The Production Process Is The Key

Given the state of world capitalism today especially in the immediate wake of the recent world economic and financial depression the current situation is as follows.

There exist only two solutions to the capitalist crisis. The capitalist solution or the communist solution.

The capitalist solution constitutes a drastioc anti-working class solution. Even at that it will not serve as a permanent solution. But it is the only solution available within capitalism if it is not to experience growing and periodic problems of the sort it experienced recently.

Since the source of the problem exists within the production process it is there that the solution will be found. This means that the labour process will have to be revolutionisied if a capitalist solution is to be realised.

This solution involves the enormous and unprecedented upgrading of the productive power of society. In this way the technical composition of capital will have been increased to such a degree that it will lead to an increase in the organic composition of capital. In that way the rate of surplus value will have increased to such a degree that the total surplus value produced will more than compensate for the the falling rate of profit.

Such an enormous development in the forces of production will lead to a radical reconfiguration of capital. Weaker capitals will generally have been wiped out on a par with the K-T extinction. Much larger, more concentrated and centralised capital will predominate. The working class will suffer increased workload and will be more disciplined.

Organisationally and politically it will be much weaker than it even was. In this way the source of the capitalist crisis, its process of production, will have been revolutionised in such a way as to have eliminated the crisis for the time being. Furthermore the struggle that led to this transformation within the labour process will have resulted in a general and devastating defeat for the working class. This will be manifested in a fall in working conditions and living standards. It will have meant severe cutbacks in social spending on health, education and the other welfare benefits that the working class has, in the West, taken for granted. In short it will be living in a new era. The character and culture of the working class will have changed drastically.

In contrast much of the radical Left falsely posit the source of the current capitalist contradictions as existing within the process of circulation of capital. This is why they persistently confine themselves to solutions that are grounded in the process of circulation of capital. They focus on money, credit, spending, taxation and commodities. Each one of these forgoing forms are necessarily confined to the sphere of circulation. Consequently they cannot provide the key to the solution of the the current world capitalist crises.

It does not understand that the central contradiction of capitalism is located within the process of production.

The the production process is a dual process. It is a labour process and a valorisation process. We must disconnect the valorisation process from the labour process. This entails the abolition of valorisation. The production process, then, is transformed into a unitary process that simply produces use-values and not exchange values in the form of commodities. Use-values are now just products and no longer commodities. Only communism can effect this change.

Generally debate surrounding the solution to Ireland's economic and financial problems centre around issues such as bailouts, bondholders, deficits and debt forgiveness. These are notions stuck within the process of circulation of capital. Consequently they can never provide the key to the solution of the problem either for capitalists or workers. Thereby debate must assume a qualitatively different form.