The Doctrine of Inevitability

[Mark Jones]

Dennis R Redmond wrote:
> it's likelier than not that the
> ultimate result of the Bubble Bust will be rockbottom interest rates
> worldwide -- just the thing to spark off another long boom#

If there is another long boom, it will only be after a substantial
write-down of existing capital. Much of the investment mania of the past
few years has created production lines in consumer goods, automobiles
etc which are certain to be obsoleted before they pay back. But the
disincentives to new investment will be very strong. So the coming slump
is likely to be as protracted as the 1930s, which rearming not
demand-stimulation put an end to. The whole technical-productive basis
of contemporary capitalism is going to be written off and an entirely
new technical/social division of labour/accumulation regime will have to
be created or emerge, requiring a total overhauling/recomposition/
reskilling of the working class, as of the
whole international framework, the parastatal and supranational
institutuons: ie, deconstruction/reconstruction of both forces and
relations of production. The role and functioning of US imperialism is
bound to be a principal target of this interrogation by history of all
that exists: but this is happening exactly at the moment when world
capitalism needs the US to carry out its task of global policeman and
hegemon with superhuman efficacy. So this is a gigantic contradiction
and drain of the system's resources and capacity for self-renewal.

The first half of the 20th century was all about the transition from the
Pax Britannica to the Pax Americana, and world capitalism only
accomplished this with great difficulty, at the price of two world wars
and via  a wave of national liberation and anti-colonial struggles, not
to speak of 1917. One is entitled to wonder how capitalism is going to
manage matters this time, considering that (a) unless Martian
imperialism is about to be invoked, there is no obvious successor to US
hegemony the way there was to British hegemony and (b) the risks
inherent in war-fighting now totally outweigh any presumed benefits war has
as a way of clearing the decks.

One more thing: if you read Lenin's 1916 'Imperialism the Highest Stage
of Capitalism' a striking thing is his depiction of contemporary world
capitalism as coal-fired, steam powered, steel-working, railway-driven.
That was the British variant of world capitalism. To supersede it required
more than money, it needed technological renewal and the refounding of 
accumulation under a new regime.

What really fuelled the US drive to supremacy was the availability of an
entirely new technical/social basis which had *already been nurtured*
in the womb of the system: Taylorism, Fordism, petrochemicals,
electronics, informatics, autombiles. This was the material basis
of the very powerful upswing which actually was still only barely
able to ensure the survival of world capitalism; and the co-
guarantor of global production relations which US-led imperialism
needed was the so-called socialist world, a fact which testifies
to the parasitism of late imperialism.

Where is the wave of the future being harboured in today's capitalism?
Anwar Shaikh and Manuel Castells are I suppose the principal leftish
spokespersons for the cybernetted, info-driven virtualised,
dematerialised wave of 21st C capitalism. Their schemas are highly
quiestionable IMHO. And even if you add the privatisation 
of the DNA commons into the mix, I still don't quite see
where the huge synergies are, where is the cheap, versatile energy
source to replace hydrocarbons, where are the new production
technologies? Nanotechnology? Off-world exploration?

I wonder.

Mark
-- 
http://www.geocities.com/~comparty