by  M

Notes on Shifting Focus

• • One big question right away is who is this directed to? Is it actually answering any ones questions? It seems to be directed towards revisionist Marxists in the “labor” movement mainly. Are they fertile ground?
• • The initial tone of this paper, while this may not have been the intent, is relatively dismissive of the problem of fascism. It essentially comes off as, “So what, it is just another form of capitalism, we already live in one form of capitalism, so not that big a deal.” It puts forward the idea that worrying about fascism is a privilege of the liberal elite, because the rest of the world lives in a near fascistic situation. It is almost like trying to guilt trip people into not worrying about how to defeat fascism.
• • “Fascism is one of the many variants of governance in the capitalist-world system. It cannot be fought with the tools supplied by other forms of capitalist rule.” Well… unless you want to say that Britain and the US played no role in defeating Nazi Germany then this is not quite true. It is true that the Soviet Union played the critical role but still….
• • I take issue with the phrase “capitalism has adapted its governance functions based on its need to secure natural resources, confront rivals and effectively and efficiently manage and control labor”. Capitalism is an anarchistic and generally extremely dynamic and constantly developing method of production and set of production relations. Nobody is in control of capitalism. This is a key point. Capitalism itself doesn’t “adapt” to anything. The upper classes and the state that serves their interest are constantly having to scramble to keep up with a changing dynamic, they are the ones that have to “adapt” to be able to stay on top of the situation. While it is true that capitalists are capital personified, that doesn’t mean that they are in control of capitalism. Quite the opposite, they are the conscious expression of the anarchy of capitalism. Today the two most important emergent problems and challenges this constant development and anarchistic transformation of capitalism presents to the state and those it serves are the digital revolution and the climate crisis. These two elements, together with, and embedded in, the expansion of capitalist production and production relations to virtually every section of the globe and problems that go along with that, constitute the “crisis” that we are now witnessing (this is different that the paper’s description of the 4 “systemic contradictions”, i.e. roots of the crisis). There are multiple aspects to these problems that pose grave difficulties that the state and those it serves do not have ready-made answers for. They cannot rely on past practice to resolve these difficulties. Additionally the speed of the development of these problems is intensifying, the urgent need for new answers and is leading to massive conflict among these forces, both in the US and elsewhere.

• The digital and technological revolution (comparable in its transformative power to the industrial revolution) is taking place in the context of the anarchic development of capitalism. Nobody planned for this to happen. It just did. While it has enabled massive and profitable transformation in almost all industries and modes of production, is also an Achilles heel, enabling new forms of crime, creating new currencies out of the control of individual states, producing major new problems in waging warfare, creating the specter of global economic chaos, allowing the uncontrolled spread of information that can be disruptive to social relations, dislocating traditional jobs and social relations (think online dating), it has enabled the adoption of “just in time” production which has made economies vulnerable to massive supply chain issues during the pandemic…….. the list goes on and on.

The climate crisis, a direct result of the expansion and development of capitalism globally, while anticipated for over 50 years has finally arrived. Again, nobody planned for this to happen. It just did. This is creating problems for which at the moment no true solutions exist, given an anarchistic capitalist world economy, because solutions require cooperation in a fiercely competitive environment. Uncontrollable damage due to storms and fires, social dislocation and upheaval internally within countries and globally between countries as waves of climate refugees join those dislocated by war and poverty, stresses on infrastructure such as roads, dams and bridges, power grids, the specter of growing alarm among the human population about the fate of the species……… the list goes on and on.

The digital revolution and technological revolution, and the climate crisis, together, exist in the context of what has been a massive transformation of the global economy since WWII, which has become much more integrated (globalization), much more vulnerable to breakdowns, and has changed the position of multiple countries in relationship to each other. For example the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), these are countries whose economies have grown markedly, especially very recently, to the point where they are no longer a major source of profitable investment for the West. One of the BRICS, China has become so powerful that it is seen as a major challenge to the dominance of Western capital, particularly the US. Its loose alliance with Russia is creating a major threat to world stability. The globalized penetration of Western imperialist capital in many places in the world has had the ironic effect of developing capitalism locally to the point where many governments in the world can pursue the goals of their home grown ruling class to an extent not possible when more directly dependent on Western overlords in the past. The chessboard has become much more complex. The digital revolution creates problems in the nature of competition between capitalists and the state that enables them in the context of the global economy. It requires massive amounts of new rules and regulations in situations where the technology is not well understood by most of the rule makers, and conflicts abound. It requires all new

infrastructure. It especially complicates the ability to resolve things by force, the traditional extension of political/economic/state to state conflict. The fact that China has the most rare earth minerals in the world, those required for modern day technology, and the fact that it has a claim on Taiwan, the worlds center of chip making, in the past decade, has shifted global power relations enormously and unfavorably to the West.

The climate crisis is in essence a global game of capitalist chicken. Who will blink first and to do things that actually try to change the climate trajectory v.s. who will push right ahead to “win” the economic competition. Unfortunately the law of capitalism, compete or die, does not allow for much blinking. The potential for impending disaster to raise mass resistance is balanced against the logic of accumulation of profit.

• • I agree with the concept that capitalism has reached it earthly geographic expansion.
• • I don’t find the World Systems Theory particularly helpful. The three worlds theory with different categories. The debate become “What category is Brazil in?”
• • I don’t think this paper proves that the tendency for the rate of profit to fall is currently creating this particular crisis of capitalism. The production of surplus value through the production of commodities comes from labor, and it is true that technology reduces the amount of socially necessary labor time in some industries. Certainly true when you have a “smart” machine that replaces a worker. So looked at from an “industrial” perspective that would mean the rate of profit is likely taking a tumble. But how about the labor that goes into writing the program? The computer a person works on transfers just a small fraction of the total value that is produced. Call centers, data mining, software creation and trouble shooting, networking, game creation, there is a massive amount of code writing, and rewriting. Website development, social media production, etc. etc. Most of that is human labor. It is a very new section of the economy where huge profits are made more or less directly off human labor. The U.S. tech market accounts for 35% of the total world market. The U.S. tech industry is expected to grow by 6% in 2022 and accounts for 10.5% of GDP. While the US has a lot of this going on other countries are in it too. There are 26.9 million software developers worldwide. Hundreds of millions worldwide work in tech in all its aspects in all countries. The U.S. tech industry employs roughly 12.2 million workers as of 2020. By contract the US has only 324,921 factory workers and 673,000 in mining. I think you would need a lot more research and data to really hang the current crisis onto the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

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