Clever Monkey versus the Accelerationists (2)

Part Two: (Nick) Land, Capital and Labor (Theory)

Clever Monkey’s argument against the accelerationists seems to rest on a precise formulaic incantation repeated over and over: the only accelerationism possible is Nick Land’s accelerationism. Thus accelerationism itself is merely a virulent subform of neoliberalist ideology that advocates commodification of all human relations. Which is to say all talk of accelerationism must lead us to embrace anarcho-capitalism, the Thought of Murray Rothbard, and the good folks at the Mises Institute.

My May Day Post: How Kautsky and Lenin Fundamentally Revised Marx

Part One: “… the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution”

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx writes:

“Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?”

In this statement Marx is arguing changes in material existence and social relations must produce changes in consciousness.

Based on his argument, we can assume when, in the German Ideology, he and Engels wrote capitalism gives rise to,

“a class which forms the majority of all members of society, and from which emanates the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness”,

they were making the argument capitalism gives rise to changes in material existence, social relations and social life that produces a communist consciousness.

I ask this, because I certainly don’t want to be accused of “stringing quotes together”. I want to be sure these two concepts — one from the Communist Manifesto, the other From the German Ideology — actually are related. I want to be sure the two arguments form a discrete, coherent and continuous line of reasoning going through their life’s work. This is so when I ask dumb fucking vanguardist groupuscules (like, e.g., the SWP (UK)) why they exist, I am on solid ground. But. more important, I want to make sure I am on solid ground when I begin looking at the arguments of both Kautsky and Lenin on the issue of working class consciousness. I don’t want any silly mindless vanguardists to say I am taking Engels or Marx out of context when I rip Kautsky and Lenin new assholes.

Ludwig von Mises and the demise of the Austrian School

Since Zak Drabczyk has been having a lot of fun stomping on the basic and sacred arguments of the Austrian-school-type regressive anarchist trend centered on the Mises Institute, I thought I would pile on and get in a few punches on my own. So, at the request of an anarchist on twitter, @adamblacksburg, I wrote up this two part critique of Ludwig von Mises’ SOCIALISM. I will post the second part of this critique by Friday.

Reply to @sushi_goat: How does reducing hours of labor work?

Tweep @sushi_goat asked me a series of questions regarding reducing hours of labor yesterday. I made a stab at it, but I want to give a fuller answer here.

My argument on the impact of a shorter work week on “the economy” is based on Postone’s and Kurz’s analysis of superfluous labor. In his magnificent book, “Time labor and Social Domination”, Postone showed that superfluous labor is a necessary result of late capitalism and includes labor time that is necessary from the standpoint of the capitalist mode of production but superfluous from a higher mode of production. To call labor superfluous therefore does not imply that it appears empirically in this form within the capitalist mode of production itself. Within the capitalist mode of production this superfluous labor appears to be necessary.

In his own groundbreaking essay, “The Apotheosis of Money“, Kurz further defined this category from the standpoint of a theory of capitalist circulation as a whole. While he enumerated how this form appears in the form of many particular and obvious types of labor time, his real contribution was to nail down its implications for the capitalist mode of production. What Kurz showed is that this superfluous labor time consists in the production of values that do not reenter the capitalist reproduction process. To give an example: the production of an ear of corn is the production of a value; but if the corn is not consumed by a worker productively employed in the capitalist production process, it cannot reenter capitalist self-valorization. The corn could be eaten by a soldier, but the soldier as living labor does not replace the ear of corn in the capitalist production process, thus the value is consumed unproductively.

Unfortunately, what Postone has not done (yet?) nor Kurz before his death is extend this analysis to the category of Marx’s organic composition of capital. If this had been done, I think it would have yielded very important results regarding the significance of their ideas.

First we begin with three important formulas in Marx’s theory:

1. c:v, or the organic composition of capital. This is the ratio of constant capital (c) necessary to set in motion a given quantity of living labor (v). In Marx’s theory, this ratio is always increasing.

2. s/v, or the ratio of newly produced surplus value (s) to the mass of living labor expended in its production (v).

