Capitalism is not simply trading goods and services (which was widespread prior to the origin of capitalism), but rather an economic and social system where trade is embedded within class domination and exploitation. Workers sell their ability to work, and this ability then becomes the property of the capitalist who uses any and all techniques to maximize profits in production. Wages, or the price of labor power, reflect the cost of sustaining the worker, whereas the proceeds of labor belong to the capitalist. Workers themselves do not realize the benefits of their labor, yet must work or face homelessness and hunger. Capitalism as a social system is one in which one class enriches itself at the expense of another class, and where workers get only what they collectively are able to fight for.
Capitalist relations of production consist of a labor force with no means of support other than their ability to work, and capitalists who own land, raw materials, tools and technology. The capitalist class buys labor power and owns what is produced for sale. The principle law of capitalism is the law of maximum profit, which compels each capitalist to lower costs of production or risk being taken over by another capitalist.
The capitalist class and working class had their beginnings in pre-capitalist merchant trading and small-scale artisan production, and in the violent destruction of pre-capitalist societies and peoples. The rising capitalist class stole land and labor. With their growing political power, the emerging British capitalist class succeeded in privatizing communal Irish lands and driving formerly self-sufficient peasants into the city as a starving labor force. They stole the land of the native American peoples. They enslaved the people of the African continent. The African slave trade and slavery in the New World became the foundation on which all of early capitalism rested, and was essential to the expansion of industrial capitalism in Europe and the New World.
Technical innovations during the 1790s, most notably improvements in steam engine technology, transformed capitalism from its early manufacturing beginnings into industrial capitalism. Industrialization was centered in Britain and characterized by mechanically animated means of production that allowed for rapid increases in labor productivity and profitability. Industrialization was a gigantic lever in the hands of the capitalist class to create unparalleled productive power, and thereby ignited a global scramble for wealth. The law of maximum profit dragged the entire world into a maelstrom of world trade, world wars, and imperialist intrigue. The British Empire was eventually brought down by national liberation movements and the slaughter of its young men in imperialist war, and by the superior economic power of the United States. Today, using a combination of military, economic, and political means, the U.S. is the world’s sole superpower.
Today, another technological revolution marks the final stage of capitalism. Developments in computers, biotechnology, robotics, and related technologies are now animating the means of production with relatively little labor. In the hands of the capitalists, these tools are used to maximize profits, and the consequence is displacement of the industrial proletariat. A new social class is arising that is economically superfluous to production. This new class cannot buy and sell the means of life, and, as it develops, becomes compelled to fight for a society that distributes the means of life on the basis of human need.
The inevitable development of a communist class within capitalism spells the end of capitalism. The communist class is developing in the abandoned industrial towns of the American Midwest, and in the lives of its sons and daughters who must choose between indebtedness, jail, or the armed forces. In the East, it is developing in China’s 300 million plus agricultural workers, who are superfluous to modern agriculture, yet cannot be absorbed by industry which downsized at least 15 million workers between the middle 1990s and 2002 due to rapid productivity increases and the curtailment of state supported employment. The communist class is international and must organize itself as such.
As the economy moves toward laborless production, the industrial phase of capitalism comes to a close. While some workers continue to work, others lose their ability to work, and join the communist class. Capitalist competition is not just killing capitalists, it’s creating its own antithesis. Laborless production demands a new social system where the means of life are distributed not on the basis of buying and selling, but on the basis of human need. Capitalism was born out of the expropriation of small, scattered private property, and its conversion into capitalist private property. The capitalists are ruthless and will stop at nothing to hold on, but they cannot stop the inevitable flow of history. We are moving toward a day when the means of production will be controlled by the class that will use it not for private accumulation, but rather for the benefit of the human race and our planet.
August.2008.Vol18.Ed4
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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