A Future That Works

A Future That Works
NO2aTory/Liberal coalition - Vote with your feet for an alternative to a neo-liberal economy and neo-conservative state Yes2aLeftFront and a Red/Green Left Alliance

Saturday 29 January 2011

Is Imperialism the Final Stage of Capitalism?

At the beginning of the twentieth century capitalism was in a crisis of overproduction and finance capital with the imperialist capitalist nations in a state of conflict and war over resources and markets. At the beginning of the twenty-first century capitalism was in a crisis of overproduction and finance capital and at war over resources and markets. Add to economic stagnation the crisis of the global ecology from capitalisms pursuit of profits from cheap labour and resources. Marx said capitalism cannot be reformed and Lenin saw social democracy as the first (reformist) stage of the social revolution with the second a socialist (revolutionary) stage of the social revolution to replace the capitalist mode of production.

In order to solve the contradictions within the capitalist mode of production have we now reached the stage where as Hans Magnus Ezensberger said capitalist (neo-liberal free market) economic policies on the environment, raw materials, energy and labour will put an end to liberal illusions as the capitalist elite resort to the use of a fascist (neo-conservative) authoritarian state to support the capitalist system. And that the ability of the people to see the connection between the capitalist mode of production and the general crisis depends on the degree of politicization and organization of the working class. Lenin saw that socialism was only possible if the proletariat had been prepared for the socialist revolution by the struggle for democracy and that without democracy socialism wasn’t possible. A socialist economy must be organized in a way that doesn’t alienate humanity from nature. Is the choice we face between socialism or barbarism?

15 comments:

  1. A Planetary Defeat: The Failure of Global Environmental Reform by John Bellamy Foster

    ‘Globalization of capitalism was to supplant local control, countries were to be encouraged to exploit their natural resources to the fullest, public goods were to be opened up to relentless privatization, and environmental regulations were to be geared to the lowest common denominator in order to not interfere with free trade.’

    ‘As conceived by the centres of world capital, development could only be sustained by pursuing the neo-liberal agenda of opening up whole countries and every single sphere of economic activity to market forces.’

    ‘however, only served to deepen the economic stagnation or decline of most third world countries and to reinforce a growing gap between rich and poor countries—along with accelerated destruction of the environment.’

    http://www.monthlyreview.org/0103jbf.htm

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  2. Lack of basic health care in poor countries means that every minute a mother dies needlessly in pregnancy and childbirth, at this year’s UN General Assembly on 23 September, Gordon Brown has a real chance to change this by supporting free public health care for mothers and children in a number of poor countries:

    Making health care free for mothers and children in developing countries means a lot to me because…*

    http://www.oxfam.org.uk/get_involved/campaign/health_and_education/mums-and-babies.html

    Climate change costs lives

    Fill in your details to get regular updates on how you can help, plus more exclusive videos and stories about Oxfam’s climate change work.

    http://www.oxfam.org.uk/get_involved/campaign/climate_change/

    http://www.oxfam.org.uk/get_involved/

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  3. Are any qualitative changes possible now under capitalism in its highest and imperialist stage?

    Capitalism will continue if it’s not challenged, but the scope for expansion is severally limited in the 21st century due to the ecological limits that the earth now presents for exponential capitalist accumulation and therefore the struggle for concessions from capitalism have probably been exhausted the struggle is now how to end it, and the struggle is now about replacing capitalism and that any concessions made by capital will now weaken it. Therefore green/red and global poverty campaign issues will expose the true nature of capitalism.

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  4. Rosa Luxemburg said the choice is socialism or barbarism, believing that only socialism could bring true freedom and social justice.

    Luxemburg, following Marx and Engels using the term ‘barbarism’ to contrast capitalism’s proclaimed ideals with actual practice of exploitation, starvation, torture, murder and war.

    With 2.5 billion people, about half of the world’s population survive on less than two dollars a day. Plus 850 million people are undernourished and three times that many go hungry.
    Every hour of every day, 180 children die of hunger and 1200 die of preventable diseases.
    Over half a million women die every year from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. 99% of them are in the global south.

    Over a billion people live in vast urban slums, without sanitation, sufficient living space, or durable housing.1.3 billion people have no safe water. 3 million die of water-related dis¬eases every year.

    (United Nations Human Development Report 2007-2008)

    http://www.readingfromtheleft.com/PDF/CJ-Barbarism.pdf

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  5. 14 October 2009
    Paul Boccara : "We must incriminate the basic rules of capitalism"

    Communist economist, Paul Boccara has just published a book about the transformations and the crisis of global capitalism, in which he deals with the financial crisis, among other topics. Paul Boccara puts forward proposals to initiate emancipation

    http://newsportal.european-left.org/english/dossiers/financial_crisis/

    "We must incriminate the basic rules of capitalism"

    Why do you speak about a "global crisis of capitalism" rather than a failure of Financial Liberalism ?

    The financial crisis is revealing the maturation of the crisis in capitalism. To be satisfied with challenging "liberalism" or the lack of regulation or "deregulated finance », as people typically say, is a basic error, leading to holding onto a system that is becoming more and more harmful.