3. s/(c+v), or Marx’s formula for profit, expressed as the ratio of newly produced surplus value (s) to the mass of constant capital used up in production (c) and the mass of living labor expended in this production (v).

For the purpose of analysis, I assume the total labor time of society can be divided into a mass of productively expended labor time (Vp) plus a mass of unproductively expended labor time (Vu). In other words, let the mass of the total labor time of society be represented by V, this total labor time can be further divided into productively employed labor time (Vp) and Postone’s and Kurz’s unproductively employed labor time (Vu)

On this basis the total labor time of society can be represented by the equation

4. V = Vp+Vu

Again on this assumption, the organic composition of capital (C:V), can be further defined as:

5. C:(Vp+Vu)

The problem here is that in Marx theory the organic composition of capital can only refer to capital’s self-expansion, which implies all labor is employed productively. So, the formula, C:(Vp+Vu), must be understood only as the prospective (or fictitious) organic composition of capital. Which is to say, this formula applies only to how the organic composition must appear, consistent with capitalist relations of production.

In this formula, however, it appears the expenditure of unproductive labor time reduces the organic composition of capital — as several writers have asserted, most notably Chris Harman, who argued:

“There is a vicious circle. Reactions by individual firms and states to the falling rate of profit have the effect of further reducing the resources available for productive accumulation. [47]

“But the effect of unproductive expenditures is not only to lower the rate of profit. It can also reduce upward pressure on the organic composition of capital. This was an insight used by Michael Kidron to explain the “positive” impact of massive arms spending on the system in the post-war decades. He saw it, like luxury consumption by the ruling class and its hangers-on, as having a beneficial side-effect for those running the system – at least for a time.

“Labour which is “wasted”, he argued, cannot add to the pressure for accumulation to be ever more capital intensive. Value which would otherwise go into raising the ratio of means of production to workers is siphoned out of the system. Accumulation is slower, but it continues at a steady pace, like the tortoise racing the hare in Aesop’s fable. Profit rates are weighed down by the waste, but do not face a sudden thrust into the depths from a rapid acceleration of the capital-labour ratio.”

In fact, this was complete nonsense. The organic composition of capital is not affected by the growth of superfluous labor time. So-called “economic growth” appears to stagnate not because superfluous labor makes capital less productive, but because the increase in the productive capacity of labor requires increasing quantities of unproductive labor time.

In the capitalist mode of production Vp+Vu can only appear as V — which is to say as abstract homogenous labor in general. It cannot, under any circumstances appear as discrete quantities of qualitatively differentiated labors Vp and Vu. On the other hand, only productive labor can produce surplus value; unproductive labor as Kurz argues, does not produce surplus value but only mediates its distribution. This has implications for my analysis.

Since, Vp+Vu can only appears as V, it would appear that a reduction of labor hours imposed on capital must result in a proportional reduction of both productive and unproductive labor. For instance, it would appear reducing hours of labor from 40 to 24 would have an equal impact both on General Motors and Federal employment. In fact, this cannot happen: General Motors as a productive capital produces surplus value that is distributed as the profit of GM and state expenditures. Given this, the effect of reducing hours of labor must have a greater impact on the state, or a defense contractor, than it has on productively employed capital.

Why? If we plug our substitute for V into Marx’s formula for surplus value, it might become clearer:

The formula 2. s/v becomes:

6. s/(Vp+Vu)

In this case, only Vp produces the surplus value shared between both sectors Vp+Vu.

And the formula for profit s/v+c becomes

7. s/c+(Vp+Vu)

Since the aim of capital is self-expansion, and, therefore, of the production of surplus value, this has implications for the impact a reduction of hours has on the mode of production. Labor time Vu produces no surplus value, although it will mediate the distribution of the surplus value produced by Vp. The reduction of total hours of labor will not have a proportional impact on the two mass of labor time, Vp and Vu, but a disproportional impact — reducing the relative proportion of labor time, Vu against Vp.

