Daniel Campos (2014)

Index

I- Introduction

II- Failure of the current Theories of Crisis

III- Definition of Crisis- The Quantitative Crisis

IV- General Law of Capitalist Forms of Accumulation (Forms) Part I: The Qualitative Crisis

V- Forms- Part II: The current crisis and the regime of globalization

VI- Forms- Part III: Accumulation of the working class and popular masses

VI- General Conclusions

Introduction

The current global crisis of capitalism has also opened a crisis in the Marxism. In the midst of the greatest crisis in the history of capitalism, the The biggest problem facing Marxists is the lack of a Theory of the Crisis, a product of the fact that Marx and Engels did not manage to elaborate it. They worked on elements in different parts of his work, but they never formulated a Theory of the Crisis in a finished, organic and systematic form.

The lack of a Marxist Theory of Crisis has led to organizations and Marxist analysts to innumerable misunderstandings, misinterpretations and erroneous forecasts about the current crisis of Capitalism. These have been added to the false and at a certain point, absurd theories and explanations that analysts, economists and political leaders have contributed to the capitalism.

This has configured a panorama of general disorientation and global absent-mindedness with respect to of the crisis. This panorama offers the generalized feeling that we are in a reality that unfolds beyond human control, of a world driven to destruction by alien forces, impossible to understand and understand. This feeling is stronger today than ever between huge swaths of fighters, activists and political and social leaders from all over the world.

Defenders of capitalism such as the neo-Keynesians (Krugman, Stiglitz, Roubini, etc.), they want us to believe that the Law of Value does not exist and that states capitalists can print money in a massive way in an eternal and permanent rescue of capitalism. Other theoretical nonsense is that of Wall gurus Street as Nassim Nicholas Taleb, whose "Black Swan Theory", states that nothing can be predicted, nor known in advance given that a "Black Swan", a massive catastrophe, it can appear out of nowhere and ruin everything. All these explanations leave the Crisis of Capitalism without explanation. And they pave the way for Marxism, the scientific theory that has the capacity to explain this crisis of enormous magnitude. However, the current crisis of capitalism does not mean automatically the triumph of Marxism, on the contrary, Marxism is suffering serious attacks from the defenders of capitalism, but also of those who claim to be Marxists.

One an example of this is the controversy unleashed by Michael Heinrich, a member of the project for the publication of the works of Marx and Engels called MEGA. Heinrich who is the representative of what has been called the "New German Marxist Thought," he wrote in the Monthly Review of April 2013 an article against the Law of the Tendency Reduction of the Interest Rate. Gain (LBTTG), claiming that it was flawed, empirically improbable, and that even Marx in his last years had abandoned it. Of In this way, we are experiencing a process similar to that experienced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when the theories that sought to liquidate Marxism were formulated by leaders and personalities who claimed to be Marxists. The statement of Heinrich received the response from a number of Marxist authors such as Roberts, Kliman, Freeman, Carchedi, Lebowitz, Williams and George who responded to Heinrich in defense of the LBTTG.

This authors' attitude in defence of the LBTTG is valuable and important Because Marxist theory needs to be defended more than ever. But even when the LBTTG is intimately linked to crises in capitalism, and is the The main factor that triggers them is not a Theory of Crisis. His defense does not It relieves us Marxists of the task of formulating one. The absence of a Marxist Theory of Crisis obliges us more than ever to work on the formulation of premises that allow us to elaborate it, and this task is the one that We undertake with this work.

This task of scientific elaboration requires the greatest attention because of its need immediate, given the acuteness of the capitalist crisis we are experiencing. But also in defense of Marxist Theory that requires updating permanent to be defended from the attacks it receives. To do this we must flee of theories developed in the twentieth century that sought to revise Marxist Theory, and delve into the orthodoxy of the classic works of Marx, Engels and Lenin in order to draw conclusions from there.

The task of scientific elaboration requires the greatest attention because of its need immediate, given the acuteness of the capitalist crisis we are experiencing. But also in defense of Marxist Theory that requires updating permanent to be defended from the attacks it receives. To do this we must flee of theories developed in the twentieth century that sought to revise Marxist Theory, and delve into the orthodoxy of the classic works of Marx, Engels and Lenin in order to draw conclusions from there.

The failure of the different theories of the crisis in no way implies that it is impossible to construct a Marxist Theory of Crisis. It is a contradiction that when a Marxist theory seems to be more relevant and more necessary than never because we are living through the most important crisis of capitalism in the world. History, Marxism seems to be at its lowest theoretical point, which makes it has led to a crisis.

The political currents that have dominated the world of Marxism in recent years are the most responsible for this situation. We refer to Stalinism and To Mandelite revisionism they are responsible for making it seem that the Marxist theory leads us nowhere, but into a series of alleys No way out. However, the problem that Marx posed of explaining the Crisis tendencies in capitalist accumulation still remain to be resolved.

Marx He did not give a simple answer to this problem. But it is worth resorting to the Marx himself to solve the question, which is the aim of this work: To establish the premises of a Theory of Crisis, to march towards a global formulation that allows us to respond to the crisis that the throughout its history, and above all, to the current crisis, the most important important in the history of capitalism.

I- The failure of the various theories of Crisis

Many theories within bourgeois economics and of Marxist economics faced the question of capitalist crises, but they failed to give a scientific explanation for them. The theories within the bourgeois economy failed because of their inability to recognize the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production. In the case of the economy Marxist, these theories failed by capitulation to bourgeois economics, pretending to assimilate the elements of bourgeois economics to Marxism.

Precisely Marxist theory establishes a debate and profound critique of the economy classical capitalist politics. For Marx the tendency to crisis was the culmination, and in a sense, the most superficial expression of the historical tendencies of the capitalist mode of production. Let us now look at the main ones bourgeois and Marxist theories of the Crisis.

Overproduction: Theory of the Crisis of the Second International

The The theory of the Second International is in the Erfurt Programme of 1891, written in set by Karl Kautsky, August Bebel and Eduard Bernstein. Kautsky considered the highest authority on Marxism at the time, he published his vision in his work "The Class Struggle" in 1892, where he focused his analysis on the limits of the capitalist system due to its tendency to overproduction, which was attributed to the fundamental contradiction between the tendency to develop the productive forces by a and the tendency to restrict the consumer power of the masses to the devaluing wages and creating relative overpopulation, on the other.

For Kautsky: This chronic tendency to overproduction is a historical tendency or secular that leads capitalism not only to violent eruptions, but to its Final destruction. "Along with periodic crises and their permanent manifestations, together with the recurrent periods of overproduction and its accompaniment of the loss of wealth and residues of force, chronic overproduction develops" (1)

"By Therefore, the production of big capital digs its own grave. From a certain point forward in its development each new expansion of the market has meaning the emergence of a new competitor... The time is coming, when the markets of the industrialized countries can no longer be expanded, and they will begin to contract. But this would mean the bankruptcy of the whole system capitalist. For some time beyond the extension of the market there has been no followed the rhythm of the needs of capitalist production. The latter it is, consequently, increasingly hindered and increasingly difficulties in fully developing the productive power it possesses. The intervals of prosperity are getting shorter and shorter; the duration of the Longer and longer crises" (2)

For The Theory of Overproduction crises result from the fact that each branch, and in fact each capital must expand independently, regardless of what are the needs of society as a whole.

The another face of the Theory of Overproduction is the Theory of Under-Consumption, which argues that capitalism tends to produce insufficient demand for the consumption of goods. He maintains that crises occur due to excessive exploitation of workers, and since workers are paid by only a part of the value they produce, they cannot buy the product of their work. Moreover, the capitalists who appropriate value are too few to consume the goods that are left over. In this way, the goods do not find buyers and the crisis begins.

The The theory of underconsumption is traditional among social democratic leaders. the trade union bureaucracy and the Second International, who argue that by paying better wages the crisis is prevented. Rosa Luxemburg, a of the most important leaders of the German SPD, began a struggle against the revisionism of Bernstein, who claimed that the growth of the system of credit and monopolies such as cartels, provide a mechanism for the alleviation of the tendencies to the crisis of capitalist accumulation. In his In response to Bernstein, Rosa Luxemburg fell into the sub- Consumerist and catastrophist. Luxembourg addressed the issue of the crisis in a series of articles in "Leipziger Volkszeitung", subsequently published in the form of a pamphlet called, "Reform or Revolution." There he polemicized with Bernstein, who claimed that the growth of the credit system and monopolies such as cartels, provide a mechanism for relieving the tendencies to the crisis of the capitalist accumulation.

