Capitalism
The socio-economic system where social relations are based on commodities for exchange, in particular private ownership of the means of production and on the exploitation of wage labour.
Wage labour is the labour process in capitalist society: the owners of the means of production (the bourgeoisie) buy the labour power of those who do not own the means of production (the proletariat), and use it to increase the value of their property (capital).
In pre-capitalist societies, the labour of the producers was rendered to the ruling class by traditional obligations or sheer force, rather than as a “free” act of purchase and sale as in capitalist society.
Value is increased through the appropriation of surplus value from wage labour. In societies which produce beyond the necessary level of subsistence, there is a social surplus, i.e. people produce more than they need for immediate reproduction.
In capitalism, surplus value is appropriated by the capitalist class by extending the working day beyond necessary labour time.
That extra labour is used by the capitalist for profit; used in whatever ways they choose.
The main classes under capitalism are the proletariat (the sellers of labour power) and the bourgeoisie (the buyers of labour power).
The value of every product is divided between wages and profit, and there is an irreconcilable class struggle over the division of this product.
Capitalism is one of a series of socio-economics systems, each of which are characterised by quite different class relations: tribal society, also referred to as “primitive communism” and feudalism.
It is the breakdown of all traditional relationships, and the subordination of relations to the “cash nexus” which characterises capitalism.
The transcendence of the class antgonisms of capitalism, replacing the domination of the market by planned, cooperative labour, leads to socialism and communism.
Historical Development: Capitalism develops through various stages.
Since capital is both a pre-condition and outcome of capitalism, a period of primitive accumulation marks the beginning of capitalism; this may involve outright theft and plunder, and in particular the creation of a class of people who no longer own any means of production – a proletariat.
By freeing the labour process from traditional forms and expanding labour cooperation through world trade, capitalism initiates a rapid transformation in the labour process and promotes the development of science and technology.
Meanwhile, religion and kinship ties are continuously undermined.
Capital is built up in a few countries at the expense of other countries which are used as sources of cheap labour and raw materials.
The competition between millions of small-scale producers which was characteristic of the early days of capitalism, leads to the concentration of capital in the hands of just a few as a more efficient means of production.
At a certain point (the beginning of the 20th-century), the entire globe had been divided up between a few great powers.
Thus begins the final stage in the development of capitalism, imperialism, characterised by the domination of the banks, the formation of large multi-national corporations, by war and revolution.
The free market that had been envisioned by Adam Smith was shown impossible by the late 19th and early 20th century, when monopolies dominated nations causing massive Economic collapses in the 1890s, a world production crisis during World War I, and the worldwide depression in the 1930s.
Thereafter national, and later international, regulation of the capitalist marketplace became necessary (SEC, International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, etc.); while the growth of militarization remains a necessity to expend excess production.
For example, the United States having overspent the Soviet Union in militarization, in the last decade of the 20th century continued to create wars throughout the world – Panama, Iraq, Bosnia, etc. – unleashing double and triple the firepower in all of World War II.
After the incredible expenditure of vast munitions and weapons (over $300 billion per year), the subjugated and destroyed nations are then offered contracts and infiltrated by capitalist business for the process of "rebuilding".
The Destruction of Capitalism: In capitalist society the working-class continues to grow, and ownership over the means of production continually dwindles into fewer and fewer hands.
One example of this is the stock market, where the finance banks emphasize that "all workers" can own a piece of various companies. In fact, through offering "ownership" of these companies to more people, financial oligarchies are able to gain greater control over these companies by diluting the ownership amongst an unorganized group while also extracting capital from this large group for further investment.
For example, a bank need only own 10 or 15 percent of a certain company to have an enormous controlling interest over that company, so long as the vast majority of stocks in that company are owned by thousands and tens of thousands of different people, people who do not have the time to attend shareholder meetings and are not united and unorganized on how to exert control over the company.
Furthermore in capitalist society, the value of labour increases while labourers continually receive a smaller portion of that value they create.
The selling of labour itself is continually reduced from something that is sold on a monthly or yearly basis to something that is sold day by day, and hour by hour, piecemeal or in short term contracts.