This is because, 1. a reduction of labor time Vp, reduces the mass of surplus value, and therefore, the mass of s in the formula for profit, s/c+v; while, 2. the reduction of labor time Vu, has no impact on the mass of surplus value, and, therefore, no impact on the mass of s in the formula for profit, s/c+v. On the other hand, the increase in the mass of labor time expended productively (Vp) will increase the mass of surplus value s, while the increase in the mass of unproductively expended labor time (Vu) will not.

The distribution of the mass of profit produced by productively employed capitals is, in part, settled by competition between the class of owners of capital. Under conditions of a general and comprehensive reduction of hours of labor, productively employed capital can increase their profits by reducing the expenditure of labor in unproductive forms, such as the state sector. While the state is incapable of increasing itself, by increasing its unproductive consumption of the surplus value produce by productively employed capital, i.e., by raising taxes or borrowing.

In the first place, a general and comprehensive reduction of hours of work — e.g., from 40 to 24 hours — must result in a reduction first of the state sector. In the second place, it must result in massive shift of the employment of labor from unproductive capitals (e.g., finance) to productive capitals. The losers in such a reduction would be first the state, second those capitals producing for the state (defense contractors) and financing it (Wall St.). By contrast, the productive employment of capital becomes more profitable, although the actual quantity of surplus value produced is smaller. Although less actual surplus value is produced, less also has to be shared with a mass of unproductive capitals and the bloated state.

This must increase demand for the productive employment of labor power, along with an increase in the wages. The rise in wages would in turn force productively employed capitals to further rationalize expenditures of labor through methods that improve the productivity of labor. Although employment is rising, along with wages, the actual improvement of the productivity of labor compels the further reduction of hours. In this way, there is both a rapid increase in the material living standards of the mass of society and more disposable time.

Reducing hours of labor not only means free disposable time for the mass of society, it pays for itself by compelling capital to revolutionize the labor process and increase the efficient employment of existing labor power. In Capital somewhere, Marx argues the capitalist class is, historically speaking, only the stewards of the total capital, who used their position to the disadvantage of the mass of society. This might not have been obvious in his day, but with the professional class of managers who have since arisen and now shuttle between Washington and Wall Street, and the resulting division of ownership from effective control of capital, it is clear this is all that class ever was. Paris Hilton’s family has long since retired to the vocation of coupon-clipping, while her functions have been assumed by these parasites.

For this reason, I think the most fanatical opponent to reducing hours of labor will be the state itself, and, in second place, the managers of the capitalist firms directly dependent on the state. Reducing hours of labor cannot be thought of as a political demand; it is, rather, a textbook example of what Kurz called antipolitics.

The key thing to understand here is that with Postone and Kurz we get two entirely antithetical forms of labor time that result in two contradictory definitions of value.

Marxists have yet to integrate Postone’s and Kurz arguments into an updated analysis of capital in the tradition of Marx reflecting post-war capitalism, although both arguments rest directly on Marx’s own analysis. It makes it difficult, if not impossible, therefore, to convince Marxists of the significance of a demand for reduction in hours of labor.

This provides with a practical route to what Kurz called the internal breach in the capitalist mode of production itself:

Where and how to begin, within the existing capitalist form of socialization which rules over all reproduction, with the intention of finding in the latter, so to speak, an internal breach and to break free of it, to take the first step, to point out a formulable beginning for social emancipation?

Clearly, this crisis presents us with a mass of unemployed workers, who are having great difficulty finding work in the advanced countries, side-by-side with a regime of austerity that only promises to intensify unemployment. If this breach can be exploited by a concerted call on the Left for a reduction in hours of labor, the stage may be set for a series of events carrying all of society beyond this historical phase.

Value and the Demise of Capitalism: Reconciling Postone and Kurz

Posted on the blog, principiadialectica, is a question to Robert Kurz about his differences with Postone on value and the current crisis that is bugging the hell out of me. In an interview conducted in 2010, Kurz is asked to explain his differences with Postone regarding the impact improvement in the productive power of labor has on value:

“For you, with the gains of productivity, capital loses its substance (abstract work) and, with the third industrial revolution, it loses it absolutely. For Moishe Postone, on the contrary, the gains of productivity increase value, but provisionally. According to him, as soon as the gain of productivity has generalized itself, the growth of value is cancelled, the basic unity of abstract work (the hour of work) having been brought back to its initial level. Thus, for you, value is collapsing, whilst, for Postone, value is growing continually then comes back to its starting point. Hence the question: doesn’t that break down the plausibility of the critique of value? Or should we see in this a point undecided at the moment?”

