Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to discuss capitalism’s long-term prospects. To some extent I draw on material and arguments I have presented elsewhere (Ougaard, 2014; Ougaard, 2015a; Ougaard, 2015b); the present intention is to bring these elements together and combine them with other material to elaborate an argument about capitalism’s long term devel-opmental potential. On some points the argument resembles recent gloomy diagnoses for-warded by Wolfgang Streeck (Streeck, 2014a; Streeck, 2014b) and Andrew Gamble (Gamble, 2014), but is also offers an alternative to their interpretations by taking a global perspective which leads to a more positive assessment. I will do this from a historical materialist perspective and therefore I begin with a discussion of the long view in Marx. This leads on to a discussion of Marx’s law of the long term declining rate of profit (LTFRP) and its counteracting factors (CFs). The next step is, drawing on regulation theory, to relate the mobilization of such CFs to the successive stages of capitalist development after World War Two, up to the present crisis, and after this, in the final two sections I discuss the potential for mobilizing ‘surplus labour’ in the world’s agrarian regions as a CF and the limitations and implications of this.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication date | 2015 |
| Number of pages | 24 |
| Publication status | Published - 2015 |
| Event | 9th Pan-European Conference on International Relations: The Worlds of Violence - Giardini Naxos, Italy Duration: 23 Sept 2015 → 26 Sept 2015 Conference number: 9 http://www.paneuropeanconference.org/2015/ |
Conference
| Conference | 9th Pan-European Conference on International Relations |
|---|---|
| Number | 9 |
| Country/Territory | Italy |
| City | Giardini Naxos |
| Period | 23/09/2015 → 26/09/2015 |
| Internet address |