decadence again

I don't see this as the central contradiction of capitalism (if, indeed, there is a fundamental one). Surely the more pressing contradiction is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall?

I mean, surely overproduction can be continually resolved through some kind of continuous expansion? To use Harvey's terms - expanded reproduction and/or accumulation by dispossession. Whilst this in itself is able to resolve the problem of overproduction (or, what to do with the surplus value in order that it might be valorized), it can't negate the fact that capitalism, in order to create profit, engages in processes (esp. the concentration and increased reliance upon capital) that weaken the general rate of profit. This for me is much more damaging - and I can't really see how it has anything to do with decadence.

Shaky hands gesture

Although to be honest I'd recommend non-marxist economic history as well. Decadence theory is krazy.

Hi George ^^
Anyway, I posted this in reply to George saying that (Iirc) the idea was rediculous

I mean, that's one way of looking at it for e.g..

i don't see how that is incorrect?? Sub efficient for desirable as you want (not saying synonymous. but there's an argument as to which is term is correct)

Not saying fwiw that I agree with the actual theory of the icc. I think they showboat too much.

sorry that's probably not helpful.

i mean that my definition of decdence is: the current way of organizing society is less desirable or efficient than an alternative.

what is missing from that defiition (without particular theorizing on evidence for decadence being current)?

Lem,

The current way of organizing society is obsolete. It is less desirable I think because the survival of civilization and our species is more desirable than a reversal to barbarism and extinction. A system based on growth can't survive when the markets are saturated. Profits can rise and for the past two decades they have, but growth rates have only fallen, because there's simply nowhere to grow into anymore.

Capitalism will end.

thanks for that alibadinin ^^

but that's kinda what i meant by the icc etc. "showboating". i personally wanted to discuss the ins and outs of a raw marxist definition of decadence. rather than hear a rerun of your argument (-which I have heard before). not having a go.

It is hard not to repeat myself when asked the same question?. SO what did you want to discuss anyway?

so 'growth' is missing? i would personally see growth as an abstraction from a more real social process (change). is 'growth' necessary for a marxist concept of "decadence"? it's not v importnat question, i just find it intersting.

(DP, soz)

That’s the nature of the universe. All viable systems conquer ever more difficult blockages.

All on their own? For the love of Christ, they must be geniuses. It’s astonishing how they fit it in with what must be such busy schedules.

Conceded. They give up material wealth in order to maintain social status and self esteem.

The crisis of ever more difficult blockages drives an ever increasing exploitation of the lower orders by the elite. I suppose that’s plausible.

What is the nature of this threat? If it’s merely the destitution and murder of the working class, it’s hardly a crisis in the sense communists normally mean. “Possibly” looks a bit suspicious there too, no amount of misery or threats of barbarism will generate uncontainable class conflict.

Absolutely. Like the problems of Narnia. Where we do agree though is in the assertion that communism without a decadence model is non-viable. A religious philosophy rather than a theory of history.

That's a very loose defintion of decadent. If I say me eating a snickers is more desirable than me eating a mars bar, that doesn't amount to saying eating mars bar is decadent.

yes but i'm talking about decadent societal systems i'm not trying to define the word/play a game of semantics to work out what Marxist decadence is. that's not the best way of working out what a philosophical idea is, tho i'm sure it depends on the philosopher (Thomas Szasz "the anti-psychiatrist" is accused of Websterian philosophy by critics).

Yeah, but "in your view" is a bit weak. It hardly makes revolution a cast iron necessity. The worst that could happen is the eventual destitution and murder of the working class to be replaced by some machines and trained animals whilst the bourgeoisie implement a kind of internal-socialism for the remaining elite, which whilst I agree is against your interests, it's hardly the end-of-human-civilisation and certainly not the end of the species.

anyone opposed to capitalism including a great number of leftists and fluffy liberals would agree with the fact capitalism needs to be overthrown, but that's not decadence theory is it?

it's perfectly possible to oppose something without thinking it's in "irreversible descent into decomposition."

Why does it need to be overthrown?

because it's decadent.

because it's in conflict with our interests, as it was when it violently uprooted the peasantry, as it was when it worked thousands to death as chronicled by marx and others

Both of these points are related. The question is how do we assess desireable and efficient.

JosephK is quite right that capitalism, initially, represented a savage attack on the peasantry and that early working conditions were absolutely appalling. The question is what historical alternatives were available at that time. I can think of several:

- Keep things as they were, i.e. support the feudal order.
- Fight for communism - but on the basis of which class and what sort of communism. Does anyone think the feudal peasantry were a revolutionary class, i.e. one that could not only take on the reigns of governing society but also develop the forces of production?
- Support the development of the productive forces, which was taking place in the cities under the auspices of the emerging bourgeoisie which was the class driving the creation of products that were raising agricultural productivity, etc.