In Kurz’s argument, the gains of productivity gradually result in capital losing its value content; while, for Postone, the gains in productivity result in the expansion of prospective value until the social relation reaches its endpoint. Although both writers end up at the same point — capital is abolished by its internal laws — the description of the process differs in the perspective of the two writers.

The question posed in the interview is which of these two theoretical approaches is valid for the period leading to the demise of capitalism.

Social emancipation cannot be founded on labor

Disconnection from the current relations of production is easier said than done in Kurz’s opinion. It is not a matter of simply seizing a single factory, a retail outlet, an office or a school, nor even of seizing all the factories, retail outlets, offices and schools altogether in a simultaneous uprising in all countries at once. These institutions evolved within the context of commodity production and exchange and are fit only to function within this mode of production. It is not simply a matter of laying hold to them on the day after “the revolution” and employing them for the cause of social emancipation. Says Kurz,

The difficulty consists in the fact that the capitalist form of the functional division of society, as in the case of the capitalist structure of use value, cannot be assimilated, without alterations, into an emancipatory reproduction.

If this argument sounds familiar to you, it should; it is precisely the difficulty the Communards faced in Paris when they took control of the old machinery of the state. They were compelled to dump that entire structure and create a new one on the fly to suit their specific needs. Marx concluded from that experience that the working class could not simply lay hold of the existing machinery of state and wield it for its purposes — that machinery had to be broken. Kurz is extending Marx’s argument well beyond the state to encompass the entire economic mechanism bound up with the capitalist mode of production. And he gives several pretty convincing reason for his conclusion:

First, if a group of workers could seize their own factory, office or school, this institution could not be pulled out of the commodity production system, because the workers don’t produce anything they directly consume. This is already obvious in an office or a school since nothing material is produced in those institutions at all — they only serve as moments in the overall system of commodity production. But, it is also true for workers in an auto factory, a packing plant, or an industrial farm.

Second, even if we assumed a global movement of factory, office and school expropriations that succeeded throughout the world market, we would still be presented with a very great difficulty. Many of these firms engage in business that are absurd outside of commodity relations — like a human resources firm, a private security firm, or contractors supplying the needs of the fascist state military for “commodities” like trident nuclear subs or predator drones. Others pose an ongoing hazard to the public, like GMO producers, pesticides manufacture, or firms constructing and operating nuclear power plants.

Third, Kurz argues there is a grotesque ignorance on the part of capitalist society and its members concerning how the current system as a whole actually functions. Most firms know little about the larger material requirement of their own activity beyond their own suppliers and clients. Frankly, what keeps capitalism working is not the conscious action of the individuals within it, but blindly acting forces operating behind the backs of the members of society. The relations between billions of daily separate acts of production only become visible in the form of innumerable transactions and capital flows.

Fourth, these billions of separate individual acts of production could only be mediated by money relations or, in the best possible outcome, by a new political structure of planning and control, which would have to intervene in social production and would, because of this, bring in its trail the danger of a new managerial elite always ready to usurp control on its own behalf. Moreover, planning, in old Marxist theories of transition, does not overcome the problem of commodity production, but merely mediates it. It simply replaces the role of prices in commodity production with the plan itself as regulator of billions of acts of production. And the plan itself is as much subject to the law of value as are the fluctuations of prices in unplanned social production. By definition, “The Plan” must be the plan of “society” as a whole, in direct opposition to the free conscious self-activity of society’s billions of individual members.

