The Existential Crisis of Capitalism
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Chaos, anarchy, confusion... Rising racism, fascism and political Islam. Hopelessness and helplessness... Ideological, political and cultural degeneration. Uncertainty and loss of meaning... Means of violence in the forefront of political struggles... An insurmountable economic crisis, growing wage inequality, unemployment and poverty... Aimless and disoriented uprisings, counter-revolutions... The awakening of women...
Today, the world looks like this. Whether in the USA, in Syria, in England or in Turkey, we can find a piece of today's landscape of the world. The emergence of the ISIS, the election of Trump as president of the United States, Tayyip Erdoğan's aspiration for a one-man dictatorship, the rise of the fascist party in France, the referendum decision of the British for Brexit, the seizure of power by fascists in Ukraine... These are not isolated, independent events, but different phenomena of the same tendency and the same global situation. They arise on a common ground. They thrive on the same soil. The same analysis can also be done on its opposite side. The uprisings of the Arab peoples, the Gezi uprising in Turkey, the Indignados in Greece and Spain, the Occupy movement in the USA, the Rojava revolution and the proclaimed Soviet republics in Ukraine are also different manifestations of the same tendency and are product of the same ground.
Can we describe this as the tendency of a general polarization of society, or as a distancing from the center? Of course. Because that's obvious. Bourgeois democracy has decayed. It grapples with the economic crisis of capitalism. The bourgeois ideology has collapsed. It is natural that under these conditions, the class contradictions are sharpening, the workers lose their faith in the state and the bourgeois parliament, the bourgeoisie can no longer rule as before and the oppressed no longer wants to be ruled as before. It should therefore not be surprising that under these conditions, the bourgeoisie turns to fascism and the oppressed to the revolution and that the tendency of a two-sided polarization arises.
Still, these are all only phenomena that are far from taking us to the truth lying behind these phenomena. For example, bourgeoisie's leaning towards fascism is a phenomenon, but the truth is more than that. This or that hostile statement of Trump against blacks, women, migrants and Muslims are not that tragic for the US monopolies, but when he talks about imposing 35% tax on German automobiles, the situation changes. In present days when the dependence of nations on one another is concentrated to such a degree, when the world market is integrated so much and rates of profit are determined on a global scale, such protectionist tendencies can't be tendencies of the world monopolies. However, it can be a regressive reaction of the bourgeois strata, which are just dissolving. But this also shows that the world monopolies are preparing for a much more violent competition over the world market.
This depression isn't new in bourgeois society. Throughout the history of capitalism, there have been many economic and political crises in bourgeois society. The economic crises that recur every 8-10 years may bring to mind the great economic depression of 1929-1930 that shook the world. The revolutions and counter-revolutions of 1848 in Europe, fascism and socialism in confrontation as two big blocs of bourgeoisie and proletariat in the imperialist stage of capitalism, the smash of the colonial yoke of the imperialists through national liberation struggles, the '68 youth movement that shook the world... More can be enumerated, all these are some of the phenomena of the political polarization within bourgeois society.
All the crises experienced so far are the crises within bourgeois society. For this reason, the bourgeoisie has managed to overcome these internal crises each time. Whenever the bourgeoisie was under pressure, it has thrown overboard liberalism and democracy, thereby managed to uphold fascism against the revolutionary socialism of the proletariat. When fascism endangered also the bourgeois society, they did not shy away from forming alliances with communists against fascism. Where the contradictions got most acute, bourgeois states have broken each other through world wars. In the end, the capitalist production relations and bourgeois form of society have always been successful to organize themselves economically as well as politically on a higher level. The bourgeoisie has not been able to prevent the socialist revolutions, but the imperialist bourgeoisie has been able to strain the socialist states to dissolve internally by unifying against them. The imperialists have failed to stop the smash of the colonial yoke, but by keeping the countries which gained independence in the capitalist system, they have succeeded in putting them under the yoke of neocolonialism. In '68, the French bourgeoisie and French state almost came to a position where they started fleeing from Paris, but in the following years, the bourgeoisie was able to drag a large number of the leaders of this rebellious generation into the abyss of bourgeois parliament.


The Crisis of Society Form
Today, there is another situation. Today we are not experiencing a crisis within bourgeois society, but of the society itself. It is the crisis of the bourgeois form of society.
The difference between these two situations is this: in a crisis within society, the dominant production relations and their corresponding political and ideological superstructure still have the capacity to reproduce themselves. For example, the bourgeoisie had overcome the economic crisis in the capitalist world in the 1870's, when it waged a transition to the monopolistic stage and colonized the non-capitalist areas of the world. At this time, capitalist relations of production were only dominant in Western European countries and in the United States. In turn, petty commodity production was widely dominant in these colonized countries. In the rest of the world, the capitalist production relations were not dominant, in some places, people were even not integrated into the system of private property relations. In some places, the feudal relations of production were ahead. For the rest, capitalism was still at a very limited level. For this reason, when the economic crisis hits, it was possible to expand within the national market and to concentrate and centralize capital. Also, there was still an immense world for the capitalist goods trade to extend. Once the conquest of this world was completed, the redistribution of the world was brought to agenda by wars. When the fire of socialist revolution in Russia flared up, the imperialists supported fascists like Mussolini, Hitler and Franco and took on them to the communists and the Soviet Union. After the great economic crisis of 1930, they left ideological temples, such as economic liberalism or the free market, behind and led the state into the market as a capitalist. When the Second World War (for the bourgeoisie, a re-division war, for the communists, an anti-fascist war) ended and new countries joined the caravan of socialist states, this time they stopped competing with each other and united under the leadership of the United States, to encircle the socialist states economically, politically, militarily and ideologically. When confronted with a new world economic crisis in 1974-75, they removed the state as a capital accumulation apparatus, but plundered it through privatization, lifted the barriers against capital movements and thus ensured that the path for concentrating and centralizing the capital on a new level was clear and the world monopolies were thus able to dominate the world market. With the liberalization of the speculative flow of capital, they have greatly accelerated the accumulation of finance capital. Just as the economic crisis of 1870 became a step for the transition from capitalism of free competition to imperialism, the crisis of the 1970's has ushered in the transition to imperialist globalization. As the states, which were ravaged from inside by the capitalist encirclement and had nothing socialist except their name, were subjected to a kind of primitive capital accumulation, and a huge market like China opened up for capitalist plundering, the imperialist globalization received a new impetus.
From the point of view of the working class, the situation looked similar. Strikes, occupations, resistance, councils, rebellions and revolutions have not been lacking in the history of the working class and its allies. Each time the bourgeoisie had succeeded to suppress the working class movement, keeping it inside the system, or reintegrating it into the system. This is because, in spite of economic crises, wars and revolutions, the bourgeoisie could continue to develop the productive forces of capitalism in the long term. The working class has grown continuously. The educational level has increased. As a result of the struggles, the living standard of the working class has risen so that the workers of the developed capitalist countries experienced the best periods of their class history in the 60's and 70's. Keeping in mind the last 150 years in history, until the 1980's, we see that working class children expected a better life than their parents. Likewise, we can say that both the level of education of a generation and its overall quality of life were more advanced than those of its previous generation. It is obvious that the struggles of the working class have been decisive. But one cannot handle things unilaterally. If the bourgeoisie wouldn't have pursued the policy of concessions, if it wouldn't have preserved the ability to produce ideological consent, in short, if it hadn't had a maneuver capability then we could now have faced a very different situation.
And today, we are facing this very different condition. The maneuver capability of the bourgeoisie is at its lowest point. The conditions to produce consent, as it used to do in any difficult situation with concessions policy, is now limited to the utmost. The bourgeoisie is unable groom the world. It cannot produce the hope that everything will get better. For the first time, the children of the working class, who are more educated than their parents, don't carry hope to have a better life than their parents. Today's generation of workers is condemned to more backward conditions compared to the previous generation and tomorrow's generation will seek long for today's conditions.
To this day, whatever the level of the struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie reaches; in the last analysis, this struggle has taken place under conditions in which the bourgeois social structure, despite interruptions by crises, materialized expanded reproduction, developed the productive forces, protected the foundation of their own reproduction and continued their rule. This also applies to the countries where the working class has carried out the most revolutionary initiatives and to the countries which began socialist construction even under capitalist encirclement. That is why the bourgeoisie has repeatedly managed to crush the working-class movement, to divert it from its path and to integrate it into the ruling order.
That's right, the working-class movement is at its lowest point today. But capitalism, on the other hand, does not have the ability to conquer the working class. Maybe the working class is living its weakest moments as an organized force. Maybe its political class consciousness is stunted. Maybe defeats of the historical gainings and socialist construction experiences have become heavy ideological burdens in its mind. Yet, how much real these are, it is that much clear that the working class no longer has anything to do with capitalism and that no better life can be achieved with its existence. For the working class, capitalism has come to an end. This reality cannot be changed by that it has not yet been reflected in the political class consciousness and has become an ideology.
What applies to the working class also applies to the bourgeoisie. Even the bourgeoisie can not reproduce itself as before. It cannot overcome crises. It can no longer create new ideas or ideology. Only pessimism and hopelessness determine the bourgeois world. Capitalism is also over for the bourgeoisie. Just as the feudal lords lost the power to maintain feudalism once, so did the bourgeoisie also lose the power to develop the productive forces and thereby maintain capitalism. Moreover, now bourgeois society, itself, has become an obstacle to the development of the productive forces.
In today's world, where the appearance is that the working class is weakest and the bourgeoisie is the ruler of everything, objective reality is just the opposite. The reality behind this appearance stands exactly upside down. The destructive consequences of imperialist globalization have obscured and blurred the consciousness of the working people and also the bourgeoisie and led to a loss of sight and orientation. For example, within the dispossessed middle class and the workers of the developed capitalist countries, who are now losing their social and economical rights, protectionist, racist and nationalist tendencies occur quickly. Yet, the basis on which bourgeois nationalism rises was actually removed by imperialist globalization. Today's bourgeois nationalism is a past consciousness, it belongs to the past and has no material basis. Their foundations are hanging in the air. For this reason, it is an address and shelter of depression, despair and impossibility.
The current crisis can not be overcome by staying in bourgeois society. The problems can not be solved either through struggles or compromise policies within this form of society. Because it has reached its economical development limits, political maneuvers are always partial, limited, and short-termed, without leaning on ideological arguments and they have the character of being lost within a short time due to actual political and economical developments. Precisely for this reason we call it the crisis of the bourgeois society form. It is also the reason why we call it the existential crisis. The capitalist relations of production have abutted their own limits. You can not go beyond the current level. There is no chance for it.


