The Fall of US Capitalism and the Victory of Socialism, Part I
Understanding the Historical Necessity of Revolutionary Change
Dialectical materialism teaches us that anything that is born will inevitably die. Anything that is created will eventually be destroyed. Materialism means that everything that exists, exists as part of the measurable, material world.
Dialectics is the study of change. It is the study of birth, growth, and death. When an object, organism, or system grows to maturity, it begins to decay. All observable phenomena, from stars and planets to plants and animals to political and economic systems, follow this pattern.
Capitalism is no different. All economic systems are finite. They are brought into being and when they no longer serve the needs of society, they are dismantled.
The economic system of any human society is based on the relations of production. Humans need to produce things (food, shelter, etc.) in order to survive. As a cooperative species, humans naturally enter into relationships with other humans to produce the materials they need. Taken collectively, the specific relations of production of any given period determine the nature of the economic system, i.e. the mode of production.
However, as productive forces develop, the relations of production change with them, which in turn changes the economic system itself. The act of production leads to experimentation, specialization, and advancement. The established relations of production which humans enter into may lead to new, more productive methods and technologies that are incompatible with the established relations of production. Societies are then faced with a choice; in order to benefit from new advancements, they must enter into new relations of production which collectively will destroy the old mode of production.
Before capitalism
The economic mode of production known as capitalism emerged in Europe while a different mode of production - feudalism - was dominant. European feudalism in turn emerged from the productive forces of late antiquity. Tools and methods such as the domestication of animals and the use of the plow led to a mode of production wherein peasants lived in near-slavery, turning over a portion of the surplus they produced to the landowning aristocracy.
In addition to the relations of production between serfs and landowners, which formed the economic base of feudalism, there also arose a political, religious, and cultural superstructure within European society. This superstructure developed because it reinforced the feudal economic system—and was in turn reinforced by it. For example, landowners had the right to the surplus produced by serfs because it was believed that landowners were given their position by god, and god was infallible.
In spite of the cyclically reinforcing nature of the base and superstructure, capitalism emerged within the feudal system due to advances in society’s productive forces and the resulting changes to the relations of production.
Capitalism
The European merchant class was enriched through the trade of commodities like slaves and gold. But trade is unpredictable. It requires someone else to produce or provide commodities, and it requires favorable market conditions allowing the merchant to buy low and sell high. By using the surplus they gained through trade, the wealthiest merchants began hiring workers. This allowed them to directly produce commodities, securing a reliable supply of products to bring to market. It also allowed them to take a portion of the value produced by their workers as profit and reinvest it as capital for further production.
The production of commodities through hired labor incentivized early merchant-capitalists to increase their profits by increasing production. This was done through the division of labor and the development of machinery (e.g. steam power) which increased the productive power of the individual laborer.
The resulting surge in the productive forces led to the capitalist economy growing to the point that it challenged the feudal economy. The European monarchs, though eager to profit from capitalist industry, nevertheless placed legal restrictions on commodity production and exchange so as to maintain political control over the economic system. The productive forces of emergent capitalism were shackled.
In response to the restriction of the productive forces, the emerging capitalist class launched the revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, weakening the European aristocracy’s hold over the economic and political system.
Imperialism (Finance Capital)
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, capitalism reached its maturation. Industries concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer capitalists until monopolies formed. Industrial monopolies, reliant on banks for capital when expanding production, in turn fell under the control of the banks who used the revenue from interest payments to buy greater and greater portions of industry stock. Under the direction of the financial industry, surplus value accumulated to the degree that it could no longer be domestically reinvested into new cycles of production. The financial powers of Europe and North America, having control of their respective industries and states, set out to divide the world and export capital to their colonies, allowing for continuing cycles of production. The resulting struggle climaxed in the two world wars.
At the end of WWII, the European imperialists were weakened and transformed into vassals of the United States – the lone remaining imperial finance capitalists. In opposition were the socialist states, and to one degree or another, the newly independent former colonies of the global south.
