Capitalism is an economic productive order of division, created on private property, legal equality and independence of entrepreneurship. The most important criterion for accepting economic issues is the desire to increase capital and make a profit.

Something passed into capitalism from previous eras of feudalism, and some of the restrictions purely originated in “capitalism” itself.

The Birth of Capitalism

In today's world, the word "capitalism" is used quite often. This word obliges the unified social system in which we currently live. In addition, many do not even realize that “capitalism” is A relatively new concept of social systems in the modern world and literally just a couple of centuries ago, the world history of mankind was formed differently.

Capitalism is not only an economic system, but also a form of society that combines morality and standards of life.

Capitalism, which arose in the process of evolution, offers:

1. private property and equal rights to resource ownership;
2. trading system, capital market, land of labor, technology;
3. freedom of enterprise, and market competitiveness.

Capitalism as a social the system on which most countries of the world live, according to the laws of this system for productivity and division of trade turnover, refers to a small percentage of the population, in other words, specifically defined people and they belong to the “capitalist class”.

The basis of economical capitalism is the production of trade turnover and the provision of services, commercial activities, the bulk of goods are produced solely for sale and capital accumulation.

The bulk of the population sells their physical or mental labor in exchange for wages or any other reward; representatives of this segment of the population belong to the “working class” group. This proletarian class needs to produce goods or provide other services, which are later sold with the direct goal of enriching income, in this manner the working layers of the population are exploited by mutually beneficial, mutual agreement.

The means of production can be at the disposal of private individuals; costs in the process of producing a particular product also fall on private individuals.

Capitalist social activity arises spontaneously, individuals can make decisions themselves at their own discretion and also take risks.

The configuration of economic development, which is characterized by the following main features:

• the means of production become the property of comparatively small groups, the owners of the capitalists;
• production acquires a commercial character, everything produced is sent to the sales market;
• the section of the labor process using machines and the conveyor process is gaining a high degree of development;
• money takes on meaning and is the main stimulating tool;
• The regulator of production is the market with its demand for a particular product.

The modern Capitalist system can be viewed as a combination of private entrepreneurs and state control, but capitalism at such an ideal level cannot be found in any country in the world, There will always be free competition.

So why does capitalism exist in every country in the world?

In our modern world, there is a clear division by class.

This statement is easily explained by the reality of the world in which we live: there will be an exploiter, there will also be a hired one - this is called capitalism and this is its essential feature.

Some may say that the modern world is divided into a lot of classes, for example, the middle class, but in fact this is not true at all! There is a chain in the key to understanding capitalism. This is when there is a boss and a subordinate and it doesn’t matter how many classes there are. By definition, the result is the same - everyone will be subordinate to a superior, and this is the very small percentage of the population “capitalist class”

Capitalism and its prospects in the modern world

As practice shows, capitalism does not have the right to solve certain problems of humanity, it does not solve the problem of inequality, poverty in general, racism and much more, but the free market gives a chance to win the biggest prize, albeit for a small number of players.

type of society based on private property and a market economy. In various currents of social thought it is defined as a system of free enterprise, a stage of development of an industrial society, and the modern stage of capitalism is defined as a “mixed economy”, “post-industrial society”, “information society”, etc.; in Marxism, capitalism is a socio-economic formation based on private ownership of the means of production and exploitation of wage labor by capital.

Excellent definition

Incomplete definition ↓

CAPITALISM

from lat. capitale - interest-bearing money) is a type of society based on private property and a market economy.

The word “capitalism” was introduced into the public consciousness by K. Marx, the author of the famous “Capital”. Marxists define capitalism as a socio-economic formation that, upon reaching maturity, will create the preconditions for the emergence of communism. M. Weber sees in capitalism the embodiment in practice of the ethical ideas of German and English Protestants. Many researchers characterize capitalism as “open society”, “industrial society”, “post-industrial”, “information”, “post-information”...

If for communists capitalism is just the prehistory of humanity, then for the liberal F. Fukuyama it is its end. In the countries of the “third world”, living under completely capitalist economic laws, capitalism, however, is perceived as an absolute evil and synonymous with neocolonialism. There is still debate about what capitalism actually is? A society of class inequality and merciless exploitation or, on the contrary, a society of general prosperity and equal opportunities? A historically passing stage in world history or simply a way of thinking (“capitalist spirit”) and living?

The variety of points of view on the nature of this specific model of the world order does not negate what is its generic feature: capitalism is total commodity production, where a commodity is defined as a product of labor produced not for one’s own consumption, but for sale. This determines all the other attributes and characteristics of capitalism: the dominance of private property (and its sacralization), and the mechanism for obtaining surplus value described in detail by K. Marx in Capital, and the exploitation of hired labor, and the associated alienation of a person from the results of his labor , and a democratic state that consolidates this order, and an ideology that justifies the existing state of affairs.

The production of goods and making profit is the main goal of a capitalist economy, the raison d'être of its existence. Under capitalism, literally everything is a commodity - right down to those who produce them and who consumes them: people, ideas, social institutions, and moral principles. Even the religious canons that had developed over thousands of years, long before the emergence of the bourgeois world order, in a market society were auctioned off and “capitalized” - as, for example, Protestants did. Their relationship with God (as, indeed, the Jews) is formalized in the form of a trade agreement, where the parties bear mutual obligations.

This nature of capitalism was convincingly revealed by K. Marx and F. Engels: “The need for ever-increasing sales of products drives the bourgeoisie around the globe. It must penetrate everywhere, establish itself everywhere, establish connections everywhere.” Nowhere before the emergence of capitalism - neither in ancient times, nor in the Middle Ages in Europe, nor in the economies of eastern civilizations (India, China, the Islamic world) - was production of an exclusively commodity nature, characteristic of capitalism. And it manifested itself from the moment of the birth of the new economic structure, when in the XIII-XIV centuries. In the city-communes of Northern Italy (Lombardy - hence the name of the now widespread financial institution), the first institutions of a market economy arose - the prototypes of modern banks.

Due to the riskiness of their trade, numerous merchants had a need for other methods of payment when conducting trade operations than in cash or through barter in kind (goods for goods). In those days, a wide variety of coins were in circulation, and without a special class of people who could quickly navigate the exchange rate, trading operations would have been simply impossible.

It was the money changers and moneylenders, who lent funds to merchants to purchase goods, who became the first bankers. They not only issued loans, but also took money for safekeeping and transferred client funds to other cities and countries through their agents. Then written debt obligations - bills of exchange - appeared, and a certain semblance of a securities market arose.

All this was of enormous importance for the development of the economy. Firstly, the creation of a financial structure based on non-cash payments significantly reduced the risks of merchants and made them less dependent on the arbitrariness of kings, feudal lords, robbers and pirates. This naturally contributed to the expansion of the geography of trade. Secondly, money itself began to gradually turn into a commodity, and finance became a special, independent type of economic activity.

Many merchants, money changers, and moneylenders accumulated significant funds, which, in modern terms, were invested in production. But the guild system that existed at that time, with its strict regulation, was clearly not adapted to this. It came into conflict with the interests of the growing financial and usurious capital and was actually doomed.

