Valorisation of capital by means of destruction of a large swath of capital and a portion of the labour force

Submitted by westartfromhere on March 3, 2024

darren p wrote:

Put simply, these material interests are to lower the cost to capital of employing labour power. If this means decimating a portion of the labour force, so be it. If needs be, destruction of the housing stock aids the same interests.

Please explain how the levelling of Gaza "lowers the cost of employing labour power".

Karl Marx wrote:

Hence the highest development of productive power together with the greatest expansion of existing wealth will coincide with depreciation of capital, degradation of the labourer, and a most straitened exhaustion of his vital powers. These contradictions lead to explosions, cataclysms, crises, in which by momentaneous suspension of labour and annihilation of a great portion of capital the latter is violently reduced to the point where it can go on.

GROUND-PLAN, "THIRD SECTION. CAPITAL AS FRUCTIFEROUS. INTEREST. PROFIT. (PRODUCTION COSTS ETC.)"

westartfromhere

1 month 3 weeks ago

Submitted by westartfromhere on March 3, 2024

The general rules of capital apply to each particular without exception.

darren p

1 month 3 weeks ago

Submitted by darren p on March 3, 2024

I going to throw it out there that if you cannot explain something in your own words you have no understanding if it. How is that Marx copypasta an explanation of how the destruction of Gaza and it's population "lowers the cost of hiring labour power". What is the mechanism?

You also mentioned "the processes by which capital valorises itself by means of destruction". Care to explain?

westartfromhere

1 month 3 weeks ago

Submitted by westartfromhere on March 3, 2024

You wish to know what mechanisms capital adopts to achieve the momentary suspension of labour and the processes capital uses to destroy itself?

These are many and varied but to keep it simple, in the 1970's in the UK capital imposed a three day week, suspending labour on the other four days of the week; more recently, capital imposed a suspension of labour by declaring a Pandemic, which meant that a large portion of the working class were no longer able to work. The most blatant form of annihilation of capital is by means of weapons of destruction used in warfare, e.g. in Somalia, in Yemen, in Palestine, Ukraine.... A knock on effect of wars is the suspension of labour by the working class of the regions effected.

You are correct in your presumption that I do not know the inner works and reasons behind these inner workings and "reasonings" of capital, just as I don't know, nor could explain to you, why the Earth circles around the Sun. Thankfully, Marx and Galilei do know, and by their work we have protection against the mysticism prevailing over heavenly and Earthly matters.