Will Barnes

The Working Class, World Capitalism and Crisis: A General Perspective

Republic Windows & Doors factory occupation

The following remarks by Will Barnes constitute a more or less coherent reflection the larger part of which has been developed by the author over three years [when written in 2009]. Some aspects of what follows are eminently warranted, and easily justified; others would be far more difficult to convincingly defend. None of it is unassailable.1

1. I have drawn heavily on two discussion I have recently penned, “Imperialism, Recreation of the Conditions for and the Drift toward World War” as it appears in Nature, Capital, Communism and “Could Antarctica Melt? Revolution Imagined. Three Scenarios.” [at these texts available at: http://intcssc.wordpress.com/]

Part I
Forms of the Contemporary Class Relation with the United States

Capitalism and productivism in Lyn Marcus' dialectical economics

The following remarks will examine the analysis of capitalism in Lyn Marcus' Dialectical Economics. The basic categories of Marcus' analysis (“negentropy,” “expanded reproduction”) permit him to identify economically irrational features of capitalist development that are amendable to radical reform. This reform involves markedly increased efficiency and productivity. For Marcus, this reform would greatly lessen the instability of capitalism, ameliorating crises. The reform leads to a capitalism without capitalists based on central planning.

Lyn Marcus is better known by his birth name, Lyndon LaRouche. His major work, Dialectical Economics though published in 1975 was basically completed about 1970.