A-Infos (en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #28: Marx or Keynes? - The management of capitalism is outdated (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The Keynesian left deceives itself by imagining that the crisis of 
investment and economic activity stems from the simple greed of capital 
holders. It is not enough to move masses of money from tax havens and 
stock portfolios to the state and wages to stem this crisis. It is the 
capitalist system that must be questioned. ---- After thirty years of 
exceptionally strong growth following the Second World War, or because 
of it, the economic situation in capitalist economies changed direction 
in the mid-1970s. These then saw their decline for many decades. The 
radical left attributes this situation to the ideological shift that 
took place in the 1980s under the name of "neoliberalism".

According to this left, the ruling class would have set up a vast 
financial system whose aim would have been to appropriate collective 
wealth to the detriment of productive investment, employment and wages. 
The flight of capital to speculation would thus deprive society of its 
resources and the state of its room for maneuver, inevitably generating 
debt and deficits. In turn, the liberal parties in power would hide the 
reality of this stock market coup from public opinion, covering it up 
with the persistent denunciation of the social costs. Considered too 
high, the latter would deprive employers of the means to carry out their 
social role as creators of wealth.

Irremediably condemned to crisis

Marx developed a theory of capitalism that allows us to resolutely 
challenge this reading of the facts. The liberal and social democratic 
criticisms are both wrong. According to him, capitalism is irremediably 
condemned to crises whose intensity must necessarily reach, at certain 
stages, unsustainable levels. His analysis makes "wealth" proceed from 
"work".

However, contrary to an all too widespread interpretation, it is not a 
question of wealth and work in a general sense, but of their properly 
capitalist form, as he carefully specifies in the first chapter of 
Capital. The author establishes that the capitalist wealth represented 
by goods and represented by money depends on the quantity of labor power 
spent on their production.

This type of wealth grows when this type of work grows at the same time. 
The work in question here is abstract labor reduced to a simple 
quantitative expenditure of muscular, nervous and cerebral force, in 
contrast to concrete, qualitative labor, which refers to technical 
skills. This quantification by "time" of abstract labor is the objective 
element of the commensurability of goods and thus establishes their 
character of exchangeability on the market.

Now, each individual capitalist strives to reduce the quantity of labor 
devoted to the production of his own goods in order to improve his 
position with respect to competition. One can, however, imagine what 
would happen to value and money if all production were completely 
automated: the result would be a world in which the socializing function 
of trade would no longer have a role. However, in the current 
technological context, the overall increase in labor has become 
insufficient. For their part, emerging economies, whose production is 
based on lower-level technical tools than those of advanced economies, 
certainly employ more human labor, but on the basis of a precarious wage 
system bordering on slavery.

The tendency for the rate of profit to fall, a central aspect of 
well-known Marxism, explains the problems posed by the growing 
technological substitution of human labor. The extension and deepening 
of capitalist relations can slow down this decline. Likewise, the 
reduction of wage costs and the lengthening of the working day. Another 
outcome is the massive devaluation of capital which, after having caused 
the criminal devastation of civilization through great crises and wars, 
allows a new cycle to begin.

Failure is only postponed

The situation has become critical again, we were saying. In fact, the 
microelectronics revolution that took place between the 1970s and 1980s 
has caused the system of value accumulation to fall into inextricable 
difficulties. An ever-increasing amount of capital lay unused, which 
pushed the capitalist intelligentsia to implement the famous 
financialization of the economy. Its function was to drain the savings 
that had become available in order to concentrate them and try to 
allocate them to more or less promising industrial and commercial 
activities. Having learned from previous mistakes in crisis management 
and fearing their disastrous social and political consequences, 
financial engineering has gone from sophistication to sophistication to 
postpone the diagnosis of bankruptcy as long as possible. However, the 
expansion of globalization and free trade will not be enough.

In the context of monetary interventions based on the manipulation of 
interest rates or the redemption of public and private securities, 
credit and debt have thus been able to swell to exaggerated and 
unprecedented dimensions, fueling speculative bubbles which in turn fed 
the production of goods. The American public debt now exceeds 20,000 
billion dollars and that of China represents 250% of its GDP! Growth at 
the beginning of this millennium could be stimulated in a totally 
artificial way. Therefore, contrary to what the rhetoric of left-wing 
parties claims, finance has not been the enemy of a fundamentally 
healthy market system, but has instead revealed itself as a providential 
crutch, and for this very reason it represents an unequivocal 
condemnation of capitalism itself.

Regulationist illusions

The Keynesian left deceives itself by imagining that the crisis of 
investment and economic activity derives from the simple greed of 
capital holders. It is not enough to move masses of money from tax 
havens and portfolios of securities to the State and wages to stem this 
crisis. It is the capitalist system that must be questioned. Indeed, it 
would be necessary for the expenditure of labor punctually increased due 
to these movements to increase further, and so on in a constant manner - 
something that the new technical standards of production no longer 
allow. So once in power, the left will sooner or later give up on the 
resounding promises made the day before. It is only in the situation of 
market collapse that state interventionism and the repatriation of 
capital will return to the agenda, and this with the consent of the 
propertied classes. This will put an end to the period of tax relief 
enjoyed by the large groups involved in the trade war. This reregulation 
will therefore not constitute a "left" policy, but simple rational 
measures to save capitalist production relations. They will not lead to 
general well-being, but only to a temporary lesser evil destined for a 
certain subsequent degradation. Despite everything, there will always be 
people who hail this miserable manifestation as the definitive victory 
of reason. Let us remember that the tutelary figures of the reformist 
left, Keynes and Roosevelt, are part of the wake of the most unbridled 
liberalism.

Necessity of anti-capitalist rupture

Capitalist wealth does not lend itself to "sharing". Being made up of 
goods, it proceeds by "exchange" and therefore requires continuous 
pressure on wages. The class struggle finds its objective foundation 
here. The watchword of sharing "wealth" reformulated in Keynesian terms 
as a desire to see capital reinvested in economic activities and 
employment has become completely obsolete. The concentration of money in 
the hands of a few large groups, as well as its being inflated by the 
processes of globalized finance, give the impression that profitable 
investment would always be possible and capable of triggering 
self-sustaining growth. But this impression is false and we must go 
beyond resentment towards the "rich" to instead point the sword of 
criticism against capitalism and its fundamental structures 
(commodities, abstract labor, money, State, etc.), that is, against the 
illusory accommodations of reform policies and against any attitude of 
trust in a lasting class compromise to which a part of the protest 
movement thinks it can return.

The crisis of capitalism is not the crisis of the established power, 
which could also see itself strengthened and find support, if necessary, 
in its "left" wing.

Wil (AL Paris North East)- Alternative Libertaire

http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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