Capitalism Will Eat Itself

On Pushing History and Inherent Contradictions

Morning Comrades.

This is, once again, an anti-nihilist rant. I don’t like nihilism at the best of times and especially not when it emerges in self-styled revolutionary contexts. What I am referring to is a thought that continues to creep up in conversations that goes something along the lines of; well, since it is the inherent nature that capitalism cannot produce without destruction, the system itself will destroy itself, not matter what we do, so why do anything at all.

I know, I am as surprised by this train of thought as the next person but its here and I will get into it, not only because it stinks of suburban white privilege but is, at its core so utterly defeatist that it needs to be addressed and wiped off the mainframe.

“Capitalism tends to destroy its two sources of wealth: nature and human beings.”

It would be nice if this popular quote attributed to Karl Marx was accurate, but he never said it. What he actually said, in Volume 1 of Capital, was:

“Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth – the soil and the worker.”

Marx’s analysis of capitalism exposed its inner contradictions, its fatal flaws. Capitalism cannot produce without destroying. The more it produces the greater the destruction. No more profound proof of Marx’s hypothesis exists than the two defining features of our age.

Let’s get into it.