Platypus Review 123<\/a> | February 2020<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nSTARTING WITH THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, there have been two contrary tendencies in the development of social production: increased automation lowering socially necessary labor-time; and the desperation of people rendered superfluous as workers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Marxism, this presented a social and political\ntask for the working class to demand higher wages for fewer hours. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
An alternative to this would be for workers to try to\nfight against technology \u2014 the Luddites. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conversely, the capitalists could invest in machines\ninstead of labor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thus was born the antagonism between wage-labor and\ncapital. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The outcome of the class struggle between the workers\nand capitalists was to be the realization of the potential for both increased\nproduction and the reduction of human toil: socialism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, since machine production created a permanent\nclass of unemployed people, there would always be a demand for work that could\nbe exploited by the capitalists to pay lower wages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paying lower wages decreases the market for produced\ngoods, which means a drive for higher profitability, leading to further pursuit\nof cost-efficiency in production as well as depression of wages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That leads to both robots and sweatshops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Disparities and imbalances between capitalist profits\nand workers\u2019 wages lead to periodic crises in which there is money that cannot\nfind profitable investment and workers who cannot find employment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But eventually balance is restored through the\ncheapening of money-capital \u2014 and the cheapening of labor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
New forms of work are developed to serve new\ntechnologies of production. \u2014 Until the next crisis begins the cycle all over\nagain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This meant that the working class as a whole \u2014 both\nemployed and unemployed \u2014 needed to be organized as a social and political\nforce to ensure increased social wealth and to prevent exploitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since this is a matter of the organization of society\nas a whole \u2014 including internationally, and indeed globally, in the\ncosmopolitan exchange of wage-labor and capital \u2014 it requires the political act\nof taking state power: world socialist revolution. | P<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chris Cutrone Platypus Review 123 | February 2020 STARTING WITH THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, there have been two contrary tendencies in the development of social production: increased automation lowering socially necessary labor-time; and the desperation of people rendered superfluous as workers. For Marxism, this presented a social and political task for the working class to demand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[45,16,6],"class_list":["post-2874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","tag-45","tag-marxism","tag-the-platypus-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2874"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2875,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2874\/revisions\/2875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}