    This system, now dominating the world, is mad because its logic of profitability is reaching its climax. That’s capitalism squared. It is therefore, capitalism as a system, which puts making money before and against people lives, that needs to be questioned.

    With the industrial revolution, material and money predominate against people in production. The accumulation of capital has helped to replace hand tools with machine tools. This has led to the firing of workers, to pressure on wages in favour of profit, while increasing production.

    With the information revolution, there is a radical change. Science and information, rather than machines, now dominate production. Computers replace some functions of the human brain. This is an extraordinary change, since information, like research, can be shared throughout the world, while a machine tool can only be here or there and can therefore be privately owned.

    The contradiction between financial accumulation and material over-exploitation is putting pressure onto wages everywhere, provoking crises like the one in 2001 or the one that is looming behind the current financial crisis.

    Paul Boccara

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  6. Understanding the New Imperialism

    http://www.marxsite.com/DavidHarvey%20interview.htm

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  7. Capitalism – the Edge of a Vortex

    http://www.communistreview.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=29:capitalism-the-edge-of-a-vortex-&catid=3:cr51-autumn-08&Itemid=3

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  8. The Crises of Capitalism

    http://davidharvey.org/

    The Enigma of Capital

    http://davidharvey.org/2010/05/video-the-enigma-of-capital-lecture-at-king%E2%80%99s-college-london/

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  9. David Harvey the new imperialism

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02eskyHJY_4

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  10. David Harvey on capitalist crisis - Democracy Now!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEnHD2KhhCk&feature=related

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI7jxbAFGuw&NR=1

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  11. By 2008 $600 trillion was invested in ‘futures markets or shadow banking’, hedge funds with the top investors making $3 billion in profits, but it’s all fictitious capital based on lending from capital accumulation on the property markets rather than from production in real goods. Capital accumulation from goods and services expanded from $694 billion in the 1820’s to $2.7 trillion by the start of the First world War and $5.3 trillion by the 1950’s, in 1973 it had reached $16 trillion and is estimated at $56.2 trillion in 2009. David Harvey has said that global capitalism requires a growth rate of 3% a year this would equate to a capital accumulation figure of $100 trillion by 2030. In the 1750’s when the capitalist system evolved growth of 3% a year was easy as the capitalist system expanded across Europe and the USA from the industrial revolution in Britain and through the network of capitalist imperialism has created modern globalization. At the beginning of the 21st century exponential growth at a rate of 3% no longer looks possible and capitalism is deep crisis. The military solution to the crisis is to invade countries like Iraq and Afghanistan for their resources, along with expansion into the markets of India and China. Whilst at the same time driving down wages and living standards, health care and welfare in the developed world, but even then with limits of growth due to finite resources and new markets on planet Earth real growth from goods and services is no longer possible.

    Therefore the capitalist class needs to reverse the social progress achieved in the 20th century by organised labour and revolution. This has been the neo-liberal/neo-conservative project since the early 1970’s. The collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980’s has made it possible for the capitalist elite to become bolder in their project. Now going further than the Thatcher government dared in the 1980’s Cameron and Clegg are intent on privatization and marketization of all social relationships, including health care and education. The only thing not up for privatization as yet is the police and armed forces. The only way capitalism could continue to expand at a rate of 3% is if we could ‘boldly go where no man has gone before’ and conquer new worlds in space, so it will take the realization of science fiction for capitalist expansion to continue. Where is the Star Trek and Captain Jonathan Archer of the United Earth Starfleet, but beware the Klingon Empire or the Romulan’s.

    So are the choice Eco-socialism or Barbarism or Science Fiction and a new phase of capitalist expansion lead by the USS Enterprise.

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  12. David Harvey explains a Marxist view of the contradictions of capitalism

    http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/07/14/david-harvey-with-a-marxist-analysis-of-the-global-recession/

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  13. ‘This crisis is not like the previous ones and the capitalism of our day has a too heavy combination of exploitation, inequity, speculation and aggression to the environment, which make impossible a swift economic, social and environmental recovery’

    ‘If we look at the US economy, we can see the end of the recession is debatable, and the way ahead is full of obstacles and dangers, which by no means point to a vigorous recovery’

    Cuban economist Osvaldo Martinez also has said the United States always prints dollars to compensate its deficits, but this practice raises the inflation, the interest rates and tends to abort the recovery.

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  14. The Enigma Of Capital - Professor David Harvey London School of Economics

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSsCiOIeJjY&feature=related
    ...
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnjfcwDXchI&feature=related

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qwtP8htL74&feature=related

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7MUcxJFda8&feature=related

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFj2CZR0NRI&feature=related

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjCnucTNd9E&feature=related

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5lPvR9gsBQ&feature=related

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsUiUcX9NwE&feature=related

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  15. Time for a bite of theoretical analysis - The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism

    David Harvey explains how capitalism came to dominate the world and why it resulted in the current financial crisis

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