Why is this definitely true? Other economic/societal systems have fallen in the past. Why does that mean this one has to? Or is there some other reason why this statement is true?
I'm not trying to cast doubt upon this idea. I'm just trying to find out its justification, from a scientific perspective.
Cheers.
It is not guaranteed that capitalism will be replaced by a better system. But it is guaranteed that capitalism will eventually collapse and end, be it through ecological disaster, the culmination of its own inherent contradictions, popular revolution, or the sun going nova and wiping out the solar system anyway.
Everyone forgets the "mutual destruction of the contending classes" line of the manifesto.
now I'm picturing a horse race announcer. "Annnndd it's ecological disaster coming up on the outside and inherent contradictions gaining quickly..."
The capitalist mode of production has been incredibly powerful at orienting human systems toward commodity production. It incentives it's own continued existence. However, it also creates contradictions.
One of the contradictions is between labor and capital. This contradiction could end the system "internally" if labor is triumphant over capital (creating the conditions for socialism). This is the contradiction Marxist have primarily focused on. At points in history, it seemed like this contradiction would inevitably destroy capitalism.
Another contradiction is between capitalism and the environment. Capitalism in its pursuit of profit demands ever greater exploitation of the natural world, greater exploitation of labor (see above contradiction) and ever greater numbers of consumers to purchase it's commodities. Capital, for the time being, has succeeded in increasingly exploiting labor and finding consumer markets. However in climate change and mass extinction, we're seeing something capital can't contend with. The time and spatial scale it's occuring over is beyond the ability of "capitalist central planners" to deal with.
There are some who think these contradictions aren't so severe. For example, most liberal environmental advocates (e.g. Dr Michael Mann of Penn State) believe that climate change can be responded to effectively within the current system. They point to things like the lower cost of renewables vs fossil fuels as evidence and do not think any kind of degrowth or system change will be necessary to contend with climate change. In fact, some argue that advocating for degrowth or system chagne undermines the climate movement. These types also tend to focus on what climate change does to the west and deemphasize global south nations.
Given the under-promising and under-delivering that we've seen from the wealthy nations of the global north at events like COP26, I'm very skeptical of the liberal climate activists' stance. I suspect that if capitalism survives the next century, it'll either be a capitalism on a very short leash and transitioning toward socialism, or it'll be fascism existing in the midst of the end of large scale civilization.
When Marx was writing, it was common for historian's to try and formulate grand predictive theories explaining all of the past, the present and how the world would inevitably progress towards a better one.
The "hard times create hard men, hard men create good times, good times create soft men, soft men create hard times" idealist rubbish fascists love to spout was a popular cyclic view of history when Marx was writing as was "by nature human are evil, as culture, technology and civilisation progress humans inevitably become better people and closer to god" progressivist theories of history.
Since WWI, historians (including most marxist historians) have acknowledged that both sweeping predictive theories and talking about anything as "inevitable" isn't really realistic and instead tend to phrase major schools of thought as useful lenses by which to examine the past rather than a grand theory of history and predictions or causal mechanisms as "here's something that was a factor in this event happening" or "here's a mechanism by which this could happen".
So will, as Marx said, contradictions inherent in capitalism inevitably lead to the advent of communist and then socialist society?
Is class struggle the only factor influencing the course of history and the present?
Absolutely not, nothing's inevitable until it's happened, and class struggle, while a major factor in why things happen and an extremely useful lens to view current and historical events through, is far from the only factor influencing the course of things.
But viewing history and current events through a marxist materialist class struggle lens is often enlightening and extremely useful, especially to us as socialists. The contradictions Marx described do exist, and they (among other factors) can and have been exploited by motivated and united working class people to destroy capitalism and start building socialism.
Our victory is not inevitable, but it is possible and Marx's theories, if not a prophesy of the only path industrial society can possibly take, do highlight mechanisms of social change, ways capitalism is tearing itself apart, and a way of viewing society and our collective interests that are utterly invaluable to us as workers suffering under capitalism and trying to find a way to tear it down and build something better in its place.
Lots of reasons, but here’s a big one no one’s said yet.
In book 3 of Capital, Marx talks about the Rate of Profit, measured as Profit/Investment. Even before Marx, this RoP had been measured to decrease over time. There are many theories as to why it does this, but Marx said it was because of the continual investment into new Capital. Regardless of the reason, the RoP has continued to fall over the centuries, to the point where now we are seeing the lowest RoP in capitalist history. This is very bad for capitalism, because the only driving force for capitalists to do anything is to make profit. But if the RoP ever reaches 0, there will be no more profit, and the system will no longer have the “fuel” to sustain itself.