Maturation of the Productive Forces
The twentieth century also saw the growing contradiction between the productive forces of society and the politically-imposed mode of production.
Advances in agricultural machinery have allowed the grain producing nations to harvest more grain than is required to feed the global population. Total energy production is beyond what is required for global electrification. Other commodities and essential services — clothing, housing, medicines, public transportation — are at or could easily reach levels which would satisfy the global population as well.
Why then is there hunger, homelessness, and death by preventable disease? As was the case in the waning days of feudalism, the politically-imposed mode of production shackles and restricts the growth of society’s productive forces.
Under capitalism, the distribution of commodities exists in the service of capital accumulation and turnover. Grain is harvested to meet the demand of buyers on the market, not the total demand of the population. If grain is harvested in excess of market demand, the excess will be destroyed or warehoused, even if there is additional demand from the population. The same is true for medicine, housing, and clothing.
Likewise, new production is determined by whether or not it will increase the turnover of capital. High speed rail requires an extended period of investment before the increase in development would create value for finance capital. Therefore, these projects are deferred or never undertaken.
The only means to resolve these contradictions and liberate the productive forces is to liberate the proletariat itself.
The Proletariat
The proletariat is brought into being by capital. Through the enclosure of agricultural land, the squeezing out of small commodity producers, the automation of professional medical and legal services, and the privatization of government functions (resulting in mass layoffs), both agricultural workers and the petit bourgeoisie are thrust into the proletariat, sometimes gradually, sometimes in a great surge.
In order to increase their share of surplus value, the bourgeoisie always try to increase the rate of exploitation. This is done by increasing the amount of unpaid labor time, reducing wages, or both. The result is the increasing immiseration of the proletariat.
The immiseration of the proletariat leads to numerous social ills and increasing contradictions. However, because the contradiction between the desires of capital and the basic survival needs of labor is sharpened, class consciousness begins to develop by leaps and bounds.
The emergence of class consciousness leads to the spontaneous drive by workers to combine into unions and other organizations. These organizations represent the initial prototype for the mass workers organizations which must inevitably form the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In the US there has been a recent resurgence in worker mobilization. There were 466 strikes in 2023 alone, involving at least 450,000 workers.
The proletarianization of the masses also trains workers in the management of industrial society. The proletariat learns how to operate machinery, factories, and the instruments of commerce. The working class, as it grows and the economy develops, has learned how to operate the means of production and does so on a daily basis.
Understood this way, the question of how the proletariat will seize the means of production becomes self-evident. Liberation comes when the proletariat grasps that which they already hold.
The Party
Will spontaneous organization lead to revolution? No, it will not and can not. The practice of spontaneous organization, as well as the larger union movement which emerges therefrom, schools the worker in cooperative action towards the achievement of economic goals. It is the practice of redividing the surplus value resultant from working class labor. But a redivision of surplus between capital and labor is only a temporizing measure. It does not resolve the fundamental contradiction between the classes and will not stave off the increasing exploitation which the capital cycle inevitably produces.
Moreover, spontaneous organizations can not steel themselves against attacks from the bourgeoisie, whether ideological or physical. The bourgeoisie uses every means available to infiltrate the spontaneous movement from within and crush it from without.
In order to resolve the primary class contradiction, the proletariat must develop beyond an economist class consciousness. They must develop a political class consciousness, leading to a revolutionary consciousness.
A political consciousness entails an understanding of the political superstructure of US society and the way that it reinforces the economic base. The proletariat must understand that the state — police, prisons, courts, jails, and the military — exists to defend the relations of production under capitalism. They must understand that the elected political class serve as managers of the economy under the direction of the capitalist ruling class. They must understand that the laws governing property ownership under capitalism are unique to one historical period and that these laws only exist so long as they are violently enforced by the state.
Understanding the relationship between the economic base and political superstructure and the irreconcilability of the contradiction between labor and capital is political class consciousness. Understanding that capitalism is a distinct and finite historical phenomenon — a mode of production which has risen and must inevitably fall —and that the proletariat has both the method and means to initiate this fall is revolutionary consciousness.