Enterprising businessmen bought raw materials from peasants and distributed them to artisans for processing. This was how the foundations of the future manufactory were laid, which at the first stage of its formation was dispersed in nature: manufacturers lived in different cities and villages, and the owner had to travel and collect the products produced. This method of cooperation did not yet have the character of mass production characteristic of capitalism, since there was no division of labor. But a start had been made: artisans gradually began to turn into hired workers, which required the abolition of serfdom and other forms of feudal dependence.

The merchant class itself has changed significantly. The economic interests of the class also required new forms of self-organization. Guilds, built on a guild principle, gave way to trading companies. Initially they were few in number and often consisted exclusively of relatives.

But with the beginning of the era of great geographical discoveries, the situation changed radically, and the role of trading companies increased sharply. They became the main engine of world trade and, in turn, initiated the process of discovery of new lands and financed expeditions to the New World, Africa, South and Southeast Asia. It is no coincidence that it was in England, where starting from the 16th century. The largest and richest companies operated - the East India, Guinea, Levantine, Moscow - capitalism began to develop rapidly. These companies provided ideal conditions for the export of British goods around the world, which provided a powerful incentive for the development of industrial production in the country.

The archaic workshop structure was not able to provide sufficient volume for export supplies. Manufacture appears, the main feature of which is the division of labor. Now each hired worker was no longer involved in the production of a product from start to finish, but performed part of the work or only one labor operation. This dramatically increased labor productivity. The products of individual artisans were of higher quality and bore the imprint of the individual skill of the master. But, naturally, more expensive, because their production required a lot of time. Manufacturing production made it possible to produce goods, albeit of lower quality, but much cheaper and, most importantly, in large quantities to satisfy growing demand. But it was not able to meet the ever-increasing needs of the external and internal markets, since the same primitive technical means from the times of the workshops were used.

Truly revolutionary changes began with the beginning of the industrial revolution in the 18th century. A number of inventions: the creation of a steam engine, combing and multi-spindle spinning machines, as well as the use of coal instead of charcoal in metallurgy, the emergence of new vehicles - a steam engine, a steamship, etc., made it possible to significantly increase production efficiency. It was at this time that the foundations of the economic and social structure were formed, which, with significant changes, still exists in a modified form, determining the development of the entire world economy.

The Industrial Revolution, which completed the formation of the capitalist system, led to serious changes not only in the economy, but also in the social and class structure of society. The bourgeoisie has finally taken shape, clearly aware of its interests and defending them in the fight against the nobility. A class of hired workers also emerged. Its formation in the country of classical capitalism - England - proceeded dramatically.

The final formation of capitalism was preceded by a period of primitive accumulation of capital. After all, in order to organize machine production, it is necessary, in addition to significant material resources (the English bourgeoisie, who got rich from trading with the colonies, had them) and the presence of free hands.

In the XVI–XVII centuries. In England, landowners everywhere drove peasant tenants off their land. It became more profitable for landlords to raise sheep there, because the demand for wool for textile factories increased sharply. Homeless, landless, possessing nothing but their own hands, yesterday's peasants went to manufactories and factories, turning into proletarians.

In the era of early capitalism, they, just like ancient slaves or serfs, were subjected to merciless exploitation, and their standard of living was just as low.

The bourgeois state defended with all its might the “freedom” of even the least tramp and enshrined it in laws; it is ready to defend the rights and freedoms of all citizens without exception by any means, even to fight for them. Because only a free man can freely sell his labor power. The owner and the worker are equally equal and free. But the latter cannot offer any other product on the market other than his labor. And since the worker does not have the means of production - machinery, equipment, his labor itself is too cheap to feed him. He can live only by offering his labor to the owner of the tools. Naturally, the terms of the deal are dictated to him by the capitalist. The worker can accept them or not - he is a free person. The same as the owner, who has the right to purchase his services or refuse them.

The difference between the proletarian and the slave is that, as F. Engels wrote, “the slave is sold once and for all, the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. Each individual slave is the property of a certain master, and, already due to the latter’s interest, the existence of the slave is ensured, no matter how pitiful it may be. The individual proletarian is the property of the entire bourgeois class. The slave stands outside competition, the proletarian is in conditions of competition and feels all its fluctuations.”

In modern conditions, of course, the main dichotomy of the era of classical capitalism “bourgeoisie - proletariat” no longer exists. Current capitalism in its post-industrial, information version has blurred the boundaries separating classes and strata and changed the contours of social space. Today, workers in developed countries are co-owners of the enterprises in which they work, and bear little resemblance to the dispossessed proletarians of the 19th century. In terms of income, they are included in the “middle class” and do not think about any class struggle to destroy the source of exploitation - private property. But neither the property relations themselves (in the economies of Western states there is a powerful state, “socialist” sector), nor the degree of development of democratic institutions are capable of changing the capitalist character of the current world order - a society of total commodity production.

Due to globalization and the international division of labor, developed countries have become the concentration of the bourgeoisie and highly qualified personnel, while the proletariat has moved to China, Latin America, Africa, and India. Thanks to another institution of capitalism - the stock market, workers in developed countries themselves became owners of shares in enterprises, while in third world countries the conditions of existence of workers resemble the dawn of capitalism.

Modern capitalism is characterized by the growing role of transnational corporations (TNCs), globalization and internationalization of economic life, and interstate regulation of the economy. This was reflected in the emergence of special organizations: the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, etc.

In Russia, after 70 years of dominance of socialist economic methods, the return to capitalism began during the era of perestroika and continued into the 1990s. “Building a fair capitalist society,” that is, a return to the methods of management of a hundred years ago, was accompanied by predatory privatization, a bloody redistribution of property, complete lawlessness and arbitrariness.

There is a lot of debate about the prospects of capitalism. But basically there are two approaches: either capitalism is something natural and eternal, or it will give way to a completely different type of society and become a kind of “preceding stage,” just as capitalism itself once replaced feudalism, which was considered “natural,” eternal and “founded.” on divine laws."

Excellent definition

Incomplete definition ↓

At its core, capitalism is an economic system based on three things: wage labor (work for wages), private ownership of the means of production (such as factories, machines, farms and offices) and production for the purpose of sale and profit.

Although some people own the means of production or capital, most of us own nothing and therefore, in order to survive, we must sell our labor in exchange for wages or survive on unemployment benefits. The first group of people is the capitalist class, the bourgeoisie in Marxist terminology, and the second is the working class or proletariat. Capitalism is based on a simple process - money is invested in producing more money.

When money functions like this, it acts as capital. For example, when a company uses its profits to hire more employees or open new production facilities and thus generate more profits, money functions as capital. The process of increasing capital (or developing the economy), called capital accumulation, is the driving force of the economy.

Those who accumulate wealth can do so more successfully if they can pass on the costs to others. If companies can cut costs without protecting the environment or using sweatshop labor, they will take advantage. Thus, catastrophic climate change and widespread poverty are symptoms of the normal functioning of the system. Moreover, in order for money to create more money, more and more things must be exchangeable for money. Therefore, there is a tendency to commodify everything from everyday items to DNA sequences, carbon emissions and, most importantly, our ability to work.

