doesn't seem to matter what kind of crisis occurs, there's always something new for capital to continue its exploitation. for example, is it possible that in the nick of time, capital will discover cheap fusion and just use that to avoid total climate catastrophe in some way?
Im sure it seemed like feudal society would have been just as insurmountable by those burgeoning capitalists and thier employees as the new system grew for CENTURIES within the rotting corpse of the old. Feudalism did not fall in a day, or a year, or even a century, but it did fall, and if our boy Marx was even remotely on to something, capitalism will fall as well. Don't give up comrade :)
it literally lasted centuries longer than capitalism has... by all measures, feudalism was more stable. and yet it fell.
Dunno. Feudalism lasted for a thousand years, even with mercantile city states constantly threatening it. Capitalism has lasted give or take a couple hundred years thus far and it's already going to absolute shit.
Capitalism cannot persist forever. Take it as a law of the universe. Capitalism is a relatively new thing and at some point, it will end. Humans have existed most of the time without capitalism. Just because something doesn't or can't change within your lifetime, doesn't mean it's forever.
One of the key contradictions of capitalism means it can’t last forever - it requires constant growth. More profit, new markets, new customers. Infinite growth on a finite planet with finite resources is simply impossible. We’re already seeing that play out in our own lifetimes.
I’d say this is why imperialism is considered capitalism at its highest stage - the division of the world by various monopolies is complete, there are no new markets to exploit, there’s nowhere left for the system to go.
Now, due to the way that particular contradiction has developed, whether or not the inevitable fall of capitalism also coincides with the fall of the human species....
it can always collapse completely and start from scratch, couldnt it? if we fail to seize the collapse for socialism the rebuild would be capitalist.
The problem with finite resources is that we have already used up a lot of the easily accessible ones, so if we had to start from scratch we might never get back to where we are now. If there is anything post collapse (if it happens) that's like socialism itd probably just be gift economies like David graeber writes about.
I dont think a collapse could ever put us back at the primitive stage where primitive communism is the norm, rather we would end at a medieval level of technology that only relies on things that werent exhausted during the industrial era pre collapse. In such a world there is room for capitalism in some form to exist, although less global and more merchantile like early capitalism. The exploitation of the industrial era would be too much of a living memory for the exploitation to just disappear.
I guess that depends on the kind of collapse. Full on nuclear war that leaves only a fraction alive would be more likely to go to primitive communism but a combo of ecological collapses and the resulting social impacts would be more likely to end the way you describe imo. God willing we will never find out
Capitalism keeps being perpetrated because we haven't been able to destroy the material, ideological and legal basis for it's existence. So long as these things are imbedded in our culture and economics while there's an upper class of people willing to commit violence for profit and private property, we're not going to see an end to this tunnel.
because of its imperative for perpetual growth, capitalism requires infinite material resources in a materially finite world. so it does have a theoretical hard physical limit at some point even with free energy