Kurz concludes from this that social emancipation cannot begin, as traditional Marxism holds, with seizing this machinery of production, but only where the act of production bound up with capitalist relations ends:

“An embryonic form such as that of a “microelectronic natural economy”, which supersedes private property in the means of production, cannot be represented at isolated points within the structure of reproduction (which at the beginning only exist in a capitalist form), but only at its end-points—where production becomes consumption. Only at these points is the constitution of a social space of cooperation possible whose activities do not lead back to the market, but are preferentially consumed, in their results, by the members themselves.”

Which is to say, this new form of organization of society must be a self-contained, autonomous, space situating entirely outside capitalist structures. Unfortunately, Kurz fails to actually come up with a model, I think, because he neglects a simple logical implication of his own analysis. In this passage, Kurz treats the material side of capitalist production and consumption as the production and consumption of material objects that can, somehow, be removed from the process of capitalist production as a whole, when it is actually inextricably connected to the production and consumption of values in the process of capitalist reproduction.

This is a common enough mistake — we all make it — but in this case it damages Kurz overall magnificent analysis. Insofar as capitalist production and consumption is conceived, it must be conceived simultaneously as the production and consumption of values, and of material objects. Thus, with regards to this capitalist act, social emancipation should be conceived as having nothing to do either with production or consumption in any form, nor as beginning with consumption, nor with regards to the nexus between the two. This must include both the production and consumption of values and also the material objects in which these values are embedded.

My argument on this point requires us to expose the mystified form on which the entire notion of value rests. Value is not a substance embedded in the commodity itself, as Marx explains in volume 1 of Capital; it is nothing more than the amount of labor time required for the production of the commodity. It, therefore, cannot be separated from the existence of the commodity itself. A society governed by value is nothing more than a society governed by the labor time required for the production of its material needs. It is silly to keep discussing value in its mystified form, as a quality of commodities, once Marx demonstrated this fact. Ninety-nine percent of the stupidities passing the lips of a Marxist consists of treating value as some ethereal substance that permeates the atmosphere of capitalist society.

As a result of this mystification of value most Marxist theories of social emancipation consists of various schemes to set labor on a new foundation when the point of the fucking exercise is to abolish labor entirely. social emancipation is not, and cannot exist, as a new foundation for labor — communist society is not a fucking society of labor. Social emancipation begins and can only begin where the socially necessary labor time of society ends — and this is the whole meaning of the present crisis.

The labor time of society has been pushed well beyond its necessary limit and this has resulted in the formation of a mass of superfluous workers and capital — as many writers like Kurz have demonstrated. The argument of bourgeois thinkers (and in this sense we must include both Marxist and alternative theorists) consists in their refusal to recognize any limits to capitalist accumulation. A society whose thinking is conditioned by the value fetish is a society whose thinking is conditioned by labor — simply put, it is a society conditioned by inescapable material want.

The true perversity of this material want is not that it exists beside actual and real wealth, but that it cannot conceive of wealth in any other fashion than universal want. It, therefore, takes the absence of want as the premise of a social catastrophe that threatens the existence of civilization itself. On all accounts, this universal want, which is the only conceivable form of wealth in a society regulated according to the law of value, must be imposed with all the means available to society.

It is only on this premise that the insane logic of fascist state economic policy can appear rational by a society drowning in unemployment, overproduction and the filth created by its own productive capacities. Marx explains this in the Grundrisse, where he writes that capitalism creates, for the first time in human history, the possibility of free disposable time for the mass of society, but only in the form of surplus labor time by this mass:

