalized property and state planning of the economy that was first crystalized into state capitalism by the Imperial German government at the time of the First World War and later adopted by the Bolsheviks, with Lenin writing throughout the final years of his life in advocacy of what he too termed "state capitalism" and properly identified as having been pioneered by the German government. What Ruhle made clear, however, was the relationship between that model and the Italian and German corporatist states that developed in the 1920s and 1930s. Moreover, he explained the role of state capitalism in enabling the rapid industrial growth needed by these late arriving nations within the capitalist bastion of Europe, of which China is now the interna!
tional model par excellence.
Thus the present crisis draws out sharply the distinction between mere nationalization of industry and the actual creation of socialist relations in the sphere of production, distribution, and exchange.
The present crisis also helps to illustrate the masquerade carried out continuously by bourgeois 'economics' which Marx himself had identified. The practioners of bourgeois economics like to present themselves as "the physics of of the social sciences," by which they mean to emphasize the reliance of both schools on mathematical formula. Far from actually being an actual social 'science', however, bourgeois economics last long since left behind the scientific enquiries of the early practioners of political economy and have become nothing more than mere apologists for the capitalist system. This is made plain by the never ending pollyanna pronouncements made by leading bourgeois economists about the present crisis and the seeming inability of most within the ranks of their ilk to have anticipated the collapse of the house of cards created by artificially inflated real estate prices, ridiculously unsecured mortgages and over-extended credit resources, criminally misleading b!
undling of securities, and over-reaching by the various private and semi-state entities established to ensure the widest possible securing of mortgages possible. One is compelled to ask, what science would be worth pursuing that utterly lacked the capacity to project outcomes reliablly on the basis of established observation and identified reactions? Imagine a a chemist whose science was unable to project the likely result of combining various substances within various circumstances; imagine a doctor whose science provided no means to determine that an allergic reaction might be anticpated from the exposure of a sensitive individual to known allergens; imagine a physicist whose science gave no insights into what result might be anticipated were one to set up a nuclear chain reaction. Any of those provide an example comparable to the bourgeois economist, who seemingly cannot even recognize the likelihood of ansevere economic down-turn ocurring, despite the undeniable evidenc!
e of history regarding the business cycles that are an inseparable aspect of the capitalist system.
Finally, for the present, the present crisis well illustrates the reality that the evils of the capitalist system of production are the not products of human malice, but inescapable aspects of the system itself; aspects of the system that not only trod heartlessly on the working class people of every capitalist nation, but which are fully prepared to crush members of the ruling class when necessary to achieve its endless process of centralization, consolidation of capital, and pursuit of profitable returns amidst the reality of the unwavering tendency towards a decline in the rate of profit, with the increased capitalization of the process of production. While their landings will be far softer than you, I, or other members of the working class, there were a significant number of members of the bourgeoisie who were fleeced of tens of millions of dollars in assets in a mere handful of days, as American financial institutions imploded.
While I shed no tears for the bloodied remains of these formerly leading members of the ruling class, I will point to their bodies among the rubble, even if only to gloat. But, the lesson for members of the working class from this reality is that capitalism is not a beast that can be brought to heel through appeals to humanitarianism, morale upright-ness, or even self-preservation; capitalism is driven by its own internal laws, ultimately fueled by its need to always remain focused on the next quarter's bottom line and the pursuit of its share-holders of ever growing mounds of capital. This lesson is meaningful for working class people because it serves to illustrate the hopelessness of reformism. Those who challenge the more revolutionary-orientated members of our movement as being 'utopians' and ignoring gains to be had here-and-now by instead pursuing the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system should learn from recent events that the real fantasy-world one mig!
ht live in, is the one where it is believed that the capitalist system can be made to offer beneficial outcomes for working people. The system that was unwilling to spare its own members of the bourgeoisie from the demands of its laws of production is not a system that can be compelled to work in any manner that might serve the interests of our class.
This is neither the first, nor the last, nor even the worst crisis American capitalism has faced. However, it is a serious crisis that is bringing in its wake a major restructuring of the institutinons of American capitalism. It will be important for revolutionary activists within the working class to analyze these developments and develop tactics to meet these new challenges. Moreover, it is now more important than at any time in the past half-century or more that revolutionaries devote their energies to building class consciousness to the greatest extent possible within the working class and to the greatest breadth possible within the class. A crisis such as the present one can provide revolutionary opportunties for the working class, but without a sufficient level of class consciousness amongst workers, nothing beyond a mere coup d' etat can be achieved...and nationalization of property, as Connolly taught us, is not the same as socialism at all.
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The present economic meltdown occuring in the US requires analysis from a Marxist perspective, so that its more important lessons are sketched for members of the working class. Time will not permit a thorough-going undertaking to be completed at present, but some key lessons to be gleaned from the present crisis can be noted.
First among these, from the perspective of a traditional republican socialist analysis, is the reality driven home by recent moves by the US government to take over or bail out some of the nations leading investment backs, re-sellers of securities, brokerages, and insurers, that the analysis of James Connolly in his writings on the subject of municipalization of certain industries around the turn of the 20th century. That is, his insightful observation that municipalization and, by extension, nationalization of private business entities is not the same thing as socialization of those industries or as socialism. We can go beyond that to the conclusion that neither is the intervention of the state to undertake the planning of the economy the same thing as socialism. This realization allows us to be clear as to what defines the creation of socialist productive relations; the collective ownership by the entire working class of the the means of production, distribution, and exchange and the operation of these industries under the direct, democratic administration of the workers engaged in the various entities comprising the system themselves, with an end to the wage system and its replacement with a system based on average labor time equivilents.