As a result, the income gap grows continually larger.
For example in the United States, from 1988-1998, income for the poorest 20 percent of the population rose a meager $110 to $12,990.
For the richest 20 percent it increased by $17,870 to $137,480. (Data according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute, checked with U.S. Census data; January, 1999).
Capitalist ideology attempts to refute Marxism on the basis that the biggest class in capitalist society is the "middle-class".
This class conception however is based purely on economic wealth (two cars in the garage, an income of x amount of dollars, etc.) and not on that person's actual relations to the means of production (See definition on class).
The enormous majority of the population in a capitalist society is proletarian – however through imperialism some highly specialized proletarians (from executive officers to autoworkers, information technology workers to industrial foremen, etc.) are paid very well (not by the full value of what they actually produce, but by a higher percentage of that value when compared to unskilled workers and workers in nations subjugated to imperialist exploitation).
In order for capitalism to function correctly, the petty-bourgeois class must be in existence.
This is one of the great contradictions in capitalist society, because on the one hand while capitalist production continually pushes small-business people out of the market (for example, the owner of the general store, vegetable shop, small grocery store owner – all are wiped out by corporations who establish enormous shopping centers to meet a large variety of consumer needs, with products of higher quality at a cheaper price); while on the other hand capitalism cannot survive without a class of people establishing new businesses to fill new consumer needs; and from a very select few of those businesses to recruit new bourgeois, forming large corporations (in United States this is referred to as the "American dream").
The ultimate failure of capitalism is brought about by capitalist production itself – the further technology advances, the more expensive and powerful are the machines needed for production, while at the same time, as a result of technological advances, products produced by more efficient machines become cheaper and cheaper.
This has the effect of firstly driving the petty-bourgeoisie into extinction (who cannot afford to constantly upgrade their productive forces, while their products continually become cheaper (the reason they are heavily subsidized by advanced capitalist governments); and further the creation of larger corporations, which in turn must not only shrink internally to maintain "efficiency", but must also merge with other companies, forming multinational conglomerates, etc.
The further this process continues, production becomes increasingly centralized, and when controlled by the capitalist, the more oppressive and backward production becomes (Microsoft at the end of the 20th century).
These technological advances will inevitably lead to either the common destruction of humanity (a third world war) or socialist revolution, a democratic society where the means of production and distribution will be controlled by the majority.
Further Reading: For a detailed description of the fundamentals and early development of capitalism see: Marx, Wage labour and Capital, and Capital Volume 1 & Volume 2 – on the Process of Production, Circulation and of Capital respectively), Capital Volume 3 on capitalist production in whole.
For a detailed description of the beginning of the later stage of development of capitalism, see: Lenin, Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism.
Casualisation
Casualisation is the practice of replacing the employment of workers on continuing contracts with the hire of workers on an hourly basis with no guarantee of continued employment or acceptance of any commitment to paying rates related to the cost of living or conditions of employment which constitute a reasonable basis for life.
The advantage to employers is that it enables them to turn the tap on and off as required to meet fluctuating demand, and even more importantly, it enables the employer to threaten every worker every hour with termination of their employment.
Casualisation is thus a method for forcing the price of labour-power down to its minimum.
The terms ‘casualisation’ was coined by a government enquiry into dock labour practices in Britain in 1920, where casual labour was becoming the norm for unskilled workers.
It was in the fight against those conditions that the first great unions of unskilled workers were built, including the British dockworkers and the I.W.W. in the early 20th century, and in the 1930s, the U.S. Teamsters Union.
Cause & Effect
Understanding of Cause and Effect is a basic mode of scientific investigation, the discovery of the specific causes of phenomena and the complete cause: “When all the conditions of a fact are present, it enters into Existence”.
However, the fixed opposition between cause and effect is limited, since every effect is also a partial cause of its own conditions of existence.
The concept of reciprocity arises from an understanding of the whole network of cause-effect leading to an understanding of "complete cause".
Scepticism says that Causality is simply a subjective construction, which flies in the face of the obvious successes of industry and natural science.
However, the limitation of the standpoint of Causality is shown in the inability to conceive the world and humanity's part in it as a single whole.