His The central argument was that credit and cartels only serve to postpone the crisis, at the price of intensifying them. This is how he put it: "Although it is It is true that crises arise from the contradiction between capacity and Trend of production expansion and limited market capacity to absorb the products, then, in view of the above, the credit... greatly increases the rate at which production expands, and provides the internal driving force that constantly pushes production beyond the limits imposed by the market... After having given rise to overproduction ... accelerates the pace at which capitalism accelerates its march towards its own destruction, collapse" (3)

She he also responded to Kautsky, making the distinction between periodic crises which are explained by the anarchy of the market, and the terminal crisis that will come in the future due to the final exhaustion of the market. This is how he put it: "... We are at a stage in which crises are not a symptom of the rise of the capitalism, but they are not yet a symptom of its disappearance. ... Once the world market more or less reaches its limit and can no longer be expanded by sudden expansions ... the conflicts between the productive forces and the limits of trade will begin" (4)

In his book "The Accumulation of Capital", Luxembourg used Marx's schemes of reproduction to affirm that it is impossible to capital accumulation in the absence of new markets, and identified consumption, rather than investment, as the driving force of capitalist production. Capitalism then depends on its expansionist unity and its tendencies imperialists, to create markets in the new geographical areas dominated. The depletion of the pre-capitalist periphery leads to a growing competition for the remaining markets, which marks the last phase of the imperialism, which "is the political expression of the accumulation of imperialism, capital in its competitive struggle for what is still open from the environment non-capitalist" (5)

The A major error in Luxembourg's analysis is its assumption that the stimulus to capitalist accumulation must come from a greater demand for consumption, passing through overlooked the fact that the driving force of capitalist production is the profit, as a result of which capitalism develops a tendency to increase production without taking into account market limits. Luxemburg's work provided a theoretical foundation for the theory of the consumerist of the crisis, in its insistence that only consumption can provide the final stimulus for the expanded reproduction of the capitalism, so capitalism can only be sustained by the sources external demand.

The The debate in the Second International on crises took place under the impact of a new characteristic of capitalism from the eighteenth century onwards: The framework of expansion that industrial development meant for the mode of production with the enormous production of commodities, the exacerbation of the competition between industrial capitalists, the expansion of markets, and its extension to new parts of the world. But the debate in the II International by establishing itself around the concepts of "market", "supply and demand" and "competition" established the Theory of Crisis in terms of bourgeois economics, far from analysis of the process of Accumulation, and putting the analysis of the crisis in terms of of "market". This type of development established the Marxist economics in terms of bourgeois economics

Other modern version of the sub-consumerist point of view is that of Baran and Sweezy, among whose ideas swung the "New Left" of the United States in the post-war period of 1960. They argue that the problem of capitalism in modern times is an excess of "surplus," which, unlike Marx's surplus value, it has no direct relation to the exploitation of the proletariat. The system cannot absorb the surplus without resorting to spending on weapons and other artificial devices. On the other hand, suffers from a "tendency to increase surpluses"

This point of view also put the Marxist theory of crisis in terms of the bourgeois economic theory, away from the process of accumulation, and establishing the analysis of the crisis in terms of "market". The failure of the Marxist Crisis Theory of Overproduction failed because it is false that there is always a crisis when there is overproduction. During the periods in which there is a growth of capitalism, there is also overproduction of commodities, capital products that develop production in search of of profits, regardless of market boundaries.

The overproduction is evident when the crisis erupts, it appears as a expression and symptom of the crisis, but it is not what produces it. The Theory of overproduction tried to respond to Say's law, formulated by the economist bourgeois Jean Baptiste Say, who argued that there is a harmony between the supply and the demand, claiming that every supply creates its own demand. Overproduction it is a reality of capitalism that expresses the irrational and anarchic character of capitalist production, as formulated by Marx, but it is not It is true that whenever there is excess production, there is a crisis.

By On the other hand, the Theory of Overproduction is a capitulation to the economy bourgeois to locate Crisis Theory in terms of market analysis. Precisely, the officials of capitalist governments, economists and Analysts who defend capitalism observe the origin of the crisis in the market, trade, the area of the circulation of goods and consumption, which leads them to define the crisis as one of overproduction, the underproduction of the production or low consumption.

These formulas end up crashing against reality and fail. For Moreno those who, from Marxism, analyze the crisis from the point of view of the market are vulgar Marxists: "... That is why it is called Marxism vulgar. Any attempt to explain the phenomena of capitalism by the market, we call it vulgar Marxism... " (6) The Theory of the Crisis Overproduction is part of vulgar Marxism; therefore, not It can be considered as part of Marxist theory.

Disproportionality: Theory of the crisis of the Imperialist stage

Before of the First World War, the Theory of Disproportionality was the preferred alternative to the Theory of Underconsumption. In contrast to the Theories of Overproduction, the Theory of Disproportionality states that The anarchy of the capitalist mode of production leads to the overproduction of certain commodities and underproduction of others.

The Disproportionality is the theory preferred by those who see the solution to the capitalist crises in the economic intervention of the state, which supposedly could solve the disproportions that arise from the anarchy of the capitalist production, in the vision of social democrats, Stalinists and Keynesian. Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky, a Russian-Ukrainian economist, was one of the most important economists in the world. of the promoters of that theory.

Tugan he was not himself a Marxist, but based his studies on the "schemas of the of reproduction", which Marx had developed in Volume II of El Capital. The conclusion Tugan came to was that capital does not would face obstacles to the realization of its expanded product, with the only condition that appropriate proportional relationships between the various branches of production. Tugan concluded that the accumulation sustained depended only on the maintenance of proportional relations between the various branches of production, which implies that the The only possible cause of the crisis was the disproportion between the branches of the production.

Like this it is as Tugan explained it: "...' If social production were organized according to a plan, if the production managers had a complete knowledge of demand and the power to direct work and capital from one branch of production to another, then consumption could be and the raw material supply could never exceed demand... If the social production is organized in proportion, there is no limit to the expansion of social production. market of the available productive forces" (7)

The Tugan's theory states that investment planning and regulation adequate credit could improve in principle or eliminate periodic accumulation tendencies. The theory of disproportionality was also developed by Rudolf Hilferding, leading Austrian-born Marxist economist socialist theoretician, politician and chief theoretician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) between 1918 and 1933, during the Weimar Republic.

One One of the most influential and original contributions to Marxist economics is the Hilferding's work on the new stage of capitalism, which he defines as the domination of financial capital expressed in the integration of capital banking and industrial under the domination of the banks. This development had a great influence on Marxist writers such as Lenin. Hilferding reiterated Tugan's critiques of the theories of under-consumption, and overproduction, and so on. It's as he explained it:

'No It is absolutely true, therefore, that a crisis in production The capitalist economy is caused by the underconsumption of the masses, which is inherent in it. A crisis could very well be triggered by a too rapid increase in the consumption, or by a static or declining production of capital goods" (8) The Hilferding's analysis focused on the role of trusts, cartels and financial institutions that had played such a central role in the controversy among the Social Democrats.

The source of disproportionalities for Hilferding was the existence of capitalist economic fluctuations produced by the trusts, the cartels, banking and industrial capital that are integrated into capital financial. However, far from stabilizing the situation, like Bernstein had argued, these events only increase instability and sharpen competition.

Like this Hilferding insisted that only comprehensive planning could overcome the tendency to crisis: "Planned production and production anarchic are not such quantitative opposites, that by turning more and more 'planning', conscious organisation will emerge from anarchy. Such transformation can only take place suddenly by subordinating the whole of the production to conscious control" (9) Although, in In principle, capitalists could achieve this with a single giant monopoly, Hilferding did not believe that this possibility was politically realistic.

