Written by Jock Dominie. £12, 276pp.
The Russian Revolution remains a landmark event in history. For the bourgeois historians, the October Revolution is thought to be a tragedy that set back the achievements of the “democratic” February Revolution, and allowed the Bolsheviks to wreak havoc on their citizens and the world. For the Stalinists, the events of 1917 paved the way for the birth of the USSR, which they point to as a prototypical example of “socialism in one country”. In reality, the February and October Revolutions were both part of the same proletarian revolution.
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Without going back to look at everything that is written on this (perhaps other, more methodical, comrades will be doing it but that would mean you will probably have to wait for a response) I would just offer these few initial thoughts.
Sorry, but what do the
Sorry, but what do the letters FROP stand for ?
Falling rate of profit.
Falling rate of profit.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Once capitalism has created
Once capitalism has created the material base from which socialism can be constructed, its further existance is an obstacle to that potential higher form,
This does not mean it cannot continue to generate an ever more immense accumulation of commodities, but another process kicks in - the tendential rate in the decline in the use value of commodities.
Ever more useless production geared up to satisfy the pseudo needs of the masses under capitalist conditions of isolation and powerlessness, an abundance of alienated production and consumption for many, if not all.
The penury remains, the essential misery of the proletarian condition, but for many it is no longer a question of survival, of existing, food, shelter, clothing.
It is a question of a pointless alienated experience, working and buying, not able to step off the treadmill of production and consumption that has gone beyond survival.
No doubt a much rawer level of primary poverty exists and spreads, but this is arguably not the prime experience of the proletariat of the advanced metropoles.
it may be the case that revolution does not break out before generalised pauperisation. This seems to be the thrust of the Communist Manifesto.
But are we then discounting the possibility of revolution throughout the sixties, seventies, eighties?
A society moulded in the interest of profiteering may not threaten us with death by hunger before we revolt.
Does anyone here have any
Does anyone here have any statistical data that may concretize whether the cost of new investements is decreasing more or less quickly than the rate of profit?
Arkady
Arkady
The best places to look are economic blogs like Michael Roberts or Carchedi (even if we don't agree with their social democratic politics) as they spend time digging this stuff out. Given the level of interest rates I think they answer is fairly obvious but the problem for them is that even at these historically low rates there is little new investment (hence the so-called "productivity problem"), Generating revenue rather than creating new value is where we are at in the crisis.