The Historical Adventure of Existential Crises
Let us deepen this matter. Every form of production has a historical role that it played. This role is their reason for existence. There is a social material basis, a stage, for this historical role. If the given form of production becomes an obstacle to the development of more advanced productive forces, it loses its historical right to exist. "Losing the historical right to exist" is not realized at one swoop, it also requires a historical process. In times when depression within society transforms into a crisis of society form, civil wars and outward wars, political polarizations, uprisings and counter-blows, economic-political-ideological depressions aggravate to utmost and render as a permanent state.
The primitive communal society defines the transition of human from a herd to a social form. That is its right to exist and its social material basis. The same basis leads to the development of the productive forces of human. The productive power of human reaches such a level that it could produce much more means of survival than it needed at that time. There emerges extra labor time. The primitive communal society form did not have the ability to use this extra time. The emergence of extra time and the lack of ability of primitive society to realize it became its existential crisis. The struggle to appropriate this extra labor time shook up all social relationships and all modes of thinking. The basis on which the primitive communal relations formed had been shattered. Some of the people have enslaved the others and usurped their extra time through appropriating their existence directly. Ultimately, as a higher level of social organization than the clans, the state emerged.
Seizing human, which is the fundamental productive force, and rendering it a private property caused a minority of slaveholders to accumulate great wealth. Living without working and through appropriating the work of others meant, at the same time, the appropriation of the free (empty) time of the slaves. With this accumulated free time, the necessary time to be productive in the fields of culture, art, science, religion and philosophy was created thereby. The slave state or Asiatic state arose on this basis. Inevitably, there were slave revolts. Peasants who rejected slavery but were unable to oppose the attacks sought refuge among larger landowners, preferring to take their protection. As this mode of production based on half-slaves was proven to be more productive than that based on slaves, it became a historical tendency to let people work as half-slaves dependent on their masters and land, rather than enslave them completely. It remarked that the existential basis of slavery had collapsed. Glorious slave states, which were stuck on this basis, such as the Roman Empire, could not resist against the assaults of the primitive-barbaric tribes and were destroyed.
By contrast, Asiatic countries were hit much later by the existential crisis. The main reason for this is the different development of private property relations. Slave societies were formed through disintegration of communal-common land property and converting it into private property. However, in the Asiatic societies, the right of use of land without any disintegration was taken first by the ruling class layers, then it became their private property.
With the emergence of capitalist relations of production, feudal society has been dragged into an existential crisis. The feudal lords themselves initiated the crisis. The struggle for the governance of trade routes has driven the central state forward. The central state, the central army and the centralization of taxes meant that weakening the power of the feudal lords in favor of the crown. The strengthening of the central state required that national trade must be conducted without obstacles and within the borders of central state, and that the people within those borders must be subjected to the king. This unity around the king, created against the other states, has laid the foundation of the formation of nation and nation-state. Thus, the feudal lords offered this with their own hands to the bourgeoisie.
Accumulation of wealth over trade subrogated the wealth accumulation over land property. This tendency has promoted the development and spread of commodity trade and exactly as a product of this, it caused the enrichment of bourgeois class. When money became the source of wealth instead of land, the existential crisis of feudalism was inevitable. The feudal lords itself began renting their land to the bourgeoisie in order to earn more money. The serfs were thrown out from the lands they depended on. Millions of peasants thronged to the cities, unemployed, hungry and miserable. As the free trade developed, the small industries and trade units dissolved, and these, as unemployed past masters, also joined the ranks of vagabonds and beggars. The feudal lords have personally destroyed their own livelihood. The feudal form of society could no longer be continued. The ruling class of this society, the feudal lords, itself had expelled the peasants and put their land for rent for the accumulation of wealth. Even though they remained feudal, the feudal relations of production based on the expropriation of surplus labor time of serfs, were being overthrown. There was no longer any need for the feudal form of society for the serfs, who were the other side of feudal relations, for the small peasants and merchants who stood under the protection of feudal lords. They were pushed out of the feudal reach.
Under such conditions, it was not possible for the feudal lords to maintain their political rule as before. The belief in lordliness and religion were shaken. The economical, political and ideological depression had shaken feudalism for a few centuries. A big convergence, cultural, intellectual, political and revolutionary dynamism arose in society as if a great burden had fallen off from their shoulders.
The capital, which now became the actual source of wealth, was in the hands of the bourgeoisie and the masses pushed out of the extent of feudals, now entered the extent of bourgeoisie as a proletariat under the control of capital. Feudalism had lost its historical reason for existence, it was about to collapse and wither away and it did.
The "collapse" occurred in two ways. First one was through a political revolution like in France, and second one was through feudals' getting to become bourgeois like in Italy and England. There were many revolutionary uprisings in the second ones as well, but political power continued to be held by the feudal lords for a while. In any case, the revolution lies in the production relations. When the feudal society form became an obstacle to the developing bourgeois relations of production, it was thrown aside.


