The Marxist Critique of Capitalism PDF Print E-mail
Tuesday, 30 November 1999 00:00

Objectives:

1) Identify the defining characteristics of the capitalist economic system.

2) Understand the central ideas of Marx’s analysis and critique of exploitation, alienation and crises in capitalist society.

3) Identify the ways in which, according to Marxists, capitalism undermines substantive

Objectives:

1) Identify the defining characteristics of the capitalist economic system.

2) Understand the central ideas of Marx’s analysis and critique of exploitation, alienation and crises in capitalist society.

3) Identify the ways in which, according to Marxists, capitalism undermines substantive participatory democracy within society.

Introduction — Defining Capitalism

  • surplus product foundation of class inequality and state forms.

  • capitalism has an historically unprecedented capacity to produce surplus over and above consumption needs.

  • social forms of surplus extraction vary historically: slavery, feudalism, capitalism.

  • initial conceptual definitions of major classes:

- capitalist class exercises effective control over the means of production and labour-power (members are not subject to socio-economic compulsion to sell labour-power);

- working class is institutionally separated from, and is unable to exercise effective control over, the means of production (members are subject to a socio-economic compulsion to sell their labour-power).

- petite bourgeoisie (self-employed, small business owners) own their own means of production and do not sell their labour-power to a capitalist employer.

  • capitalist form of surplus extraction is unique: hidden and obscured by nature of exchange relations.

2) Exploitation & Inequality – The Production of Surplus-Value

a) Explaining Inequality & Conflict

  • The reality: existence and long term persistence of major socio-economic inequalities in capitalist societies.

  • Why does this exist? How do we explain it?

  • the dominant neoclassical tradition is primarily concerning with price determination, not with explaining inequality.

  • neoclassicism fails to provide convincing explanation.

  • in contrast, this was Marx's central concern.

  • the ultimate source of inequality is the exploitation of workers by capitalists in the process of production.

  • Marxian labour theory of value is a theory of the historically specific form of capitalist surplus extraction.

  • historical realism of theory: explaining inequality & conflict

b) Origins of Capitalist Profit: The Production of Surplus Value

Three essential historical preconditions of capitalist production and exchange:

i) separation of producers from the means of production.

ii) labour power is a commodity (which is bought and sold on the 'labour' market).

iii) substantive, but not legal, compulsion of labourers to sell labour-power because of non-ownership of means of production/subsistence (plant and machinery, raw materials, land, forests, fisheries, etc.).

  • In the capitalist mode of production labour-power (that is, the capacity which a person has to labour for a specified period of time) appears on the market as a commodity.

  • Like any other commodity labour-power has both an exchange-value and a use-value.

- the exchange-value of labour-power is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour time which goes into its production. It is a measure of the historically determined level of subsistence of the working class.

- the use-value of labour-power is the actual work which is performed for the capitalist in the labour process.

  • labour-power a 'special' commodity because it has the capacity to produce surplus value.

  • labour-power is used within the production process to produce commodities whose exchange-value exceeds the exchange-value of that labour power (and the other non-labour inputs).

  • surplus-value.

  • assumes monetary forms of profit, interest and rent.

  • once produced, becomes monetized and flows around system in highly complex ways...

c) The Capitalist Production Process.


Stage one, the purchase of inputs: M - C(MP + LP)

Stage two, the productive consumption of inputs: ... P ...

Stage three, the sale of output to realize a profit: C' - M'

The circuit of industrial capital:

M - C(MP+LP) ... P ... C’ - M’

d) So What? What are the implications for democracy?

  • class formation, structuration and conflict can be analyzed in terms of this underlying theory of exploitation.

  • resulting socio-economic inequalities bestow social classes with unequal capacities to exert influence over the governance of society.

  • capitalist state maintains exploitation & inequality.

2) Alienation

  • limited control over our own lives.

  • implications of selling our labour-power to an employer.

  • alienation from products of our labour.

  • relationships within workplace are authoritarian and undemocratic.

  • influence of ‘market forces’ over resource allocation.

  • commodification of leisure time.

  • nature of communications in capitalist society.

  • limited influence over government.

  • globalisation

3) Crisis

  • capitalist has an inherent long term tendency towards crisis (stagnation and high unemployment).

  • exploitation and crisis generates class struggle:

- direct conflict between classes (industrial conflict)

- classes mobilise politically to influence the state (interest groups & parties)

  • eventually generates massive spontaneous revolutionary upheavals, placing the question of socialist transformation on the historical agenda.

  • capitalism generates massive inequalities between rich and poor countries.

- mass starvation in the third world.

  • economic competition between nations major cause of war

  • destruction of the natural environment

  • privatisation of benefits, socialisation of costs.

Conclusion — Capitalism and Democracy

  • exploitation & inequality

  • alienation – capitalism incompatible with democratisation of economic & political spheres.

  • crisis – capitalism is unsustainable in the long term & lays the historical foundations for socialism.