The present is characterized not only by a political crisis of the global neoliberal order but also by differing interpretations of the cause of this crisis: capitalism. If we are to interpret capitalism, we must also know how to change it. We ask the panelists to consider the following questions: – What is capitalism? – Is capitalism contradictory? If so, what is this contradiction and how does it relate to Left politics? – How has capitalism changed over time, and what have these changes meant politically for the Left? – Does class struggle take place today? If so, how, and what role should it play for the Left? – Is capitalism in crisis? If so, how? And how should the Left respond? – If a new era of global capitalism is emerging, how do we envision the future of capitalism and what are the implications of this for the Left?
Chris Cutrone
Chris Cutrone is a college educator, writer, and media artist, committed to critical thinking and artistic practice and the politics of social emancipation. ( . . . )
ACCORDING TO MARX, capitalism is the contradiction of bourgeois social relations and industrial forces of production.[1] The effect of this self-contradiction of bourgeois society in industrial production is the division of capital and labor. It is from this division that the opposed classes of capitalists and workers derive. The class struggle between workers and capitalists is a phenomenon — the phenomenal expression — of the self-contradiction of capitalism. It expresses labor’s contradiction with itself — which is also capital’s contradiction with itself. When referring to “capital and labor” there are actually just two forms of capital — Marx called these “variable and constant” as well as “fixed and circulating” capital — and both refer to labor — Marx called capital “alienated labor.” Labor and capital are two aspects of the same thing in capitalism. The bourgeois social relations of production are the social relations of labor.
The usual oppositions posed by the labor
movement and by socialism, such as profit vs. human needs (and the needs of the
natural world beyond humanity), are expressions of this self-contradiction of
society in capitalism, the needs of capital as opposed to the needs of labor. The
contradiction of capital is not external but internal.
Marx described capitalism as “false
necessity.” What he meant by this was not simply wrong necessity, but rather self-contradictory
necessity. For the needs of capital and the needs of labor are the same. In
becoming opposed in capitalism, there is the conflict of labor with itself as
well as of capital with itself.
In capitalist politics, there is another
phenomenon — expression — of capital’s self-contradiction, namely, the disputes
among capitalist politicians over government policy, which can also express
conflicting interests of different capitalists, including different sectors of
industry, between different capitalist nation-states, etc. Workers employed in
different occupations as well as in industries can thus have different and
conflicting interests, competing over the priorities of social investment in
capital. The opposed aspects of capital — and of labor — are inseparable. Labor
cannot be extricated from capital any more than capital can be from labor.
The goal of socialism is to realize capital
as well as labor — to negate labor as well as capital. It is to realize as well
as negate — overcome — capitalist necessity. What would such Aufhebung [sublation] mean?
Discontents in capitalism take various
different and even opposed forms. The history of socialism itself as well as
the history of capitalism expresses self-contradictory desires and goals. At
different moments in the history of capitalism, the goals of socialism have
taken various different and indeed opposed forms. For instance, socialism has
variously regarded its goals as realizing the potential of capitalist
production as opposed to abolishing capitalist production: achieving
hyper-industrialism versus returning to subsistence primitivism[2]
have both found home at one time or place or another in the struggle for
socialism. Socialism could be defined as both and neither of the opposed
alternatives that capitalism generates as its own positive goals and its own
self-negations. All the various opposed demands arising from the discontents in
capitalism will be both fulfilled and negated — overcome — in socialism.
Capital seeks to abolish labor and labor
seeks to abolish capital — but more importantly in capitalism capital seeks to
abolish itself and labor seeks to abolish itself. By making labor more
productive it becomes less necessary; by producing excess capital it becomes
more superfluous — less a real measure of social value. Labor seeks to abolish
itself in capitalism, and thus to abolish capital, tasking socialism.
Only by encompassing the wide variety of
discontents within the working class and across the history of its developments
in capitalism could the political movement for socialist revolution to overcome
capitalism become adequate to its task and mission, by becoming conscious of it.
Since capital is the product of labor and labor the product of capital, this
would mean encompassing the divisions among the capitalists as well as within
capitalism itself as a total movement of society. The achievement of socialist
revolution would be when the working class can take responsibility politically
for capitalism as a whole. In so doing, the working class would confront the
choices posed by the contradictions of capitalism that are otherwise expressed
by the conflicts between the different capitalists and thus among workers of
the world. All the conflicts exhibited in the world must be grasped as
expressions and various forms of the self-contradiction of capitalism. Such
conflicts are necessary — to be
overcome.
The false necessity of capitalism as
self-contradictory but opposed real needs can only be truly engaged and
overcome from the standpoint of universal world history.[3]
This can only take place from within the social antagonisms of capitalism, and
not from partial, single-sided aspects of its contradictory totality.
The “workers of the world must unite”
because the world is united in its self-contradiction and crisis in capitalism.
The laborers must themselves take up and overcome the social relations of labor
in crisis in capitalism by assuming the socialist political responsibility for
capital that is eluded by capitalist politics.
Otherwise, the social conflicts in capitalism — between and among its capitalists and workers — will reproduce its contradictions forever. | P
[2] See the articles in the Platypus Review issue #125 (April 2020) published to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first observation of Earth Day, April 22 (the same date as Lenin’s birthday), in 1970 (thus on the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s birth in 1870), available online at: <https://platypus1917.org/category/pr/issue-125/>.