I think in that period - had humanity been in the position to make a conscious choice, which it wasn't anyway - supporting the growth of capitalism whilst fighting to ameliorate its more delerious effects was not only the best choice but the only choice. It was the development of capitalism and the bourgeoisie which broke the back of the religion which enslaved the peasantry. It introduced ideas (Fraternity, Liberty, Equality) which, whatever the hypocrisy behind them, inspired generations of revolutionaries including those of the working class.

Given all this I think it's clear that at some stage of its development capitalism (when compared its predecessor) was a positive development for the whole of humanity. It's freed us from back-breaking labour, given us (potentially at least) more food than we know what to do with, increased the human life-span immeasurably, and inspired the most spectacular developments of human understanding more than any other system in the history of humanity. I don't think this can be denied. If capitalism had not developed, we'd still be kow-towing to some bloated feudal lord, thinking he was really was chosen by Christ to rule us.

The real question is when did the negative aspects of this system begin to outweigh the positive? If forced to pick a date (oversimplifying as this is) some might say 1848, others 1914 or perhaps later. But I think everyone on this board agrees that we are certainly at this stage today.

It doesn't "need" anything, unless you mean in the sense of a house needing painting. In which case, the answer is obvious. Because it is unsightly.

On the why dont anarchists vote thread George Stapleton said

The situs didnt use the word decadence much, if at all -no doubt as part of their determination to disassociate from Marxists (did Marx use the term much himself? I dont really know anything about the history of the term) - but I think decadence in a broad sense was pretty central to the situs ideas. Eg The death of art/culture was the point of departure for the SI.
Debord in particular described the decline and fall of just about everything over the period of his writing - by Comments on the SOS he was talking about the decomposition of among other things : the law, liberal democracy, and objective scholarship.
By Panegyric he was saying that all the beers and most of the wines that he used to enjoy had lost their taste, thanks to the progress of capitalist production.

I think its important to remember as well that Marx's conflict between the forces of production and relations of production is not fundamentally an economic conflict. The central force of production being the workers themselves and all that - giving it an irreducible subjective element. (Which debord, of course, is not shy of.)

This also relates to the idea some have put forward on here that there needs to be objective criteria for measuring decadence or else the concept is meaningless. This idea is simple positivism.
(Which in turn is what became the dominant tendency within bourgeois thought, as that thought decayed.)

The irony for the ICC is of course that their organisation is itself a scrap of dead Marxism.
Do we need objective criteria to be sure?

John
You may find our articles Profit rates and decadence [url=http://en.internationalism.org/ir/128/cwo-falling-rate-of-profit]
answers the questions that you pose. It is not a question of posing the rate of profit against the saturation of the market but of seeing the relationship between the two. Let us know what you think.

That would be soooo fucking cool. Weeee arrrrr chunk whizzz 'robot fetch me a latte' chunk kerrrrr whizzz chunk gerrrrrunnnnnn 'yes master' weeee grun tititititititit beep duduluup zum 'here is your latte master', 'cheers robot, ahhh socailism kicks ass'.

Who's "us"?

To add a couple points to the replies to Joseph K's points

and

Clearly very many people oppose capitalism without agreeing with the theory of decadence. It is also right that many leftists want to overthrow capitalism. However, the central question is why does it need to be overthrown. For the leftists, whilst saying capitalism needs to be overthrown and they may even talk about the decay of capitalism, but in the end they will also talk about the need to defend the unions, national liberation, the positive nature of nationalisation etc, i.e., that it is possible to reform or improve capitalism. Amongst the libertarian communists -well so far in this discussion and others- there is strong rejection of this reformism but based on the idea that capitalism has always been in conflict with our interests and along with this is there is a strong tendency -as seen on this thread- to see capitalism going on and on. For Marxists capitalism is a historical system with an ascendency and a decadence. In its ascendency s a social system it ripped humanity out of feudalism and other social system and brought the planet under the domination of one social system and developed the forces and means of production to enable abundance, and the taking of humanity to another stage: communism. The ascendant stage was not picnic for humanity, especially the working class but it went from being a social class enduring terrible conditions, with little organisation and understanding of its own potential, mainly in Britain and France, to being an international class that was able to shake the foundations of capitalism during the revolutionary wave. Had the international revolutionary proletariat overthrown capitalism it would have been able to free the potential contained within itself and the means of production, It could not have done so in the 1840's or even the 1890's, but by the 1900 capitalism had established itself in all of the main capitalist country and thus an international proletariat existed.
A central question to this whole discussion is why did the revolution happen in 1917-1926 and not before, what had changed? The world war, caused by the division of the world market between the major powers, market an historical turning point. It confirmed to millions of workers what the Socialists had been saying about the growing threat of imperialism before the war and that the war meant that the proletariat faced one choice socialism or barbarism (as alf explained above). This was confirmed by stark reality.
The defeat of the revolutionary wave left the accelerating contradictions of capitalism full play: the depression of the 1929 and the following depression -if I remember correctly those rejecting or questioning decadence theory on this thread have not addressed the question of the significance of this economic earthquake-, the slaughter of WW2 due to imperialisms barbaric re-division of the world market. I shall not go on because lurch's above post on this question develops all the main points.
It is important to acknowledge the criticism raised by some of a tendency to not deal with the subjective factor in relation to the discussion on decadence. If at times we do not give enough weight to this aspect it is a weakness. It is important to draw out the dynamic inter-play of the objective and subjective forces.
This subject factor is crucial to the future of humanity. As Jaycee posed at the beginning of this thread capitalism has reached a stage where it sinking humanity further and further into barbarity at the imperialist, ecological and economic level. Whilst some on this thread appear to have a very optimistic view of capitalism being able to go on and one, within the working class there is a growing sense that capitalism has less and less to offer. This subjective feeling is of the greatest importance to the future overthrow of capitalism, because out of this questioning and uneasy will come the consciousness that not only does capitalism have nothing to offer but that the proletariat has an alternative. The development of this class consciousness is the crucial question for the future of humanity. For the ICC this questioning is the expression of the proletariat's gut feeling of the stakes contained in the present period and it is the responsibility of revolutionaries to contribute to this gut feeling to becoming ever more conscious through showing that this linking this developing subjective factor as clearly as possible to the objective factor: the barbaric decomposition of capitalism.

