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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • rhino_hornbill@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlStill relevant to this day
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    1 year ago

    Nah, the boom bust cycle happens due to the contradictions inherent to capitalism. They are speeding up because the contradictions get sharper as capitalism progresses. Marx developed this understanding 200 years ago, check it out:

    “When the expansion of production outruns its profitability, when existing conditions of exploitation preclude a further profitable capital-expansion or what amounts to the same thing, an increase of accumulation does not increase the mass of surplus-value or profits, an absolute over-accumulation has occurred and the accumulation process comes to a halt. This interruption of the accumulation or its stagnation constitutes the capitalist crisis. It represents an overproduction of capital with respect to the degree of exploitation. From the point of view of profitability at this stage, existing capital is at the same time too small and too large. It is too large in relation to the existing surplus-value and it is not large enough to overcome the lack of surplus-value. Capital has only been over-produced in relation to profitability. This is not a material overproduction for the world in this respect is undercapitalised [73]. This stresses once again the central contradiction between the commodity as a use-value and as an exchange-value, between production for use and that for profit.” https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/yaffed/1972/mtccs/mtccs3.htm


  • Reforms are great, but ultimately a doomed bandaid over real problems. Quoth Lenin:

    "Reformism is bourgeois deception of the workers, who, despite individual improvements, will always remain wage-slaves, as long as there is the domination of capital.

    The liberal bourgeoisie grant reforms with one hand, and with the other always take them back, reduce them to nought, use them to enslave the workers, to divide them into separate groups and perpetuate wage-slavery. For that reason reformism, even when quite sincere, in practice becomes a weapon by means of which the bourgeoisie corrupt and weaken the workers. The experience of all countries shows that the workers who put their trust in the reformists are always fooled.

    And conversely, workers who have assimilated Marx’s theory, i.e., realised the inevitability of wage-slavery so long as capitalist rule remains, will not be fooled by any bourgeois reforms. Understanding that where capitalism continued to exist reforms cannot be either enduring or far-reaching, the workers fight for better conditions and use them to intensify the fight against wage-slavery. The reformists try to divide and deceive the workers, to divert them from the class struggle by petty concessions. But the workers, having seen through the falsity of reformism, utilise reforms to develop and broaden their class struggle."

    https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/sep/12b.htm