“The creation of a large quantity of disposable time apart from necessary labour time for society generally and each of its members (i.e. room for the development of the individuals’ full productive forces, hence those of society also), this creation of [non-labour] time appears in the stage of capital, as of all earlier ones, as [non-labour time], free time, for a few. What capital adds is that it increases the surplus labour time of the mass by all the means of art and science, because its wealth consists directly in the appropriation of surplus labour time; since value [is] directly its purpose, not use value. It is thus, despite itself, instrumental in creating the means of social disposable time, in order to reduce labour time for the whole society to a diminishing minimum, and thus to free everyone’s time for their own development. But its tendency always, on the one side, [is] to create disposable time, on the other, to convert it into surplus labour. If it succeeds too well at the first, then it suffers from surplus production, and then necessary labour is interrupted, because no surplus labour can be realized by capital. The more this contradiction develops, the more does it become evident that the growth of the forces of production can no longer be bound up with the appropriation of alien labour, but that the mass of workers must themselves appropriate their own surplus labour. Once they have done so – and disposable time thereby ceases to have an antithetical existence – then, on one side, necessary labour time will be measured by the needs of the social individual, and, on the other, the development of the power of social production will grow so rapidly that, even though production is now calculated for the wealth of all, disposable time will grow for all. For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labour time, but rather disposable time. Labour time as the measure of value posits wealth itself as founded on poverty, and disposable time as existing in and because of the antithesis to surplus labour time; or, the positing of an individual’s entire time as labour time, and his degradation therefore to mere worker, subsumption under labour. The most developed machinery thus forces the worker to work longer than the savage does, or than he himself did with the simplest, crudest tools.>”

Social emancipation consists in no more than the mass of society’s members wresting this free disposable time back from capital. This is not time spent in capitalist production (which, as Kurz explains, must be understood as both production and consumption bound up with capitalism, or commodity production generally) but in non-labor for the mass of society, freeing them to develop their own capacities apart from labor.

This self-development has no aim other than that given to it by the individual herself. It is, therefore, no longer “productive” in any sense of that term — neither materially or value-producing — but only the free individual unstructured activity of the members of society. As can be now seen, by resting the premise of the inevitability of the collapse of capitalism on the productive forces created by the digital revolution, and the resulting mass of superfluous workers and capital, Kurz also rendered his argument for a positive program of social emancipation unnecessary. The material for the supercession of capitalism by social emancipation is already given in the form of a mass of superfluous labor and capital produced by the material impact of the digital technology itself. To realize this new stage of society, we need only reduce hours of labor within the logic of value production and realize the result as free, disposable time of each individual.

This is why bourgeois economists, like Paul Krugman, condemn every suggestion that unemployment can be ended by a reduction of hours of labor. This proposal is routinely disparaged by the advocates of fascist state fiscal and monetary policy, who call it a proposal based on the “lump of labor fallacy” that there can be an end to the need for labor. For the apologists of the capitalist mode of production any suggestion hours of labor can be reduced is tantamount to a suggestion there is a limit to capitalist accumulation. And it is why even academic Marxists like Michael Heinrich must denounce Kurz’s analysis and posit in its place (as the blog principia dialectica delightfully put it) a theory of “the eternal return of capitalism”. As Kurz argued, no less than bourgeois economists, “historical materialism “pisses its pants”, so to speak, as soon as it is called upon to define the so-called socialist revolution.” And this is because it is incapable of conceiving human activity outside the fetishistic structures of value production.

The Marxism of the 20th Century is dead and its foul rotting corpse is stinking up the very air we breathe. All the categories of traditional Marxist analysis, having reached the theoretical limits of the expansion of human activity under the value form, can offer no help in defining social emancipation insofar is this emancipation actually crosses the threshold of communist society itself. A completely new discourse is necessary formulated in the concept of freely associated individuals, for whom activity serves as forms of self-development of each individual; and of the further development of society within these forms. This discourse, contrary to most Marxist assertions to the contrary, is littered throughout Marx’s own argument and is the premise of his own critique of social emancipation (i.e., Utopian Socialism) from the start of his career to its end.

Kurz’s argument is not quite yet that discourse, but must be considered the moment when such a discourse became necessary for the further advance of social emancipation. Our job is to elaborate this discourse, showing that it rests on the very premises of existing society – a mass of unemployed labor and a mass of superfluous capital, the premise of wealth that rests on, and cannot be conceived apart from, universal want and privation — that makes possible the unfettered self-development of each individual within society.

When we say that social emancipation is the solution to capitalist crisis, we only mean free disposable individual time away from labor is the solution to the horrors of capitalist austerity, unemployment, poverty and want.