And it is this last point - the commodification of our creative and productive abilities, our ability to work - that is key to understanding the secret of capital accumulation. Money turns into even more money not by magic, but as a result of the work we do every day.

In a world where everything is for sale, we all have to sell something in order to buy the things we need. Those of us who have nothing to sell except our ability to work will have to sell this ability to those who own factories, offices, etc. And, of course, those things that we produce at work are not ours, they belong to our bosses.

At the same time, due to overtime, increased productivity, etc., we produce much more than is necessary to maintain our ability to continue working. The wages we receive are roughly equivalent to the cost of the food we need to keep us alive and able to work every day (which is why at the end of each month our bank account rarely looks any different than it did the month before). The difference between the wages we are paid and the value of what we create is how capital is accumulated or profit is produced.

This difference between our wages and the value of the products we produce is called surplus value. The extraction of surplus value by employers is the reason why we view capitalism as a system based on exploitation - the exploitation of the working class.

This process is essentially the same in the case of any hired labor, not just in private companies. Public sector workers also face constant attacks on their wages and working conditions to cut costs and maximize profits for the economy as a whole.

Unpaid work

Wealth accumulation also relies on unpaid work such as housework or domestic work. This includes the reproduction of the workforce in the form of having and raising children, a new generation of workers, and serving the existing workforce: physically, emotionally, and sexually. This unpaid labor is predominantly carried out by women. Serving men and children at home serves capital: from doing housework and reproduction - this natural and characteristic task of women, and not work, capitalism benefits in the form of free labor. When a capitalist pays his husband, he gets two workers, not one. Refusal to pay household labor renders this work invisible and divides the working class into paid and unpaid, to the detriment of both.

Competition

In order to accumulate capital, our bosses must compete in the market with the bosses of other companies. They cannot afford to ignore market forces, or they will lose ground to their rivals, lose money, go out of business, be acquired by another company, and ultimately cease to be our bosses. Therefore, even the bosses, in fact, do not rule capitalism, it is ruled by capital itself. This is why we can talk about capital as if it itself had influence or interests, therefore, usually talking about capital is more accurate than talking about bosses.

Due to the above, both bosses and workers are alienated from this process, but in different ways. While from the workers' point of view our alienation is experienced through the control emanating from our boss, the boss experiences it through the impersonal forces of the market and competition with other bosses.

Therefore, bosses and politicians are powerless in the face of market forces, everyone is forced to act according to a scheme that leads to continued accumulation (and in any case, they warm their hands well at this!). They cannot act in our best interests because any concessions they give us will help their competitors nationally or internationally.

So, for example, if a manufacturer develops new technologies to produce cars that double productivity, it may cut its workforce in half, increase profits, and lower the prices of its cars in order to undercut competition. If one company wants to be good to its employees instead of ripping people off, it will eventually be driven out of business or taken over by its more ruthless competitor, so it will also have to introduce new equipment and fire workers to remain competitive.

Of course, if entrepreneurs were given free rein to do as they pleased, monopolies would soon form and stifle competition, leading to stagnation of the system. Therefore, the state stands up for the long-term interests of capital as a whole.

State

The main function of the state in a capitalist society is to maintain the capitalist system and assist in the accumulation of capital. According to it, the state uses repressive laws and violence against the working class when we try to act in our interests against capital. For example, it introduces laws against strikes or sends police and soldiers to disperse strikes and demonstrations.

Currently, liberal democracy is the ideal type of state under capitalism, but sometimes, in order to continue accumulation, capital uses different political systems to carry out its will. State capitalism in the USSR and fascism in Italy and Germany are two such models that were necessary for the authorities of that time to absorb and crush powerful labor movements. Movements that threatened the very existence of capitalism.

When the excesses of the bosses lead to resistance from the workers, along with repression, the state intervenes from time to time to ensure the normal operation of business, without shocks. For this reason, there are national and international laws protecting workers' rights and the environment. Typically, the strength and enforcement of these laws is determined by the balance of power between masters and workers in a given place at a given time. For example, in France, where workers are better organized and active, the maximum working week is 35 hours. In the UK, where workers are less active, the maximum is 48 hours, and in the US, where workers are even less likely to strike, there is no legal limit at all.

Story

Capitalism is presented as a natural system that arose like mountains or land masses under the influence of forces beyond human control, and we are told that this economic system is ultimately rooted in human nature itself. However, it was not established by natural forces, but through intense and widespread violence throughout the world. First, as a result of enclosures in developed countries, independent peasants were driven from common lands into cities to work in factories. Any resistance was suppressed. People who resisted the introduction of wage labor were recognized by law as vagrants and imprisoned, tortured, exiled or executed. In England, during the reign of Henry VIII alone, 72,000 people were executed for vagrancy.

Capitalism later spread across the globe through invasions and conquests by Western imperialist powers. Entire civilizations were brutally destroyed, local communities were driven from their lands to force their inhabitants into wage labor. Those few countries that escaped conquest, such as Japan, introduced capitalism of their own free will in order to compete with other imperialist powers.

Capitalism spread everywhere, the peasantry and the first generations of workers resisted, but ultimately they were suppressed by mass terror and violence. Capitalism did not arise due to the natural laws of human nature: the ruling elite spread it through organized violence. Maybe now the ideas of private ownership of land and means of production seem natural to us, but we should not forget that they were created by man and forcibly introduced into society. Likewise, the existence of a class of people who have nothing to sell except their labor power is not something that has always existed - common lands that belonged to everyone were taken by force, and the dispossessed were forced to work for wages under the threat of starvation or even execution. As capital has spread, it has created a global working class consisting of the majority of the world's population, which it exploits but also depends on.

Future

Capitalism has been the dominant economic system on the planet for just over the last two hundred years. Compared to the millions of years of human existence, this is a short period, and it would be naive to believe that it will last forever. Capitalism is completely dependent on us - the working class, and on our labor, which it exploits. He will exist only as long as we allow him to.

Class and class struggle: an introduction

The first thing to say is that there are different approaches to defining people as belonging to one class or another. Often when people talk about class, they talk in terms of cultural/sociological labels. For example, middle class people like foreign movies, working class people like football, upper class people like wearing top hats and so on.

However, another approach to thinking about class is based on the economic position of classes. This is exactly how we talk about class, because we consider it necessary to understand the structure of capitalist society and the possible mechanisms of its change.

It is important to emphasize that our definition of class is not about classifying individuals or putting them into specific boxes, but about understanding the forces that shape our world, understanding why our bosses and politicians act the way they do, and how we can act to improve our conditions. .

Class and capitalism

The economic system that currently dominates the world is called capitalism. Essentially, capitalism is a system based on the self-expansion of capital - goods and money that produce more goods and more money.

This happens not even by magic, but thanks to human labor. For the work we do, we are paid only a fraction of what we produce. The difference between the value we produced and the value we were paid is called the surplus value we produced. Our bosses keep it for themselves as profit and either invest it back into the business to produce more money, or use it to buy luxury goods.

