Capitalism's Fatal Flaw, and the Way Forward: "Self-Expanding Value" vs. ‘Self-Contracting Value’ – The ‘Intra-Duality’ of the Capital[ist] System.

‘‘Self-Expanding Value’’

versus

‘Self-Contracting Value’ –

The ‘Intra-Duality’

the Capital[ist] System.

GLOBAL STRATEGIC HYPOTHESES.

Dear Reader,

Marx’s definitional description of capital as “self-expanding value” is well-known, at least among Marxian circles.

However, almost unknown, even in Marxian circles, is its ‘intra-dual’ process – not formulated in Marx’s writings in directly-oppositional terms, but present in those writings nevertheless – its contrary process, immanently contained in the ‘capital-praxis’, and in the capital social relation of production, that we term ‘self-contracting value’.

You can, of course, describe the internal opposition of these two ‘‘‘moments’’’ of the capitals-system as an “internal contradiction” of that system, if you’d like. We hold that a metaphor borrowed form propositional incompatibility, if used to describe ‘existential, internal, self-incompatibility’, tends to induce more confusion than it is worth. Instead, we find the terms ‘intra-duality’ or ‘self-duality’ as more fitting.

We hold that it is the interplay, the shifting imbalance, of these “two” processes, of these two sides of the capital ‘meta-dynamic’, of this immanent ‘self-opposition’ or ‘self-antithesis’ of the capitalist system, that shapes modern history.

It divides the capitalist epoch into an ‘ascendence phase’ followed by a ‘descendence phase’; into a phase wherein the capital-relation fosters the growth of the social forces of production, and thus also of the ‘meta-Darwinian’ collective-phenomic fitness of the human species, followed by a phase, since »1900 C.E./B.U.E., and encompassing our present historical moment, in which the capital-relation “enfetters” the further growth of the ‘societal-expanding self-re-productive forces’.

In so doing, it also fosters a ‘capitalist anti-capitalist’, ‘ultra-Malthusian’, “people are pollution” ruling class, ruling faction ideology, which seeks to de-industrialize the globe, to reverse the historic rise of those productive forces, and including to exterminate the vast majority – “95%” – of the human species. See, for example –

F. Willian Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, edition.engdahl, Wiesbaden, Germany, 2011 [3rd edition].

– and –

https://capitalismsfundamentalflaw-wayforward.blogspot.com/2013/03/plutocracy-publicly-proclaims-planned.html

The “self-expanding value” ‘intra-dual’ of the capitals-system dominates the industrial capital-system’s inner development, when the fixed capital composition in total industrial capital is small, so that its obsolescence and write-off against gross profits does not contract the net-profit-rate by much.

Then, “self-expanding value” overpowers its ‘self-contracting value’ other, and thereby defines the ‘ascendence-phase’ of the capitals-system, during the first ‘‘‘half’’’ of that system’s existence, including the “Hundred Years’ Peace”, and during which there is even a ‘tendency for the rate of profit to rise’ due to the rise of what Marx names “relative surplus-value”, a rise achieved via the productivity-increasing – productive-force-increasing, production-output-accelerating – effects of a growing mass of production machinery, of industrial fixed capital plant and equipment.

Yet already, still during that “Hundred Years’ Peace”, in the »1870 to »1890 ‘Great [Techno-]Deflation’, the ‘fatal flaw’ of the capitalist system began to manifest, especially for the industrial-capitalist ruling class.

Already by that “Great Deflation” double-decade, the transition from the, “capital as self-expanding value”- dominated ‘ascendence phase’ of the capitalist system and capitalist epoch, had begun its immanent ‘self-transition’ into the ‘capital as self-contracting value’-dominated ‘descendence phase’, of the capitalist system, impending the termination of the capitalist epoch, during which further growth of the social forces of production drives the Marxian “law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall”.

¿What is the mechanism that causes the ‘descendence-phase’ dominance of capital as ‘self-contracting capital-value’?

As the fixed-capital portion of total industrial capital grows, as physical manifestation of growing productivity/-productive-force, imperfectly proxied by Marx’s c/v capital-value ratio, the bulk of world-market-competitive industrial capital becomes hyper-vulnerable to ‘technological obsolescence depreciation’, or ‘techno-depreciation’ for short.

The minute word goes out to the capital equity stock markets, to bankers, etc., about the existence or installation of more-productive capital-equipment, and/or substantially less expensive to purchase capital-equipment, and/or substantially less expensive to operate capital equipment, and/or new capital equipment designed to produce an improved product that will supplant the old product designs in a competitive market, the value of the older capital equipment of legacy competitors loses at least part of its capital-value. This lost capital-value is, in actuality or in effect, subtracted from gross profit for the accounting period in which recognition of that loss of capital-value is forced by competition, thus lowering net profits for that period.

If similar losses of fixed-capital-value continue, accounting-period-after-accounting period, then a secular decline in the rate of net profits – in the net return numerator divided by the fixed-capital-value denominator – is encountered by the legacy capitalist competitors in the given market, and becomes generalized if similar capital devaluations occur in market-after-market.

¿Why do we call the resulting general contraction of industrial fixed capital capital-value a ‘self-contraction’?

We do so because the causation – the collective-psychology, psycho-historical motivation – the core capitalist motivation of the pursuit of increased profitability, is what drives capitalists to invent better machines, cheaper-priced machines [due to the growth of productive-force in the machine-building industries], cheaper in operating-costs machines, and better products, produced by different kinds of machines. This immanent pursuit of increased profits by capital-owners, profits increased by increased machinery-driven productivity, is what results in the capital-value-evaporation of the historical original cost/value of older, more expensive to buy, more expensive to operate, and obsolete-products-producing vintages of fixed-capital machinery.

The threat of their economic overthrow, the overthrow of the legacy, still-dominant in political power, geo-graphical-core-of-capitalism concentrated-capital-owners, especially in the U.K. and the U.S.A., by “their own” capitalist system itself, drives the capitalist ruling class crazy, leads them to seek to reverse or to suppress industrial development all over the rest of the globe, to sabotage industrial technological advances even within the capitalist ‘geo-core’ itself, and ultimately to target gargantuan “population reduction” for humanity as a whole, the growing human population itself being the perennial basis of the societal self-re-productive self-force, and of the ‘meta-Darwinian’, collective, human- phenomic fitness, of the human species.

To halt their ‘hyper-Malthusian’ pogrom against the human species, a way beyond the ‘technodepreciation/-profit-rate-fall’ “fatal flaw” of capitalism must be found – a way that must take humanity – a way by which humanity must take itself – beyond the capitalist system itself.

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