Germinal : Marxismo e Educação em Debate (Jan 2010)
CRISES AND REVOLUTION
Abstract
This article addresses the materialist theory of development and fall of Marxism based on the theory of value as originally considered and presented by Karl Marx in Grundrisse and in Crítica da Economia Política, claiming that the production of value depends on labor force. As it takes place today, capital displaces labor force in every industry, service and activity, country, territory and region all over the world; workers are dismissed and are transferred to speculative activities of the fictional capital. This lesser disposition of labor force eventually harms the mean profit rate and, as time goes by, it provokes a crisis. The present capitalist crisis is resultant from the insufficiency and, to certain extent, to the incapacity of mechanisms from the system to generate enough value production in the labor process, to provide value to the invested capital (in settings of production, raw matter, and in labor force or variable capital); to create more value and to regain increased profit rate. These restraints of the financial capital (fictional capital) cause a deviation to the speculative plan and contribute for the formation of tragic speculative bubbles in sectors such as those of housing, energy and food. No matter how much productivity is increased, developing a technological revolution and “sparing labor force”, the reduction of time, socially required for the production of goods and labor force, becomes harder and more marginal. This is the way the capitalist system enters a civilian, structural and organic crisis, as it is now. To go beyond the capital means to construct structures and superstructures of a new non-capitalist society based on a new way to produce, to work and to keep harmonious and friendly human social relations. It is difficult to have a successful revolution if not with the education of its agents, that is, the organized front people, parties and syndicates that will raise the social, political and cultural awareness. For that purpose, a brief analysis of the system crisis core is required.