The Disproportionality Theory was an emerging crisis theory under the impact of the beginning of the epoch of capitalist decadence, the epoch of the imperialism. The emergence of monopolies, controlled production through through Corporations, trusts and cartels that Marx and Engels already had observed, it was at that time a new phenomenon. In addition, since the end of the From the 1870s onwards, the European powers completed the The colonization of Asia and Africa and the capitalist market embraced the entire world.

These changes had to be incorporated into the theory, and a debate ensued whose controversy continues. Many authors, such as Eduard Bernstein, argued that The concentration and centralization of capital had enabled capitalism to overcome its tendency to crisis. Others such as Rosa Luxemburg affirmed that the capitalist centralization of cartels and trusts would lead to new and violent crises. There was a logical debate because monopolies were a phenomenon unprecedented at the time, something that Marxists had never faced before. faced before.

But the answer of the Theory of Disproportionality was wrong. The failure of disproportionality is because of his view that capitalism's defects Like the anarchy of the market, it can be remedied by better coordination. In the capitalist economy there has always been anarchy, and anarchy always leads overproduction of some commodities and industries; and the low production of others. But this anarchy does not necessarily produce crisis.

In long periods of the history of capitalism, there was disproportion in branches of production and a strong growth of the economy, that is, the overproduction, underconsumption, or disproportionality are phenomena permanent in capitalism, so it cannot be said that when they there are crises, otherwise capitalism would live only in a state of crisis.

The failure of disproportionality, in the second place, is the product of the fact that identifies the shortcomings of capitalism at the level of relations between the capitalists, and not at the level of the class relation between capital and capitalism. work, exploitation, accumulation. That is the reason why it tends to lead to non-Marxist conclusions.

During the entire first stage of Marxist development of a Theory of Crisis, established a permanent struggle between Overproduction and Disproportionality. The Great Depression of 1929 and World War I and II opened a new stage in the development of a theory of crisis. In this new stage a struggle was established between the formulation of renewed theories of underconsumption by Stalinism and Keynesianism expressed in the various theories of the Business Cycle on the one hand; and the theories supported by Law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, on the other.

Theory of the Business Cycle: Bourgeois and Stalinist Theory of Crisis

The The theory of the business cycle is the classic bourgeois view of the crisis, elaborated by bourgeois economists through the centuries, adopted by different economists who call themselves Marxists, and it is the theory preferred by the Stalinists. This theory states that economic development develops through cycles as a downward and upward movement of the product Gross domestic growth (GDP) around its long-term growth trend. One business cycle is a period of time that contains a single sequence of boom and bust determined by change or innovation in patterns technological or the branches of production.

For The theory of the business cycle The capitalist economy moves in a "up movement" & down", which occurs ineluctably and predetermined, a movement that explains economic crises. Various bourgeois economists formulated all kinds of theories of the economic "cycle", among the first the French Jean Charles Léonard of Sismondi who affirms that economic equilibrium is broken by periodic crises in his book "New Principles of Political Economy" in 1819. His theory was adapted by Charles Dunoyer, another bourgeois economist which introduces the notion of a cycle between two phases, thus giving a form of of the business cycle.

Clement Juglar, a French bourgeois statistician, identified the fixed investment cycle from seven to eleven years, in his book "Periodic commercial crises and his return to France, England and the United States " in 1862. Joseph Schumpeter an Austrian-American bourgeois-Austrian economist who served Briefly as Austria's Minister of Finance in 1919, he developed in "The Theory of Economic Development" of 1911 where he states that the The main cause of economic development, which comes from cyclically over various time scales, in waveforms.

Schumpeter He argues that innovation and technological change develop wave A starting from the efforts of the entrepreneurs, in his own words: "the wild entrepreneurial spirit". Dutch economists Jacob van Gelderen, together with Samuel de Wolff, proposed the existence of cycles super-economic lengths of 50 to 60 years in 1913, as a result of the emergence of new branches of production. Joseph Kitchin, a British bourgeois statistician proposed a short business cycle of around 40 months in his book "Cycles and Trends in Economic Factors" in 1923.

Nikolai Kondratieff formulated the Long Wave Theory, another theory of the cycle, with long cycles of about 50 years. Kondratieff was a Russian economist, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which served as deputy minister of Alexander Kerensky government supply for only a few days. Then it was member of the economic team of the Bolshevik government in the time of the New Economic Policy (NEP), which promoted private market enterprises in the Union Soviet. In his work "The World Economy and its Junctures during and after the War" of 1922, he stated that the principle of the cycle is produced by capital goods and investments in infrastructure, which creates new jobs and income and demand of consumer goods. After a few decades, the expected profitability of investment falls below the interest rate and people refuse to investment, as well as excess capacity in capital goods results in mass layoffs, resulting in reduced demand for goods from consumption.

The unemployment and the crisis, produces the contraction of the economic cycle. In the Kondratieff's schemes, people and companies save their resources up to that confidence begins to return and there is a phase of expansion in a new period of capital formation characterized by large-scale investment in new technologies.

Also Simon Kuznets, American bourgeois economist in his work "His nature and its incidence on cyclical fluctuations" in 1930, proposes a theory of cycles. Kuznets schemes extend the cycles of economic activity between 15 and 25 years. And like all the cycle systems, the sequence of boom and bust is determined by the change or innovation in technological patterns or branches of production.

Joseph Schumpeter reformulated his schemes and suggested a model taking the ideas of Kondratieff, Kuznets, and Kitchin, but he elaborated a scheme in which there are 4 cycles Kondratieff, 54, in first place in the second place cycles of Kuznets of 18 years, in third place, the cycles of the Minstrel of 9 years, and finally Kitchin cycles about 4 years. These schemas of Schumpeter They propose that the 4 types of cycles can be combined with each other to form a compound waveform.

John Maynard Keynes worked on the causes of business cycles. In his book "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" by 1936, argued that during the Great Depression the loss of production in the private sector as a result of a systemic shock such as the Wall crash Street of 1929, must be occupied by public spending. According to the Keynesian economy, state intervention is necessary to moderate the cycles of the "boom and bust" of the economy and establish the use of fiscal and monetary policies to mitigate the adverse effects of recessions and economic depressions.

With from an under-consumerist point of view, Keynes argued that with a lower "demand effective aggregate ", or the total amount of expenditure in the economy, the private sector could subsist at a reduced level what develops the unemployment, unless there was active intervention by the State. As the businessmen lost access to capital, lay off workers. And these workers now have less to spend as consumers, while people with higher incomes cannot consume everything.

This outlook reduces the growth rate. Expenditure must therefore guide the large-scale public works programs, so that it is sufficient to accelerate the growth of its previous levels. These ideas concerning the economic policies were adopted by major Western economies during the 1950s and 1960s. The success of Keynesian economics resulted in a success in almost all capitalist governments that adopted their policy recommendations. In the post-war period, the Keynesianism was adopted by the Western Communist Parties as a basis for a "democratic road to socialism" through a political alliance between reformists and revolutionaries. But in the period of the These ideas concerning economic policy were adopted by Communist parties also in the Soviet Union, and the economies of Eastern Europe. This.

The capitalist "boom" it also hit within the Iron Curtain and the Eastern Bloc during the 1950s and 1960s, decades in which the success of Keynesian economics was translated into the adoption of Keynesian measures such as public investments, the industrial development, social wages and full employment also in economies in which the bourgeoisie was expropriated. The Business Cycle Theory does not found contradictions with the concepts of "socialism in a only country", or "peaceful coexistence", theories developed and applied by the Stalinist leaders in the Soviet Union, under the boot of the Stalinist dictatorship.

Low the government of Nikita Khrushchev, Kondratieff economist who was executed for Stalin's regime was rehabilitated and the theory of the business cycle was adopted by Stalinism and the members of the Communist Party of the Union Soviet. Stanislav Menshikov, member of the Central Committee of the Party Soviet communist, vice-minister, and collaborator in the department of commerce outside the Soviet Union, developed in the post-war period the same point of Keynesian view in his books: "The Business Cycle: The Evolution of the Post-War Period" of 1975 and "The Long Waves of the Economy".