Social emancipation is incompatible with every form of property

In the first section of his essay, Kurz examined the limitations of 20th Century Marxism that, he argued, was incapable of theoretically superseding capitalism except by means of a proposed future event, the proletarian political revolution, which, would solve all of capitalism’s ills and manage society in some undisclosed fashion. To address this theoretical failure, in section two of his essay, Kurz returns to the basic schema of Marx, the link between the forces and relations of production. Kurz proposes the technologies associated with the digital revolution renders living, value producing, labor increasingly superfluous to production. Kurz concludes the significance of the new technology is not to be found in its production, but in its utilization by society. This technology cannot be employed to mobilize the massive labor armies of the Fordist era.

I argue, following Kurz, the impact of the digital revolution on the ‘economy’ appears to us in its phenomenal or perceptible form as a growing potential for social collapse and regression to a primitive state of simple survival. This survivalist fear is simply the result of the conditioning of our consciousness by commodity production itself — since we have been conditioned by bourgeois society to take its relations as the “natural” form of society, we experience capitalism’s potential for collapse as the potential for the collapse of civilization itself, when it is actually otherwise. In fact, as Kurz seems to argue, the potential inherent in this technology for the collapse of commodity production must actually be the premise of our conceptions of social emancipation; because this technology makes possible a decentralized organization of society without the necessary fulcrum of the state and commodity fetishism generally.

The “nightmare scenario” of capitalist collapse

The nightmare scenario typically presented by bourgeois thinkers to the possibility of the collapse of capitalism can pretty much be summed up in six words:

“Buy guns, gold and beans! Now!”

In this view, the passing of capitalism is equated with the complete breakdown of civilization and a regression to some primitive state. Without market forces and the centralized control of the fascist state, we are warned, society must splinter into roving gangs of murderous, zombie-like, scavengers.

Kurz and the dead end of Statist Marxism

I am reading Robert Kurz’s “Anti-economics and anti-politics: on the reformulation of social emancipation after the end of ‘Marxism'”.

It appears to me, at first glance, that this 1997 piece is a continuation of his 1995 prediction of a devaluation shock that would  bring an end to capitalism. As I stated in my reading of that work, I found it inexplicable that Kurz did not take his analysis to its logical conclusion. That analysis pointed to hours of labor as the central problem of our time and the only real solution to the capitalist crisis. However, Kurz did not go there in his 1995 work, but made an attempt to nail down how to “supersede” capital in this 1997 piece.

I am going to take on section 1 of Part One today, which focuses on the failures of mainstream Marxist praxis at the turn of the century.

Robert Kurz: The Road to Devaluation Shock and the Collapse of Capitalism (Final)

5. The recovery of capitalism is no longer possible

Kurz’s overall analysis of the crisis that emerged full blown in 2008 consists of four fundamental bullet points:

First, in the course of capitalist development Marx’s theory states there is a rising composition of constant capital to variable capital; this rising composition of capital compels an increasing dependence of productive capital on interest yielding capital, i.e., on debt.

Second, this rising composition of capital is also a declining ratio of variable capital to constant capital that compels the total capital to find new outlets. This dependence can, at first, be satisfied through outward expansion into new markets, but ultimately can only be met by the growth of an unproductive service (or tertiary) sector.

Third, based on the above two developments, there is an increasingly paradoxical (self-contradictory) dependence of productive capital on profits derived from debt of the non-productive sector that consists entirely of a dependence of productive capital on fictitious claims to its own future profits.

Fourth, this third paradoxical, self contradictory, dependence can only be resolved ultimately through the dependence of this entire increasingly fragile structure of accumulation on the consumption and debt of the fascist state.

In the first instance, the increasing dependence of the total social capital on the state is made necessary by the fact that the state becomes essential to the expansion of the total social capital into new markets through the means of imperialist wars and predations. But, this dependence really only comes into its own when the state becomes the consumer and debtor of last resort. In the final analysis the growth of a non-productive sector must be dependent on the growth of the fascist state as consumer of last resort. And this latter, if it is to maintain existing commodity production relations, must be dependent on expansion of the public debt. This is true because only the state can decide what serves as money within its territory and what means are used to pay its debts. It can, therefore, pay its debts with “money” it creates out of nothing, simultaneously “satisfying” this debt and evaporating its value.