The technological and economic advances that capitalists have been achieving — largely not on their own but rather through their states’ action — are in many ways of the utmost importance to these states, especially and above all others the mighty ones. These advances urgently require their supervision, control, and direction because they are essential for their own competition with each other, whether on the economic, world-market strategic, or military level — in short, essential for their “future.”
A few years ago, capitalism was reinvented in California’s Silicon Valley. China has been following suit and can now show a thing or two about the “artificial intelligence” business. So as not to be left behind by this epochal progress, Berlin’s politicians are vigorously trying to “digitize the economy.” How this is actually advancing capitalist competition is easily overlooked.
America’s money dominates world markets for commodities and capital. America’s cyber industries dominate global communications. America’s navy controls the world’s oceans. America’s strategic weapons can demolish any enemy’s strategic potential as needed. The USA is on its way to making sure Russia is ostracized around the world and its power destroyed. It is countering China’s efforts to revise the prevailing world order by declaring a cold war of good guys — democracies — against bad guys — autocrats.
So what’s missing?
Companies wage their own kind of power struggle against each other. It is called “competition,” takes place in “free markets,” and is considered the epitome of economic efficiency and the greatest possible satisfaction of needs. As is well known, it looks different in practice. A lot of effort is put into cornering the dear competitors in such a way that they disappear from the free market if possible. This struggle for the expropriation of free private owners is explained in the continuation of our treatise on the competition of capitalists: “Growth through centralization of capital: The competitive struggle to overcome competition.” The role of the state and that of finance are discussed, both of which ensure that the struggle for monopoly is not the end of capitalist competition, but its daily routine.
Some Japanese John Doe once had a criticism of money. Not that the average person always has too little of it and has to work long and hard to earn it. His criticism was that its price fluctuations make it unreliable for private payment transactions, and that it does not really belong to "all of us" who want use money to pay and exchange because all kinds of authorities from the central bank to speculators are involved and misuse it. The solution was quite simple: he invented a free money for free citizens on the Internet, bypassing the demonized authorities, and christened it Bitcoin. Now, a few years later, the stock market professionals from radio and television will explain to you how the price jumps of Bitcoin make it such an exciting investment opportunity, which, however, it is better for ordinary people to keep their hands off. On the other hand, if you have enough money left over that you don't need to spend, you can become filthy rich with a little luck by speculating on this strange something that the financial critic has put into the world. But actually, money is there for something other than what the critics of state-money imagine. Our article explains Bitcoin's career from digital monstrosity arising from a false criticism of the state's money to object for speculation.
A new housing shortage has broken out in Germany’s major cities. Average wage earners currently pay around a third of their income for housing — and rents continue to rise. The fact that this elementary living condition is a luxury the working majority can hardly afford is officially recognized at the highest levels as a “social problem.” Especially during election campaigns, politicians promise to ensure that housing remains affordable. And really that says it all: after 150 years of capitalist growth, for many it is not.
There is one achievement the capitalist mode of production can count on making a good impression with, or at least commanding respect: unstoppable technological progress, seen in all kinds of consumer goods along with the means for producing them. It is popularly illustrated by sophisticated equipment in fashion at the moment. On suitable occasions it is measured in the few hours and minutes of working time required for producing a certain product nowadays as compared with the past. “Downsides” are not ignored: the oversized “footprint” left by the consumption of resources, destruction of the environment, loss of jobs due to “rationalization” — all this is recognized as problematic. But “rationalization” is still called by that name; and the solution of choice for the excessive load on “nature” is considered to be — alongside a personal willingness to do without things — more technological progress. Yet it is quite clear that neither free choice nor rationality is the reason for the unstoppable technological progress the capitalist mode of production impresses with. It is caused by a practical constraint that industrialists actually create for themselves.
In the market economy, growth is an officially and quite generally recognized necessity. It is taken for granted that the growth of the economy is the precondition for prosperity; when growth slows down or actually stops altogether, there is a risk of want and need. Those who warn that continuous economic growth is an absurdity go more or less unheard in the culture section. Critics who maintain that a growth geared solely to immediate economic performance is too narrow a focus for society’s well-being and who call for broader criteria and values to be included are suspected of being anti-consumerist or anti-progress, or accused of ultimately having no idea of human nature and inherent human needs. Even the most sober reference to “natural limits of growth” will face the accusation of being divorced from reality. And indeed it is — reality being that those in charge of business definitely do not know or recognize any ‘natural limit’ that could thwart the economic purpose that is in effect and being practiced: a market economy needs growth. The only question is why? Where does this absolute necessity come from?
Those who run businesses are said to have certain tasks, expected to achieve this and that, and sometimes accused of neglecting their duties. However, the members of this profession don’t perform any of the positive or negative functions attributed to them unless they do their job. And that is to increase the wealth at their disposal — regardless of whether a nation’s public credits them with creating jobs or blames them for destroying jobs, whether public opinion says they are protecting the environment or damaging it, contributing to growth or jeopardizing it…
President Trump's “America first!” targets the whole world. But the degree to which the US is affected by the politics in other states comes down to more than the differences in numbers that the President loves to read from the figures of America’s negative bilateral trade balance. There is one rival above all others — actually just about the only one — that is ultimately incompatible with “America first!”: the People's Republic of China.