The Existential Reason of the Bourgeois Society Form
The historical condition of existence of capital lies in the emergence of the free laborer, who has freed himself/herself from the feudal fetters.1 Without this, the flow of commodity and money can not create capital accumulation. In order to realize capital accumulation, the capitalist had to expropriate the worker's surplus labor time. Commodity and money circulation are the means to capture this surplus labor time. Only when capital, in the form of commodity and money, meets labor force, it is possible to realize the production of surplus value. Also, the labor force only manages to obtain its means of subsistence when it enters under the command of capital, because the worker has nothing to sell but his/her labor force. When he/she cannot sell it, he/she will lack his/her sole livelihood, the wage.
Wherever capital flows, it dissolves the old relations of production, makes them dependent to itself, and then destroys them. Ultimately, capital allows no other production relations other than its own. One of the main tendencies of capital is to turn any kind of ownership over the means of production into capital and to turn any kind of labor into wage labor.
Wage labor and capital are each others' conditions of mutual existence. They produce each other. Wage labor and capital is the contradicting unity of two opposite poles. However, this unity, through which capital and labor produce each other, experiences a crisis in every 8-10 years on average. Capital that needs to be invested in production for the reproduction of surplus value remains at hand due to the fall of profit rates. There realized extra capital surplus. Extra capital surplus inevitably lead to extra labor surplus. Because when the capital is not invested in the production, industrial reserve army gets larger than necessary and unemployment peaks. The capitalist has capital at its hand but can not invest it, the worker has labor force ready for sale but can not sell it. At such times, capital and labor can not produce each other, capital and labor becomes no longer each other's existence conditions.
This is only temporary. As long as capital in the form of commodity and money does not meet labor force and remains at hand, it is inevitable that both capital and labor force will lose value. The price of commodity-capital and the interest rate of money-capital fall. With shorter words, the capital cheapens. Due to extreme unemployment, the price of the labor force declines. Under these conditions, the rate of profit rises to an investable level, and capital tends toward production again. The crisis is overcome.
From every crisis, capital stands out even more accumulated and even more centralized. The area of bourgeois production relations expands and the number of workers increases with each ascent after crisis.
Another inherent tendency of capital is to create a world market.2 The more capital is accumulated, the more the capital's spread around the world accelerates. However, this does not work like first, the exhaustion of the expansion possibilities of the national market, then opens up to external market; even if there are opportunities for expansion in the national market, capital tends to go outside if profit rates there is higher.
The capital production process runs in two phases. The first phase is the phase of production of surplus value. The boss exploits the worker and seizes his/her surplus labor time. This extra labor time is materialized in the produced commodity as surplus value. The surplus value is in the form of the commodity-product. For it to be converted into profit, it must be sold. This is the second phase.
In this second phase, the surplus value gained through exploitation by the capital accumulates in the pot called market. The capitalists compete for surplus profit. At the production field, the bosses exploit the workers. In the market, on the other hand, the bosses rob each other.
The value of a commodity is determined by the average necessary social labor time required for its production. Labor-intensive capital has more surplus value per unit commodity in the market. High-tech capitals bring less surplus value to the market because its unit of production needs less labor force for the commodity compared to the others. As the value of the commodity is formed by the average social labor time, the ones, whose commodity has less value than the average social value, sell it above its own production value as if they produced the commodity on the average labor time. The production value of commodities, which are produced with technologically backward labor-intensive capital, is above average, but they also compulsorily go down to the market average. In other words, technologically advanced commodities are sold above their value and technologically backward commodities are sold below their value. Thus, capitals, which have higher technological equipment, snatch a part of the surplus value produced by the technologically under-resourced capitals.
The value of a commodity consists of three parts: constant capital + variable capital (what is paid to the labor force) + surplus value. When a commodity, which is produced on average social labor time, is sold, the surplus value becomes profit. Since the average social production value is already decided, and by assuming that the surplus value rate is constant as well, the only way to gain more profit is lowering the price of the labor force per unit commodity. A capitalist who, in comparison to others, recruits workers to work for longer hours and with even less wage, produces his/her commodities cheaper, but since he/she sells them with the average value, he/she gains surplus profit. But through the application of science in production, it has become possible to reduce the labor force required per unit commodity and thereby much higher surplus profit can be gained. Reducing the necessary labor force through more intensive application of science in production means increasing the social productive power of labor.3 For this reason, the continuous reduction of the cost of production of unit commodity and for this, the constant increase of the social productive power of labor4, and making permanent revolution in production are the existential basis and the historical existence reason of capital.5
The thrust for this existential basis is the greed for more profit.
This greed triggers the centralization and concentration of capital. Investing in technology requires from the beginning a much larger amount of capital than others. Smaller capitals will either go bankrupt or join the larger one. Big ones unite in order to be superior in the competition. This, leads to the emergence of national monopolies first and then causes each one to become world monopolies.
In any case, capital needs a market ready to conquest for its expanded reproduction. Areas that have not yet been capitalist and all other capitalist enterprises are always areas ready to conquest in the eyes of every capitalist. Monopolistic capital accelerates this war of conquest. Capitalism quickly spreads around the world, and bankruptcies multiply among the small and medium capitalists. The necessary amount for the initial capital gradually grows. The possibility of small and medium capital's independent existence disappears, these become dependent on big capital. Eventually, there comes a moment where there is no place in the world left non-capitalist, and the already narrowed spaces of small-middle capitalists are no longer enough to satisfy big capital's expansionist needs. The capital has grown so much that the market's expansion potential falls below the capital's necessities. The possibility of surplus profit extraction through the application of science in technology has decreased. The market has reached its limits compared to the size of capital (the monopolization level). When the monopolies dominate the world market alongside with the national market, the possibility to obtain surplus profit is narrowed. Because surplus profit emerges from the difference of the production values between the big capital groups and the smaller ones, as well as between the developed capitalist countries and the backward capitalist countries. Due to this difference, the bigger capitals rob the smaller ones, the more developed capitalist countries rob the more backward ones. When the number of smaller ones diminishes due to monopolization and the world market is dominated by world monopolies, the possibility of robbing through developing the productive forces also reduces. The capital builds a barricade on its own path. Capital becomes no longer able to produce its own existential basis. Its historical reason for existence, namely, to develop the social productive force of labor, to apply science to technology, that is, the permanent revolution in production, can no longer be realized. Instead of developing the social productive forces of labor, it becomes a hindrance to it. That is the objective basis of its existential crisis.
Because this happened, capital does not give up on surplus profit. When capital is unable to develop the social productive forces of labor, this time it tries to lower the price of labor in order to reach the surplus profit. It recruits workers longer and cheaper, and by doing that, goes in a competition of gaining surplus profit. Yesterday, production capital has been concentrating on where the application of science to technology was better possible, but now it flows to where cheap labor can be found. Historically, this reversal leads to the abolition of its historical reasons for existence.
The monopolies achieve surplus profit not only through this path. There are two ways for capital accumulation. The first proceeds through surplus-value production, the second through robbery of accumulated surplus value produced by others through financial means. In the stage of capitalism of free competition, the former, that is, the surplus value production, is decisive. In the stage of imperialism, accumulation through financial means has gained importance, but the former was still predominant. In the period of imperialist globalization, accumulation through financial means has accelerated and began to dominate the first one. This means nothing but the decay of capital. In the end, the limit of accumulation on this path is anyway the produced surplus value. If there is a slowdown on that end, then someday the possibility of robbing the existing surplus value by financial means weakens.
When cheap labor and robbery through financial means become the two main routes for surplus profit extraction, unemployment and misery grows like avalanche, the shrinkage of intermediate layers accelerates, inequality between classes grows immeasurably, culture and ethics decays more and more, hopelessness and helplessness become the prevailing feeling and the form of consciousness.


Minor and Major Cyclical Crises
Apart from classic cyclical crises in every 8-10 years, even more shocking and protracted big cyclical crises have emerged. The crises of 1876, 1930, 1974 and 2008 were just such crises. Except for the last one, the consequences of these crises lasted 5-10 years. In the classic cyclical crises, there is no significant change in the conditions in which capital moves and stands. The capital independently continues to produce its own conditions of existence. But this is not the case with the big cyclical crises. Capital can no longer reproduce in the given conditions. The crisis can only be overcome if the given conditions are changed.
In the crisis of 1876, the conditions for capitalism of free competition lost their validity, and the travail of the birth of monopolistic capitalism became palpable. This crisis could only be overcome by colonizing the non-capitalist areas of the world by the capitalist countries. That was the transformation of capitalism into a competition for monopoly capitalism, imperialism. Even before 1876 many crises arose. They were all overcome within free-competition capitalism. On the other hand, this crisis could not be overcome in the given circumstances, the conditions had to change and that's how it happened.
The crisis of 1930 was the depression of the conditions created after the crisis of 1876. Monopolistic capitalism, leaning on capital export, was stuck. Monopolistic capitalism lacked the strength to overcome the crisis with its own internal dynamics. The bourgeois state was called to rescue in times of need. The bourgeois state was until then the collective ruling apparatus of the bourgeois class, it had the function of a lever for the capital. It was a bourgeois ideological dogma that the state was not allowed to interfere in the economy. That the USSR did not suffer a crisis and the successes of the planned economy of the socialist state shattered this dogma. The bourgeois class has thrown aside this ideological dogma according to their interests. The bourgeois state then went into the field as a collective capitalist power. Monopolistic state capitalism has driven monopoly capitalism out of the crisis. After the 1950's, this has become much clearer. The main objective of the bourgeois front was to keep the socialist giants surrounded and lead them to destruction. National liberation struggles, national-democratic revolutions and the socialist states have pretty much limited and narrowed the world market. The capitalist states, on the other hand, placed the competition among themselves in second place and expanded their own national markets. Just as the crisis was overcome by exporting the surplus capital outside after 1876, this time, the crisis was overcome by using a large part of the capital surplus in the developed capitalist countries and enlarging their national markets. Even if the capitalist world market has narrowed geographically at this time, the capital accumulation has gained great rapidity.
The crisis of 1974 announced the end of this phase. The accumulation of capital has again congested. The crisis '74 was reminiscent of the crisis of 1876. In 1876, there was no great destruction, but the capitalists were unwilling to use their capital surplus in the national market, because the rate of profit had fallen. The growing greed of the nascent monopolies has led them to search for new markets. 1974 was somewhat like this. Between 1945-1970, capital accumulation accelerated. The national monopolies have begun to turn into world monopolies. The capitalist world market became too narrow for world monopolies. Above all else, the bourgeois state occupied an important place in the capitalist market. Now, the state became an obstacle to capital accumulation. This obstacle that the monopolies of private capital confronted in the national market had to be lifted. On the other hand, the customs walls and national legislations, which limited, the rapid flow of surplus capital and its export. Instead of a world market constituted of interconnected national markets, an integrated world market is needed to emerge.
Out of the crisis of 1974, imperialist globalization was born.
The crisis of 2007-08 was the offshoot of the accumulated contradictions of imperialist globalization. This crisis was different from the previous major cyclical crises.
The capital concentration and centralization of world monopolies had reached such an extent that their bankruptcy would have devastated the capitalist economy and torn down the states. That could not be allowed. With resources from the state budget, they were saved.
The fundamental feature of any crisis is that capital investment has become cheaper through capital destruction and that new capital investments and demand have been revived. Not letting the monopolies that fell into crisis go bankrupt prevents devaluation of capital, thus prevents the revival of new investments and demands. In addition, chronic unemployment and decrease in wages due to crisis have also reduced demand. The same conditions increase chronic capital surplus6 and chronic unemployment. Large amounts of capital, which are not invested, flow all the more into the financial resources. The inevitable consequences of this are the acceleration of the expropriation of the intermediate strata, the incredible degree of inequality between classes, the spread of misery and decay around the world.
The capital itself, has exhausted the possibilities of crisis management under the conditions of the bourgeois social structure. With the extreme concentration and centralization of capital, capital has lost its productive quality more7 and tends more to the financial robbery, but on contrary to this, an ever-growing section of the growing proletariat is unable to find place to sell labor force. This has detached capital and labor force from each other more and weakened the possibilities of mutual production and alienated each other even more. The steady detachment of capital from its productive quality led it to become an ever greater obstacle to the development of the social productive forces of labor.8
The more capital dissolves from its productive quality, the more dominant its character will be in robbing surplus profits rather than producing it. Instead of producing surplus value, it began looting accumulated surplus value and the accumulated funds of the laborers with financial means and speculative capital. Instead of increasing surplus labor by reducing the necessary labor through the development of the productive forces, it began to plunder labor by increasing working hours and lowering effective wages. So, the capital has returned to its primitive accumulation age, the age of savagery and barbarism. Nature, too, is more than a means of production; now appears to capital more as an object of plunder. Water, forest, land and living nature are getting plundered. Apart from the fact that the women's labor is drawn in the area of the exploitation more widespread, the women's sexuality is more exposed to the exploitation of the capital than ever. Capital has become, in all respects and with the everything related to it, to produce only reaction.