All this explains the strong association between the neo-Keynesian economist John Kenneth Galbraith and the Stalinist economist Stanislav Menshikov, who wrote a book co-authored called "Capitalism, the communism and coexistence". Stanislav Menshikov spoke in his lectures, along with Russian politician and author Sergei Glazyev, an economist bourgeois and advisor to President Putin, who contributed to the theory of Kondratieff providing structural analysis of the underlying change of technological patterns.

Also authors linked to Stalinism in China such as Andong Zhu from the University of China Beijing Tsinghua where the elite of the Party bureaucracy are educated Communist Party of China, they adopted the Long Wave Theory. Andong Zhu, together Minqi Li, Feng Xiao who work in US universities, work currently with the Long Waves scheme. Long waves and the business cycle They thus became a theory shared by Keynesians and Stalinists.

Inside of Marxist economics, Leon Trotsky confronted the theory of Long Waves and he rejected the Stalinist position. As explained by the Marxist economist Michael Roberts, Trotsky, Stalin's historical enemy confronted the Theory of Revolutions. Long Waves that decades later Keynesians and Stalinists made their own. Like this Michael Roberts explained it: "A very different position had the Marxist Leon Trotsky, who also firmly rejected the theory of cycles Long. In an article partially intended to counteract the influence of Kondratieff written in 1923, entitled "The Long Curve of Development capitalist," Trotsky agreed and in fact emphasized The concrete history of capitalism showed alternating periods of of rapid economic growth and stagnation. But Trotsky denied that There was something cyclical about the succession of long periods of rapid growth economic under capitalism followed by periods of stagnation. Instead Trotsky suggested that the succession of "epochs" of rapid economic growth and stagnation could be explained by factors "external" to the capitalist system. For example, he mentioned openness of new continents and natural resources, revolutions and counterrevolutions, and world wars as the factors responsible for the successive "epochs" of rapid capitalist growth and stagnation economic capitalist or decline" (10)

Against Trotsky's position, the Marxist economist Ernest Mandel introduced the Theory of the Business Cycle in the Trotskyist Movement and the Fourth International, after Trotsky's death. This is how Michael Roberts explained it: "Follower Trotsky's confessed Ernest Mandel, from the 1960s onwards, was much more favorable to the idea of a long cycle. As the leader of perhaps the largest faction of declared "Trotskyists," as they called themselves, Mandel was embarrassed by Trotsky's rejection of the theory of the long cycle, since this opened the accusations of the members of the "Trotskyist" groups that he was not a "real Trotskyist... Therefore, Mandel, Backing up a bit, he prefers the term "long waves." (11)

For give his version of Business Cycle Theory a Marxist appearance, Mandel established the Keynesian theory of the business cycle associated with the Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall in his book "The Long Waves of Capitalist Development" of 1978. But the The introduction of Business Cycle Theory into Marxism was a movement in the same sense as Stalinism, trying to reconcile the economy bourgeois with Marxist economics. The theory of the business cycle is a theory of bourgeois economics, fundamentally in the post-war period of the Keynesians. But it is also the case of the Stalinists and Mandelites within Marxist economics. The failure of the Theory of the business cycle was visible to the extent that at a high percentage failed in their predictions of the main trends of the economy, and fundamentally failed in the analysis of the crisis. Their forecasts about crises or the "boom" at a high percentage never happened.

There's A long list of economic crashes and booms that surprised the authors of the business cycle. This is so because the capitalism does not move by "Cycles", "Waves" or "Curves". Not 5 years old, not 7 years old, not 20 years old, not 30 years old, etc. The bourgeois economists and Many Marxist leaders have tried in vain to find "waves" and "cycles" in the world. the functioning of capitalism, and in its scheme, the economy moves in a "Up & Down" movement, which occurs in the form of ineluctable, schematic and predetermined, movement that explains crises Economic.

The first problem with this type of reasoning is mechanism. For the proponents of the Long Wave Theory, the economy moves cyclically "down" and "for above" in various time-interval variants, regardless of the political and social events that take place in the reality. For example, those who defend the permanent "up & down" from 1890 to the present, obviate the fact that During that period of more than 120 years, bankruptcies, wars civil wars, atomic bombs, fascist regimes, camps concentrations, coups d'état, invasions, etc.

The Proponents of the Long Wave Theory defend the "up & down" by means of a mechanical reasoning that obviates these important political events which have an enormous impact on the economy. For the mechanistic supporters of the "waves", the Ascending and descending cycles of 30 or 40 years, the "up" movement & down," occurs ineluctably, no matter if he governs Hitler or Roosevelt, Churchill or Mussolini, if there are strikes or invasions, triumphant or defeated.

For the proponents of the "Long Waves" independently of what happens in the political field, the "Up & Up" movement down" will occur mechanically and unfailingly, predetermined and ineluctably, which puts the Long Wave Theory closer to religion than to science, because there is nothing ineluctable or default in any field of science. But there's another problem for the mechanistic reasoning of those who defend the "waves" and the "cyclical" functioning of the economy to explain crises.

The drawback of this reasoning is that these movements "up & down", which supposedly happen "cyclically", in some order of regularity, it never existed. In reality, the economy The capitalist system has never moved like this, and this is the reason why most of the defenders of the Theory of the Business Cycle ends up making the ridiculous, when the reality of the crises ended up flatly denying their forecasts.

Any movement of the economic growth of the economy is a fundamental statistical data, but like any other data or index, it cannot be explain the crisis. This is why many economists and analysts of the business cycle permanently failed on their predictions and facts important economic booms and the crises that ended surprising the authors of the Business Cycle Theory themselves. The Business Cycle Theory also has a sub-consumerist point of view. For Business Cycle Theory, the upward movement of the cycle begins when a new branch, a new technology or product emerges, and makes it possible to the increase in consumption. 

From Sismondi, to Kondratieff, from Kuznets to the Keynesians, all cycle theories argue that with increased "demand," or the total amount of spending in the economy, the private sector could have a higher level of activity, and low unemployment. This is where the Theory of the Cycle Economic is in line with Keynesianism. In Keynesian terms, that's why It is necessary to have an active intervention of the State in order to get out of the crisis, opening a "new cycle" of rebound in the economy through a wave of state intervention to achieve this. The State intervention would solve wages, unemployment and relaunch the economy. This is the Keynesian and Neo-Keynesian view of the current bourgeois economists such as Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz or Nouriel Roubini.

Other The problem with the Business Cycle Theory is that it implies an anti-economic vision. Genetics of capitalism. This theory of the business cycle only sees there are cycles, regular or irregular, "booms" and "falls", towards up and down independently social and political events and of the class struggle, but also of the evolution of the system itself capitalist. However, as Trotsky pointed out, the reality is very different.

In In recent centuries, capitalism has evolved with great changes: free trade market to monopolies; From the national market to the market worldwide; from dispersion of capital to concentration and centralization, from a capitalist accumulation lower than a higher one. It is not the same when a economic expansion develops in the commercial stage of capitalism, which in the industrial stage. A moment of expansion in the free stage is not the same trade of capitalism, than in the stage of monopolies and cartels. Are different contexts to understand how crises occur.

One Crisis theory that does not take into account these social levels, economic and historical understanding, is completely unscientific, ahistorical, that is, antigenetic, and it is therefore impossible for it to be understanding capitalist crises. Precisely, the reconstruction of the Theory Marxist demands those minimum levels of elaboration that the Theory of the Cycle Economic, because it is a Bourgeois Theory of the crisis, does not possess.

Law Tendency of the Rate of Profit (LTDTG): Marxist Theory of Profit Post-war crisis

The failure of the Theories of Overproduction, Under-consumption, Disproportionality and of the Business Cycle produced the emergence of new authors with a point of different view around the Law of Declining Tendency of the rate of Profit (LTDTG). The Marxist Theory of Crisis built around the LTDTG claims that the crisis is caused by the downward trend in the rate of profit, a Marxist law of Capital Book III, which very rarely it had previously been identified with a theory of crisis.

The LTDTG asserts that, at a constant rate of exploitation of labour, it would have as a consequence an overaccumulation of capital, and in that case, a growth of constant capital relative to variable capital, which produces a tendency for the rate of profit to fall.

