An entire generation -- those who are presently in charge -- has grown up thinking that the Unholy Trinity -- Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek and Ayn Rand -- understood how society should be organized. But Giles Fraser argues that the next generation -- the millennials -- are dusting off their copies of Das Kapital, and that Karl Marx is back. Marx argued that capitalism was based on superstition and magical thinking:
In the first chapters of Das Kapital, Marx explains how money makes money – or how, in the words of Matthew’s Gospel, “to everyone who has, more shall be given … but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away”. Those with money are able to own the means of production and the labour needed to operate it. Throughout the whole cycle of making things and selling them on, the capitalist creates more money for themselves by getting employees to work longer and longer hours. This extra labour creates surplus value that results in profits for the capitalist.
Profit here is intrinsically exploitative – it does not exist without the extra hours worked by the capitalist’s employees. This is the source of the capitalist’s wealth, and when it is reinvested to capture an even greater share of the means of production and employ more workers, it grows off itself. Thus more and more is owned by fewer and fewer people. And money makes money, as if by magic.
Globalism has proven that Marx was, essentially, right:
The magical quality of our faith in money and in economic growth is a deliberate mystification of the social exploitation that the capitalist – understandably – wants to cover up. And “we draw the magic cap down over eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters,” as Marx put it in the preface to Das Kapital.
All of this becomes more and more obvious as global capital seeks new and ever more ingenious forms of concentration. The generation who learned their politics through the Occupy movement have had the scales fall from their eyes. Since then the 1% has become the 0.1%. And the magic cap is beginning to slip.
The kids are refusing to wear the hats they were given. They're making their way in the world bareheaded.
Image: mixedapples.co.za
6 comments:
We can be sure, however, that the old guard will fight tooth and nail as they strive to forestall the inevitable, Owen. Only when we get a new, younger and less compromised political class will a new model prevail.
I agree, Lorne. The present generation of movers and shakers will not go gently into that good night.
Communism has never been tried. To succeed it will need Star Trek strong institutions and trust. Something to consider in capitalist capital Hong Kong, you cant own property. Its all 99 year leases.
It's true, Steve, that Lenin's and Stalin's versions of communism were not exactly what Marx had in mind.
In 2011, economist Nouriel Roubini, the guy credited with first sounding the alarm before the 2007-8 Great Recession, gave an interview in which he said Marx was basically right.
http://the-mound-of-sound.blogspot.ca/2011/08/is-capitalism-self-destructing-was-karl.html
A blast from the past, Mound. As you point out, Roubini was not alone. Krugman and Stiglitz foresaw what Roubini saw. But use the word "communism" and the blinders go up.
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