For this to be possible, a class of people must be created who do not own anything that could be used to create money, such as offices, factories, agricultural land or other means of production. Therefore, this class must sell its ability to do work in order to acquire the necessary goods and services in order to survive. This class is the working class.

So at one end of the spectrum is this class that has nothing to sell except its ability to work. On the other side are those who own capital sufficient to hire workers in order to increase capital. Individual people in society settle somewhere between these two poles, but from a political point of view it is not the position of individuals that is important, but the social relationship between classes.

Working class

In this case, the working class, or "proletariat" as it is sometimes called, is the class that is forced to work for a wage, or claim benefits if we cannot find work or are too sick or old to work in order to survive. We sell our time and energy to the boss so that he can make a profit. Our work is the basis of society. And the truth is that this society depends on the work we do, while at the same time always oppressing us in order to maximize profits, which makes it vulnerable.

Class struggle

When we are at work, our time and energy are not ours. We must reckon with alarm clocks, schedules, managers, deadlines and goals.

Work takes up a large part of our lives. During the day, we may see our managers longer than our friends and loved ones. Even if we enjoy some of our work, we experience it as something alien to us, something over which we have very little control. This is true both when we are talking about the organization of work as such, and when we are talking about the number of hours, breaks, time off, etc. The work forced upon us in this way forces us to resist. Entrepreneurs and bosses want to get the maximum amount of work from us, the greatest number of working hours for the lowest pay. We, on the other hand, want to be able to enjoy our lives: we don’t want overtime and we want to work less for more pay.

This antagonism is central to capitalism. There is a tug-of-war between these two sides: employers are cutting wages, increasing working hours, and speeding up the pace of work. But we try to resist: both in secret and separately, working coolly, stealing moments to take a break and chat with colleagues, saying that we were sick, leaving work early. Or we can resist publicly and collectively through strikes, work slowdowns, plant takeovers, etc. This is class struggle. The clash between those of us who must work for a paycheck and our bosses and governments, who are often classified as the capitalist class, or bourgeoisie in Marxist jargon.

By resisting the burden of work, we say that our lives are more important than our bosses' profits. By doing this, we challenge the very nature of capitalism, where profit is the most important reason to do anything, and point to the possibility of a world of classlessness and private ownership of the means of production. We are the working class who oppose our own existence. We are the working class who fight against work and class.

Away from the workplace

Class struggle is not just fought in the workplace. Class conflict reveals itself in many aspects of life. For example, providing affordable housing is something that affects all working class people. However, what is available to us means what is not profitable to them. In a capitalist economy, it often makes more sense to build neighborhoods of luxury apartments, even when tens of thousands of people remain homeless, than to build housing we can afford to live in. Fighting for social housing or taking over empty properties for further housing is therefore part of the class struggle.

Likewise, the provision of health care can be a site of class conflict. Governments or companies seek to reduce health care costs by cutting budgets and introducing user fees to shift the burden of costs onto the working class, when we want the best possible health care at the lowest possible cost.

Middle class

Although the economic interests of capitalists are directly opposed to those of workers, a minority of workers will be better off than the rest or will have some degree of power over the rest. When talking about history and social change, it is useful to classify this group as the middle class in order to understand the behavior of various groups.

Occasionally, class struggle can be disrupted by enabling the formation and growth of a middle class - Margaret Thatcher encouraged apartment ownership by selling social rent housing cheaply in Britain during the major struggles of the 1980s, knowing that workers were less likely to go on strike if they will have a mortgage. And in South Africa, the creation of a middle class helped thwart workers' struggles when apartheid was dismantled by allowing limited career advancement and giving some black workers a stake in the system.

Bosses are trying to find all sorts of ways to divide the working class materially and psychologically, including by salary level, professional status, race and gender. Again, it is important to note that we are using these class definitions to understand social forces at work, not to label people or predict what people will do in a given situation.

Conclusion

A conversation about class in a political sense is not a conversation about what your defining characteristics are, but about the basic conflict that characterizes capitalism - those of us who must work to survive versus those who profit from our labor. By fighting for our own interests and needs against the dictatorship of capital and the market, we are laying the foundation of a new type of society - a society focused on the direct satisfaction of our needs: a libertarian communist society.

Capitalism is only one of the socio-economic formations that existed in the world. The history of its formation is associated with such phenomena as colonial expansion and the exploitation of workers, for whom an 80-hour work week became the norm. T&P publishes an excerpt from Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang's How Does the Economy Work? , which was recently published by the publishing house "MYTH".

The economy of Western Europe is indeed
grew slowly...

Capitalism originates in Western Europe, particularly in Great Britain and the Low Countries (which today includes Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg), in the 16th and 17th centuries. Why it originated there and not, say, in China or India, which were then comparable to Western Europe in terms of economic development, is the subject of intense and lengthy debate. Everything from the Chinese elite's contempt for practical pursuits (such as trade and industry) to a map of Britain's coalfields to the discovery of America has been suggested as an explanation. Let's not dwell on this debate for too long. Let us take it for granted that capitalism began to develop in Western Europe.

Before its advent, Western European societies, like all others in the pre-capitalist era, changed very slowly. People were largely organized around agriculture, which used essentially the same technologies for many centuries, with a limited degree of commerce and craft production.

Between the 10th and 15th centuries, that is, during the Middle Ages, per capita income increased by 0.12 percent per year. Consequently, income in 1500 was only 82 percent higher than in 1000. By comparison, that's what China, with its 11 percent annual growth rate, achieved in the six years between 2002 and 2008. It follows that, from the point of view of material progress, one year in China today is equivalent to 83 years in medieval Western Europe (during this time three people could be born and die - in the Middle Ages, the average life expectancy was only 24 years).

...but still faster than the economy
any other country in the world

Despite the above, economic growth in Western Europe was still much faster than in Asia and Eastern Europe (including Russia), which was estimated to grow three times slower (0.04 percent). This means that over 500 years, local incomes increased by only 22 percent. If Western Europe moved like a turtle, then other countries were more like snails.

Capitalism emerged "in slow motion"

Capitalism appeared in the 16th century. But its spread was so slow that it is impossible to accurately determine the exact date of its birth. Between 1500 and 1820, the growth rate of per capita income in Western Europe was still 0.14 percent—essentially the same as during the Middle Ages (0.12 percent). In Great Britain and the Netherlands, growth in this indicator accelerated at the end of the 18th century, especially in the cotton textile and ferrous metals sectors. As a result, from 1500 to 1820, Great Britain and the Netherlands achieved per capita economic growth rates of 0.27 and 0.28 percent, respectively. And although by modern standards these figures are very small, they were twice the Western European average. This led to a number of changes.

The beginning of colonial expansion

From the beginning of the 15th century, the countries of Western Europe began to expand rapidly. Referred to for propriety as the Age of Discovery, this expansion included the expropriation of lands and resources and the enslavement of indigenous populations through the establishment of a colonial regime.

