Capitalism's Fatal Flaw, and the Way Forward: Seldon's Sayings Series, #3. The 'Intra-Duality' of the Capitals-System -- Excerpt on the '''Lawful''' Psychohistory of Capitalist Civilization.

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Seldon's Sayings Series, #3. The 'Intra-Duality' of the Capitals-System -- Excerpt on the '''Lawful''' Psychohistory of Capitalist Civilization.

Dear Reader,

It is my pleasure to share with you, from time to time, selections from the seminal sayings, and writings, shared by him among we of F.E.D., by our co-founder, Karl Seldon [main site: www.dialectics.info; see also http://equitism.org/Equitism/Equitism-entry.htm].

A case in point is the following --

“ ... Capitalist competition compels capitalists to increase the productive force of their fixed capital, as worked by their wage workers.”

“To do so, to increase that productive force, they are also compelled to increase the physical mass of their fixed capital.”

“The increase in the ‘value-mass’ -- the capital-value -- of that physical mass of fixed capital lags behind the increase in its physical mass, but that ‘value-mass’ also tends to rise.”

“Marx metered the latter rise, tendentially, approximately, by the tendency to rise of what he called the “organic composition of capital”.”

“This rising productive force of fixed capital is also necessarily accompanied by a tendential rise in the “technical composition” of that capital, together with a corresponding rise in the ‘technical composition of labor’.”

“Capitalists are thus forced to achieve a kind of “in-itself” progress, an unintentional kind of progress for humanity -- ‘progress in itself’ -- by thus increasing that force which ultimately constitutes ‘the meta-Darwinian’ ‘‘‘fitness’’’ of the human species, a ‘‘‘fitness’’’ which is that of the ‘humanity-totality’, of the ‘‘‘complex unity’’’ of the combined ‘human phenome/human genome’, advancing that force which is the ‘self-force’ -- arising from humanity as its source, and acting back upon humanity as the subject/object of its operation -- the ‘self-force’ of human societal, ‘quanto-qualitatively expanding’, ‘quanto-ontologically’ expanding, ‘acceleratedly’ expanding self-reproduction of human ‘socio-mass’, of living human biomass, and of the mass of human creations which also count as human-species ‘onto-mass’, and which are objectifications of ‘the human phenome’.”

“This kind of progress defines especially the ‘‘‘ascendence phase’’’ of the capitalist system.”

“However, and also within capitalist competition, increasing productive force, and the accompanying competitive drive for an accelerating rate of productive force increase, and, thus, for an accelerating rate of technological innovation in the engineering design of the fixed capital means of production, also forces a continual, accelerating “premature” retirement of thus increasingly quickly ‘obsoleted’ fixed capital -- its retirement due thus to “moral depreciation”, ever much more prior to its “wear-and-tear” depreciation-amortization.”

“Competition-enforced growth of the productive force of fixed capital thus destroys fixed capital.”

“Productive force increase thus destroys capital-value -- destroys capital itself.”

“After a certain point in capitalist development, after a certain point in the accumulation of fixed capital, and in the concentration of its ownership, and in the accumulation of social-[re-]productive force, further [re-]productive force increase tends to destroy more capital value than the incremental profits generated using the new, more productive, more ‘productively-forceful’ fixed capital, that replaces the old, prematurely-retired fixed capital, can contribute as new capital formation, even if all of these new profits were to be re-invested in new fixed capital.”

“And this is so especially for the more concentrated accumulations of “old” fixed capital, which form the basis of the most economically powerful, hence also the most politically powerful, factions of the capitalist ruling class.”

“This situation characterizes the ‘‘‘descendence phase’’’ of the capitalist system.”

“At the start of this phase, the most wealthy, most powerful faction of the capitalist ruling class realizes their predicament.”

“In response to this realization, they turn against productive force advance.”

“They turn against competitive capitalism itself.”

“They turn against science and technology, against scientific and technological progress, with certain exceptions.”

“They turn against science and technology except for those sciences, and those technologies, which they can turn into massive, electronic, police-state surveillance of the working class, as George Orwell foresaw, and/or which they can use to bankrupt, then monopolize, the remnants of a free press, and of diverse-viewpoints mass media of communication in general, and/or which they can use as weapons of mass destruction, for their plan for the eventual mass extermination of most of the working class that they fix upon, and for the ‘re-feudalization’ that they fix upon, as their only way to remain in power.”