i970s, from which capital has still not fully recovered and which is the driving force of the present crisis, was an infernational decline working itself out in all countries.
But capital as it actually exists is not "capital in general'. As Marx put it: 'In their actual movement capitals confront each other in certain concrete forms. "3 Capital exists as different firms, and different nations with different companies and trusts, in competition with each other. It exists, as Marx put it, as 'many capitals. Competition between these capitals is the 'essential locomotive bourgeois economy' A Competition is the mechanism.by which me. mumdancilal laws the capitalist economy work themselves out.
There is a clear relation between the development of capital in general and the decline in the rate of profit. A decline in the rate of profit leads to stagnation in the entire capitalist economy: 'the rate of profit, is the spur to capitalist production ... a fall in this rate •.. appears as a threat to the capitalist production process; it promotes overproduction, speculation and crises, and leads to the existence of exess capital alongside a surplus popula ion (unemployment)."
Profit The reason is simple: It is the rate of profit that is the driving force of capitalist production, and nothing is produced save what can be produced at profit. '6 Therefore: Production comes to a standstill not at the point where needs are satisfied, but rather where the production and realisation of profit impose this. The stagnation and unemployment economy since 1973-75, and the vastly greater depression of the 1930s, is a product of a decline in the rate of profit.
A crucial effect of this decline, however, is to dramatically intensify inter-capitalist competition. fronted with a decline in the rate of profit the bourgeoisie as a whole can only THE overcome it by attacking the working For, a marginal case today, through gaining profit from a pre-capitalist system of production. But this is not the only way out for an incapitalist. Alt capitalist can increase their rate of profit by competing with, or attacking another capitalist. Indeed attacks on other capitalists can be a way to avoid une necessily or so severely allacking their own workers. mechanism used by the most powerful imperialist powers to maintain reformist control over their working class -they attack other capitals in order to limit the necessity to so severely attack their own working class and thereby destabilise their internal situation. Competition As Marx put it: 'which section (of capitalist capital) is particularly to be affected by this idling (of production)... is decided in the course of the competitive struggle. As long as everything goes well, competition acts. freemasonry of the capitalist class, so Con that they all share in the common body ... But as soon as it is no longer a ques tion of division of profit, but rather of loss, each seeks as lal as restrict his own share of this loss and pass it on to someone else.
•For the class as a whole, the loss is unavoidable. But how much each individual member has to bear, the extent to which he has to participate in it, now becomes a question of strength and competition becomes a struggle of enemy brothers. The opposition between the interest of each individual capitalist and that of the capitalist class as a whole now comes into its own, in the same way as competition was previously the instrument through which the identity of the capitalists' interests was asserted...
'Loss is by no means uniformly distributed amongst all the particular individual capitalists... tion being decided instead by a competitive struggle in which the loss ee decided very unevenly and in very different forms açcording to the particular advantages • •1 DOS OS already been won... one capital lies La temporary devaluation, and so on.
the effects of inter capita This is the sharper inter-imperialist began to appear.
competition which is and for the big not the reverse." • as a practical Monopoly he can to mergers of simultaneously to La higher growth rate..
forced onto speculation, crisis, that gives rise to the crisis. the distribu- Alongside rise to throughs in technology to increase profit -that have idle, another is destroyed, a third experiences balya relative loss or simply during the period of pro sperity of the 1950s and 1960s it was relatively easy for capitalto ameliorate list and inter-imperialist competion - the relations between the imperialist powers were relatively harmonious. With the decline promotiol in the rate of profit in the 1970s much conflicts It appears to the capitalists that it is decline in the rate of profit. But in fact superior it is a decline in the rate of profit which is producing the increased competition: the capitalist crisis. 'the fall in the profit rate... necessarily gives rise to a competitive struggle.
