Political Crossfire Forums

The basic question is: will the rate of input-saving technological progress outpace input-depleting economic growth?

Star Trek hocus pocus aside, the pretty obvious historical fact is that input-depleting economic growth has catastrophically outpaced progress in input-saving technologies. This should be expected to continue until demonstrated otherwise. Some sort of technological miracle is always possible, and its always possible that by some miracle of international politics the revolutionary technology will be implemented effectively and sufficiently on a global scale, but its doubtful. Banking on these sorts of magic bullets is a pretty dumb basis for policy.

If history is any guide, resource depletion will continue to accelerate.

As inputs become scarcer they will become more expensive. The subsequent rise in the costs of production (buying labor, machinery, technologies, etc) will reduce the margin of profit and act as a drag upon capitalist growth. Similarly, as prices increase, purchasing power should decline which will cause consumption to decrease, creating more drag on growth as markets dry up. Resource depletion is going to make profits a lot harder to come by.

With the state of the current economy and the seemingly complete lack of viable solutions to the ongoing stagnation, you cant really bank on countervailing economic forces to override the drag created by rising input prices. It is probs pretty reasonable to predict that eventually rising inputs could push growth below 2-3% which would be, by definition, a crisis of capitalism. A frighteningly unresolvable one at that.

As far as poitics goes, it's pretty clear how the capitalist class has historically tended to behave when it runs out of options for realizing a profit within the confines of liberal norms. So the situation is pretty desperate actually. If scarcity really does have the potential to induce a serious and long term crisis, there is no conceivable path forward that won't be brutal.

that's the fear, the "oh shit" moment when everyone wakes up. i'm hoping solutions are made before then, but history has shown people don't change until they're desperate.

Really interesting thread, I just skimmed some of the larger posts but I'll try and formulate my own position.

With regard to OP's assertion that capitalism is dependent on growth, yes and no. There is a structural logic that is an intrinsic part of capitalism (which Marx defined as M-C-M' or simply investing money to produce commodities to realize on the market to get more money, then start the cycle all over again). At the same time, as a ton of pomo and Marxist-influenced theorists have pointed out, capitalism gets pretty creative after the formal end of territorial imperialism somewhere during the mid 20th century, meaning it doesn't just rely on capturing external markets. Hardt and Negri have referred to the post-1970s period as a rise in post-Fordist or "immaterial" labor, which means instead of actually producing materially tangible commodities we have a boom in the service industry and affective forms of consumption (think also about the dot com boom, and the current social media explosion).

The major rub to this is that people do still need to eat (we're not entirely "virtual"), and Boris Johnson for example brings up a good point about current instability of the global food network. In India alone there have been hundreds of thousands of farmer suicides because of accumulation of debt and failure of the state to take care of people there despite its welfarist pretensions. Probably the same thing is going on in China. So yes, there are huge issues with the current system, although problems like massive famine existed and were perpetuated under all sorts of structures, including colonialism. It's not a new phenomenon per se. It could spawn more rebellious political movements under the right conditions, and certainly there's the example of the global justice movement that has been protesting unfair trade practices at various economic summits.

As far as I can tell though, I think the first part of what I've written will hold, meaning capitalism will continue to invent the resources necessary for its survival. We may well be seeing the shift from external expansion and saturation of non-capitalist social relations with market logic, to an intensification and involution in existing capitalist societies. Here also we see the impact of financialization, and the increasing stake of financial capital over manufacturing capital in places such as the US. It's interesting to contrast the "patriotic" need to support the car industry with the Wall Street-driven creation of junk bonds and credit default swaps, which also got us into this mess. The crisis hasn't subsided, but capitalism limps on. Perhaps we may see an increase in extra-economic motives for sustaining social consumption, beyond the traditional economic doctrine of accumulation epitomized by the American Dream. This could mean an increase in community ties and welfare activities to create alternative non-economic reasons and redistribution behind the "actually existing" economy, which continues to thrive on speculation, socializing private risk, etc.

enjoy your internet when we run out of super-conducting materials