Under capitalism, competition causes the rate of profit to drop, and for goods to be overproduced. This is when the business cycle dips, and we experience recessions and depressions.
To restore the rate of profit and force the cycle up again, capitalists have several methods including financial speculation and deliberate waste. Plus they must destroy excess capital, usually through wars. (This is to lower the ratio of fixed production costs to variable costs like labor — so acts like cutting wages to make profits go up again has more of an effect).
During the current dip we have seen a frenzy of financial speculation, waste, and wars. In the process of destroying excess capital to save capitalism, there is always contention among capitalists: whose capital will be destroyed? No one wants it to be their own. When this conflict becomes acute, it can be resolved antagonistically, by fighting it out.
At the moment, the capital of a British oil company, the fourth largest corporation in the world, is being destroyed. BP was allowed to create this destructive situation by the US government. Most people assume it must have been due to greed, negligence and short-sightedness.
But what if it wasn’t? Could this, actually, be war in another form (since the usual war-fighting resources are stretched very thin right now) — the deliberate facilitation of destruction of British-based capital by representatives of US-based capital?
That would explain why Obama isn’t doing anything about it.
7 Comments.
When I read that first paragraph, I thought to myself: what’s the substantial difference between someone who still writes stuff like these and the congregation of Fred Phelps’ church? Yeah, I know, your socialism is “scientific”, notwithstanding the refutation from serious economists and the history of the past century and a half.
The real difference is this: Phelps’ flock is a small and annoying bunch, but it’s mostly harmless. People who think like McMillan still run the show, unfortunately, in a couple of remnants from the Cold War.
bucephalus said: “People who think like McMillan still run the show, ”
Oh man, I wish that were true.
Stephanie,
Barry is surrounded with Marxists. 7% of the people in his administration have had private work experience. The rest are leftists wonks.
Stephanie,
You lef out the part “in Cuba, Venezuela and North korea”, which I hinted at. You may disavow the tyrants that run the show in these places, but their “revolutions” were based on the same misguided philosophy that nurtures your convictions.
I’m sure you and Ted are nice folks, but so were some of the people that hanged around Lenin and Trotsky. “This time it’s going to be different” is no assurance, when the wrong principles are the same.
Route,
Obama is not a Marxist. Like his predecessor, he is a corporate-statist, i.e., a lightweight fascist.
>>…but so were some of the people that hanged around Lenin and Trotsky.
yawn.. You do realize that in terms of actual public wealth becoming private, we are WAY more socialist than Russia ever could have hoped to be, right?
yawn, you make no sense, Oleg.
I’m sure I don’t