The Material Technical Basis of the New Society
The existential crisis is not an economical crisis form. It is the crisis of a mode of production which has lost its historical basis of existence and the form of society which corresponds to this mode of production. The existential crisis is the sum of economic, political, ideological crises. This crisis can not be overcome within the conditions in which it originated. In other words, bourgeois society no longer has the ability to overcome this crisis with its own internal dynamics. It can only be overcome if an "external" force abolishes the given conditions and puts new conditions into its place, that is, by substituting a new form of society for the old.
No form of society can abolish itself. The "external force" repealing any form of society stuck in an existential crisis is a product of the respective world. In societies before capitalism, new production relations arose from the given society, from the world at that time. Before the old society was abolished, alongside it, has sprouted the new form of society. In the primitive communal society, slavery society was born, from this society, feudalism and from his bosom, capitalism was born.
In capitalism, the situation is different. "The real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself."9 Capital abolishes all forms of private property except itself. It transforms the means of production into social means of production and the individual labor into social labor. For this reason, no new mode of production grows in the bourgeois society, which is leaning on the private ownership of the means of production. Elimination of capital, which slided into an existential crisis, cannot be realized through sprouting of a new new mode of production within the bourgeois society. In order to move into a new form of society, the capital must be repealed. For a revolution in the production relations, first, the political power of the capital must be overthrown. When this political power has been seized, the old form of production is not lifted by economic means, but through political means. The society expropriates the capital and socializes it. Private ownership over the means of production is abolished and they become social property. Transition to the new mode of production can only happen with this condition.
The material-technical basis for this new form of society is prepared by the capital itself. Capital itself abolishes private property, the big fish swallows the small ones, and at the end a few hundred monopolies remain, dominating the world market. Now it's their expropriation turn. The capital produces those who will expropriate it with its own hands. By dissolving the intermediate strata, transforming all working people into wage laborers (working or unemployed) capital upends a huge army against itself.10
In the absence of new relations of production in capitalism, and through the fact that the force which will abolishes capital will not be the element of a newly created relation of production, this army (the proletariat) can only become an "external force" as a political army. The working class and the oppressed, organized as a political army, will crush the state, seize power and convert capital to social ownership. Only in this way, the existential crisis of capitalism can be overcome.


Conclusion
The condition of existence for capital, and thereby also for bourgeois society is the free, unrestricted and universal development of productive forces. Capital strives for the universal development of the productive forces. This tendency is immanent to the capital, but at the same time, that drives it into dissolving. This tendency differentiates capital from all previous modes of production. The development of new productive forces on the old foundation has also been developing the existing basis, but that has also caused the existing mode of production to be buried in this foundation. For example, the feudal system, for its part, foundered on urban industry, trade, modern agriculture (even as a result of individual inventions like gunpowder and the printing press) .11 With the development of wealth, meaning the productive forces, the economic conditions the society relies on dissolve. The political relationships of the constituent parts of society, as well as the prevalent forms of social consciousness, develop parallel to these economic conditions. With the dissolution of economic relations, the political relations and ideology which are embodied according to these economic relations also start to dissolve. The characters and understandings of individuals formed in these economic conditions, begin to dissolve too and emerge in a new form. Considered ideally, the dissolution of a given form of consciousness sufficed to kill a whole epoch.12 Development of science, as an expression of the intellectual and practical enrichment of the productive forces of human, had the same influence on the previous forms of society, especially ion the feudal system. New productive forces, new relations of production, new human beings and their new forms of character, comprehension and consciousness, develop the basis of the old society, change it and eventually dissolve it on the basis of new economic conditions and parallel to it, new political conditions and ideological forms prevail. The old society dissolves, the new development takes on a new foundation.
Unlike the other societies, the bourgeois society, leaning on capital production, the development of productive forces is the capital's condition of existence. Capital posits the production of wealth itself and hence the universal development of the productive forces, the constant overthrow of its prevailing presuppositions, as the presupposition of its reproduction. Value excludes no use value; i.e. includes no particular kind of consumption etc., of intercourse etc. as absolute condition; and likewise every degree of the development of the social forces of production, of intercourse, of knowledge etc. appears to it only as a barrier which it strives to overpower. 13 For capital accumulation, this is a compulsory phase. The labor force, corresponding to a one workday rented from a worker by the capitalist, is divided into two parts. The first is the necessary labor corresponding to the wage paid to the worker, and the second is the surplus labor shared by the capitalists in the market. The compulsory condition for the increased reproduction of capital is to constantly reduce the necessary labor in order to increase the share of surplus labor. That is the reason why it develops productive forces. But there is a limit for the reduction of necessary labor through the development of productive forces. If the necessary labor is reduced to zero, also the surplus labor is also zeroed. In this case, surplus value and profit also reduce to zero. The goal of capital is not the universal development of the productive forces, but to obtain more profit. The productive forces are developed to reach surplus profit. When it becomes clear that not enough surplus profit can be gained with this way, the enthusiasm to develop the productive forces breaks, first it stagnates and totters and at the end it dissolves. In parallel with this dissolution of the economic basis, political conditions, prevailing social consciousness forms which mean ideology, characters and comprehensions of individuals also dissolve. The bourgeoisie itself gets politically confused and ideologically scattered. A different voice pops up from every mouth. A collage (cut-paste) composed of hopelessness, loss of hegemony, lack of clarity, breakage of strategy, etc. has become a reality of the political world of the bourgeoisie. The ideological apparatuses of the state no longer function. It is no longer possible to produce new bourgeois ideas that enthrall people.
Expressing once again, capital creates the material forces for the new society with tis own hands, but for the free development of these forces, capital must be abolished. Therefore, it's a direct political action. The future material forces that capital has produced can only and firstly design the new society in mind, and this design can be a universal design because of the universal quality of the development of the productive forces. The first point of design involves the removal of obstacles against the development of the productive forces. After this is realized, so after production is removed from being the purpose for profit, then the removal of the obstacles against the development of productive forces is provided. In this case, there will no longer be any obstacle for zeroing the necessary labor in the production phase.
The common feature of all societies leaning on private property over the means of production is that the surplus labor time is expropriated to accumulate wealth. What is distinguishing them from each other is the various forms of this collection or exploitation. In these societies, the source of wealth is unpaid surplus labor time. Capitalism is the last of these societies. In communism, the source of wealth will not be the surplus labor time, but the free and disposable time.14

 

Footnotes

1. "The historical conditions of its existence are by no means given with the mere circulation of money and commodities. It can spring into life, only when the owner of the means of production and subsistence meets in the market with the free laborer selling his labor-power. And this one historical condition comprises a world's history. Capital, therefore, announces from its first appearance a new epoch in the process of social production. " (Marx, Capital Vol 1, s. 120, Progress Publishers, Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) )
2. "The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere. " (Marx-Engels, Communist Manifesto, p.16, Progress Publishers, Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) )
3. "Development of the productive forces of social labor is the historical task and justification of capital. " (Marx, Capital Vol. 3, p.181, Progress Publishers, Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) )
4. "This reduction of the total quantity of labor going into a commodity seems, accordingly, to be the essential criterion of increased productivity of labor, no matter under what social conditions production is carried on." (Marx, age, p.182)
5. "The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. " (Marx-Engels, Communist Manifesto, p.16, Progress Publishers, Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org))
6. "The so-called plethora of capital always applies essentially to a plethora of the capital for which the fall in the rate of profit is not compensated through the mass of profit - this is always true of newly developing fresh offshoots of capital - or to a plethora which places capitals incapable of action on their own at the disposal of the managers of large enterprises in the form of credit. This plethora of capital arises from the same causes as those which call forth relative over-population, and is, therefore, a phenomenon supplementing the latter, although they stand at opposite poles - unemployed capital at one pole, and unemployed worker population at the other. " (Marx, Capital Vol. 3, p.176, Progress Publishers, Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) )
7. "And as soon as formation of capital were to fall into the hands of a few established big capitals, for which the mass of profit compensates for the falling rate of profit, the vital flame of production would be altogether extinguished. It would die out. " (Marx, age, s. 181)
8. Here the capitalist mode of production is beset with another contradiction. Its historical mission is unconstrained development in geometrical progression of the productivity of human labor. It goes back on its mission whenever, as here, it checks the development of productivity. It thus demonstrates again that it is becoming senile and that it is more and more outlived. " (Marx, age, s. 183)
9. Marx, age, s. 176
10. "One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the cooperative form of the labor process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labor into instruments of labor only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialized labor, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. "(Marx, Capital Vol. 1, p.542, Progress Publishers, Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) )
11. Marx, Grundrisse Notebook V, p. 473, Marxists Internet Archive(marxists.org)
12. Age, p. 474
13. Age, p. 474
14. "The development of the power of social production will grow so rapidly that, even though production is now calculated for the wealth of all, disposable time will grow for all. For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labor time, but rather disposable time." (Age, p. 640) 

 
 

