Capitalism's rate of decay ( Communication)

[Christian Gregory]

>
> Of course, the analogy was invoked mostly as a corrective to Doug's
> open-ended skepticism.  If capitalism is a historical system, like
> feudalism, with a beginning and an end, it should follow at at some point,
> the system "passes its zenith", so to speak.  What that point is, though,
> is certainly open to debate.  The (highly abstract) criterion deployed
here
> is that in which capital attains a scale and scope of development to the
> point where capital itself becomes its own "greatest  barrier" to its
> further development, whereupon there ensues the process of its own
> "self-abolition".

Brad defined that moment, paraphrasing Mandel, as taking shape in the
postwar world. Marx (and Althusser) said that the industrial revolution is
actually more like it--ie labor does not own or set in motion the means of
production (in a mundane sense) at this point. Open-ended skepticism is
probably to the point in this circumstance. (ie. an empirical argument about
when capital really became capital). Else, you're left with a kind of hollow
messiansism a la' Derrida--ie the end of capitalism is "to come" but you
don't know when, etc.  Of course, there are also lots of practical
messianisms at play here also, but with huge swathes of India and Africa (to
take two non-random examples) yet un- or under-proletarianized, it's hard to
see how capital might have reached its zenith or to be significantly more at
risk as a system now than, say, 30 or 40 years ago.

Christian