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Capitalism may be unwell but it is not dead. : Comments
By John Passant, published 30/12/2008Workers can build on capitalism and create a new world where the economic crisis is consigned to a museum and war and want becomes a memory.
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The debate about the state and its role has blossomed.I would have liked it on my blog, where the article first appeared. (enpassant.com.au).
Tthere are a range of other articles on that site - Overpopulation, Israel, From Howard to Rudd, Is Obama just a competent George W?) also worthy of picking apart.
I have an old fashioned view - the labour theory of value. Here are these workers creating value in society and then all these parasites fight over it - rentiers, financiers, shareholders, the state, and of course capitalists. In addition, the creators of the wealth, workers, also fight for a share of their own creation. So all these groups battle it out for a bigger share for themselves.
But the surplus itself comes from the exploitative relationship between those who own the means of production and those who sell their labour power. So the state, rentiers, financiers etc do not contribute to that process of value creation (and either do capitalists in a more general sense since it is human labour which creates value) but rather are dependent on it. The way this is often presented in mainstream discussions is to talk about the real or productive economy.
So the state for example, like financiers and rentiers, must ensure that the productive but exploitative relationship between labour and capital and the creation of surplus value continues and flourishes. That does not make the state anti-capitalist. Indeed I would argue it is an integral part of capitalism.
Anyway, I'll try to clarify my thoughts and put something on my blog that is simple and lucid but necessarily simplistic since there are books and books on this issue and 1000 words is hardly enough to scratch somewhere near the surface, let alone make real contact. (Did I mention my blog Is En Passant with John Passant at enpassant.com.au)?