 

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The Existential Crisis of Capitalism
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Chaos, anarchy, confusion... Rising racism, fascism and political Islam. Hopelessness and helplessness... Ideological, political and cultural degeneration. Uncertainty and loss of meaning... Means of violence in the forefront of political struggles... An insurmountable economic crisis, growing wage inequality, unemployment and poverty... Aimless and disoriented uprisings, counter-revolutions... The awakening of women...
Today, the world looks like this. Whether in the USA, in Syria, in England or in Turkey, we can find a piece of today's landscape of the world. The emergence of the ISIS, the election of Trump as president of the United States, Tayyip Erdoğan's aspiration for a one-man dictatorship, the rise of the fascist party in France, the referendum decision of the British for Brexit, the seizure of power by fascists in Ukraine... These are not isolated, independent events, but different phenomena of the same tendency and the same global situation. They arise on a common ground. They thrive on the same soil. The same analysis can also be done on its opposite side. The uprisings of the Arab peoples, the Gezi uprising in Turkey, the Indignados in Greece and Spain, the Occupy movement in the USA, the Rojava revolution and the proclaimed Soviet republics in Ukraine are also different manifestations of the same tendency and are product of the same ground.
Can we describe this as the tendency of a general polarization of society, or as a distancing from the center? Of course. Because that's obvious. Bourgeois democracy has decayed. It grapples with the economic crisis of capitalism. The bourgeois ideology has collapsed. It is natural that under these conditions, the class contradictions are sharpening, the workers lose their faith in the state and the bourgeois parliament, the bourgeoisie can no longer rule as before and the oppressed no longer wants to be ruled as before. It should therefore not be surprising that under these conditions, the bourgeoisie turns to fascism and the oppressed to the revolution and that the tendency of a two-sided polarization arises.
Still, these are all only phenomena that are far from taking us to the truth lying behind these phenomena. For example, bourgeoisie's leaning towards fascism is a phenomenon, but the truth is more than that. This or that hostile statement of Trump against blacks, women, migrants and Muslims are not that tragic for the US monopolies, but when he talks about imposing 35% tax on German automobiles, the situation changes. In present days when the dependence of nations on one another is concentrated to such a degree, when the world market is integrated so much and rates of profit are determined on a global scale, such protectionist tendencies can't be tendencies of the world monopolies. However, it can be a regressive reaction of the bourgeois strata, which are just dissolving. But this also shows that the world monopolies are preparing for a much more violent competition over the world market.
This depression isn't new in bourgeois society. Throughout the history of capitalism, there have been many economic and political crises in bourgeois society. The economic crises that recur every 8-10 years may bring to mind the great economic depression of 1929-1930 that shook the world. The revolutions and counter-revolutions of 1848 in Europe, fascism and socialism in confrontation as two big blocs of bourgeoisie and proletariat in the imperialist stage of capitalism, the smash of the colonial yoke of the imperialists through national liberation struggles, the '68 youth movement that shook the world... More can be enumerated, all these are some of the phenomena of the political polarization within bourgeois society.
All the crises experienced so far are the crises within bourgeois society. For this reason, the bourgeoisie has managed to overcome these internal crises each time. Whenever the bourgeoisie was under pressure, it has thrown overboard liberalism and democracy, thereby managed to uphold fascism against the revolutionary socialism of the proletariat. When fascism endangered also the bourgeois society, they did not shy away from forming alliances with communists against fascism. Where the contradictions got most acute, bourgeois states have broken each other through world wars. In the end, the capitalist production relations and bourgeois form of society have always been successful to organize themselves economically as well as politically on a higher level. The bourgeoisie has not been able to prevent the socialist revolutions, but the imperialist bourgeoisie has been able to strain the socialist states to dissolve internally by unifying against them. The imperialists have failed to stop the smash of the colonial yoke, but by keeping the countries which gained independence in the capitalist system, they have succeeded in putting them under the yoke of neocolonialism. In '68, the French bourgeoisie and French state almost came to a position where they started fleeing from Paris, but in the following years, the bourgeoisie was able to drag a large number of the leaders of this rebellious generation into the abyss of bourgeois parliament.


The Crisis of Society Form
Today, there is another situation. Today we are not experiencing a crisis within bourgeois society, but of the society itself. It is the crisis of the bourgeois form of society.
The difference between these two situations is this: in a crisis within society, the dominant production relations and their corresponding political and ideological superstructure still have the capacity to reproduce themselves. For example, the bourgeoisie had overcome the economic crisis in the capitalist world in the 1870's, when it waged a transition to the monopolistic stage and colonized the non-capitalist areas of the world. At this time, capitalist relations of production were only dominant in Western European countries and in the United States. In turn, petty commodity production was widely dominant in these colonized countries. In the rest of the world, the capitalist production relations were not dominant, in some places, people were even not integrated into the system of private property relations. In some places, the feudal relations of production were ahead. For the rest, capitalism was still at a very limited level. For this reason, when the economic crisis hits, it was possible to expand within the national market and to concentrate and centralize capital. Also, there was still an immense world for the capitalist goods trade to extend. Once the conquest of this world was completed, the redistribution of the world was brought to agenda by wars. When the fire of socialist revolution in Russia flared up, the imperialists supported fascists like Mussolini, Hitler and Franco and took on them to the communists and the Soviet Union. After the great economic crisis of 1930, they left ideological temples, such as economic liberalism or the free market, behind and led the state into the market as a capitalist. When the Second World War (for the bourgeoisie, a re-division war, for the communists, an anti-fascist war) ended and new countries joined the caravan of socialist states, this time they stopped competing with each other and united under the leadership of the United States, to encircle the socialist states economically, politically, militarily and ideologically. When confronted with a new world economic crisis in 1974-75, they removed the state as a capital accumulation apparatus, but plundered it through privatization, lifted the barriers against capital movements and thus ensured that the path for concentrating and centralizing the capital on a new level was clear and the world monopolies were thus able to dominate the world market. With the liberalization of the speculative flow of capital, they have greatly accelerated the accumulation of finance capital. Just as the economic crisis of 1870 became a step for the transition from capitalism of free competition to imperialism, the crisis of the 1970's has ushered in the transition to imperialist globalization. As the states, which were ravaged from inside by the capitalist encirclement and had nothing socialist except their name, were subjected to a kind of primitive capital accumulation, and a huge market like China opened up for capitalist plundering, the imperialist globalization received a new impetus.
From the point of view of the working class, the situation looked similar. Strikes, occupations, resistance, councils, rebellions and revolutions have not been lacking in the history of the working class and its allies. Each time the bourgeoisie had succeeded to suppress the working class movement, keeping it inside the system, or reintegrating it into the system. This is because, in spite of economic crises, wars and revolutions, the bourgeoisie could continue to develop the productive forces of capitalism in the long term. The working class has grown continuously. The educational level has increased. As a result of the struggles, the living standard of the working class has risen so that the workers of the developed capitalist countries experienced the best periods of their class history in the 60's and 70's. Keeping in mind the last 150 years in history, until the 1980's, we see that working class children expected a better life than their parents. Likewise, we can say that both the level of education of a generation and its overall quality of life were more advanced than those of its previous generation. It is obvious that the struggles of the working class have been decisive. But one cannot handle things unilaterally. If the bourgeoisie wouldn't have pursued the policy of concessions, if it wouldn't have preserved the ability to produce ideological consent, in short, if it hadn't had a maneuver capability then we could now have faced a very different situation.
And today, we are facing this very different condition. The maneuver capability of the bourgeoisie is at its lowest point. The conditions to produce consent, as it used to do in any difficult situation with concessions policy, is now limited to the utmost. The bourgeoisie is unable groom the world. It cannot produce the hope that everything will get better. For the first time, the children of the working class, who are more educated than their parents, don't carry hope to have a better life than their parents. Today's generation of workers is condemned to more backward conditions compared to the previous generation and tomorrow's generation will seek long for today's conditions.
To this day, whatever the level of the struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie reaches; in the last analysis, this struggle has taken place under conditions in which the bourgeois social structure, despite interruptions by crises, materialized expanded reproduction, developed the productive forces, protected the foundation of their own reproduction and continued their rule. This also applies to the countries where the working class has carried out the most revolutionary initiatives and to the countries which began socialist construction even under capitalist encirclement. That is why the bourgeoisie has repeatedly managed to crush the working-class movement, to divert it from its path and to integrate it into the ruling order.
That's right, the working-class movement is at its lowest point today. But capitalism, on the other hand, does not have the ability to conquer the working class. Maybe the working class is living its weakest moments as an organized force. Maybe its political class consciousness is stunted. Maybe defeats of the historical gainings and socialist construction experiences have become heavy ideological burdens in its mind. Yet, how much real these are, it is that much clear that the working class no longer has anything to do with capitalism and that no better life can be achieved with its existence. For the working class, capitalism has come to an end. This reality cannot be changed by that it has not yet been reflected in the political class consciousness and has become an ideology.
What applies to the working class also applies to the bourgeoisie. Even the bourgeoisie can not reproduce itself as before. It cannot overcome crises. It can no longer create new ideas or ideology. Only pessimism and hopelessness determine the bourgeois world. Capitalism is also over for the bourgeoisie. Just as the feudal lords lost the power to maintain feudalism once, so did the bourgeoisie also lose the power to develop the productive forces and thereby maintain capitalism. Moreover, now bourgeois society, itself, has become an obstacle to the development of the productive forces.
In today's world, where the appearance is that the working class is weakest and the bourgeoisie is the ruler of everything, objective reality is just the opposite. The reality behind this appearance stands exactly upside down. The destructive consequences of imperialist globalization have obscured and blurred the consciousness of the working people and also the bourgeoisie and led to a loss of sight and orientation. For example, within the dispossessed middle class and the workers of the developed capitalist countries, who are now losing their social and economical rights, protectionist, racist and nationalist tendencies occur quickly. Yet, the basis on which bourgeois nationalism rises was actually removed by imperialist globalization. Today's bourgeois nationalism is a past consciousness, it belongs to the past and has no material basis. Their foundations are hanging in the air. For this reason, it is an address and shelter of depression, despair and impossibility.
The current crisis can not be overcome by staying in bourgeois society. The problems can not be solved either through struggles or compromise policies within this form of society. Because it has reached its economical development limits, political maneuvers are always partial, limited, and short-termed, without leaning on ideological arguments and they have the character of being lost within a short time due to actual political and economical developments. Precisely for this reason we call it the crisis of the bourgeois society form. It is also the reason why we call it the existential crisis. The capitalist relations of production have abutted their own limits. You can not go beyond the current level. There is no chance for it.


