Heartless, clueless?

Chris Dillow asks if Capitalists are really Heartless, clueless?.

One is a form of naive cynicism which regards inequality and injustice as natural and inevitable, and so attempts to fight it must be futile and foolish whilst defenders of the system are hard-headed realists.

The other is a tendency to underweight the incompetence of those who are on the side of the rich.

Hostile portrayals of capitalists have for decades been of Gradgrindian figures grinding the faces of the poor rather than of bumbling oafs. And today bankers are routinely described as greedy when in fact what distinguishes them from the rest of us is their stupidity: most of us like a pound, but we didn't destroy an entire industry.

What this misses is the likelihood that a lot of success in business might be due to dumb luck.

In this sense, the claim that the the rich are heartless, by understating their stupidity, actually helps to legitimate inequality.

Emphasis Mine

What motivates the Capitalists is the defence of their class interests. And what defines their class is the control of the means of production. Thus, their class interest is to preserve that control.

How that control has evolved over time has been from direct control of personal property to the control of providing finance necessary for the operation of a business.

In the early days of Capitalism, the Capitalist was the man who owned and ran the business. This is the small businessman. This is the image that the petite bourgeoisie has of the Capitalist despite the radical changes over the past five (5) centuries. The confrontation between Capitalist and their enemies was at personal level and direct.

The capitalist then evolved to the stockholder who sat on the board of directors. Control and ownership was shared, but the Capitalist was still visible at the head of the firm. This started with the East India Company and its ilk in the seventeenth century and continued until the late nineteenth century with Andrew Carnegie, J.P.Morgan, etc.. The confrontation now evolved to be between masses of people: unions versus troops and police. The proxy war was waged throught the political system.

Nowadays, the Capitalist controls the finance provided to businesses. The control of businesses is indirect. Capital is owned—not the business. The political process has been subverted by international organisations such as the World Bank, IMF, ECB, WTO, and through treaties such as 'free-trade' deals. The Capitalist has vanished from the real world, yet their power is greater than before.

Now, the Capitalists dare to discipline entire nations: Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Russia, Ukraine, Greece, Spain, Italy, Iran, China, North Korea, etc.. Anyone who defies the existing world order can expect to be attacked and destroyed.

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Productivity, Robots, China, Growth

Mike Shedlock writes about Productivity, Robots, China, Growth.

Congratulations. You are more productive than ever. Just don't expect to be paid more for it. In reality, some machine is doing all that for you.

Emphasis Mine

With China rapidly automating, the idea of cheap, replacable labour is in the dustbin of history.

This poses two (2) problems for Capitalism: reduction in the available surplus value; and reduction in the purchasing power of the working class. Without an income, workers cannot purchase goods and services, and profits cannot be materialised. Without workers, Capitalists cannot convert the surplus value of labour into profit.

Total automation is the death of Capitalism.

Workers can only survive in such a system by finding niches that are difficult to automate. This requires training and development. Workers will have to become self-directed because businesses are losing the profitability to do this for their workers.

In other words, workers will have to think like Communists in such a world. They will have to develop an appreciation of the Marxist critique of Capitalism so that they can understand how Capitalism works. They will have to develop their own abilities—they can no longer be passive receptables of corporate wisdom.

Economic survival means that workers cannot wait for governments to come to their aid. Workers have to develop their own abilities and solidarity.

But this only takes us part of the way towards a Communist revolution. Whether workers, in general, have the stomach for this remains to be seen.

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