Dear Reader,
This blog-entry contains the fourth part of my serialization, within this blog, of the Equitist Advocacy Group's groundbreaking manifesto entitled "Malady and Remedy: What's Wrong, and What to Do About It", with my own edits added to their text, for its improvement [at least, I think so!].
In my opinion, this text is too important to be treated as any kind of "sacred text".
It needs to be improved upon, and circulated <<samizdat>>, worldwide, in such "improved" forms -- i.e., in as many versions as are seen as being needed, by every author who thinks that [s]he can improve upon it [including this one].
Here is a link to the original version, including to its "endnotes" --
http://equitism.org/Equitism/Equitism-entry.htm
http://www.equitism.org/Equitism/MaladyAndRemedy/MaladyAndRemedy.htm
Regards,
Miguel
Diagnosis: What's Wrong [continued].
Hypothesis II: The Core Plutocracy's Solution to the Crisis of 'Techno-Depreciation'.
These impositions were, in fact, the plutocracy's
"solution" to the 'techno-depreciation' crisis of industrial capital
profitability, which was also a viability-crisis for the global, capital-based
social system as a whole.
These solutions begat, in their wake, the plutocracy's
power to create World War I, to engineer the currency inflation
"bubble" of the 1920s, the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Second
World War of the 1940s [though WWII was also, in part, the result of a partial
failure on their part -- a result of the 'Franken-Dictator'
turn of their erstwhile servant-dictator, Hitler,
against them], the post-World War II continual inflation since [see the chart
above/in last blog-entry -- M.D.], and the Global Crisis of Humanity that is
now fast upon us.
The productivity-growth / capital-value annihilation
process of ‘technodepreciation’ will generate secular net losses, instead of
net profitability, to the plutocracy's industrial production capital assets, until that plutocracy imposes, upon the rest of society,
mechanisms to convert such continuing, ongoing, and
even accelerating private losses
to the plutocracy's businesses, into ongoing, continual, even accelerating social losses to the rest of
society — losses to wages and salaries, and to the life-conditions, of the rest
of society as a whole, but losses that tend to increase the percentage
ownership of all net-income-producing capital assets by the core plutocracy,
and to decrease the percent ownership of such assets by the rest of the
“underlying” population.
The plutocracy accomplishes this conversion of its losses, otherwise private and confined to itself — its private capital 'techno-losses' — into losses for the majority of the rest of the human population, via the establishment of central bank mechanisms enforcing "permanent inflation", such as the mechanisms of the U. S. Federal Reserve System [for more about this, see the film, "Zeitgeist: Addendum". [e6] ].
"Permanent inflation" is, precisely, a permanent tendency to reduce real wages and salaries, if nominal wages and salaries remain constant, or even if wages and salaries increase, but at a rate of increase (s)lower than the rate of general consumer price inflation.
Geert Reuten more fully describes this process of conversion of 'techno-deflation', and of ‘technodepreciation losses’ to private capital, via continual inflation, into social losses. [e7]
The plutocracy accomplishes this conversion of its losses, otherwise private and confined to itself — its private capital 'techno-losses' — into losses for the majority of the rest of the human population, via the establishment of central bank mechanisms enforcing "permanent inflation", such as the mechanisms of the U. S. Federal Reserve System [for more about this, see the film, "Zeitgeist: Addendum". [e6] ].
"Permanent inflation" is, precisely, a permanent tendency to reduce real wages and salaries, if nominal wages and salaries remain constant, or even if wages and salaries increase, but at a rate of increase (s)lower than the rate of general consumer price inflation.
Geert Reuten more fully describes this process of conversion of 'techno-deflation', and of ‘technodepreciation losses’ to private capital, via continual inflation, into social losses. [e7]
Narration of U. S. Inflation-History Chart
Consider again the chart [e2]
of the history of U. S.
price levels from 1665 to 2005.
What stories does it tell, about what previous generations have been through, and about what is now upon us?