The Historical Adventure of Existential Crises
Let us deepen this matter. Every form of production has a historical role that it played. This role is their reason for existence. There is a social material basis, a stage, for this historical role. If the given form of production becomes an obstacle to the development of more advanced productive forces, it loses its historical right to exist. "Losing the historical right to exist" is not realized at one swoop, it also requires a historical process. In times when depression within society transforms into a crisis of society form, civil wars and outward wars, political polarizations, uprisings and counter-blows, economic-political-ideological depressions aggravate to utmost and render as a permanent state.
The primitive communal society defines the transition of human from a herd to a social form. That is its right to exist and its social material basis. The same basis leads to the development of the productive forces of human. The productive power of human reaches such a level that it could produce much more means of survival than it needed at that time. There emerges extra labor time. The primitive communal society form did not have the ability to use this extra time. The emergence of extra time and the lack of ability of primitive society to realize it became its existential crisis. The struggle to appropriate this extra labor time shook up all social relationships and all modes of thinking. The basis on which the primitive communal relations formed had been shattered. Some of the people have enslaved the others and usurped their extra time through appropriating their existence directly. Ultimately, as a higher level of social organization than the clans, the state emerged.
Seizing human, which is the fundamental productive force, and rendering it a private property caused a minority of slaveholders to accumulate great wealth. Living without working and through appropriating the work of others meant, at the same time, the appropriation of the free (empty) time of the slaves. With this accumulated free time, the necessary time to be productive in the fields of culture, art, science, religion and philosophy was created thereby. The slave state or Asiatic state arose on this basis. Inevitably, there were slave revolts. Peasants who rejected slavery but were unable to oppose the attacks sought refuge among larger landowners, preferring to take their protection. As this mode of production based on half-slaves was proven to be more productive than that based on slaves, it became a historical tendency to let people work as half-slaves dependent on their masters and land, rather than enslave them completely. It remarked that the existential basis of slavery had collapsed. Glorious slave states, which were stuck on this basis, such as the Roman Empire, could not resist against the assaults of the primitive-barbaric tribes and were destroyed.
By contrast, Asiatic countries were hit much later by the existential crisis. The main reason for this is the different development of private property relations. Slave societies were formed through disintegration of communal-common land property and converting it into private property. However, in the Asiatic societies, the right of use of land without any disintegration was taken first by the ruling class layers, then it became their private property.
With the emergence of capitalist relations of production, feudal society has been dragged into an existential crisis. The feudal lords themselves initiated the crisis. The struggle for the governance of trade routes has driven the central state forward. The central state, the central army and the centralization of taxes meant that weakening the power of the feudal lords in favor of the crown. The strengthening of the central state required that national trade must be conducted without obstacles and within the borders of central state, and that the people within those borders must be subjected to the king. This unity around the king, created against the other states, has laid the foundation of the formation of nation and nation-state. Thus, the feudal lords offered this with their own hands to the bourgeoisie.
Accumulation of wealth over trade subrogated the wealth accumulation over land property. This tendency has promoted the development and spread of commodity trade and exactly as a product of this, it caused the enrichment of bourgeois class. When money became the source of wealth instead of land, the existential crisis of feudalism was inevitable. The feudal lords itself began renting their land to the bourgeoisie in order to earn more money. The serfs were thrown out from the lands they depended on. Millions of peasants thronged to the cities, unemployed, hungry and miserable. As the free trade developed, the small industries and trade units dissolved, and these, as unemployed past masters, also joined the ranks of vagabonds and beggars. The feudal lords have personally destroyed their own livelihood. The feudal form of society could no longer be continued. The ruling class of this society, the feudal lords, itself had expelled the peasants and put their land for rent for the accumulation of wealth. Even though they remained feudal, the feudal relations of production based on the expropriation of surplus labor time of serfs, were being overthrown. There was no longer any need for the feudal form of society for the serfs, who were the other side of feudal relations, for the small peasants and merchants who stood under the protection of feudal lords. They were pushed out of the feudal reach.
Under such conditions, it was not possible for the feudal lords to maintain their political rule as before. The belief in lordliness and religion were shaken. The economical, political and ideological depression had shaken feudalism for a few centuries. A big convergence, cultural, intellectual, political and revolutionary dynamism arose in society as if a great burden had fallen off from their shoulders.
The capital, which now became the actual source of wealth, was in the hands of the bourgeoisie and the masses pushed out of the extent of feudals, now entered the extent of bourgeoisie as a proletariat under the control of capital. Feudalism had lost its historical reason for existence, it was about to collapse and wither away and it did.
The "collapse" occurred in two ways. First one was through a political revolution like in France, and second one was through feudals' getting to become bourgeois like in Italy and England. There were many revolutionary uprisings in the second ones as well, but political power continued to be held by the feudal lords for a while. In any case, the revolution lies in the production relations. When the feudal society form became an obstacle to the developing bourgeois relations of production, it was thrown aside.