Like this this is how Marx explains it: "This is how the rate of surplus-value itself becomes would be expressed with the same degree of labor exploitation in a decreasing rate of profit, because the material growth of constant capital implies also a growth - although not in the same proportion - in its value, and therefore consequent in that of the total capital ... If it is further assumed that this change The gradual composition of capital is not limited to the spheres of of production, but it occurs more or less in all, or at the same time, less in the key areas of production, so it implies changes in the average organic composition of the total capital of a given company, then the gradual growth of constant capital relative to capital must necessarily lead to a gradual fall in the overall rate of Profit " (12)

One The new orthodox tradition of Marxists was established from the 1970s onwards. '70, according to which the falling rate of profit was presented as a theory of authentically Marxist of the crisis, in contrast to the different theories of the crisis, that they were a revisionist deviation. In 1960, Paul Mattick introduced the tax Declining Profit as a Theory of Crisis and as a Logical Alternative to that of Underconsumption, in his work "Marx and Keynes" in 1969.

In other works with David Yaffe and Mario Cogoy established the LTDTG theory as the alternative to Keynesian reformism. All the authors worked as a reaction to revisionism and returning to the Marxist bases, seeking establish elaboration with different models of capital accumulation. One similar formulation seeking to establish the importance of LTDTG was proposed by John Strachey for whom the decreasing rate of profit was not more a tendency but an absolute.

Strachey was followed by Maurice Dobb, who in his book "Political Economy and Capitalism" in 1937 stated that: "it seems clear that Marx considered this question of the tendency of the rate of profit as a important underlying cause of periodic crises, as well as a factor in the shaping the long-term tendency" (13) A As the postwar boom approached its limits in the middle of the 1960s The Keynesian vision and the underconsumerism that had remained indissolubly linked to it, began to crack.

The capitalism was in a period of renewed crisis, which the measures Keynesian movements were unable to resolve, and the crisis was characterized by its early stages not because of mass unemployment, but because of a fall in the rate of profit and a decrease in investment. In the early 1970s there was an agreement It was general among Marxists that the fall in the rate of profit was the cause of the crisis and not its consequence. The central issue in this debate was because the fall in the rate of profit caused the crisis. Some Marxists argued that LTDTG was the result of the erosion of profits by the rising wages as a result of the growing militancy of the workers, as proposed, among others, or the Japanese Kozo Uno.

By on the other hand, some Marxists such as the English Marxist economist Ben Fine, or the Kim Soohaeng raised the main cause of the crisis in the contradiction between the downward trend of the rate of profit and the counteracting forces. Other Marxists argued that the LTDTG is the result of "over-accumulation of capital", as a result of its growing organic composition.

One of the most important contributions of this tradition of orthodoxy Marxist came from Nahuel Moreno. Here's how Moreno explained it: "... The last key to begin to understand all the phenomena that occur in the international arena since the end of the 60s is the chronic crisis that has been dragging the world economy down ever since... The chronic crisis has had three peaks or acute conjunctural crises. The first is from 1966-67... the second crisis occurred between 1973-75 ... the third was born in 1979 and was generalizes to the entire world economy... In all cases, the overcoming of The crisis is produced by an increase in the mass of surplus value, which slows down or momentarily reverses the inexorable fall in the rate of profit"

"The process of internationalization of the economy and its centralization by the imperialism of the United States and the great international monopolies" Transnational... allows a rapid rate of production of surplus value, the distribution of income, the accumulation and overaccumulation of capital. This The same rate accelerates the chronic crisis of the imperialist economy. Each huge increase in the mass of surpluses recovered the rate of profit and allows the overcoming the economic crisis. But it prepares a bigger crisis: By increasing colossally, capital produces an accumulation of capital, which seeks the investments where profit is produced; and as the mass of surplus-value continues to being the same, and the capital has increased, the rate of profit falls abruptly, giving rise to a new conjunctural crisis" (14)

Tanned established the crisis linked to LTDTG, and explained it as follows: "When Is there a crisis? When the decrease in the rate of profit causes the capital is not invested... when capital does not join the process of material production, the crisis occurs... And when they leave, there's a gap... no there is capitalist accumulation... When there is little surplus value and little profit, the capital flees and there is crisis" (15)

In the same sense as other authors, Moreno established the elaboration of the Marxist theory of crisis around LTDTG in search of an elaboration linked to the tradition of Marxist orthodoxy. By developing the elaborated around the LTDTG, this current of authors established their studies around the accumulation of capital, exploitation, overaccumulation and the contradictions of the production process in the mode of capitalist production, in the same way that Marx and Engels worked in the nineteenth century, taking up the method and theoretical concept of orthodox Marxism.

Tanned saw the crisis as linked to the dynamics of the capitalist mode of production, which it establishes the tendency to crisis as something inherent to that dynamic. Other current of authors that emerged in defense of LTDTG as Crisis Theory it was the ones who postulated the so-called Interpretation of a Single System Temporal Single-System Interpretation (TSSI) of theory of Marx's value. The TSSI was formulated in the 1980s in response to renewed allegations that the LTDTG was "torn apart by internal contradictions", and that therefore it should be rejected or corrected. The accusations of inconsistency of Marx's theory of value and LTDTG had been a prominent feature of Marxist economics and the debate around him in the '70s.

The defenders of the TSSI of Marx's theory of value are Guglielmo Carchedi, Alan Freeman, and Andrew Kliman, among others. These authors state that the alleged inconsistencies are actually the result of bad interpretation; and they argue that when Marx's theory is understood as "temporary" and a "system unique" internal inconsistencies disappear.

The "Theorem of Okishio" produced by the Japanese Marxist economist Nobuo Okishio in 1961, was widely regarded as a theoretical work that he refuted Marx's law on LTDTG. But the authors of the TSSI have It has been shown that Marx's rate of profit can fall in circumstances in which Okishio's theorem says that the rate of profit cannot fall, and his The answer to Okishio's theorem is part of a great Marxist current that defended the LTDTG which included in different versions Sweezy, Mattick, Yaffe, Strachey, Moreno, Kliman or Dobb. All this constellation of authors who advocated the construction of a theory of crisis around the LTDTG, not nor did he achieve a solid explanation of the crises by a simple reason: The General Rate of Profit Trend happens all the time, but there is not a crisis all the time. On the contrary, there have been large crisis in the midst of an increase in the rate of profit, as occurred in the 1990's. or the first decade of the twentieth century.

For Marx and Engels, the tendency of the general rate of profit is a natural fact of the process of capitalist accumulation, that is the reason why in The Capital Book III, in the chapter dedicated to the presentation of LTDTG, the The word "crisis" does not appear throughout the chapter. This is because, for Marx and Engels, LTDTG is the expression of development capitalist of production, but not the explanation of the crisis. How Marx explains: "The progressive downward tendency of the rate The general mode of profit is therefore only an expression proper to the mode of profit. capitalist production of the progressive development of the social productivity of the work" (16) The downward trend in the rate general profit, can explain the small crises, the periodic crises, or the conjunctural crises linked to a permanent movement of capitalism, but it cannot explain secular trends, the great crises, or crises historical of capitalism.

On the other hand, the LTDTG must be analyzed in a context. The fall in the rate of profit It happens all the time, but it's not the same when the tendency for the general rate of profit occurs in a context of a general expansion of the economy, than when it occurs in the context of a general fall. A lot when the tendency of the general rate of profit to fall occurs in In the middle of a period of general expansion, or general decline, the consequences of a period of general expansion, are not the same, and the effects of LTDTG on the development of the economy.

Therefore, the LTDTG is the expression of the development of capitalist production, the manifestation of its inherent contradictions, the "expression peculiar" of the capitalist mode of production, in Marx's words. The LTDTG is linked to the crisis, it is its expression, and we can even define which acts as a trigger for the crisis, but does not constitute its explanation, because the Declining trend of the rate of profit acts by summarizing the more general tendencies of the process of accumulation, expresses them, but does not explain them. The construction of a Theory of the Crisis remains as a pending matter, to the extent that the authors who they looked for the answer to the problem around the LTDTG, they retraced their steps towards Marxist orthodoxy, they sought the answer in the process of accumulation, but with the LTDTG, they were unable to find it either.