Beginning with Portugal in Asia, and Spain in the Americas, from the end of the 15th century, Western European peoples began to ruthlessly seize new lands. By the mid-18th century, North America was divided between England, France and Spain. Most of the countries in South America were ruled by Spain and Portugal until the 1810s and 1820s. Parts of India were ruled by the British (mainly Bengal and Bihar), the French (southeast coast) and the Portuguese (various coastal areas, particularly Goa). Around this time, the settlement of Australia began (the first penal colony appeared there in 1788). Africa at that time was not “developed” so well; there were only small settlements of the Portuguese (the previously uninhabited islands of Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe) and the Dutch (Cape Town, founded in the 17th century).

Francis Hayman. Robert Clive meets Mir Jafar after the Battle of Plassey. 1757

Colonialism was based on capitalist principles. It is symbolic that until 1858, British rule in India was exercised by a corporation (the East India Company) and not by the government. These colonies brought new resources to Europe. At first, expansion was motivated by the search for precious metals for use as money (gold and silver), as well as spices (especially black pepper). Over time, plantations were established in the new colonies - especially in the United States, Brazil and the Caribbean - using slave labor, mainly taken from Africa. Plantations were established to grow and supply new crops to Europe, such as cane sugar, rubber, cotton and tobacco. It is impossible to imagine a time when Britain did not have traditional chips, Italy did not have tomatoes and polenta (made from corn), and India, Thailand and Korea did not know what chilli was.

Colonialism leaves deep scars

There has been debate for many years about whether capitalism would have developed in the 16th to 18th centuries without colonial resources: the precious metals used as money, new foods such as potatoes and sugar, and raw materials for industrial production such as cotton. Although there is no doubt that the colonialists benefited greatly from their sale, it is likely that capitalism in European countries would have developed without them. That being said, colonialism has undoubtedly devastated colonized societies.

The indigenous population was exterminated or brought to the brink of extinction, and their land with all its resources was taken away. The marginalization of indigenous peoples has been so profound that Evo Morales, the current president of Bolivia, elected in 2006, is only the second indigenous head of state in the Americas to rise to power since Europeans arrived there in 1492. (The first was Benito Juarez, President of Mexico from 1858–1872).

Many Africans - an estimated 12 million - were captured as slaves and transported to Europe and the Arab countries. Not only was this a tragedy for those who lost their freedom (even if they managed to survive the difficult journey), but it also depleted many African societies and destroyed their social fabric. The territories acquired arbitrary borders - this fact influences the domestic and international politics of a number of countries to this day. The fact that so many interstate borders in Africa are straight lines illustrates this, since natural borders are never straight, but usually follow rivers, mountain ranges and other geographical features.

Colonialism often involved the deliberate termination of existing productive activities in economically developed regions. For example, in 1700, Britain banned the import of Indian calico (we mentioned this in Chapter 2) to promote its own production, thereby dealing a severe blow to the Indian cotton industry. This industry was completely destroyed in the middle of the 19th century by the flow of imported fabrics, which at that time were already produced in Britain by mechanization. As a colony, India could not apply tariffs or other policies to protect its manufacturers from British imports. In 1835, Lord Bentinck, Governor General of the East India Company, famously said: “The plains of India are white with the bones of weavers.”

Start of the Industrial Revolution

Capitalism really took off around 1820 throughout Western Europe and later in the European colonies in North America and Oceania. The acceleration in economic growth was so dramatic that the next half century after 1820 came to be called the Industrial Revolution. Over these fifty years, per capita income in Western Europe grew by 1 percent, which is very little by modern standards (Japan saw such an increase in income during the so-called lost decade of the 1990s), and compared with a growth rate of 0. 14 percent, observed between 1500 and 1820, was true turbojet acceleration.

80-hour work week: suffering for some
people have only become stronger

However, this acceleration in per capita income growth was initially accompanied by a decline in living standards for many. Many people whose skills had become obsolete - such as artisans who made textiles - lost their jobs because they were replaced by machines operated by cheaper, unskilled workers, many of whom were children. Some cars were even designed for the height of a child. People employed in factories or small workshops that supplied raw materials worked very hard: 70–80 hours a week was considered the norm, some worked more than 100 hours a week, and usually only half a day on Sunday was allocated for rest.

Working conditions were extremely dangerous. Many English cotton industry workers died from lung diseases due to the dust generated during the production process. The urban working class lived very crampedly, sometimes 15–20 people crammed into a room. It was considered quite normal for hundreds of people to use one toilet. People were dying like flies. In poor areas of Manchester, life expectancy was 17 years, 30 percent lower than in the whole of Great Britain before the Norman Conquest in 1066 (then life expectancy was 24 years).

The Myth of Free Markets and Free Trade:
how capitalism actually developed

The development of capitalism in Western European countries and their colonies in the 19th century is often associated with the spread of free trade and free markets. It is generally accepted that the governments of these states did not tax or restrict international trade in any way (called free trade) and did not interfere at all with the functioning of the market (free market). This state of affairs led to the fact that these countries managed to develop capitalism. It is also generally accepted that the UK and the US led other countries because they were the first to embrace free markets and free trade.

Free trade spreads mainly through means that are far from free

Although free trade did not cause the rise of capitalism, it did spread throughout the 19th century. Part of it emerged in the heart of the capitalist world in the 1860s, when Britain accepted the principle and signed bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs), in which both sides abolished import restrictions and customs duties on exports for each other, with a number of countries Western Europe. However, it has spread most strongly on the peripheries of capitalism - in the countries of Latin America and Asia, and as a result of what no one usually associates with the word “free” - the use of force, or at least the threat of its use.

Colonization was the most obvious way to spread “unfree free trade,” but even those many countries that were lucky enough not to become colonies had to accept it too. Using “gunboat diplomacy” methods, they were forced to sign unequal treaties that deprived them, among other things, of tariff autonomy (the right to set their own tariffs). They were allowed to use only a low flat tariff rate (3–5 percent)—enough to raise some government revenues, but too low to protect fledgling industries. The most shameful of these facts is the Treaty of Nanjing, which China had to sign in 1842 after defeat in the First Opium War. But unequal treaties also began to be signed with Latin American countries until they gained independence in the 1810s and 1820s. Between 1820 and 1850, a number of other states were also forced to sign similar treaties: the Ottoman Empire (predecessor of Turkey), Persia (today's Iran), Siam (today's Thailand) and even Japan. Latin American unequal treaties expired in the 1870s and 1880s, while treaties with Asian countries continued into the 20th century.

This statement is too far from the truth. The government played a leading role in the initial stage of the development of capitalism both in Great Britain and in the United States and other Western European countries.

The inability to protect and defend their fledgling industries, whether as a result of direct colonial rule or unequal treaties, contributed significantly to the economic regression of Asian and Latin American countries during this period: they experienced negative growth in per capita income (at a rate of -0.1 and - 0.04 percent per year respectively).

