181
edits
m
changed italics for better emphasis
(→"We already live in socialism": fixed grammar, clause was begun but not picked up again making the structure of the sentence confusing) |
m (changed italics for better emphasis) |
||
| Line 3: | Line 3: | ||
For [[Utopian socialism|Utopians]] like '''Simon''' and '''Fourier''', this was an intellectual problem, one which they considered themselves to have solved. Marx departs with the simple premise that capitalism would never voluntarily annihilate itself in service of better angels, as the Utopians suggested, that instead it would ''involuntarily but automatically'' annihilate itself as a mode of production due to objective contradictions essential to its very process of reproduction. Circulation of commodities at exchange value would lead to a falling rate of profit and economic crises which trigger the consolidation of capital under fewer and fewer firms. Somewhere along the line this process would no longer be sustainable as a free system without intervention. | For [[Utopian socialism|Utopians]] like '''Simon''' and '''Fourier''', this was an intellectual problem, one which they considered themselves to have solved. Marx departs with the simple premise that capitalism would never voluntarily annihilate itself in service of better angels, as the Utopians suggested, that instead it would ''involuntarily but automatically'' annihilate itself as a mode of production due to objective contradictions essential to its very process of reproduction. Circulation of commodities at exchange value would lead to a falling rate of profit and economic crises which trigger the consolidation of capital under fewer and fewer firms. Somewhere along the line this process would no longer be sustainable as a free system without intervention. | ||
Marx and Engels recognized capitalism as a force of disruption and immiseration, but in it they recognized also the forces which would inevitably lead to socialism. Never did they assert this trajectory as voluntaristic, self-conscious construction of a new system by individuals subjectively opposed to capitalism. Rather, socialism was the inevitable conclusion of tendencies integral to capitalism itself. | Marx and Engels recognized capitalism as a force of disruption and immiseration, but in it they recognized also the forces which would inevitably lead to socialism. Never did they assert this trajectory as voluntaristic, self-conscious construction of a new system by individuals subjectively opposed to capitalism. Rather, socialism was the inevitable conclusion of tendencies integral to capitalism itself. '''Capitalism was for them the process by which Socialism constructed itself, ''independent of any individual subjective will.'' [[Communism]]''' is the real movement which gives discursive and political recognition to this fact. | ||
== The Dual Revolution and the Social Question == | == The Dual Revolution and the Social Question == | ||