One Opportunity for a fresh start

The The failure of the various theories of crisis that we have presented puts us on the spot. faced with the challenge of looking for new bases on which to build theory. But To develop this kind of new beginning, it is necessary to go back to the foundations and principles of Marxist Theory, and to provide a point of around which a theory can be built that explains the reality of world capitalism in crisis. The Crisis tendencies inherent in the social form of capitalist production they only come to the surface in a crisis if capital cannot overcome the barriers of accumulation. When the reproduction of capital becomes a barrier to the development of the productive forces of social labour. The tendency to overaccumulation appears in the form of overproduction generalized, and a general crisis.

Like this Marx explains: "The excess production of capital, not of individual commodities - although the excess production of capital always includes an excess of commodity production - therefore, it is nothing more than a excess accumulation of capital" (17) The same case is for Under-Consumption, both theories are the reflection of the contradictions real in the process of accumulation. The same is true of the disproportionality and the tendency of the general rate of profit to fall, are movements and expression of the process of real accumulation. However, it is not he can confuse the expressions of the accumulation process, with the contradictions and tendencies that constitute it.

Those contradictions and tendencies of the accumulation process are the essence of its development. They are the fundamental of capitalist development in all areas of the world. branches of production at all times. And also, those contradictions have a permanent manifestation in the class struggle, in the production of surplus value, and the competitive struggle over its realization, that is, the way in which Capitalists try to overcome inherent social and natural barriers to capitalist accumulation. The authors who began to build a theory of the Crisis around the LTDTG, opened the way to construct a theory of crisis. This The first question begins with the definition of the crisis, because the first point to construct a theory of crisis is work on a definition of what we mean by crisis. This matter, which the economists and researchers take it for granted has not been properly studied, nor specifically analyzed, and is the point that begins the next chapter.

Notes

(1) and (2) Karl Kautsky. "The Class Struggle"

(3) and (4) Rosa Luxembourg "Reform or Revolution"

(5) Rosa Luxembourg "Capitalist Accumulation"

(6) Nahuel Moreno. School of Economics Cadres - 1985

(7) Tugan-Baranowsky, Studies on the Theory and History of Trade Crises in England, G. Fischer, Jena, 1901, [1894], 33, quoted Sweezy, 1946, 166).

(8) y (9) Rudolf Hilferding. "Financial Capital"

(10)y(11) Michael Roberts. "The 'Long Cycle'—Summary and Conclusions"

(12) Karl Marx. Capital Book III. The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall. Chapter 13. The Law As Such

Maurice Dobb. "Political Economy and Capitalism" (1937)

(13) Nahuel Moreno. "Theses on world situation" (1984)

(14) y (15) Nahuel Moreno. "Economic School" (1984)

(17) Karl Marx, Capital, Book III, Chapter XV Part II, "Conflict between Expansion of Production and Production of Surplus-Value"

Chapter I- The definition of "Crisis" The Quantitative Crisis

The debates around crisis theory had always developed a analysis on the question of the causes of the crisis, trying to give answer to questions such as the following: Why does the crisis occur? What are the causes? Why are the same elements that at one time historical produce the crisis, do not produce it in others?, etc. To this type of questions must be answered by any Theory of Crisis that prides itself on such. But there is, however, a preliminary question that every Theory of Crisis must answer: What is crisis?

One the permanent mistake of crisis theories is to begin to develop what is not the case. concerning a Theory of Crisis without answering this question. And precisely we must begin by answering questions such as: What do we mean by crisis? What is a crisis? Is there a single type of crisis, or are there different types of crisis? Marx and Engels addressed the question of the crisis by pointing out a series of of contradictions inherent in the process of capitalist accumulation, on the On the basis of which Marxist theorization was established.

The Process of Accumulation or Extended Reproduction (both terms are synonymous), It is the process in which the transformation of surplus value into capital, the main process in capitalist production. This is how he defines it Marx: "The whole character of capitalist production is determined by the expansion of capital-value advanced itself, that is, in first instance by the production of the greatest quantity of surplus value as possible possible; in the second place, to achieve the production of capital, through the transformation of surplus-value into capital. Accumulation, or production in on an enlarged scale, appear as a means for the wider constant production of surplus value and the enrichment of the capitalist, as his personal objective" (1)

One the conclusion with respect to Accumulation or Extended Reproduction is that crisis of capitalism have a profound relationship with it and find in the Accumulation of its determining element. As we shall see now, Marx and Engels define as a crisis the violent explosion of the contradictions of capitalism, which it disturbs Accumulation or Reproduction on an Enlarged Scale. Therefore, it is It is necessary to evaluate the Marxist Theory of Crisis in relation to the Accumulation or Expanded Reproduction in order to define its laws and Movements

Marx develops the relationship between the capitalist production process and the crisis in various parts of his work. In Capital Book III Chapter XV this is how explains it "From time to time the conflict of the organisms antagonistic finds expression in crises. Crises are always momentary and forced solutions to existing contradictions. Are violent eruptions that restore the balance disturbed by a time" (2)

In First, Marx speaks of crises in respect of them as "solutions of the existing contradictions" and "violent" eruptions that for a time restore the disturbed balance". Following these definitions of Marx, we can ask: To what extent is the What contradiction does Marx refer to? And we can also ask: What equilibrium is disturbed? Let us see how Marx answers the first question: "The contradiction, to put it in a very general way, consists in the fact that the of capitalist production implies a tendency towards the absolute development of the productive forces, without taking into account the value and surplus-value that contains, and regardless of the social conditions in which production capitalist develops; while, on the other hand, its objective is to preserve the value of existing capital and encourage its self-expansion until the higher limit (i.e., the promotion of an increasingly rapid growth of this value)" (3)

For Marx, the main contradiction of capitalist production is production collective value on the one hand and the individual appropriation of it, on the other hand, other. Marx analyzes that capitalism carries forward the development of the productive forces, that is, value developed in a social form, on the one hand; while the small group of capitalists appropriates this social value produced in order to transform it into capital, in Marx's own words: "its self-expansion towards the higher limit to promote ever-increasing growth higher than this value." In this way Marx sees the development of this contradiction.

See Now, the answer to the second question: What equilibrium is disturbed? That's right as Marx explained: "The methods by which it is carried out the periodic depreciation of existing capital - one of the immanent means of capitalist production, in order to verify the fall in the rate of profit and accelerating the accumulation of capital-value through the formation of new capital - disturbs the given conditions, within which the process of the circulation and reproduction of capital takes place, and therefore accompanied by sudden stoppages and crises in the production process" (4)

Marx states that the disturbed equilibrium is the "given conditions, in that the process of the circulation and reproduction of capital is carried out by the corporal". The process in which the circulation and reproduction of the capital is carried out is the Process of Accumulation or Expanded Reproduction. For Marx, the crisis is the Disturbance of the Process of Accumulation or Extended Reproduction. But not only the Disturbance of Accumulation it affects production and circulation processes. Disturbance includes the damage and destruction of means of production.

Like this is as Karl Marx explains it: "How is this conflict and the conditions that correspond to "healthy operation" are restored of capitalist production? The way it is set indicates the Emergence of the conflict under discussion. It involves the withdrawal and even the partial destruction of capital... so that a capital is going to be used, another is destroyed, and one-third suffers a relative loss, or depreciation temporary, etc. But balance is restored in all circumstances by withdrawing or even destroying more or less capital ... the paralysis causes enormous damage to the means of production" (5) Marx states that when a crisis occurs the means of production are disturbed for a shorter or longer period. This is what he states: "Without However, the main effect in this case would be that these means of production would cease to function as such, that its function as a means of production would be would be disturbed for a shorter or longer period" (6) This is, for Marx, Disturbance affects the processes of Production, Circulation and Circulation. Means of Production.

Also Marx states that the fall in the rate of exploitation at a certain point causes the Disruption of Accumulation and the destruction of capital. This is what explains: "The excess production of capital is nothing more than the overproduction of means of production - of means of labour and necessities of life - which can serve as capital, i.e., it can serve to exploit labor to a certain degree of exploitation; without However, a drop in the intensity of exploitation below a certain period, causes disturbance, and stoppages in the capitalist production process, crisis and destruction of capital" (7)

In short, going to the definition of what crisis is, for Marx crisis is Disturbance of the Process of Accumulation or Extended Reproduction. The Disturbance affects the processes of circulation, production, the means of production, and destroys capital. Disturbance is the result of development of the contradictions of the accumulation process that unfold in the form of and are expressed in bankruptcies, inflation, stock collapse, devaluation, recession, etc.