not sure if right thread (need more paragraphs ernie :mad:)

but, i think develop is the wrong word. it makes it sound like society can only head in one driection, never regress (-what's the opposite of develop?). i think mature is the right word, as it highlights that the model is not some organism, but an individual.

Is a really bad tautology.

It wasn't established in China or India, or even Russia for that matter, all of which became "main capitalist countries" afte 1900, and with very, very large populations then as well as now. So neither had it established itself in all the major capitalist countries by that period (although it was established in the countries it was established in), nor was the proletariat truly international.

Joseph K , the above does not make a point that it was meant to, I wanted to include a reference to Marx's Speech at the Anniversary of the People's Paper (I cannot link to marxists,org, for some reason) which explains very clearly the contradictory nature of the development of capitalism. Sometimes when we talk about ascendency on here we can be a bit too broad. Nevertheless, we do attempt to underline that Luxemburg, underlined that capitalism emerged dripping blood and gore from every pour. Hopefully, the above Speech will help clarify what we are trying to say

i think it's about truth. i'm playing at revolutionaries on turboisland atm, and want x or y to happen (don't ask) because what i can learn. i see that as crucial: the workig class siezing themselves or whatever has got to be a subjective need to see or grasp the truth. maybe that's what i think decadence is: a greater and greater masking of the truth. in which case, surely the weakness/disunity/etc. of the proletariat, their mystifictaion my 21st century capital's ideology, is not a fatal failure. it is undermined by it's very existence!

It is possible of course to hold to some view of marxist decadence theory without basing it on the flawed economic theories or Rosa Luxemburg.

Apart from the approach of the IBRP there are of course my favorite Ex ICC group :

http://internationalist-perspective.org/IP/ip-archive/ip_42_how-capitalism-changed.html

I have to post that again as this discussion keeps switching threads and I don't think all the same comrades are switching with them.

I would add however, that I think it is also possible to avoid decadence theory alltogether (at least in the forms elaborated by left communists) and still utilise Marx's theories to explain some of the critical, historic structural changes in capitalism, and come up with a similar political programme to other internationalist pro revolutionary communists on issues such as the trade unions, national liberation, the state, reformism etc. That is to recognise the changes in, and the dangers which modern capitalism threatens, but not to describe these in terms of some inherent tendency to 'decline' but rather as a progression, resulting from the interplay of the class struggle and the competitive struggle between different capitals. This may open up new possibilities for revolutionary struggle but it also closes off others from the past. I would still have to acknowledge that a secure and stable communist society would be unlikely in the absence of the global material conditions, which in practice capitalism has continued to provide. In pre-capitalist and early capitalist society any potentially pro communist revolt would inevitably be isolated and eventually undermined. In this sense it is possible to talk about capitalism preparing conditions favourable to communist revolution, but it is a long drawn out process that it seems to me is continuing even now (in a geographically uneven way). Circa 1914 is a significant watershed (particularly in Europe) but their have been others since and may be more to come before capitalism is destroyed.

Also, as previously posted, the old article from Ron Rothbart comparing Matticks and Zeroworks approach to, Economic 'Law' and class struggle us useful:

http://geocities.com/cordobakaf/rothbart.html