(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #238 - Viewpoint: Crisis of capitalism and false solutions (fr, pt)

The main criticism that can be leveled at "Reform" does not include the modesty of their 
claims. The challenge of reformism lies in the assertion of its fundamentally illusory and 
unrealistic conditions of capitalist crisis character. ---- The basis of a revolutionary 
positioning is recognition of the impossibility of sustainable reforms in favor of the 
large number sense. This impossibility is not "political." Interim reforms could be 
implemented in favor of changing the balance of power, but they inevitably fail more or 
less imminent. More precisely, if latitudes exist when the accumulation is experiencing 
strong momentum is no longer the case when clearly this dynamic is slowing. ---- When 
capitalist relations are entering a process of crisis, opportunities for reform in fact so 
close even more definitive than the process in question is more advanced.

The belief that it could be otherwise, and that the sole condition of the political will, 
based on a misunderstanding of the mechanisms involved in the development of capitalism. 
For the critical left, the principle of crises lies in the final analysis and in 
accordance with the reading that gives a hegemonic Keynesianism within it, in imbalances 
occurring at the "share the wealth". These imbalances are expected to result only of greed 
left to itself holders of capital, with the result to amputate the economy an increasingly 
important part of the "Application". If that were the case, a rebalancing of political 
weight of the working masses and the formation of a stable social compromise pressing this 
last criticism would indeed only under objective too measured.

Neoliberal capitalism

Neoliberal deregulation would have been imposed in favor of a coup driven by the 
insatiable desire for money magnates of industry and finance. The "money insatiable 
desire" is actually an anthropological constant characteristic of homo capitalismus and in 
this, it can not account alone of neoliberal bifurcation operated in the 1980s. 
significantly more be remembered that it takes place in a context of acute crisis 
affecting severity with remarkable profits then. In fact, for reasons of structural 
nature, capitalism is repeatedly confronted with a critical shortage of the only form of 
wealth that matters to him, "abstract wealth", represented by money. This statement has 
something against-intuitive since it is the excess that requires the attention of the 
masses daily observation of "material wealth" discharged at the peril of our ecosystem and 
the colossal fortunes concentrated in few hands. In the industrial market society, money 
represents the past, present and future activity of workers. Fictitious in this regard, 
which has taken extravagant proportions on three decades capital corresponds to "projects" 
productive investment. They will experience no translation but in reality serve as 
collateral for the money. If so speculation "future" earnings has gained importance in the 
so-called neoliberal economy is due to the lack of opportunities for enhancement of 
short-medium term. Without massive debt - for example - American households, European and 
Asian trade surpluses have found no outlet. In other words, the debt economy has taken the 
considerable growth that we know that from the moment the endogenous growth mechanisms 
began to fail. In addition to the subjective factor of the thirst for immediate profits of 
the shareholder, the "short-termism" so often invoked its origin in the objective 
shrinking windows of opportunity for investment. From this point of view, the huge profits 
which the press are regularly display the tree that hides the garden... We do not say that 
the domination is undermined in general, only that the capitalist mode is in crisis. This 
is what the Reform indignation or "economism appalled" contributes greatly to ignore. 
Sacrificing timely protest to the mood of a growing part of the population, which is not 
without maintaining a certain ambiguity with populism, the reformist critique makes a 
thunderous denunciation of finance well done to give the charm of subversion struggling 
the most banal alter-capitalist position.

Critical theory of Marx

For Marx, the cyclical nature of the crisis is due to the contradictions inherent in the 
capitalist system. In addition to the class antagonism that materializes in the distortion 
of income sharing in favor of the owners of the means of production, Marx identifies in 
the technical development and rationalization of work organization the main causes of the 
liquidation of work human who reached a certain threshold, eventually constitute a 
decisive continued accumulation obstacle. Because - and this fact is not sufficiently 
understood - this is the growth of the business and work at a certain pace that ensures 
appropriate sufficient demand for goods produced. Or, more productivity standards rise, 
more growth becomes problematic. Thus, an ever greater mass of goods is done with less and 
less paid work. Hence the difficulties in achieving sales with the revolution in 
microelectronics are still extensive. Its potentially devastating consequences that have 
been pushed through unprecedented swelling of fictitious capital. However, as indicated by 
the close succession of crises, and the growing intensity of these, the expedient of debt 
and stay that was granted arrive at their historical limits.

A system in crisis

Conducted the recent aggressive capital against the company are not the only result of 
greed, which invariably defines oligarchy. The capitalist system is to be truly in crisis. 
While the crisis takes the form of an absolute impoverishment of workers, but it is not 
only because of the boundless egoism of some financial and prompt servility of the 
political elites. Must also enter reason in the inexorable decline in the share of wage 
labor in the overall production. This decline has occurred in a context of strong 
competition through ceaseless sophistications of the productive apparatus. This is the 
objective and systemic side of capitalist accumulation that accompanies subjective side, 
the resolution capitalists to increase their earnings. In short, the class violence 
naturally plays a major role in this case, but it operates at the same time under the 
inherent conflict of commodity production: on one side the wage appears as an outlet on 
the other as a cost; the individual capitalist seeks to minimize labor costs while global 
capitalism calls for more work under the expansion of consumption, and all this in the 
context of a process aimed at increasing labor elimination. Also, the choice of supply 
policy and policy application which calls the radical left supposed to decide is it 
nothing more than a way to hide the real contradictions of capitalism and its deleterious 
dynamic. It is important to clearly distance ourselves from the theoretical and political 
reformism and make the choice of utopia rather than the chimera.

Wil (AL-West Paris)