Historical Materialism and the Inevitable End of Capitalism

Unlike idealist schools of history, the historical materialism of Marx and Engels sees both the origins of human life and the succession of economic and political forms that have marked the course of human history as rooted in the origins and transformations of human material production.

Unlike other animals, who are collectors of their means of subsistence, humans are producers who make and use tools to modify raw materials provided by nature. Our ape ancestors over millions of years of both biological and social evolution were gradually humanized as they shifted from merely collecting foodstuffs and began to modify foodstuffs and other raw materials with the aid of tools.

Over the last ten thousand years, human society has evolved from classless primary communism—called hunting and gathering societies by academic anthropologists—to various forms of society divided into ruling non-working classes and direct producers who work for and are exploited by the ruling classes.

The successive ruling classes of history have ruled through a special organization called the state. According to historical materialism, the transition from classless and stateless primary communism to the various early forms of class rule through state organizations took place because of the development of new forces of production—particularly the development of animal husbandry and agriculture—that were no longer compatible with the traditional classless clan-tribal mode of social and economic organization.

In turn, the early class societies themselves were transformed as the instruments of production grew in power. Eventually, the forces of production grew to a point that they required the capitalist mode of production with its world market, free competition and wage labor. Unlike the earlier forms of class rule, capitalist society by its very nature is not local but engulfs the entire globe. It destroys any other form of human society that stands in its way.

The Ideas of John Maynard Keynes

The ideas of the English economist John Maynard Keynes, 1883-1946, achieved their greatest influence during the 1960s and early 1970s. In those days, Keynes was widely credited by his followers among the economists for saving capitalism itself.

The story told by the Keynesian economists went something like this. In the dark days of the Depression of the 1930s, capitalism to all appearances was approaching the end of its road. When the Depression began, the traditional liberal economists, who had long dominated the economics profession, claimed that capitalism would quickly recover from depression without government intervention. Therefore, these economists urged the government to do virtually nothing to encourage economic recovery.

After all, the traditional economists argued, this had always worked in the past. Recovery had always followed recession. But the Depression of the 1930s, the story goes, was different. The economy was showing no signs of recovering on its own. As a result, many young people, including a certain number from the ruling capitalist class itself, were turning toward Marxist ideas. The replacement of capitalism by socialism seemed increasingly likely in the near future.

The Phases of the Industrial Cycle (pt.4)

From boom to crisis

Marx sometimes called the stage of the industrial cycle just before the outbreak of the crisis the phase of fictitious prosperity. The economy is going gang-busters, the rate of profit appears to be high, and the mass of profit keeps growing. Unemployment compared to all other phases of the industrial cycle is very low and still falling. At long last, the balance of forces on the labor market are beginning to tilt in favor the working class.

But the continuation of the boom now depends on the increasingly unsustainable inflation of credit. As long as debts can be “rolled over” rather than paid, and terms of payment can be further extended, the boom can go on.

Later, after the boom’s inevitable collapse, the recriminations fly. Why was “regulation” so lax? Why were so many derivatives and exotic credit instruments created? How could so many loans have been extended to people who couldn’t possibly repay them?

But those questions will be asked later. While the phase of fictitious prosperity lasts, it can only be maintained by progressively eliminating regulations designed to prevent the reckless extension of credit and instead encouraging “financial innovation” to unfold without hindrance.

Crisis Theories: Disproportionality (pt. 3)

According to Marx, the capitalist mode of production can in the long run exist only as a system of expanded reproduction. But expanded reproduction can only take place if certain proportions are maintained between Department I, which produces the means of production, and Department II, which produces the means of (personal) consumption.

Marx’s basic assumptions

Marx developed his diagrams of expanded reproduction in volume II of “Capital” from the diagrams of simple reproduction. Like was the case with simple reproduction, Marx assumed that society consists of only two classes, industrial capitalists and productive workers. Like was the case with the diagrams of simple reproduction, the rate of surplus value is 100 percent. That is, the workers work half the time for themselves and half the time for the industrial capitalists.

Crisis Theories: Disproportionality (pt. 2)

In a response to my critique of theories that explain crises by a long-term tendency of the rate of profit to fall due the rise in the organic composition of capital, reader Jeffery Curtis wrote: “I’m not sure this was a fair representation of the falling rate of profit crisis theory. For example, your bit about departments I and II I’ve never heard of in any interpretation of the falling rate of profit. The only crisis theory I’ve read about using that is a temporal disproportionality theory concerned with fixed capital (demand falls for department I goods as machines last for years, so they fall and take wages with them, department II slowly falls and crisis erupts).”

Jeffery makes other points in his response, most of which I agree with, that all readers of this blog should read carefully. In due course, all the questions that Jeffery raises will be dealt with. But it is the first question, the relationship between Department I and Department II, which is the main subject of this week’s post. What is really involved in the question of Department I and Department II is capitalist reproduction and its role in crisis theory.

Crisis Theories: Disproportionality

Disproportionality and the anarchy of production

Just like the insufficient surplus value families of crisis theories can be divided into sub-groups, such as profit squeeze, class struggle and falling rate of profit brought about by the rising organic composition of capital, so the disproportionality school can be divided into two sub-groups. One can be called the anarchy of production theory, and the other emphasizes the disproportions between the two great departments of production, Department I, which produces the means of production, and Department II, which produces the means of (personal) consumption.

In this post, I will examine the anarchy of production school. The question of the necessary proportionality between Departments I and II involves the question of reproduction, which I will begin to examine in next week’s post.