The Existential Reason of the Bourgeois Society Form
The historical condition of existence of capital lies in the emergence of the free laborer, who has freed himself/herself from the feudal fetters.1 Without this, the flow of commodity and money can not create capital accumulation. In order to realize capital accumulation, the capitalist had to expropriate the worker's surplus labor time. Commodity and money circulation are the means to capture this surplus labor time. Only when capital, in the form of commodity and money, meets labor force, it is possible to realize the production of surplus value. Also, the labor force only manages to obtain its means of subsistence when it enters under the command of capital, because the worker has nothing to sell but his/her labor force. When he/she cannot sell it, he/she will lack his/her sole livelihood, the wage.
Wherever capital flows, it dissolves the old relations of production, makes them dependent to itself, and then destroys them. Ultimately, capital allows no other production relations other than its own. One of the main tendencies of capital is to turn any kind of ownership over the means of production into capital and to turn any kind of labor into wage labor.
Wage labor and capital are each others' conditions of mutual existence. They produce each other. Wage labor and capital is the contradicting unity of two opposite poles. However, this unity, through which capital and labor produce each other, experiences a crisis in every 8-10 years on average. Capital that needs to be invested in production for the reproduction of surplus value remains at hand due to the fall of profit rates. There realized extra capital surplus. Extra capital surplus inevitably lead to extra labor surplus. Because when the capital is not invested in the production, industrial reserve army gets larger than necessary and unemployment peaks. The capitalist has capital at its hand but can not invest it, the worker has labor force ready for sale but can not sell it. At such times, capital and labor can not produce each other, capital and labor becomes no longer each other's existence conditions.
This is only temporary. As long as capital in the form of commodity and money does not meet labor force and remains at hand, it is inevitable that both capital and labor force will lose value. The price of commodity-capital and the interest rate of money-capital fall. With shorter words, the capital cheapens. Due to extreme unemployment, the price of the labor force declines. Under these conditions, the rate of profit rises to an investable level, and capital tends toward production again. The crisis is overcome.
From every crisis, capital stands out even more accumulated and even more centralized. The area of bourgeois production relations expands and the number of workers increases with each ascent after crisis.
Another inherent tendency of capital is to create a world market.2 The more capital is accumulated, the more the capital's spread around the world accelerates. However, this does not work like first, the exhaustion of the expansion possibilities of the national market, then opens up to external market; even if there are opportunities for expansion in the national market, capital tends to go outside if profit rates there is higher.
The capital production process runs in two phases. The first phase is the phase of production of surplus value. The boss exploits the worker and seizes his/her surplus labor time. This extra labor time is materialized in the produced commodity as surplus value. The surplus value is in the form of the commodity-product. For it to be converted into profit, it must be sold. This is the second phase.
In this second phase, the surplus value gained through exploitation by the capital accumulates in the pot called market. The capitalists compete for surplus profit. At the production field, the bosses exploit the workers. In the market, on the other hand, the bosses rob each other.
The value of a commodity is determined by the average necessary social labor time required for its production. Labor-intensive capital has more surplus value per unit commodity in the market. High-tech capitals bring less surplus value to the market because its unit of production needs less labor force for the commodity compared to the others. As the value of the commodity is formed by the average social labor time, the ones, whose commodity has less value than the average social value, sell it above its own production value as if they produced the commodity on the average labor time. The production value of commodities, which are produced with technologically backward labor-intensive capital, is above average, but they also compulsorily go down to the market average. In other words, technologically advanced commodities are sold above their value and technologically backward commodities are sold below their value. Thus, capitals, which have higher technological equipment, snatch a part of the surplus value produced by the technologically under-resourced capitals.
The value of a commodity consists of three parts: constant capital + variable capital (what is paid to the labor force) + surplus value. When a commodity, which is produced on average social labor time, is sold, the surplus value becomes profit. Since the average social production value is already decided, and by assuming that the surplus value rate is constant as well, the only way to gain more profit is lowering the price of the labor force per unit commodity. A capitalist who, in comparison to others, recruits workers to work for longer hours and with even less wage, produces his/her commodities cheaper, but since he/she sells them with the average value, he/she gains surplus profit. But through the application of science in production, it has become possible to reduce the labor force required per unit commodity and thereby much higher surplus profit can be gained. Reducing the necessary labor force through more intensive application of science in production means increasing the social productive power of labor.3 For this reason, the continuous reduction of the cost of production of unit commodity and for this, the constant increase of the social productive power of labor4, and making permanent revolution in production are the existential basis and the historical existence reason of capital.5
The thrust for this existential basis is the greed for more profit.
This greed triggers the centralization and concentration of capital. Investing in technology requires from the beginning a much larger amount of capital than others. Smaller capitals will either go bankrupt or join the larger one. Big ones unite in order to be superior in the competition. This, leads to the emergence of national monopolies first and then causes each one to become world monopolies.
In any case, capital needs a market ready to conquest for its expanded reproduction. Areas that have not yet been capitalist and all other capitalist enterprises are always areas ready to conquest in the eyes of every capitalist. Monopolistic capital accelerates this war of conquest. Capitalism quickly spreads around the world, and bankruptcies multiply among the small and medium capitalists. The necessary amount for the initial capital gradually grows. The possibility of small and medium capital's independent existence disappears, these become dependent on big capital. Eventually, there comes a moment where there is no place in the world left non-capitalist, and the already narrowed spaces of small-middle capitalists are no longer enough to satisfy big capital's expansionist needs. The capital has grown so much that the market's expansion potential falls below the capital's necessities. The possibility of surplus profit extraction through the application of science in technology has decreased. The market has reached its limits compared to the size of capital (the monopolization level). When the monopolies dominate the world market alongside with the national market, the possibility to obtain surplus profit is narrowed. Because surplus profit emerges from the difference of the production values between the big capital groups and the smaller ones, as well as between the developed capitalist countries and the backward capitalist countries. Due to this difference, the bigger capitals rob the smaller ones, the more developed capitalist countries rob the more backward ones. When the number of smaller ones diminishes due to monopolization and the world market is dominated by world monopolies, the possibility of robbing through developing the productive forces also reduces. The capital builds a barricade on its own path. Capital becomes no longer able to produce its own existential basis. Its historical reason for existence, namely, to develop the social productive force of labor, to apply science to technology, that is, the permanent revolution in production, can no longer be realized. Instead of developing the social productive forces of labor, it becomes a hindrance to it. That is the objective basis of its existential crisis.
Because this happened, capital does not give up on surplus profit. When capital is unable to develop the social productive forces of labor, this time it tries to lower the price of labor in order to reach the surplus profit. It recruits workers longer and cheaper, and by doing that, goes in a competition of gaining surplus profit. Yesterday, production capital has been concentrating on where the application of science to technology was better possible, but now it flows to where cheap labor can be found. Historically, this reversal leads to the abolition of its historical reasons for existence.
The monopolies achieve surplus profit not only through this path. There are two ways for capital accumulation. The first proceeds through surplus-value production, the second through robbery of accumulated surplus value produced by others through financial means. In the stage of capitalism of free competition, the former, that is, the surplus value production, is decisive. In the stage of imperialism, accumulation through financial means has gained importance, but the former was still predominant. In the period of imperialist globalization, accumulation through financial means has accelerated and began to dominate the first one. This means nothing but the decay of capital. In the end, the limit of accumulation on this path is anyway the produced surplus value. If there is a slowdown on that end, then someday the possibility of robbing the existing surplus value by financial means weakens.
When cheap labor and robbery through financial means become the two main routes for surplus profit extraction, unemployment and misery grows like avalanche, the shrinkage of intermediate layers accelerates, inequality between classes grows immeasurably, culture and ethics decays more and more, hopelessness and helplessness become the prevailing feeling and the form of consciousness.


Minor and Major Cyclical Crises
Apart from classic cyclical crises in every 8-10 years, even more shocking and protracted big cyclical crises have emerged. The crises of 1876, 1930, 1974 and 2008 were just such crises. Except for the last one, the consequences of these crises lasted 5-10 years. In the classic cyclical crises, there is no significant change in the conditions in which capital moves and stands. The capital independently continues to produce its own conditions of existence. But this is not the case with the big cyclical crises. Capital can no longer reproduce in the given conditions. The crisis can only be overcome if the given conditions are changed.
In the crisis of 1876, the conditions for capitalism of free competition lost their validity, and the travail of the birth of monopolistic capitalism became palpable. This crisis could only be overcome by colonizing the non-capitalist areas of the world by the capitalist countries. That was the transformation of capitalism into a competition for monopoly capitalism, imperialism. Even before 1876 many crises arose. They were all overcome within free-competition capitalism. On the other hand, this crisis could not be overcome in the given circumstances, the conditions had to change and that's how it happened.
The crisis of 1930 was the depression of the conditions created after the crisis of 1876. Monopolistic capitalism, leaning on capital export, was stuck. Monopolistic capitalism lacked the strength to overcome the crisis with its own internal dynamics. The bourgeois state was called to rescue in times of need. The bourgeois state was until then the collective ruling apparatus of the bourgeois class, it had the function of a lever for the capital. It was a bourgeois ideological dogma that the state was not allowed to interfere in the economy. That the USSR did not suffer a crisis and the successes of the planned economy of the socialist state shattered this dogma. The bourgeois class has thrown aside this ideological dogma according to their interests. The bourgeois state then went into the field as a collective capitalist power. Monopolistic state capitalism has driven monopoly capitalism out of the crisis. After the 1950's, this has become much clearer. The main objective of the bourgeois front was to keep the socialist giants surrounded and lead them to destruction. National liberation struggles, national-democratic revolutions and the socialist states have pretty much limited and narrowed the world market. The capitalist states, on the other hand, placed the competition among themselves in second place and expanded their own national markets. Just as the crisis was overcome by exporting the surplus capital outside after 1876, this time, the crisis was overcome by using a large part of the capital surplus in the developed capitalist countries and enlarging their national markets. Even if the capitalist world market has narrowed geographically at this time, the capital accumulation has gained great rapidity.
The crisis of 1974 announced the end of this phase. The accumulation of capital has again congested. The crisis '74 was reminiscent of the crisis of 1876. In 1876, there was no great destruction, but the capitalists were unwilling to use their capital surplus in the national market, because the rate of profit had fallen. The growing greed of the nascent monopolies has led them to search for new markets. 1974 was somewhat like this. Between 1945-1970, capital accumulation accelerated. The national monopolies have begun to turn into world monopolies. The capitalist world market became too narrow for world monopolies. Above all else, the bourgeois state occupied an important place in the capitalist market. Now, the state became an obstacle to capital accumulation. This obstacle that the monopolies of private capital confronted in the national market had to be lifted. On the other hand, the customs walls and national legislations, which limited, the rapid flow of surplus capital and its export. Instead of a world market constituted of interconnected national markets, an integrated world market is needed to emerge.
Out of the crisis of 1974, imperialist globalization was born.
The crisis of 2007-08 was the offshoot of the accumulated contradictions of imperialist globalization. This crisis was different from the previous major cyclical crises.
The capital concentration and centralization of world monopolies had reached such an extent that their bankruptcy would have devastated the capitalist economy and torn down the states. That could not be allowed. With resources from the state budget, they were saved.
The fundamental feature of any crisis is that capital investment has become cheaper through capital destruction and that new capital investments and demand have been revived. Not letting the monopolies that fell into crisis go bankrupt prevents devaluation of capital, thus prevents the revival of new investments and demands. In addition, chronic unemployment and decrease in wages due to crisis have also reduced demand. The same conditions increase chronic capital surplus6 and chronic unemployment. Large amounts of capital, which are not invested, flow all the more into the financial resources. The inevitable consequences of this are the acceleration of the expropriation of the intermediate strata, the incredible degree of inequality between classes, the spread of misery and decay around the world.
The capital itself, has exhausted the possibilities of crisis management under the conditions of the bourgeois social structure. With the extreme concentration and centralization of capital, capital has lost its productive quality more7 and tends more to the financial robbery, but on contrary to this, an ever-growing section of the growing proletariat is unable to find place to sell labor force. This has detached capital and labor force from each other more and weakened the possibilities of mutual production and alienated each other even more. The steady detachment of capital from its productive quality led it to become an ever greater obstacle to the development of the social productive forces of labor.8
The more capital dissolves from its productive quality, the more dominant its character will be in robbing surplus profits rather than producing it. Instead of producing surplus value, it began looting accumulated surplus value and the accumulated funds of the laborers with financial means and speculative capital. Instead of increasing surplus labor by reducing the necessary labor through the development of the productive forces, it began to plunder labor by increasing working hours and lowering effective wages. So, the capital has returned to its primitive accumulation age, the age of savagery and barbarism. Nature, too, is more than a means of production; now appears to capital more as an object of plunder. Water, forest, land and living nature are getting plundered. Apart from the fact that the women's labor is drawn in the area of the exploitation more widespread, the women's sexuality is more exposed to the exploitation of the capital than ever. Capital has become, in all respects and with the everything related to it, to produce only reaction.


