Readings: Capital I, ch. 16-18; Grundrisse pp. 398-423, 649-652, 745-758; Capital III, ch. 10, 50; Limits to Capital, pp. 45-54
While the Grundrisse is challenging to read because it is often written just as Marx’s notes to himself, it contains significant theoretical material that complements the more formal presentation of Capital. One point that stands out in my current reading is his discussions of capital’s barriers to sustained operation and expansion. It seems, according to Marx, that these barriers are infinite and capital’s ability to overcome them is nearly infinite. In the final instance, Marx is optimistic that the working class will finally conquer capitalism, proving to be the ultimate, insurmountable barrier.
Echoing the Manifesto, Marx explains, “In accord with this tendency, capital drives beyond national barriers and prejudices as much as beyond nature worship, as well as all traditional, confined, complacent encrusted satisfactions of present needs, and reproductions of old ways of life. It is destructive towards all of this, and constantly revolutionizes it, tearing down all the barriers which hem in the development of the forces of production, the expansion of needs, the all-sided development of production, and the exploitation and exchange of natural and mental forces.” (410)
Further to this point, he writes, “The tendency to create the world market is directly given in the concept of capital itself. Every limit appears as a barrier to be overcome.” (408)
These barriers come in many forms: those remnants of pre-capitalist modes of production like feudalism, slavery, ancient, primitive communist, etc. whose labor processes resist the discipline of the capitalist market; crises of realization wherein capital cannot sell the commodities it produces; the resistance of the working class itself to exploitation; and others.
While Marx was certainly in favor of reforms to capitalism, as demonstrated by his vehement advocacy for an eight-hour day, he was not a reformist, and he demonstrates this in several of his works. In the context of the barriers discussion, he polemicizes against both Ricardo and Sismondi, the former a staunch conservative defender of capitalism and the latter a critic who sought reforms. Ricardo espoused the view that the contradictions or barriers that Marx argued were inherent to capitalism were merely “accidental” and would be routinely overcome. Sismondi, on the other hand saw these as rough edges that needed to be smoothed out through reform. Writing of Sismondi, he states, “He therefore wants to put up barriers to production, from the outside, through custom, law etc., which of course, as merely external and artificial barriers, would necessarily be demolished by capital.” (411) In this short quote, we can see a germ of Marxist opposition to reformism. Taken to its logical conclusion, it could be said that one of capital’s central contradictions is its tendency to attempt to resolve its contradictions. There are inherent barriers that naturally arise from its operation as mentioned above. Capital seeks to overcome or demolish these barriers, but the solutions quickly become new barriers that it seeks to overcome by posing new solutions, which become barriers to be overcome, etc.
One example of this is the driving down of wages to increase the rate of surplus value. While this may solve the problem of increasing profits, it creates a new problem in a potential crisis of capital realization because workers generally are then unable to pay for the products. This leads to the enactment of laws to increase wages and allow for unionization (such as in the 1930s in the U.S.), which eventually contributes to a declining rate of profit (such as the late 1960s in the U.S.), which then causes the capitalists to roll back labor rights and push down labor compensation. We are now in the midst of the crisis generated by neoliberal reform.
My point here is that there is an inherent tendency in capitalism to apply reforms and to subsequently roll back those reforms. This is what I keep returning to with respect to reformism. I have said before that reforms under capitalism, while they are important, are temporary and are always rolled back. The point must be made to the working class that reformism is a dead-end strategy that has been re-run many times throughout capitalist history. We can add to this that not only are reforms temporary, but they are a necessary part of capitalism’s sustained dominance. It cannot continue to exist without continually reforming and renewing itself: reforming and then reforming the reforms as it were. The New Deal then, was a reform program for capitalism, but neoliberalism was a reform to the New Deal reform.
This generalized and long-term picture painted by Marx is lost on most of the contemporary left. We need to step back and understand that the capitalist system itself needs to be overthrown in order to make any lasting change.
World of Lenidzky 