However, the day to day practice of the proletariat will not uncover this information. If a person works in a factory or a retail store every day for their entire life, none of the work that they do will lead to the discovery of the historical development of the capitalist mode of production. In their work they do not conduct the experiments which would lead to this knowledge. An understanding of historical materialism and political economy can only come from a scientific analysis of philosophy, history, and the conditions of the working class. This is precisely the study in which the cadre of a dedicated communist party are engaged.
Our task as communist revolutionaries is to put our theoretical study into political practice. By engaging in agitation and organization amongst the members of the working class, we develop within the proletariat a revolutionary class consciousness. The political leadership of a communist party dispels the confusing falsehoods spread by the bourgeoisie, explains the irreconcilability of class contradictions, and clarifies the path toward revolution.
The political leadership of a communist party forges the working class into durable organizations, defeating the worship of spontaneity and its consequent vulnerabilities.
Revolution
Having established that capitalism is a finite mode of production, that the productive forces of society have outpaced the legally imposed relations of production, and that the proletariat already has a grip on the means of production, all that remains is to establish a course of action.
To engage in revolutionary struggle – that is, to seize the means of production – is to set about building the dictatorship of the proletariat in a deliberate, step-by-step process.
The dictatorship of the proletariat does not spring into being on the day after a revolutionary contest is won and the old regime is defeated. It would be too late to construct a mechanism for working class rule at such a point in time as the defeated bourgeoisie would be preparing a vicious counterattack.
Moreover, it is the construction of the dictatorship of the proletariat which in fact causes the destruction of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
The physical form of the dictatorship of the proletariat is simply the unity and centralization of all revolutionary worker organizations. These organizations are united and mobilized towards the seizure of the means of production, the management of the economy, and the liquidation of the bourgeoisie.
The step-by-step development of the dictatorship of the proletariat entails cadre entering into every workplace where the proletariat has collected in significant numbers. There, cadre must form organizations where none exist and radicalize those that already do.
The leadership of the communist party enables cadre to do this systematically, seeking out the most active workers in the most populated locations and bringing forward the interests of the nationally oppressed – particularly the Black proletariat.
Because capitalism in the US produces white supremacy, and white supremacy in turn strengthens capitalism in the US, a communist party with a correct analysis of conditions seeks to construct a multinational working class movement with oppressed nationalities as its vanguard.
A multinational proletarian movement stands as the inverse of US capitalist white supremacy, opposing the reaction politically and depriving it of sustenance economically.
With a vanguard formed around the Black working class, a multinational proletarian movement, and revolutionary workers organizations developing in all major population centers, the power of the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot but grow.
Leading such a movement, cadre must unite all workers organizations into larger workers councils and win the workers councils to the leadership of the communist party.
This centralization and politicization of the proletarian movement is what will enable the working class to engage in revolutionary struggle – to mobilize strikes and further offensives on the bourgeoisie’s economic control.
Likewise, as it makes inroads against the bourgeoisie’s control over the means of production, the dictatorship of the proletariat – the union of workers councils – will have to sustain itself. It will have to engage in its own production so that, over time, it can serve the needs of the working class. This is why the construction of socialism begins before the liquidation of capitalism has been finalized and why the construction of the dictatorship of the proletariat is simultaneously the destruction of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
Conclusion
Understanding the historical development of capitalism and the dialectics of revolution, what do we say to those alleged Marxists who claim that revolution in the US is not possible – or relegated to so distant a future as to be inconsequential? It is often difficult to form a rebuttal when faced with awe-inspiring ignorance. If these nihilist, self-flagellating Marixists are open to reason, we must educate them. If they are not, we must insist that they stand aside and not impede the revolution lest they serve the interests of the reaction. Our path is clear, our methods are tested, and our motivation is the liberation of the exploited and the destruction of the greatest apparatus of death and suffering known to history.