The disturbance of the Accumulation Process causes periodic crises, assiduous fluctuations, a movement that takes place permanently, that happens all the time, at all stages and phases of development capitalist. Because they take place permanently, it is necessary to call to this movement Quantitative Disturbance of the Reproduction Process Expanded, or Quantitative Crisis. The Quantitative crisis occurs when the Extended Reproduction Process is interrupted, stopped, or is disturbed. And after the damage or destruction of a part of capital, the Expanded Reproduction Process remakes its march again, and the crisis is temporarily over. In other words, the Quantitative crisis is an organic movement of capitalism, chronic, permanent, and of a historical, that is, it occurs in all stages or periods of the development of capitalism.

Then if for Marx crises are always momentary and forced solutions to the existing contradictions, and whether these contradictions develop in the form of permanent, it is necessary to analyze the way in which contradictions are carried out as a result of a historical process of production development capitalist, and how these contradictions are linked to each other. This process gives rise to the various contradictions existing in the capitalism, which when evolving constitute the cause that causes crises. This historical process is the one that we will begin to analyze from Now

One historical process generates the contradictions of capitalism

To From now on, we will analyze the movements and contradictions that the process of accumulation has engendered. These huge masses of workers, working masses of all categories have produced masses of value that are expressed in wealth, in a Historical Magnitude for capitalism. That historic magnitude of wealth is the continuation of The accumulation that has been going on for centuries, of which through the ownership private capitalists seize in order to get more profits and capital.

In In this section we are going to start analyzing step by step the movements and laws Marxist economists who explain how the contradictions of the capitalist system. We are going to analyze from now on the movements and the contradictions that the process of Accumulation has generated, and we will see then how the contradictions of the capitalist system are chained together. To pedagogical purposes, and for a better understanding of the problem, we are going to go to showing this concatenation of the contradictions of Accumulation capitalist in schematic and summary form, to facilitate its understanding, but We must clarify that this is not how it happens in reality. In real life every One of the steps and scales that we are going to analyze are developed in the form of simultaneous, combined, convulsive, and not necessarily in the order in which we are going to present them.

Started analyzing how the goods that capitalist society accumulates today arise. This infinite and immense quantity of goods Who has produced it?, How can it be measure its value? We are going to begin to analyze the wealth that society capitalist accumulates today. Who produced all this immense and infinite amount of wealth? Where does it come from?, How can its value? The defenders of capitalism claim that it is the capital that generates And this is what governments and agents of capitalism teach and they reproduce even in schools and universities.

But those who have produced these enormous masses of value are the masses of workers, industrious of all ranks, who have produced masses of value expressed in goods, in a historical magnitude for capitalism. How do we know that it is the laboring masses who have built up these masses of value? By the Law of Value. Hence, the interest and aspirations of the Defenders of capitalism encounter serious problems when it comes to the Law of Value. What does this Law mean, what does it consist of?

The The law of value was developed by classical political economy. He maintained that the The value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour which in the prevailing conditions of production is on average necessary for Produce. Adam Smith was the first economist to work on the law of value in his book "Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" in 1776, a title that has been usually abbreviated as "The Wealth of Nations".

This is considered Adam Smith's masterpiece and the first modern work on the capitalist economy. One of the most influential classical economists, the British economist David Ricardo became interested in economics after read "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith. In his most famous work "Principles of Political Economy and taxation" in 1817, Ricardo opens the first chapter with the formulation of the labor theory of value, in which he argued that the value of a commodity is determined by the human labor necessary to produce it.

Almost 50 years later, in 1867, Karl Marx in his book Capital, reformulated the Law of Courage to make it stronger. In his version he states that the products They share a common quality that they are all products of human labor. Let's see how Karl Marx explains the law of value: "... The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production predominates are presented as an "enormous wealth of goods". Well, if we set aside the use-value of the main body of the commodity, only a property will continue to be: that of being the product of labor... This product it's no longer a board, a house or a thread or any other useful thing... It has been totally reduced to undifferentiated human labor... " (8)

Of According to the law of value, it is labor that produces value, wealth, and the goods: "... The Law of Value Dominates Over Processes economic in the regime of the capitalist economy. In very general terms which has the following content: the value of the commodity is the form specific and historical with which the productive power of labor is imposed... What are the assets? The objective form of social labour expended in the production of it. And how is the magnitude of value measured? Because of the magnitude of the work contained. Labor is the substance and the immanent measure of the values " (9)

¿What do we understand by work? According to Nahuel Moreno: "... The work is a physiological truth, it is the essential expenditure of the human brain, the muscles, nerves, and senses. That is, it is abstract work. All use value is the product of a human expenditure of energy, regardless of the historical epoch in which it takes place..." (10) Marx affirms that value is determined by abstract labour, i.e., not by labour concrete that a worker produces.

The concrete work of a machinist, a miner, the skill of the worker individual, their living conditions, the time, or the day that the all these elements are all abstracted. Setting aside any Another thing that distinguishes one human labor from another, you get an hour of abstract work. Once value is reduced to a social substance, homogeneous, it can be measured by a common unit of time, and in terms of value, although one commodity differs from another, is qualitatively the same. This Theory of value has represented a major advance beyond the theory of value Ricardo's work. At this point, Nahuel Moreno added the concept of Determinants of Value. He explains that in Marx's formulation the value of The commodity is determined by 3 elements: 1) abstract labor contained in it, 2) The time during which social character that is produced, and 3) The social character of work, that is, that it is produced by millions of people. workers in different branches of production.

According to Moreno, these three elements are the determinations or determinants of value: "... This means that every time an object is produced, (the worker) works, that is, human energy passes, the energy is transferred human energy to the object, two: it is transferred for a certain time and three, it does so in society..." (11) That is, it is the human labor was allowed the wealth that is produced, which in capitalism becomes a commodity.

Without However, these products have no value in themselves; it is work that It gives value to them, a process that has taken place not only in capitalism, but also in capitalism. but also in all previous societies. According to Moreno, "... the exchange of goods transforms what in any era of humanity are the 3 properties or characteristics of each human production in the social property of objects. But characteristic of social production not of objects..." (12)

Determinant of Value is a concept of Nahuel Moreno, to understand the importance of work in the formation of value in all human societies. But this Determinant of the Value that is human labor, in capitalism it is put in the same way. manifested in a different way than in societies prior to the capitalism. It is expressed in the form of commodities. And, consequently, the are the expression of the class character of the economic development of the capitalist society. The fetishistic character of the commodity is used by the capitalist class, which seeks to make people believe that it is capital that generates value, and that commodities produced have value because of their appearance or utility. This is what Marx calls "The fetish of the commodity". But these goods do not have value in themselves, but because of the human labor contained in them, it is that is, what produces value is labor, not capital. And the goods they contain value, because they contain work.

Like this this is how Nahuel Moreno explains it: "... In my opinion, the value It has a lot to do with the value of the class. That is to say, it is the bourgeoisie that they want to make us believe that commodities have value... that the capital that the produces is what counts" (13) Karl Marx, a unlike classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo, distinguishes between constant capital, composed of fixed capital, and raw and auxiliary materials on the one hand, and variable capital, the force of work on the other hand.

According to Marx only living labor, variable capital, produces value and surplus value. The constant capital, on the other hand, can only transfer its existing value for the products you help produce. That is, goods and commodities they have no value, the work contained in them is what gives them value, it is that is, goods are the expression of the value created through exploitation of human labor in the capitalist mode of production. In this way, it is with goods, the class character of value is expressed in the capitalist society. But a special commodity above all appears as expression of value in capitalist society: Money. With the appearance of the new contradictions also emerge in capitalism between the money, prices and value that will be an important component in relation to to the development of capitalist crises.

