Marx provided an outline of how capitalism works and how, due to its internal contradictions and the stresses it places on the working classes, it will collapse. He did this not as a prophet or some soothsayer, just as an observer of history. He also didn’t put a hard timeline on it because he could not predict the future, only relate its tendencies.
Horace Vernet’s ‘Barricade on the rue Soufflot,’ 1848.
Capitalism, true to the Marxist definition, is a voracious beast that consumes everything in its path. When it has nothing else to consume, it self-cannibalizes. That’s how booms and busts occur. Rosa Luxemburg addressed the “it hasn’t happened yet’ criticism by pointing out the resiliency of credit in propping up capitalism. Lenin pointed out imperialism as the last stage of capitalism because it represents an intrusion into new areas; that is, new fodder for the beast. When hard currency began to hinder continued growth, we switched to fiat money: Money as an illusion, a fantasy enforced only by capitalist hierarchy. Money is now tied to nothing except the power of those who handle and distribute it via capitalist means.
Since globalization is becoming more entrenched and likewise more resisted in pernicious forms due to suppression of working-class interests worldwide (where people think the nation is going to save them from capitalism), you see not only how money has become an abstract concept but how the continued control of where it is invested directly preys upon those it needs to perpetuate this system. Capitalism has already self-cannibalized in many industrialized countries and it’s going to do the same thing in developing nations.
The only things that can save capitalism are new markets and new technologies. Marxists don’t say that its collapse is inevitable on its own; we have never said that. Marxists instead say that its internal contradictions become so strong that it begins to split at the seams and it’s our job to finish it off because we have solved 1) the problem of scarcity, if only we distributed things correctly and 2) the problem of international solidarity, if only we united, because everyone on this planet has been impacted by globalization.
That Marxism rides the wave of capitalism is entirely the point. It is an evolutionary concept that can only be pulled into fruition by revolutionary means. The mission of those in the working class who continue to apologize for capitalism because of its continued success, or fear corrupted examples of socialist implementation, is to instead under why and how we advocate for a different world. You are chained to your oppressor. Instead, link arms in a voluntary struggle with the oppressed.
Speech by V.I. Lenin at a rally of workers of the Putilov factory in May 1917, Isaak Brodsky
The voices of those like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others who draw attention to the contradictions of capitalism while also apologizing for it will not ultimately solve our struggles either here in the United States or globally. Americans, for the most part, comprise the global elite and it is our responsibility to strike at the heart of global capitalism. No single politician is going to do that (especially not from party directed by a corporate and political elite), nor is anything but a worker-led party with a goal of revolution. Revolution does not necessarily mean violence, but it also does not accept intimidation and repression by those who would use violence against the vast majority of humanity.
It is beyond time to take up the cause in 2019 as the war drums continue to beat year after year, this year alone against Venezuela and Iran. The world is heading headlong into a global crisis in capitalism yet again, the international order has disintegrated into one that resembles the pre-World War I European order yet again, and the working classes, people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, and the indigenous are locked in an intersected struggle with those who would prey upon them to secure their grip on human existence with artificial borders, illusory money, debt, and discrimination to distract from the core problem. The veil is in tatters, the people need only see past it.