Capitalism shifts into higher gear: the beginning of mass production

The development of capitalism began to accelerate around 1870. Between 1860 and 1910, clusters of new technological innovations emerged, resulting in the rise of so-called heavy and chemical industries: electrical equipment, internal combustion engines, synthetic dyes, artificial fertilizers, and other products. Unlike the technologies of the Industrial Revolution, which were conceived by practical men with good intuition, new technologies were developed through the systematic application of scientific and engineering principles. Thus, any invention could be reproduced and improved very quickly.

In addition, the organization of the production process in many industries was revolutionized by the invention of the mass production system. Thanks to the introduction of a moving assembly line (conveyor belt) and interchangeable parts, costs dropped dramatically. In our time, this is the main (almost universally used) system, despite frequent statements about its demise that have been heard since 1908.

New economic institutions emerged to manage the growing scale of production

At its peak, capitalism acquired the basic institutional structure that still exists today; it includes limited liability companies, bankruptcy laws, central banking, the social security system, labor laws and much more. These institutional shifts occurred largely due to changes in underlying technologies and policies.

Due to the growing need for large-scale investments, the principle of limited liability, which was previously applied only to privileged companies, has become widespread. Consequently, it could now be used by any company that met certain minimum conditions. With access to an unprecedented scale of investment, limited liability companies became the most powerful vehicle for the development of capitalism. Karl Marx, who recognized their enormous potential before any ardent supporter of capitalism, called them “capitalist production in its highest development.”

Before the British reform of 1849, the essence of bankruptcy law was to punish the insolvent businessman with, at worst, a debtor's prison. New laws introduced in the second half of the 19th century gave failed entrepreneurs a second chance by allowing them to avoid paying interest to creditors while reorganizing their business (under Chapter 11 of the US Federal Bankruptcy Act, introduced in 1898) and forcing the latter to write off some of their debts. Now running a business is not so risky.

The Rhodes ColossusStriding from Cape Town to Cairo, 1892

As the size of companies increased, banks also began to grow larger. At that time, there was a danger that the failure of one bank could destabilize the entire financial system, so to combat this problem, central banks were created to act as lender of last resort - and the Bank of England became the first in 1844.

Due to widespread socialist agitation and increasing pressure on the government from reformists regarding the condition of the working class, a number of social security and labor laws were introduced starting in the 1870s: accident insurance, health insurance, old-age pensions and insurance were introduced. case of unemployment. Many countries have banned the work of young children (usually under the age of 10–12 years) and limited the number of working hours for older children (initially to only 12 hours). New laws also regulated the conditions and hours of work for women. Unfortunately, this was not done out of chivalrous motives, but because of an arrogant attitude towards the weaker sex. It was believed that, unlike men, women lacked mental abilities, so they could sign unfavorable employment contracts - in other words, women needed to be protected from themselves. These welfare and labor laws smoothed out the rough edges of capitalism and made life better for many poor people—even if just a little at first.

Institutional changes contributed to economic growth. Limited liability companies and debtor-friendly bankruptcy laws have reduced the risk associated with business activity, thereby encouraging wealth creation. The central bank, on the one hand, and social security and labor laws, on the other, also contributed to growth by increasing economic and political stability, respectively, which allowed for greater investment and hence a further acceleration of economic recovery. The growth rate of per capita income in Western Europe rose from 1 percent per year during the peak period 1820–1870 to 1.3 percent during 1870–1913.

Capitalism- a socio-economic formation based on private ownership of the means of production and exploitation of wage labor by capital, replaces feudalism and precedes the first phase.

Etymology

Term capitalist in meaning capital owner appeared earlier than the term capitalism, back in the middle of the 17th century. Term capitalism first used in 1854 in the novel The Newcomes. They first began to use the term in its modern meaning. In Karl Marx's work "Capital" the word is used only twice; instead, Marx uses the terms "capitalist system", "capitalist mode of production", "capitalist", which appear in the text more than 2600 times.

The essence of capitalism

Main features of capitalism

• The dominance of commodity-money relations and private ownership of the means of production;
• The presence of a developed social division of labor, the growth of socialization of production, the transformation of labor into goods;
• Exploitation of wage workers by capitalists.

The main contradiction of capitalism

The goal of capitalist production is to appropriate the surplus value created by the labor of wage workers. As relations of capitalist exploitation become the dominant type of production relations and bourgeois political, legal, ideological and other social institutions replace pre-capitalist forms of the superstructure, capitalism turns into a socio-economic formation that includes the capitalist mode of production and the corresponding superstructure. In its development, capitalism goes through several stages, but its most characteristic features remain essentially unchanged. Capitalism is characterized by antagonistic contradictions. The main contradiction of capitalism between the social nature of production and the private capitalist form of appropriation of its results gives rise to anarchy of production, unemployment, economic crises, an irreconcilable struggle between the main classes of capitalist society - and the bourgeoisie - and determines the historical doom of the capitalist system.

The emergence of capitalism

The emergence of capitalism was prepared by the social division of labor and the development of a commodity economy within the depths of feudalism. In the process of the emergence of capitalism, at one pole of society a class of capitalists was formed, concentrating money capital and the means of production in their hands, and at the other - a mass of people deprived of the means of production and therefore forced to sell their labor power to the capitalists.

Stages of development of pre-monopoly capitalism

Initial accumulation of capital

Developed capitalism was preceded by a period of so-called primitive accumulation of capital, the essence of which was the robbery of peasants, small artisans and the seizure of colonies. The transformation of labor power into goods and the means of production into capital meant the transition from simple commodity production to capitalist production. The initial accumulation of capital was simultaneously a process of rapid expansion of the domestic market. Peasants and artisans, who previously subsisted on their own farms, turned into hired workers and were forced to live by selling their labor power and buying necessary consumer goods. The means of production, which were concentrated in the hands of a minority, were converted into capital. An internal market for the means of production necessary for the resumption and expansion of production was created. Great geographical discoveries and the seizure of colonies provided the nascent European bourgeoisie with new sources of capital accumulation and led to the growth of international economic ties. The development of commodity production and exchange, accompanied by the differentiation of commodity producers, served as the basis for the further development of capitalism. Fragmented commodity production could no longer satisfy the growing demand for goods.

Simple capitalist cooperation

The starting point of capitalist production was simple capitalist cooperation, that is, the joint labor of many people performing individual production operations under the control of the capitalist. The source of cheap labor for the first capitalist entrepreneurs was the massive ruin of artisans and peasants as a result of property differentiation, as well as the “fencing” of land, the adoption of poor laws, ruinous taxes and other measures of non-economic coercion. The gradual strengthening of the economic and political positions of the bourgeoisie prepared the conditions for bourgeois revolutions in a number of Western European countries: in the Netherlands at the end of the 16th century, in Great Britain in the mid-17th century, in France at the end of the 18th century, in a number of other European countries in the mid-19th century. Bourgeois revolutions, having carried out a revolution in the political superstructure, accelerated the process of replacing feudal production relations with capitalist ones, cleared the way for the capitalist system that had matured in the depths of feudalism, for the replacement of feudal property with capitalist property.

