CC writes; > Stability, in capitalist terms, is constituted by the pacification of the > working class. Other forms of 'instability' harm only individuals -- mostly > workers but also _individual_ capitalists. But disaster for individual > capitalists (or groups of capitalists) does not constitute any threat to > capitalist relations of production. Only a mass movement of workers (such as > the '60s offered a premonition of) can endanger capitalism. Mass misery (or > mass precariousness) serves ordinarily to "individualize" (fragment) > workers, thereby contributing to capitalist stability. ...
Something less than a mass (unified & class conscious) movement of workers can threaten the careers of capitalist politicians, which can cause political/economic changes (e.g., the New Deal). It's true that typically mass misery encourages working people to find individual solutions, but sometimes they look for collective solutions (especially when they are unified by their neighborhoods and/or their workplaces). In the extreme, this could show up as support for socialist or labor parties -- or for fascist parties. In more moderate cases, we see collective "solutions" in working-class support for Occupy or the Tea Party or mega-churches, etc. By the way, low demand for the product (e.g., what prevails now) hurts profits (all else constant) by hurting cash flow, especially for smaller businesses. Currently, a lot of small business types are pissed off by low demand for their product and the refusal of banks to lend to them. Of course, they go for Tea Party-type "solutions." > Austerity is stable (stagnant) as former capitalist regimes were not. The > result of this "permanent" or endless 'crisis' is the transformation of the > "proletariat" into the "Precariat," its powers of resistance suppressed, as > Marx saw it could happen. See Chapter 14 of Wages, Price and Profit. Here is > the key paragraph: > > "These few hints will suffice to show that the very development of modern > industry must progressively turn the scale in favour of the capitalist > against the working man, and that consequently the general tendency of > capitalistic production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of > wages, or to push the value of labour more or less to its minimum limit. This is Marx's absolute general law of capitalist accumulation (the tendency toward working-class "immiseration") which was more fully developed in CAPITAL, volume I, ch. 25.His later works are usually better. We should note that, just as with Marx's other "laws," there can be counteracting tendencies. The warfare-welfare state of the 1950s and 1960s counteracted working-class immiseration, for example, as did mass working-class struggles during the 1930s. [continuing the quote from Marx] > Such being the tendency of things in this system, is this saying that the > working class ought to renounce their resistance against the encroachments > of capital, and abandon their attempts at making the best of the occasional > chances for their temporary improvement? If they did, they would be degraded > to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation. I think I have shown > that their struggles for the standard of wages are incidents inseparable > from the whole wages system, that in 99 cases out of 100 their efforts at > raising wages are only efforts at maintaining the given value of labour, and > that the necessity of debating their price with the capitalist is inherent > to their condition of having to sell themselves as commodities. By cowardly > giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would certainly > disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement." This is saying that we shouldn't avoid defensive battles against capital. I don't see how this fits with CC's point. -- Jim Devine / If you're going to support the lesser of two evils, at the very least you should know the nature of that evil. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