The appeal of capitalism over preceding systems is that although the proportional size of the creditor class is as small as the nobility was under feudalism, there is a possibility that anyone can earn and trade and gamble their way into it. Before capitalism, the only "rags-to-riches" stories were about children of nobility being lost in infancy.
As the system proceeds, the gap between creditor and debtor classes tends to enlarge, the size of the creditor class tends to shrink, and social mobility tends to decrease. These trends point toward a new hierarchy of classes which may not be based around kings but will still be hereditary and absolute, like feudalism was.
As the system proceeds, the gap between creditor and debtor classes tends to enlarge, the size of the creditor class tends to shrink
That's not what's actually happening currently, though. ZIRP has flipped the script of who is a "creditor" vs a "debtor". The creditor class is increasing due to the fact that more and more people have private savings, which they tend to put in the bank or a "conservative" mix of bonds (i.e. become creditors) and stocks because they need to have a rainy day fund or protected retirement savings (and individual workers risk tolerance will push them towards low return products), while the Capitalist class uses cheap debt to buy more and more assets. The rise in asset prices helps them pay off the loan (which was made with the savings of all those workers) and they get to keep the assets and move further ahead.
"Stocks" and "assets" these days are almost entirely interchangeable though.
There are fewer and fewer people who have a larger share of the pie. It doesn't matter whether you call them capital holders or creditors, they're people who get paid to do nothing. And while more laborers have investments, they aren't getting more value out of it than they put in through labor in the first place.
The distinction is important because debt is how Capitalists actually consolidate their holdings. Leverage lets you increase your rate of profit by borrowing against your existing assets to buy more machines and exploit more workers.. The whole reason for loans is that the person taking the loan can make more money than the interest they pay because they will invest it in various places they think that they can . If interest rates are artificially low, debtors get a "free lunch" in the form of excess returns while creditors (i.e. people with cash or bonds) lose out. Large capital holders don't provide credit unless required to by certain regulations or if the interest rate gets high enough that they can't find places to generate return.
And while more laborers have investments, they aren’t getting more value out of it than they put in through labor in the first place.
The key distinction is that laborers will have a greater portion of their funds either in a safe bank account or in bonds because everyone needs a certain "cushion" to feel secure/not go bust, so they proportionally lose out as "creditors".
Tell me more about how all the richest and most powerful people in the economy are net debtors rather than net creditors.
Banks and financial services are at the top of the economy, and they have been for a long time.
Tell me more about how all the richest and most powerful people in the economy are net debtors rather than net creditors.
Banks and financial services are at the top of the economy,
Banks need people to take out loans to make money. No one will take out a loan if they don't think they can make more than the cost to borrow it. The idea that consumer debt drives accumulation is bunk - if workers go into debt, wages go up or the cost of capital rises to account for defaults, which lowers profitability and lowers the demand for loans, which lowers the bank's profits ultimately. Banks are only at the top of the economy because Capitalists are willing to borrow to make more.
Before capitalism, the only “rags-to-riches” stories were about children of nobility being lost in infancy.
wait, what do you mean by this?
Stuff like King Arthur, where the protagonists are raised in poverty and get a lucky break by a revelation of their true identities. No acts that they do are rewarded, it's just a matter of finding out their true ancestry.
Obviously in reality there were people who took command of armies and made themselves kings, as it always was.
It's not definitely true, nothing guarantees it. Capitalism contains contradictions and its our role to help bring about the reality where those contradictions are resolved by the overthrow of the ruling class by the working class, as opposed to the reality where the contradictions are resolved in the common ruin of the contending classes.
"The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall." -Che Guevara
ye, sounds right to me. the pple hs to be ripe but it won't fll by itself
I don't know for sure but global warming will either be the end of capitalism or humanity. Capitalism leads to over-production and that crisis has to be resolved somehow, which in the past has been war and colonialism, but when the entire world is brought into the capitalist world system, there is nowhere else to stabilize except space (which they are trying really hard and failing at) or nuclear annihilation (:inshallah-script::xi-plz:).
All things that have a beginning have an ending. Capitalism cannot last forever, but it's impossible to know for sure how or when it will end.
if you replace “capitalism” with “dinosaurs” it’s easy to understand. Time keeps going
Yeah right liberal, Dinosaurs have lived for over 150 million years and you tell me they're gonna go extinct? Give me a break. I'm gonna go look at that cool glowing thing in the sky
Yes. However when and what comes next is yet to be determined. It could still be doubble capitalism in the far futre.