Manufacturing production. Capitalist factory

A major step in the development of the productive forces of bourgeois society was made with the advent of manufacture in the mid-16th century. However, by the middle of the 18th century, the further development of capitalism in the advanced bourgeois countries of Western Europe encountered the narrowness of its technical base. The need has become ripe for a transition to large-scale factory production using machines. The transition from manufacture to the factory system was carried out during the industrial revolution, which began in Great Britain in the 2nd half of the 18th century and was completed by the mid-19th century. The invention of the steam engine led to the appearance of a number of machines. The growing need for machines and mechanisms led to a change in the technical basis of mechanical engineering and the transition to the production of machines by machines. The emergence of the factory system meant the establishment of capitalism as the dominant mode of production and the creation of a corresponding material and technical base. The transition to the machine stage of production contributed to the development of productive forces, the emergence of new industries and the involvement of new resources in economic circulation, the rapid growth of urban populations and the intensification of foreign economic relations. It was accompanied by a further intensification of the exploitation of wage workers: the wider use of female and child labor, the lengthening of the working day, the intensification of labor, the transformation of the worker into an appendage of the machine, the growth of unemployment, the deepening of the opposition between mental and physical labor and the opposition between city and countryside. The basic patterns of development of capitalism are characteristic of all countries. However, different countries had their own characteristics of its genesis, which were determined by the specific historical conditions of each of these countries.

Development of capitalism in individual countries

United Kingdom

The classic path of development of capitalism - initial accumulation of capital, simple cooperation, manufacturing production, capitalist factory - is characteristic of a small number of Western European countries, mainly Great Britain and the Netherlands. In Great Britain, earlier than in other countries, the industrial revolution was completed, the factory system of industry arose, and the advantages and contradictions of the new, capitalist mode of production were fully revealed. The extremely rapid growth of industrial production compared to other European countries was accompanied by the proletarianization of a significant part of the population, the deepening of social conflicts, and cyclical crises of overproduction that regularly repeated since 1825. Great Britain has become a classic country of bourgeois parliamentarism and at the same time the birthplace of the modern labor movement. By the mid-19th century, it had achieved world industrial, commercial and financial hegemony and was the country where capitalism reached its greatest development. It is no coincidence that the theoretical analysis of the capitalist mode of production given was based mainly on English material. noted that the most important distinctive features of English capitalism of the 2nd half of the 19th century. there were “huge colonial possessions and a monopoly position on the world market”

France

The formation of capitalist relations in France - the largest Western European power of the era of absolutism - occurred more slowly than in Great Britain and the Netherlands. This was explained mainly by the stability of the absolutist state and the relative strength of the social positions of the nobility and small peasant farming. The dispossession of peasants did not occur through “fencing,” but through the tax system. A major role in the formation of the bourgeois class was played by the system of tax farming and state debts, and later by the government’s protectionist policy towards the nascent manufacturing industry. The bourgeois revolution occurred in France almost a century and a half later than in Great Britain, and the process of primitive accumulation lasted for three centuries. The Great French Revolution, having radically eliminated the feudal absolutist system that hindered the growth of capitalism, simultaneously led to the emergence of a stable system of small peasant land ownership, which left its mark on the entire further development of capitalist production relations in the country. The widespread introduction of machines began in France only in the 30s of the 19th century. In the 50-60s it turned into an industrialized state. The main feature of French capitalism in those years was its usurious nature. The growth of loan capital, based on the exploitation of the colonies and profitable credit operations abroad, turned France into a rentier country.

USA

The USA entered the path of capitalist development later than Great Britain, but by the end of the 19th century it became one of the advanced capitalist countries. Feudalism did not exist in the United States as an all-encompassing economic system. A major role in the development of American capitalism was played by the displacement of the indigenous population onto reservations and the development of vacated lands by farmers in the west of the country. This process determined the so-called American path of development of capitalism in agriculture, the basis of which was the growth of capitalist farming. The rapid development of American capitalism after the Civil War of 1861-65 led to the fact that by 1894 the United States took first place in the world in terms of industrial output.

Germany

In Germany, the abolition of the system of serfdom was carried out “from above.” The redemption of feudal dues, on the one hand, led to the mass proletarianization of the population, and on the other hand, it gave the landowners the capital necessary to transform the cadet estates into large capitalist farms using hired labor. Thus, the preconditions were created for the so-called Prussian path of development of capitalism in agriculture. The unification of the German states into a single customs union and the bourgeois Revolution of 1848-49 accelerated the development of industrial capital. Railways played an exceptional role in the industrial boom in the mid-19th century in Germany, which contributed to the economic and political unification of the country and the rapid growth of heavy industry. The political unification of Germany and the military indemnity it received after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 became a powerful stimulus for the further development of capitalism. In the 70s of the 19th century, there was a process of rapid creation of new industries and re-equipment of old ones based on the latest achievements of science and technology. Taking advantage of the technical achievements of Great Britain and other countries, Germany was able to catch up with France in terms of economic development by 1870, and by the end of the 19th century to approach Great Britain.

In the East

In the East, capitalism received its greatest development in Japan, where, as in Western European countries, it arose on the basis of the decomposition of feudalism. Within three decades after the bourgeois revolution of 1867-68, Japan became one of the industrial capitalist powers.

Pre-monopoly capitalism

A comprehensive analysis of capitalism and the specific forms of its economic structure at the pre-monopoly stage was given by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in a number of works and, above all, in Capital, where the economic law of movement of capitalism was revealed. The doctrine of surplus value - the cornerstone of Marxist political economy - revealed the secret of capitalist exploitation. The appropriation of surplus value by capitalists occurs due to the fact that the means of production and means of subsistence are owned by a small class of capitalists. The worker, in order to live, is forced to sell his labor power. With his labor he creates more value than his labor costs. Surplus value is appropriated by capitalists and serves as a source of their enrichment and further growth of capital. The reproduction of capital is at the same time the reproduction of capitalist production relations based on the exploitation of other people's labor.

The pursuit of profit, which is a modified form of surplus value, determines the entire movement of the capitalist mode of production, including the expansion of production, the development of technology, and the increased exploitation of workers. At the stage of pre-monopoly capitalism, competition between non-cooperative fragmented commodity producers is replaced by capitalist competition, which leads to the formation of an average rate of profit, that is, equal profit on equal capital. The cost of goods produced takes the modified form of production price, which includes production costs and average profit. The process of profit averaging is carried out in the course of intra-industry and inter-industry competition, through the mechanism of market prices and the transfer of capital from one industry to another, through the intensification of competition between capitalists.

By improving technology at individual enterprises, using the achievements of science, developing means of transport and communication, improving the organization of production and commodity exchange, capitalists spontaneously develop social productive forces. The concentration and centralization of capital contribute to the emergence of large enterprises, where thousands of workers are concentrated, and lead to the growing socialization of production. However, enormous, ever-increasing wealth is appropriated by individual capitalists, which leads to a deepening of the main contradiction of capitalism. The deeper the process of capitalist socialization, the wider the gap between direct producers and the means of production owned by private capitalists. The contradiction between the social character of production and capitalist appropriation takes the form of antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It also manifests itself in the contradiction between production and consumption. The contradictions of the capitalist mode of production are most acutely manifested in periodically recurring economic crises. There are two interpretations of their cause. One is related to the general one. There is also the opposite opinion, that the capitalist's profits are so high that the workers do not have enough purchasing power to buy all the goods. Being an objective form of violent overcoming of the contradictions of capitalism, economic crises do not resolve them, but lead to further deepening and aggravation, which indicates the inevitability of the death of capitalism. Thus, capitalism itself creates the objective prerequisites for a new system based on public ownership of the means of production.