Note the "Great Inflation" that began circa 1915, immediately after the core plutocracy’s forceful imposition, in the U.S., of the Federal Income Tax , and of the Federal Reserve fiat money /- central bank system, both in 1913, and their global imposition of World War I, starting in 1914.
What stories does it tell, about what previous generations have been through, and about what is now upon us?
Note the "Great Inflation" that began circa 1915, immediately after the core plutocracy’s forceful imposition, in the U.S., of the Federal Income Tax , and of the Federal Reserve fiat money /- central bank system, both in 1913, and their global imposition of World War I, starting in 1914.
Note also the decided lack of any such continual
inflationary trend throughout the 250 years visible in that graph prior to 1915,
from 1665 to 1915.
Before ~1915: One sees, in this chart, a series of somewhat shallow undulations — somewhat shallow relative to what arises after 1915 — a series of alternating, aperiodic 'acycles', acyclical waves of inflation and deflation, shadowing "business cycles", with peaks of inflation around times of war.
After ~1915: One sees an unprecedented, towering, essentially unbroken upward "exponential" trend line [with a nearly "symmetric perturbation", around that trend-line of inflation, in the 1920s 'engineered bubble', turning into nearly "equal and opposite" deflation in the 1930s Great Depression] — albeit with a further acceleration after ~1965 — of ever-escalating price levels, continual inflation.
Before ~1915: One sees, in this chart, a series of somewhat shallow undulations — somewhat shallow relative to what arises after 1915 — a series of alternating, aperiodic 'acycles', acyclical waves of inflation and deflation, shadowing "business cycles", with peaks of inflation around times of war.
After ~1915: One sees an unprecedented, towering, essentially unbroken upward "exponential" trend line [with a nearly "symmetric perturbation", around that trend-line of inflation, in the 1920s 'engineered bubble', turning into nearly "equal and opposite" deflation in the 1930s Great Depression] — albeit with a further acceleration after ~1965 — of ever-escalating price levels, continual inflation.
Hypothesis III: The Conversion of 'Technodepreciation' into General Inflation
The post-1915 continual inflation overall
— apart from temporally-local, shorter-duration, 'bubble-engineering', and
war-related transients — is, precisely, general 'technodepreciation' converted into general inflation.
It is private ‘techno-losses’ to the core plutocracy converted into social livelihood losses for the social majority, via the mechanisms of the Federal Reserve Banks system, imposed upon that majority by the plutocracy from 1913 on, all the way through to the present moment.
It is private ‘techno-losses’ to the core plutocracy converted into social livelihood losses for the social majority, via the mechanisms of the Federal Reserve Banks system, imposed upon that majority by the plutocracy from 1913 on, all the way through to the present moment.
Reuten describes succinctly how this conversion process works:
"To the extent that technical change accelerates,
price competition precludes the full amortization of capital investments.
In contrast with the common opinion that both technical change and competition are key characteristics of the capitalist system, they are incompatible, at least when technical change accelerates.
Such acceleration then gives rise to forms of concurrence — abstinence from price competition, price leaderships, cartels. The particular form depends on the structure of production of enterprises (i.e. the make-up of the stratification of capital).
Concurrence is a major determinant of the inflationary form of the accumulation of capital.
Because it is in their interest, banks tend to accommodate the concurrent price settings of enterprises and so to accommodate a socialisation of private losses that would be due to the devaluation of capital in the case of price competition.
Price inflation also puts enterprises in a relatively advantageous position vis-á-vis labour."
— Geert Reuten, "The Incompatibility of Prolonged Technical Change and Competition: Concurrence and the Socialization of Entrepreneurial Losses through Inflation" [e7]
In contrast with the common opinion that both technical change and competition are key characteristics of the capitalist system, they are incompatible, at least when technical change accelerates.
Such acceleration then gives rise to forms of concurrence — abstinence from price competition, price leaderships, cartels. The particular form depends on the structure of production of enterprises (i.e. the make-up of the stratification of capital).
Concurrence is a major determinant of the inflationary form of the accumulation of capital.
