Author: Internationalist Perspective

The following text is a reply to Mcl (Controverses) who criticized what IP wrote on the trajectory of capitalism. His main points were:

-how can you claim that capitalism’s decadence, or social retrogression, began in 1914 when, overall, the 20^th century was an era of rising growth, rising productivity and rising living standards?

-how can you claim that the transition to real domination is a still ongoing process, while my stats show that the transition from absolute surplus value extraction to relative surplus value extraction was completed by 1850?

His own text can be found HERE

A debate on the trajectory of capitalism

A REPLY TO MCL

Dear Mcl,

to analyze the periodization of capitalism, you start from Marx’s words: “Here the capitalist mode of production is beset with another contradiction. Its historical mission is unconstrained development in geometrical progression of the productivity of human labour. It is unfaithful to its vocation whenever, as here, it checks the development of productivity. It thus demonstrates again, that it is becoming senile period and that it is more and more outlived.” ¹ You add: “Capitalism fails in this mission when it no longer manages to fulfill it, that is, when capitalism no longer manages to develop this productivity of labor.”  

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It has been four month since the latest uprising in Iran began. The movement has waned for now, although there are still demonstrations and riots in the provinces of (Iranian) Kurdistan and Baluchestan. There still are some strikes going on as well, by petrochemical workers in Bandar Mahshahr in the south and others, but they are not directly linked to the earlier protests. Most are against the increasing practice of delaying the payment of wages for several months, which is an effective way to increase exploitation. It leaves the workers in dire straits and when they’re so lucky to get their back wages, inflation had bitten off a great chunk of it.

In the reports of pro-revolutionaries in Iran [dndf.org] , two reasons are given for the decline of the uprising: the ferocious repression and the extreme cold. The repression was indeed ruthless but in the beginning of the movement this seemed to make the masses only angrier, more determinant. It was toned down for a while, the government made some conciliatory promises, but when the movement had crested and lost strength, it became more ferocious and more effective.

That the cold played a role seems likely. Iran had not experienced such freezing weather in more than a decade.  

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