Antagonistic contradictions and the historical doom of capitalism are reflected in the sphere of the superstructure of bourgeois society. The bourgeois state, no matter in what form it exists, always remains an instrument of class rule of the bourgeoisie, an organ of suppression of the working masses. Bourgeois democracy is limited and formal. In addition to the two main classes of bourgeois society (bourgeoisie and), under capitalism, classes inherited from feudalism are preserved: the peasantry and landowners. With the development of industry, science and technology, and culture, the social stratum of the intelligentsia - people of mental labor - is growing in a capitalist society. The main trend in the development of the class structure of capitalist society is the polarization of society into two main classes as a result of the erosion of the peasantry and intermediate strata. The main class contradiction of capitalism is the contradiction between the workers and the bourgeoisie, expressed in an acute class struggle between them. In the course of this struggle, a revolutionary ideology is developed, political parties of the working class are created, and the subjective prerequisites for a socialist revolution are prepared.

Monopoly capitalism. Imperialism

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, capitalism entered the highest and final stage of its development - imperialism, monopoly capitalism. Free competition at a certain stage led to such a high level of concentration and centralization of capital, which naturally led to the emergence of monopolies. They define the essence of imperialism. Denying free competition in certain industries, monopolies do not eliminate competition as such, “... but exist above it and next to it, thereby giving rise to a number of particularly acute and steep contradictions, frictions, and conflicts.” The scientific theory of monopoly capitalism was developed by V.I. Lenin in his work “Imperialism, as the highest stage of capitalism.” He defined imperialism as “... capitalism at that stage of development when the dominance of monopolies and finance capital has emerged, the export of capital has acquired outstanding importance, the division of the world by international trusts has begun and the division of the entire territory of the earth by the largest capitalist countries has ended.” At the monopoly stage of capitalism, the exploitation of labor by financial capital leads to the redistribution in favor of monopolies of part of the total surplus value attributable to the non-monopoly bourgeoisie and the necessary product of wage workers through the mechanism of monopoly prices. Certain shifts are taking place in the class structure of society. The dominance of financial capital is personified in the financial oligarchy - the large monopoly bourgeoisie, which brings under its control the overwhelming majority of the national wealth of capitalist countries. Under the conditions of state-monopoly capitalism, the top of the big bourgeoisie is significantly strengthened, which has a decisive influence on the economic policy of the bourgeois state. The economic and political weight of the non-monopoly middle and petty bourgeoisie is decreasing. Significant changes are taking place in the composition and size of the working class. In all developed capitalist countries, with the total amateur population growing by 91% over the 70 years of the 20th century, the number of employed people increased almost 3 times, and their share in the total number of employed increased over the same period from 53.3 to 79.5%. In the conditions of modern technical progress, with the expansion of the service sector and the growth of the bureaucratic state apparatus, the number and proportion of employees, whose social status is similar to the industrial proletariat, have increased. Under the leadership of the working class, the most revolutionary forces of capitalist society, all working classes and social strata, are fighting against the oppression of monopolies.

State-monopoly capitalism

In the process of its development, monopoly capitalism develops into state-monopoly capitalism, characterized by the merging of the financial oligarchy with the bureaucratic elite, the strengthening of the role of the state in all areas of public life, the growth of the public sector in the economy and the intensification of policies aimed at mitigating the socio-economic contradictions of capitalism. Imperialism, especially at the state-monopoly stage, means a deep crisis of bourgeois democracy, the strengthening of reactionary tendencies and the role of violence in domestic and foreign policy. It is inseparable from the growth of militarism and military spending, the arms race and the tendency to unleash wars of aggression.

Imperialism extremely aggravates the basic contradiction of capitalism and all the contradictions of the bourgeois system based on it, which can only be resolved by a socialist revolution. V.I. Lenin gave a deep analysis of the law of uneven economic and political development of capitalism in the era of imperialism and came to the conclusion that the victory of the socialist revolution was possible initially in one single capitalist country.

Historical significance of capitalism

As a natural stage in the historical development of society, capitalism played a progressive role in its time. He destroyed patriarchal and feudal relations between people, based on personal dependence, and replaced them with monetary relations. Capitalism created large cities, sharply increased the urban population at the expense of the rural population, destroyed feudal fragmentation, which led to the formation of bourgeois nations and centralized states, and raised the productivity of social labor to a higher level. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote:

“The bourgeoisie, in less than a hundred years of its class rule, has created more numerous and more ambitious productive forces than all previous generations combined. The conquest of the forces of nature, machine production, the use of chemistry in industry and agriculture, shipping, railways, the electric telegraph, the development of entire parts of the world for agriculture, the adaptation of rivers for navigation, entire masses of population, as if summoned from underground - which of the previous centuries could suspect that such productive forces lie dormant in the depths of social labor!

Since then, the development of productive forces, despite unevenness and periodic crises, has continued at an even more accelerated pace. Capitalism of the 20th century was able to put into its service many of the achievements of the modern scientific and technological revolution: atomic energy, electronics, automation, jet technology, chemical synthesis, and so on. But social progress under capitalism is carried out at the cost of a sharp aggravation of social contradictions, waste of productive forces, and suffering of the masses of the entire globe. The era of primitive accumulation and capitalist “development” of the outskirts of the world was accompanied by the destruction of entire tribes and nationalities. Colonialism, which served as a source of enrichment for the imperialist bourgeoisie and the so-called labor aristocracy in the metropolises, led to a long stagnation of the productive forces in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and contributed to the preservation of pre-capitalist production relations in them. Capitalism has used the progress of science and technology to create destructive means of mass destruction. He is responsible for enormous human and material losses in the increasingly frequent and destructive wars. In the two world wars alone, waged by imperialism, over 60 million people died and 110 million were wounded or disabled. At the stage of imperialism, economic crises became even more acute.

Capitalism cannot cope with the productive forces it has created, which have outgrown capitalist relations of production, which have become fetters for their further unhindered growth. In the depths of bourgeois society, in the process of development of capitalist production, objective material prerequisites for the transition to socialism have been created. Under capitalism, the working class grows, unites and organizes, which, in alliance with the peasantry, at the head of all working people, constitutes a powerful social force capable of overthrowing the outdated capitalist system and replacing it with socialism.

Bourgeois ideologists, with the help of apologetic theories, try to argue that modern capitalism is a system devoid of class antagonisms, that in highly developed capitalist countries there are supposedly no factors that give rise to social revolution. However, reality shatters such theories, increasingly revealing the irreconcilable contradictions of capitalism.