Often, we talk about the contradictions of capitalism inevitably causing economic crises, but what are those contradictions?
I think a pretty digestible one is that businesses need customers to buy their product to get profit but also need to keep wages as low as possible to maximize profit, which reduces their customer base because people can’t afford things.
So basically the way millennials are killing industries because they can’t afford them.
This is the main one. Infinite growth is impossible and destructive because it necessitates increasing consumption of resources that accelerate climate change. Also, growth is always measured in the short term. Corporations only care about increasing the profits of the next quarter, so they will try to maximize those to the detriment of more sustainable decisions. It's basically just one global ponzi scheme.
It is in the capitalists' interest to pay their workers less and have them work more, it's in the workers' interests to work less and be paid more.
Stalin mentions a contradiction of imperialism in The Foundations of Leninism. The imperialist states aim to exploit working people in colonized countries but in order to do that they need to create the infrastructure and social stratification of capitalism in order to get their profit, so they force urbanization and essentially "proletarianize" people in these countries but that naturally makes them more revolutionary, and that lead to the explosion of anti-colonial revolutionary movements in Africa, Asia, and South America.
Another contradiction is that the individual capitalist wants to pay workers less, but capitalism in agreggate enters crises of overproduction when workers aren't paid enough to consume. So the goals of the capitalist are not aligned with the good of capitalism, leading to a contradiction.
Contradictions are two things that depend on one another to exist but they also exist in opposition to one another. A lot of people seem to lump any logical contradiction of capitalism, but that's not quite right. Logical contradictions are easier to grasp and more intuitive.
Some contradictions are buyer/seller, production/consumption, worker/boss, use value/market value. But it doesn't have to be strictly economic. USA/China is a contradiction. That's why it's important to try to understand the concept of a contradiction more so than memorize a list of them from Kapital. There are contradictions all around us, some haven't been found or analyzed much. They're present in all things, even yourself. If we achieve communism it will have its own contradictions that must be addressed. At any given time there is a singular contradiction above all others. The dominant contradiction changes over time. This is why we must analyze our present world and try to understand its contradictions. Some people get too caught up in history and try to analogize past contradictions to now or assume a past dominant contradiction must be the present dominant one. USA/USSR was a contradiction, but it no longer exists. It is different from USA/China despite similar superstructural rhymes ie cultural cold war and similar foreign policy towards them.
That in every industry under capitalism, it is a race to the bottom. You cannot compete as a capitalist by playing fairly and compensating your workers well. Other capitalists will inevitably undercut you and drive you out of business. Additionally, it is a race to the bottom for the workers since they must bid themselves at lower and lower prices to compete for jobs. Capitalism requires constant growth into new markets or expanding with new products, they cannot sustain themselves off of stagnation. The "fair" capitalist that is satisfied with their company will be forced to compete or they will swallowed up and eaten by competition.
Secondly, capitalists tell you to enact social change by "voting with your dollar." Of course that means those with more money get the most votes.
The idea that capitalism brings us the most freedom and choice. You and I get access to a large variety of cheap goods that are easy to access. But that is only true because there are millions of people in the global south with miserable lives who work for dirt wages and don't have access so the same economic freedom that their labor creates for the rest of the world. Capitalism is supposedly freeing but actually it can't exist without gross exploitation.
Consumers buy based on supply and demand
But also, check out this ubiquitous advertising that we'll use to artificially create demand and convince your ape brain to keep consuming
David Harvey has a book called seventeen contradictions of capitalism. I haven't read all of it but it goes to show... there are a lot of contradictions
oh I just posted about this
It's a fantastic read actually
Lots of great answers here but seems like we're missing what is potentially my favorite (hopeful) contradiction of capitalism.
:inshallah-script:
Love this quote, but I also do disagree a little with Marx here in that capital does not require wage-labour. Industrial capital does, but there were plenty ways before to create and augment capital before it married production and started realizing crazy superprofits and stuff.
I would support Marx here and in a way that is historical connecting his point with yours.
Marx did not look at any meaningless capital here, but did have the specific capitalist changes in history in mind and the manifest was result of association of some socialists which talked to the proletariat in specifics.
While there might be other forms the wage labour is very constituent for capitalism at that point and not only for industrial capital, even though the latter pushed with the bourgeosie their mark onto all spheres of exchange (and production).
However it is right that there are some non wage based forms e.g. prison labour/slavery in the US. Would still like to know which you might mean :)
The point I want to do is that the context and audience of texts and the boundaries we make for arguments (how specific or general we want to be) is quite important for Marx's texts.
I'm thinking more capital in forms before the industrial revolution. Marx and co seem to think that historical capitalism only kicked off during the industrial revolution, and required wage-labour and total factor markets in land, labour, and money to do so. Braudel, Arrghi and a few other historians would argue that the systemic cycles of accumulation of capital predate the industrial revolution by a few centuries, and can actually be placed in Renaissance Italy as their origins, and that capital accumulation primarily happened (in the second phases of all these cycles) through financialization and M-M' rather than M-C-M'. Production is a specific form of capital accumulation that doesn't emerge (in a big way, anyway, it was visible in 14th century Florence for sure with cloth production) until the Industrial Revolution, but there were capitalists focused on capital accumulation rather than use value and political power for centuries before that time.
This also kind of has implications for Lenin's understanding of imperialism and financialization, as it would imply it's not the "highest stage" of capitalism but merely a cyclical phase at the end of a systemic accumulation cycle, a "sign of autumn" in the verbage of Braudel. Like, it happened with the Spanish/Genoese, happened with the Dutch, the British (during said financilization phase of British hegemony Lenin wrote that work) and is happening again with the US (which is very clearly in its financilization rather than production stage) as hegemony slips away to China.
Paying your workers as little as possible to push up profits, while also needing them to have enough money to buy your stuff
Businesses need to continue to cut costs in order to remain profitable year over year (steady, "manageable" inflation is encouraged by the U.S government [which is really GE, Wall Street, and Big Oil in a Congress-shaped trench coat]). Costs are cut by suppressing wages and other labor costs, and/or renegotiating with their contractors to force them to do the same (oppressing labor all the way down!).
Of course, businesses and other commercial entities under capitalism also need to grow by selling more and more products/services. The contradiction arises due to the fact that consumers of these products and laborers are the same exact pool of people. Businesses are required to both sell more product in order to exist and pay wages that people need to live on, while also doing everything they can to reduce their payroll as much as possible as fewer and fewer people can actually afford to buy their product.
One of the easiest solutions to this as a capitalist would be just a bit of social democracy. Say you're a Carl's Jr. or Olive Garden Franchisee or something like that, a lot of people who make minimum wage or near that are going to be well outside of your target market since they may only be able to afford to live off EBT/cooking at home/McDonalds on occasion. If you simply set the minimum wage as a "living wage" then yeah, your labor costs increase, but your target market now includes pretty much everyone since even people on the new minimum wage should have some extra spending money to bring to your business. Not to mention the other positive externalities that would result from even a slight reduction in income inequality.
Anyway there's one of many examples, hope it helps.
The drive for capital to automate as many jobs as possible, even though this would destroy the consumer base that capital depends on
Also capitalism has created an economic order in which workers are incentivized to not have children. Having children is likely to make working class people more economically insecure.
Also:
In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production.
Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production.
With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase.
Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control,
instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature;
and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature.
But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity.
Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite.
Capital Vol. III, Part VII. Revenues and their Sources, Chapter 48. The Trinity Formula