Because it is in their interest, banks tend to accommodate the concurrent price settings of enterprises and so to accommodate a socialisation of private losses that would be due to the devaluation of capital in the case of price competition.
Price inflation also puts enterprises in a relatively advantageous position vis-á-vis labour."
— Geert Reuten, "The Incompatibility of Prolonged Technical Change and Competition: Concurrence and the Socialization of Entrepreneurial Losses through Inflation" [e7]
See also Joseph M. Gillman's book, The Falling Rate of Profit, published by Dennis Dobson (London: 1957), especially pages 47-57 [e8], and the forthcoming article, "Exposing the Existential, Ontological, Historical, Dialectical Self-Contradiction That Capital Is — The Solution to the Riddle of the [Psycho]History of Capitalism", by the Equitist Advocacy Group.
Hypothesis IV: Timing of the Core Plutocracy's Conversion to 'Capitalist Anti-Capitalism'
This prolonged, ~35 year period (from 1865 through
1900) of steep, deep, sustained 'techno-deflation' was the real '''turning
point crisis''' for the ruling, capital-based core plutocracy.
In this period, the falling prices, plus the falling
profit margins, and the falling profit rates, that accompanied it — impacted
not just a restricted class of goods, like computers, or other "consumer
electronics" in general today, but the broad classes of industrially-produced
commodities.
This was, for the core plutocracy, the "Gotterdammerung" of their industrial capital "Gott".
This was, for them, the "turning point" from
the ascendance phase to the decadence phase of the system of industrial,
technological, competitive capital.
It was this protracted experience that turned the core plutocracy against industrial, technological, competitive capitalism; that turned this ruling plutocracy into "capitalist anti-capitalists".
Not the Panic of 1907, not the Panic of 1920, nor the prolonged 'hyper-deflation' of the "Great Depression" 1930s, but rather this prolonged fall in their rate of profit, was the "turning point" as far as this core, ruling plutocracy was concerned.
Indeed, the Panic of 1907 — which this core plutocracy used in their argument for the creation of the Federal Reserve system, to help them impose it upon a suspicious public — and the Panic of 1920, and the "Great Depression" itself, were, in fact, contrived and orchestrated by that core plutocracy.
This core plutocracy contrived these socio-economic catastrophes as the beginnings of their response to, and of their retaliations against, the mortal threat that they felt being posed to their rule by 'technodepreciation'; by the general growth of technology-based and of technologically-facilitated productivity, by the growth of the '''productive force''' of human labor in general, by the growth in the “technical composition of labor” [Marx] -- hence also of the “technical competencies” of the core wagéd and salaried working class -- by scientific progress applied as technological progress, and by the prosperity that all of this '''potentiated''' for the majority of humanity. For more on this, see "Zeitgeist: The Movie" [e9], moving the slider so as to start the movie at time-frame ~1:14:28 [Part III, DON'T MIND THE MEN BEHIND THE CURTAIN].
Illustrative Counterfactual Conditional
Had this ruling plutocracy not
acted to resuscitate its profitability — at the expense of human social
[self-re-]productivity, and, therefore, at the expense of the rest of human society,
as we shall see — the rate of profit after ~1900 would have continued to fall,
soon reaching a point whereafter capital-based and profit-motivated industrial
production would have tended to grind to a halt.
The majority of humanity population would have been forced to discover, and to invent, a new system of social relations of production, one which would resuscitate, mediate, and 'sustainedly' motivate a re-starting, and a re-continuation, of the human social re-production, of their social livelihood(s); a system of social relations that transcended the capital-/wage-labor-relation.
The majority of humanity population would have been forced to discover, and to invent, a new system of social relations of production, one which would resuscitate, mediate, and 'sustainedly' motivate a re-starting, and a re-continuation, of the human social re-production, of their social livelihood(s); a system of social relations that transcended the capital-/wage-labor-relation.
Note to Readers:
Typographical and notational conventions observed throughout this text
are described in the 'zeroth' endnote. [e0]
SOLUTION –
‘Equitist
Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY’;
BOOK:
MARX’S MISSING
BLUEPRINTS
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