Classical Marxism in an Age of Capitalist Crisis by Briggs William;

Author:Briggs, William; [Briggs, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Changes in capitalism: implications for the working class

A range of theoretical positions, broadly defined as sceptical, transformational and hyper-globalist have been addressed in relation to changes that have taken place in capitalism. These have been considered against the proposition that capitalism has entered a qualitative new stage in its development. The issue of the nation-state and its relationship to a changed capitalism has also been discussed. The contending schools within the broadly constituted Marxist milieu generally recognise and accept that inequality and social disharmony are growing. There is a generally held consensus that things are changing. What is frequently overlooked, however, is the connectedness between capitalism’s qualitative shift and the dramatic rise in inequality, and of the inevitable social discontent that accompanies inequality. Those most affected, the working class, remain powerless, as a consequence of the lack of independent leadership, in their quest for emancipation. They remain caught in entanglements of nationalist rhetoric and a retreat into national responses to global crises.

Inequality and discontent are connected, and their growth has been linked to the rapidity of capitalist globalisation. The steady rise in inequality can be observed in individual countries and globally. The rise in social discontent has been manifested in both anti-globalisation movements and more recently, in developed economies, in both left and right-leaning political and nationalist movements. Globalised capitalist relations have particularly affected the working class as unemployment remains high, industrial and manufacturing production continues to flow from the industrialised states, and welfare state structures have been eroded. Ultimately, this crisis is a consequence of capitalist globalisation, which, in turn, is a by-product of the qualitative changes that are apparent in world capitalism. The ramifications are obvious.

Dallmayr (2002: 144) cites the UN Human Development Report (1999) to show that just three of the wealthiest families in the world enjoy an income equivalent to the poorest 600 million. These statistics change with alarming rapidity as wealth accumulates into fewer and fewer hands. Pieterse (2002: 1025) uses these same figures to indicate that there has been a steady and significant growth in inequality since the Industrial Revolution from a situation in 1820 which saw a gap between the richest fifth of the world’s population and the poorest fifth steadily grow from a ratio of 3:1 to 74:1 in 1997. This trajectory has been steadily accelerating and especially since the 1970s. Oxfam figures show that the world’s richest 62 individuals control the same wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion people (Oxfam 2016). Credit Suisse (2015) research reveals that nearly three-quarters of the world’s population have a per-capita wealth of less than $10,000. Conversely the richest 8 per cent of the population own 84.6 per cent of global wealth. Pieterse asks, “what kind of world economy grows and yet sees poverty and global inequality rising steeply?” (2002:1036). The answer to his question is not simply a capitalist economy, but a qualitatively changed capitalism that exists in conditions of irresolvable crisis.

International institutions, analysts and activists acknowledge that a fundamentally new stage of crisis has emerged.

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