Compensation for the fall in the proti Crisis rate by an increase in the mass of profit is possible only for total sociat capital capitalists who are already established ... it is the fall in the profit rate that provokes the competitive struggle between capitals, and Falling profit rates also lead to increasing trends to monopoly — one example being the wave of takeovers and the last decade speculation fraud: "As the profit rate falls... concentration grows at the same time, since beyond certain limits a large capital with a lower rate of growth accumulates more quickly than a small capital with The mass of small fragemented capitals are thereby overous paths: swindles, share limits. 12 rate therefore gives rise to the casino economy' we see today — but it is the decline in the profit rate, the economic produces the casino economy', not the speculation which as swindles and fraud, however, a decline in the profit rate also revolutionary breakattempt to another is the rapid develop ment of new technology alongside C1ty frauds of the present period is quite typical: If the rate of profit falls, on the one hand we see exertions by capital, in that the individual capitalist drives down the individual value of his own particular commodities below their average social value, by using better methods, etc, and thus makes a surplus profit at the given price; on the other hand we have swindling and general swindling, through desperate attempts in the way of new methods of production, new capital investment and new adventures, to secure some kind of extra profit, which will be indepior end the that the casino That 'casino economy' and the computer revolution exist side by side is a logical product of The crisis itself, however, is neither illogical nor irrational. It is the only means capitalism possesses; as it lacks central planning, for overcoming crisis and relaunching a capitalist upswing. As Marx noted: 'Stagnation in production makes part of the working class idle and hence places the employed workers in conditions where they have to accept a fall in wages... The fall in prices and the competitive struggle, on the other hand, impel each capitalist to reduce the individual value of his total product below its general value by employing new means of machinery, new and improved methods of labour and new forms of combination. That Is, they impel him to raise the productivi ty of a given quantity of labour ... and to dismiss workers.. The stagnation in production that has intervened prepares the ground for a later expansion of production - within capitalist This process, including the competitive struggle, works itself through not just in attacks on workers within individual countries but in tremendous conflicts between the imperialist states they determine, through competition, which will experience the situation whereby, Marx's words: 'one capital lies idle, destroyed, third experiences only a relative loss'.
The relative stagnation in production is therefore accompanied by not the order of the day.' This 'new partition of the world', as well as attacks on national working classes was the preparation for a new upswing. , As Trotsky had noted earlier in the 1920s: If we grant — and let us grant it for the moment - that the working class fails to rise in revolustruggle, allows the bourgeoisie the opportunity to rule the world's destiny for a long number of years, say two or three decades. , then assuredly some sort of new equilibrium will be established. Europe will be thrown into reverse gear. Millions of WOLKCH. will die unemployment and malnutrition: Afterwards, after a new world division of labour is thus established in agony for 15 or 20 or 25 years, a new epoch of capitalist upswing might perhaps ensue.'o War This was not 'catastrophism' but literally happened. Tens millions of European, Asian, workers and peasant died amid fascism and world war. The consequence was that a 'new (capitalist) world division of under the leadership of the United States was established in 1945. At the cost of 100 million dead in the Wars the centre of capitalism passed from Europe to the United States. But in the 1980s that 'new international division of labour has itself been undermined by the decline of the United States and a new wave of inter-imperialist competition is breaking out.
Imperialism must again create a 'new international division of labour' - one that corresponds to the real economic weights of the different imperialist powers. Just what that division of labour will be will be decided not by any pre-arranged plan but by a real competitive struggle between the im- in which those who will lose will fight by all political means to hold onto what they have possessed in the past, and the rising capitalist powers will have not option but to assault their old dominant rivals.
The crash of 1987 is an announcement that this struggle is breaking out with a new force.
1. Marx, Grundrisse p346 2. This is, for example, the typical mistake made by David Yaffe.
3. Marx, Capital Vol 3 pl17 4. Grundrisse p440 5. Capital Vol 3 p350 6. Capital Vol 3 p368 7. Capital Vol 3 p362 • Capital Vol 3 p365 Capital Vol 3 • Capital Vol 3 p364 Trotsky, Report on the World Economi Crisis and the New Tasks of the Com 14. Trotsky, A fresh lesson the character of munist internanionas the coming war 15. Trotsky, Report on the World Economic Crisis ana ine new. lusks of me com munist International.
Socialist Action 6 Nov 1987