Re:What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?
by vidarh on Tuesday August 02, 2022 @02:21PM
(#32322420)
One thing worth remembering, and that even a lot of socialists forget, is that Marx predicted this not out of some deep hate for capitalism.
The first half of the first chapter of the Communist Manifesto is Marx being a total fanboy for capitalism and it's capacity for transforming the world.
Marx predicted that capitalist competition, which he expressed admiration for, would be too successful, and that people would just fail to reign it in and deal with the result.
There's a conceptually very simple fix to the crises Marx predicted if he's otherwise right:
Share more of the value, and spread labour around if automation comes to reduce the need for labour to the extent he predicted, where, to paraphrase, both overproduction and lack of work becomes common.
It doesn't take equality to prevent it, just enough adjustment to smooth out the crises enough to prevent escalation.
Marx took capitalists own predictions about the efficiency of capitalist competition at face value, and simply asked what will happen if capitalism eventually runs out of new markets to expand into (temporarily or permanently) and responds by driving down margins, and his prediction of eventual revolution is predicated on the assumption that society will fail to apply those very simple fixes.
Ironically, then, if capitalism survives, it might be because the competitive pressures are not as strong as Marx believed.
The first half of the first chapter of the Communist Manifesto is Marx being a total fanboy for capitalism and it's capacity for transforming the world.
Marx predicted that capitalist competition, which he expressed admiration for, would be too successful, and that people would just fail to reign it in and deal with the result.
There's a conceptually very simple fix to the crises Marx predicted if he's otherwise right:
Share more of the value, and spread labour around if automation comes to reduce the need for labour to the extent he predicted, where, to paraphrase, both overproduction and lack of work becomes common.
It doesn't take equality to prevent it, just enough adjustment to smooth out the crises enough to prevent escalation.
Marx took capitalists own predictions about the efficiency of capitalist competition at face value, and simply asked what will happen if capitalism eventually runs out of new markets to expand into (temporarily or permanently) and responds by driving down margins, and his prediction of eventual revolution is predicated on the assumption that society will fail to apply those very simple fixes.
Ironically, then, if capitalism survives, it might be because the competitive pressures are not as strong as Marx believed.