The Material Technical Basis of the New Society
The existential crisis is not an economical crisis form. It is the crisis of a mode of production which has lost its historical basis of existence and the form of society which corresponds to this mode of production. The existential crisis is the sum of economic, political, ideological crises. This crisis can not be overcome within the conditions in which it originated. In other words, bourgeois society no longer has the ability to overcome this crisis with its own internal dynamics. It can only be overcome if an "external" force abolishes the given conditions and puts new conditions into its place, that is, by substituting a new form of society for the old.
No form of society can abolish itself. The "external force" repealing any form of society stuck in an existential crisis is a product of the respective world. In societies before capitalism, new production relations arose from the given society, from the world at that time. Before the old society was abolished, alongside it, has sprouted the new form of society. In the primitive communal society, slavery society was born, from this society, feudalism and from his bosom, capitalism was born.
In capitalism, the situation is different. "The real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself."9 Capital abolishes all forms of private property except itself. It transforms the means of production into social means of production and the individual labor into social labor. For this reason, no new mode of production grows in the bourgeois society, which is leaning on the private ownership of the means of production. Elimination of capital, which slided into an existential crisis, cannot be realized through sprouting of a new new mode of production within the bourgeois society. In order to move into a new form of society, the capital must be repealed. For a revolution in the production relations, first, the political power of the capital must be overthrown. When this political power has been seized, the old form of production is not lifted by economic means, but through political means. The society expropriates the capital and socializes it. Private ownership over the means of production is abolished and they become social property. Transition to the new mode of production can only happen with this condition.
The material-technical basis for this new form of society is prepared by the capital itself. Capital itself abolishes private property, the big fish swallows the small ones, and at the end a few hundred monopolies remain, dominating the world market. Now it's their expropriation turn. The capital produces those who will expropriate it with its own hands. By dissolving the intermediate strata, transforming all working people into wage laborers (working or unemployed) capital upends a huge army against itself.10
In the absence of new relations of production in capitalism, and through the fact that the force which will abolishes capital will not be the element of a newly created relation of production, this army (the proletariat) can only become an "external force" as a political army. The working class and the oppressed, organized as a political army, will crush the state, seize power and convert capital to social ownership. Only in this way, the existential crisis of capitalism can be overcome.


Conclusion
The condition of existence for capital, and thereby also for bourgeois society is the free, unrestricted and universal development of productive forces. Capital strives for the universal development of the productive forces. This tendency is immanent to the capital, but at the same time, that drives it into dissolving. This tendency differentiates capital from all previous modes of production. The development of new productive forces on the old foundation has also been developing the existing basis, but that has also caused the existing mode of production to be buried in this foundation. For example, the feudal system, for its part, foundered on urban industry, trade, modern agriculture (even as a result of individual inventions like gunpowder and the printing press) .11 With the development of wealth, meaning the productive forces, the economic conditions the society relies on dissolve. The political relationships of the constituent parts of society, as well as the prevalent forms of social consciousness, develop parallel to these economic conditions. With the dissolution of economic relations, the political relations and ideology which are embodied according to these economic relations also start to dissolve. The characters and understandings of individuals formed in these economic conditions, begin to dissolve too and emerge in a new form. Considered ideally, the dissolution of a given form of consciousness sufficed to kill a whole epoch.12 Development of science, as an expression of the intellectual and practical enrichment of the productive forces of human, had the same influence on the previous forms of society, especially ion the feudal system. New productive forces, new relations of production, new human beings and their new forms of character, comprehension and consciousness, develop the basis of the old society, change it and eventually dissolve it on the basis of new economic conditions and parallel to it, new political conditions and ideological forms prevail. The old society dissolves, the new development takes on a new foundation.
Unlike the other societies, the bourgeois society, leaning on capital production, the development of productive forces is the capital's condition of existence. Capital posits the production of wealth itself and hence the universal development of the productive forces, the constant overthrow of its prevailing presuppositions, as the presupposition of its reproduction. Value excludes no use value; i.e. includes no particular kind of consumption etc., of intercourse etc. as absolute condition; and likewise every degree of the development of the social forces of production, of intercourse, of knowledge etc. appears to it only as a barrier which it strives to overpower. 13 For capital accumulation, this is a compulsory phase. The labor force, corresponding to a one workday rented from a worker by the capitalist, is divided into two parts. The first is the necessary labor corresponding to the wage paid to the worker, and the second is the surplus labor shared by the capitalists in the market. The compulsory condition for the increased reproduction of capital is to constantly reduce the necessary labor in order to increase the share of surplus labor. That is the reason why it develops productive forces. But there is a limit for the reduction of necessary labor through the development of productive forces. If the necessary labor is reduced to zero, also the surplus labor is also zeroed. In this case, surplus value and profit also reduce to zero. The goal of capital is not the universal development of the productive forces, but to obtain more profit. The productive forces are developed to reach surplus profit. When it becomes clear that not enough surplus profit can be gained with this way, the enthusiasm to develop the productive forces breaks, first it stagnates and totters and at the end it dissolves. In parallel with this dissolution of the economic basis, political conditions, prevailing social consciousness forms which mean ideology, characters and comprehensions of individuals also dissolve. The bourgeoisie itself gets politically confused and ideologically scattered. A different voice pops up from every mouth. A collage (cut-paste) composed of hopelessness, loss of hegemony, lack of clarity, breakage of strategy, etc. has become a reality of the political world of the bourgeoisie. The ideological apparatuses of the state no longer function. It is no longer possible to produce new bourgeois ideas that enthrall people.
Expressing once again, capital creates the material forces for the new society with tis own hands, but for the free development of these forces, capital must be abolished. Therefore, it's a direct political action. The future material forces that capital has produced can only and firstly design the new society in mind, and this design can be a universal design because of the universal quality of the development of the productive forces. The first point of design involves the removal of obstacles against the development of the productive forces. After this is realized, so after production is removed from being the purpose for profit, then the removal of the obstacles against the development of productive forces is provided. In this case, there will no longer be any obstacle for zeroing the necessary labor in the production phase.
The common feature of all societies leaning on private property over the means of production is that the surplus labor time is expropriated to accumulate wealth. What is distinguishing them from each other is the various forms of this collection or exploitation. In these societies, the source of wealth is unpaid surplus labor time. Capitalism is the last of these societies. In communism, the source of wealth will not be the surplus labor time, but the free and disposable time.14

 

Footnotes

1. "The historical conditions of its existence are by no means given with the mere circulation of money and commodities. It can spring into life, only when the owner of the means of production and subsistence meets in the market with the free laborer selling his labor-power. And this one historical condition comprises a world's history. Capital, therefore, announces from its first appearance a new epoch in the process of social production. " (Marx, Capital Vol 1, s. 120, Progress Publishers, Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) )
2. "The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere. " (Marx-Engels, Communist Manifesto, p.16, Progress Publishers, Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) )
3. "Development of the productive forces of social labor is the historical task and justification of capital. " (Marx, Capital Vol. 3, p.181, Progress Publishers, Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) )
4. "This reduction of the total quantity of labor going into a commodity seems, accordingly, to be the essential criterion of increased productivity of labor, no matter under what social conditions production is carried on." (Marx, age, p.182)
5. "The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. " (Marx-Engels, Communist Manifesto, p.16, Progress Publishers, Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org))
6. "The so-called plethora of capital always applies essentially to a plethora of the capital for which the fall in the rate of profit is not compensated through the mass of profit - this is always true of newly developing fresh offshoots of capital - or to a plethora which places capitals incapable of action on their own at the disposal of the managers of large enterprises in the form of credit. This plethora of capital arises from the same causes as those which call forth relative over-population, and is, therefore, a phenomenon supplementing the latter, although they stand at opposite poles - unemployed capital at one pole, and unemployed worker population at the other. " (Marx, Capital Vol. 3, p.176, Progress Publishers, Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) )
7. "And as soon as formation of capital were to fall into the hands of a few established big capitals, for which the mass of profit compensates for the falling rate of profit, the vital flame of production would be altogether extinguished. It would die out. " (Marx, age, s. 181)
8. Here the capitalist mode of production is beset with another contradiction. Its historical mission is unconstrained development in geometrical progression of the productivity of human labor. It goes back on its mission whenever, as here, it checks the development of productivity. It thus demonstrates again that it is becoming senile and that it is more and more outlived. " (Marx, age, s. 183)
9. Marx, age, s. 176
10. "One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the cooperative form of the labor process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labor into instruments of labor only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialized labor, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. "(Marx, Capital Vol. 1, p.542, Progress Publishers, Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) )
11. Marx, Grundrisse Notebook V, p. 473, Marxists Internet Archive(marxists.org)
12. Age, p. 474
13. Age, p. 474
14. "The development of the power of social production will grow so rapidly that, even though production is now calculated for the wealth of all, disposable time will grow for all. For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labor time, but rather disposable time." (Age, p. 640)