06-17-2014, 08:56 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-17-2014, 10:38 PM by FireIceTalon.)
(06-16-2014, 02:09 PM)kandrathe Wrote: As for Schumpeter, his idea that; "...collapse of capitalism from within will come about if democratic majorities vote for restrictions upon entrepreneurship that will burden and destroy the capitalist structure." is not far from accurate in many places. It is certainly a restriction to the point of suffocation.
Except, this idea(lism) does not accurately reflect the history of capitalism, and it sounds more like pro-free market rhetoric and propaganda than it does a proper material analysis of capitalisms' woes. Schumpeter sounds like he is just parroting capitalist pundits like Friedman or Hayek.
The capitalist system IS unsustainable to be sure, and its destruction at some point is assured, but because of "tighter regulations" is an unlikely, if not completely erroneous scenario. It is an inherently contradictory system, and its adherents have the myopic belief that we live in a world of infinite resources; resulting in mass over-production in order to maximize profits and profitability - which can explain why the planet is in terrible shape (and not just economically or socially, but also environmentally). Of course resources are finite, yet the system also must create 'artificial scarcity' as needed by the demands and flow of international capital, which is why "poverty in the midst of plenty" is an intrinsic trait of the capitalist system and cannot be removed from it. The State does not exist with the purpose to destroy the capitalist system, but rather to preserve and protect it from itself (though this too, has its limitations, and it cannot alter the social relations or the fundamental characterization that define the system and make it what it is, and how it works. Nor can they ultimately save it, not forever anyway). The presence of the state merely slows down or postpones the inevitable demise of the system, nothing more nothing less. Without a state or some other similar agency of absolute power, capitalism would have gone the way of the dinosaurs long ago. The state is the only reason it has survived as long as it has - capitalism does not (and cannot) exist on its own merit or accord.
A more likely outcome is, the capitalist system will implode on itself due to the above (and other) contradictions, as well as its permanent features of constant wars, poverty, and destruction of the planet, in conjunction with estrangement, decadence, and social and economic decay.
Sure, governments may fuck around with certain industries that result in some individuals or business being harmed, but to suggest that they have the power to single-handedly destroy the entire existing social order that exists across the globe is a pretty fantastically exaggerated claim. The state is powerful, but not that powerful. But even if they were, they have no vestige in wanting to do so, since the state itself both directly and indirectly benefits from preserving the current way of things (the only major individual statesman that was probably an exception to this was Lenin, whose politics do not closely align with my own yet I have the sense that he genuinely wanted a better and more just world than what exists).
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"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (on capitalist laws and institutions)
"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (on capitalist laws and institutions)