This conclusion is both fundamental and important; the overturning of the system of capitalism and the creation of socialism is not an act that can be undertaken by a given state apparatus, nor by a specific political organization. It is always, at base, an act that can and must only be undertaken by a class; specifically the working class--by which we mean, not merely that part of the working class directly engaged in industrial production of goods, but all those whose livelihood is primarily dependent on the sale of their labor power for wages and who, by the act of selling their labor, create the product of all capitalist production ultimately, commodities. These conclusions are important because they have been misrepresented and falsified for so long it is difficult at times to find a genuinely Marxist analysis within the ranks of the broad Left; but they are conclusions that are readily apparent when the current economic acts of the US government are scrutinized.
As Otto Ruhle and others so well explained in the 1920s, within the Council Communist tendency of which republican socialists Jim Larkin, John MacLean,and Sylvia Pankhurst were all comrades, the intervention of the state through nationalized property and state planning of the economy that was first crystalized into state capitalism by the Imperial German government at the time of the First World War and later adopted by the Bolsheviks, with Lenin writing throughout the final years of his life in advocacy of what he too termed "state capitalism" and properly identified as having been pioneered by the German government. What Ruhle made clear, however, was the relationship between that model and the Italian and German corporatist states that developed in the 1920s and 1930s. Moreover, he explained the role of state capitalism in enabling the rapid industrial growth needed by these late arriving nations within the capitalist bastion of Europe, of which China is now the interna!
tional model par excellence.
Thus the present crisis draws out sharply the distinction between mere nationalization of industry and the actual creation of socialist relations in the sphere of production, distribution, and exchange.
The present crisis also helps to illustrate the masquerade carried out continuously by bourgeois 'economics' which Marx himself had identified. The practioners of bourgeois economics like to present themselves as "the physics of of the social sciences," by which they mean to emphasize the reliance of both schools on mathematical formula. Far from actually being an actual social 'science', however, bourgeois economics last long since left behind the scientific enquiries of the early practioners of political economy and have become nothing more than mere apologists for the capitalist system. This is made plain by the never ending pollyanna pronouncements made by leading bourgeois economists about the present crisis and the seeming inability of most within the ranks of their ilk to have anticipated the collapse of the house of cards created by artificially inflated real estate prices, ridiculously unsecured mortgages and over-extended credit resources, criminally misleading b!
undling of securities, and over-reaching by the various private and semi-state entities established to ensure the widest possible securing of mortgages possible. One is compelled to ask, what science would be worth pursuing that utterly lacked the capacity to project outcomes reliablly on the basis of established observation and identified reactions? Imagine a a chemist whose science was unable to project the likely result of combining various substances within various circumstances; imagine a doctor whose science provided no means to determine that an allergic reaction might be anticpated from the exposure of a sensitive individual to known allergens; imagine a physicist whose science gave no insights into what result might be anticipated were one to set up a nuclear chain reaction. Any of those provide an example comparable to the bourgeois economist, who seemingly cannot even recognize the likelihood of ansevere economic down-turn ocurring, despite the undeniable evidenc!
e of history regarding the business cycles that are an inseparable aspect of the capitalist system.
Finally, for the present, the present crisis well illustrates the reality that the evils of the capitalist system of production are the not products of human malice, but inescapable aspects of the system itself; aspects of the system that not only trod heartlessly on the working class people of every capitalist nation, but which are fully prepared to crush members of the ruling class when necessary to achieve its endless process of centralization, consolidation of capital, and pursuit of profitable returns amidst the reality of the unwavering tendency towards a decline in the rate of profit, with the increased capitalization of the process of production. While their landings will be far softer than you, I, or other members of the working class, there were a significant number of members of the bourgeoisie who were fleeced of tens of millions of dollars in assets in a mere handful of days, as American financial institutions imploded.
While I shed no tears for the bloodied remains of these formerly leading members of the ruling class, I will point to their bodies among the rubble, even if only to gloat. But, the lesson for members of the working class from this reality is that capitalism is not a beast that can be brought to heel through appeals to humanitarianism, morale upright-ness, or even self-preservation; capitalism is driven by its own internal laws, ultimately fueled by its need to always remain focused on the next quarter's bottom line and the pursuit of its share-holders of ever growing mounds of capital. This lesson is meaningful for working class people because it serves to illustrate the hopelessness of reformism. Those who challenge the more revolutionary-orientated members of our movement as being 'utopians' and ignoring gains to be had here-and-now by instead pursuing the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system should learn from recent events that the real fantasy-world one mig!
ht live in, is the one where it is believed that the capitalist system can be made to offer beneficial outcomes for working people. The system that was unwilling to spare its own members of the bourgeoisie from the demands of its laws of production is not a system that can be compelled to work in any manner that might serve the interests of our class.
This is neither the first, nor the last, nor even the worst crisis American capitalism has faced. However, it is a serious crisis that is bringing in its wake a major restructuring of the institutinons of American capitalism. It will be important for revolutionary activists within the working class to analyze these developments and develop tactics to meet these new challenges. Moreover, it is now more important than at any time in the past half-century or more that revolutionaries devote their energies to building class consciousness to the greatest extent possible within the working class and to the greatest breadth possible within the class. A crisis such as the present one can provide revolutionary opportunties for the working class, but without a sufficient level of class consciousness amongst workers, nothing beyond a mere coup d' etat can be achieved...and nationalization of property, as Connolly taught us, is not the same as socialism at all.
return to top