The Logic of Marx

Image: Der Zauberlehrling (The Sorceror's Apprentice), 44″x36″ oil on canvas, By Margot Serowy. Marx thought capitalism was a case of the sorceror losing control of the forces they has called up with their spells.

Marx predicts that capitalism will destroy itself, leading to a flourishing capital-less class-less society where 'the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all'. His logic for why this is inevitable is as follows.

 First, it is in the nature of capital to accumulate. But as it accumulates, there is overproduction and it becomes unstable, leading to recession and crisis. The antidote to this is to expand into yet more markets, becoming bigger still and yet more unstable. This gigantic means of production, conjured up by rampant capital accumulation, is what Marx calls, 'the weapon' that signals the demise of the capital owning bourgeoisie.

 But it is not enough to have a weapon, you need someone to shoot it. Thus, the second, condition for capitalism to perish is the existence of a revolutionary class, namely the capital deprived working class proletariat. And it so happens that the very existence of this class is guaranteed by the inexorable growth of capital.

 In particular, as capital accumulates, it homogenises workers and causes them to associate, solidarity and shared interests are created and a unified political force comes to be. Capital accumulation also guarantees the revolutionary nature of this new class. As capital grows it becomes more concentrated, pushing more and more bourgeoisie into the ranks of the proletariat, and pushing those already in the proletariat further down still. Stripped of their assets and lacking a stake in their country's future, the proletariat are excluded from politics and revolution becomes the only route left to them to escape their brutal circumstance.

 The existence of both the weapon and the agent is thus written into the very nature of capital. The bourgeoisie 'produces its own gravediggers'. But given this stark prediction, the obvious question is how capitalism somehow survives.

Marx's take was that you needed capital to have accumulated enough to create a sufficiently powerful and mature working class. In the French Revolution for example, though communist elements did exist (he refers to Baboeuf, famous for his Conspiracy of Equals), the revolution was rather one of the bourgeoisie overthrowing the feudal system as represented by the aristocracy. The values it promoted, of equality before the law and property rights, were ones that furthered the logic of the market and bourgeois class interests rather than those of the working class.

Today we would be hard-pressed to claim that the necessary level of capital accumulation has still not been achieved. Rather, Marxist thinkers like Gramsci and Marcuse have offered explanations centred on ideology and false or contradictory consciousness, a state of mind that precludes the proletariat from recognising its revolutionary role and the possibility of an alternative society.

The rise of 'human' capital has no doubt also played a part. A large part of productivity is now created by individual skill rather than sophisticated machinery. Through education, training and experience workers have become 'human' capitalists. This has not only broken Marx's link between capital growth and worker homogenisation and association, but has also equipped a large proportion of the work force with (their own) capital, enfranchising them politically and making societal upheaval an altogether less attractive prospect.