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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. Socialism is the sublation of Capitalism in the precise Hegelian sense: ''in preservation'' (cartels setting prices, central banks ordering the economy) ''it passes away'' (competition ceases, property becomes hereditary and institutional). | 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. Socialism is the sublation of Capitalism in the precise Hegelian sense: ''in preservation'' (cartels setting prices, central banks ordering the economy) ''it passes away'' (competition ceases, property becomes hereditary and institutional). | ||
Marx and Engels recognized capitalism as a force of disruption and immiseration, but in it they recognized also the forces which would | Marx and Engels recognized capitalism as a force of disruption and immiseration, but in it they recognized also the forces which would 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 == | ||