Contradiction between money, prices and value

In crises there is a violent eruption of the contradiction between money, the prices and value. Therefore, depreciations, devaluations, inflation, bankruptcies, etc., are the expression of these contradictions. To From now on, we are going to analyze those contradictions developed in process of circulation, but which impact on the entire accumulation process. The objectification of the human labor contained in commodities is expressed when exchange takes place, that is, in trade which is a process that allows the exchange of commodities. According to Marx, "only they can interrelate their commodities as values and therefore only as commodities when they are antithetically related to any other merchandise" (14)

But In order to develop trade, it requires an element, a commodity that it will act as a general equivalent that allows this exchange. This general equivalent is money, according to Marx, "... Just one act A certain piece of commodity can be converted into an equivalent general. That is why the social action of all the other goods that difference to a given piece in which they all represent their values... its character as a general equivalent makes it, by means of a social process, in a specifically social function of the selected piece of goods. That's how it becomes money" (15)

The expression of the value of a commodity when exchanged in trade is called price. Both price and money are two elements absolutely different, if price is the expression of value in a context Historical and social determined, money is a commodity that allows to specify prices and exchange the goods and values existing in they. But since they do not contain human labor, the price and money are Figurative expressions of value serve to measure values, but they are not value.

For represent the closest thing to value, money must be backed by monetary material that has human labor, acts as a general equivalent, and back the bills. In general, capitalism has been consolidating gold as a global backing of money. First the gold and silver coins appear, which act to represent gold and precious metals. These currencies are figurative expression of the value of commodities, which allows them to be compared and measure them against each other, until giving way to the appearance of money and banknotes.

According to Marx: "The values of commodities, then, are transformed into quantities of figurative gold and of different magnitude... Prior to his transformation into money, gold, silver, copper already have such standards in their metallic weights..." (16) Here capitalism develops the contradiction between value on the one hand and money on the other that together with price are imaginary expressions of value, reaching the extreme of that commodities have a price and have no value, such as banknotes or land without cultivating for example.

In capitalism another contradiction develops: the contradiction between value and price. According to classical capitalist economists, the value of a commodity determines its natural price around market prices in response to changes in supply and demand. But in reality, it's not the law of supply and It is not not the demand that determines the price of commodities, but the process of capital accumulation.

This is because behind the commodities, there are capitals that act in the process of accumulation in search of profits and the achievement of more capital. They do fighting each other and competing for portions of surplus value in order to to guarantee profit, as Marx explained: "... the goods are not not merely exchanged for money as commodities, but as the product of capitals that demand a share in the total mass of surplus value, a participation proportional to the magnitude of the capital..." (17)

To starting from this struggle between capitalists to appropriate masses of surplus value, producer prices will arise. Producer prices are the prices of commodities that depend on the rate of exploitation that the capitalists achieved in the different branches of production. This price contradicts the classical capitalist economics, which postulated that the price of goods was equal to the to their value.

But In reality, this does not work like that, the prices of production are different from the value that goods have. This issue is known in economics as "The problem of transformation". The difference between value and Price apparently contradicts the law of value, but in reality, it confirms it. The capitalist who obtained a higher rate of exploitation, obtains better prices for their products against other capitalists who obtain a lower exploitation rate since the contradiction between the value and the prices of production is the product of the capitalist mode of production, which includes the exploitation of human labor based on private ownership of the means of production.

¿By What is this possible? Because the capitalists who get a higher rate of exploitation, pay less for the value of the human labor of the workers. For capitalism, human labor is a commodity, so that the capitalist who can buy human labor more cheaply, can sell cheaper their production, that is, to obtain lower production prices.

One an example of this was the production of China, where the capitalists found a rate of exploitation higher than the world average. This produced in the In the last 20 years, there has been an enormous migration of masses of capital to China, which aimed to find better production prices to make in the face of competition in the world market. But the question of the transformation, i.e., the change in the value of commodities at prices of production is the result of the exploitation of human labor, and therefore, it confirms the law of value.

The Law of Value states that it is human labor that produces value, so regardless of the lower or higher price than a commodity Its price is ultimately determined by the value that possesses, and this, in turn, by the human labor it contains. That is, anyone Whatever its price, the value of the commodity is determined by the value of the commodity. human, as stated by the Law of Value. In any case, the prices of production are the quantitative expression of this phenomenon, but never its negation. The origin of the contradiction between prices of production and the value is not the law of value, but the private ownership of the means of production. It is the private ownership of the means of production and exchange that it causes profit-oriented production, and the need for greater exploitation of human labor, which gives rise to production prices. But another contradiction arises. There is also the fact that the price of money rises or falls without any relation to goods.

This It happens because money is a commodity that is the imaginary expression of value and achieves its independence of value which allows its manipulation. ¿By What the contradiction between prices and money, on the one hand, and the value of money, on the other hand, the other? Because money and prices have always been manipulated over a long time. history by the ruling classes. For example, the activity of the early bankers as goldsmiths in the Middle Ages, sometimes issuing more papers than what they actually had as a backing in precious metals.

Is that is, the bourgeoisie permanently manipulates the money and goods that are used as a general equivalent expressed in coins, banknotes or documents. We can see as an example of this the falsification of money, or in the "great inflation of the sixteenth century", when States hoarded gold and silver, and issued fiat money to to finance war and plunder. Another case is the manipulation of money made by the U.S. Federal Reserve when through the agreements Smithsonians of 1971, under the Nixon administration, broke the dollar-gold parity to manipulate the price of the dollar.

All This is just a few examples of the mechanisms that capitalists and States carry out in order to confront and counteract the crisis. But these mechanisms, far from resolving the crisis, aggravate the contradiction of value on the one hand and prices and money on the other as Karl Marx put it. explains: "In the crisis, the antithesis between goods and their figure of value, e.g., money, aggravates and becomes an absolute contradiction ... " (18) In crises there is a violent eruption of the contradiction between money, prices and value. These contradictions between prices and value, value and money, money and prices, they act all the time and produce depreciation, inflation, bankruptcies, etc., both in the national economies of developing countries or economies of the third world countries, or in the world economy, as an expression of those Contradictions.

The Contradictions between capital, production, value and formations Social

In In the crisis there is a violent eruption of the contradiction between capital, capitalism, and the production, value and social formations. From now on, we're going to analyze these contradictions. Price and money develop in the sphere of circulation involving a series of economic processes, part of the of which are: the traffic in goods, money-trade, exchange of foreign exchange, and the appearance of Banks. The process of circulation is the the first capitalist economic process, the oldest. It was built around of trade and evolved autonomously from the different societies and modes of production that was intertwined and among which he developed the interchange. The process of circulation allowed the development of capital, long before the capitalist mode of production existed.

Carlos Marx polemicized with the great bourgeois economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo, who considered that capital had arisen with the capitalism: "The great economists like Smith, Ricardo, etc., since they in fact regard the fundamental form of capital as capital industrial... they are perplexed by commercial capital as a species independent. The theses concerning the formation of value, profit, etc., derived directly from the examination of industrial capital, do not apply directly to commercial capital. For this reason, in fact, he is marginalized for mentioned only as a variety of capital industrial" (19)

The Capital emerged many centuries before the mode of production was born capitalist and evolved through the centuries mediating the exchange between different societies and modes of production, such as Asian, feudal, primitive communist tribes, city-states, etc. What kind of capital is this one that emerged? This is the merchant's capital which for Marx is divided into 2 subspecies.

Like this Karl Marx explains it: "... Merchant or commercial capital is divided in two forms or categories: merchants' capital and (20) Marx calls these two types of capital on the one hand as "the capital dedicated to the traffic of commodities" to merchant's capital proper and "capital dedicated to money trafficking", to financial capital. In turn, to Marx, commercial capital, both mercantile and financial, is independent of the industrial and cannot be confused with it, among other things, because they have existed long before the existence of capitalist industry.

Like this Marx explains it: "... Nothing can be more absurd than to consider capital whether in the form of commercial or financial capital... as a type private of industrial capital... merchant's capital is older than capitalist mode of production, in reality historically it is the free mode of production. oldest existence of capital..." (21) With the emergence of the Commercial Nations around the tenth century, capital deepened the development of trade, the process of circulation of goods, and between societies with different stages of evolution, modes of production and social formations.

How Marx pointed this out: "I have pointed out earlier how the money system became originally developed in general, in the exchange of products between various community entities. For this reason, the money trade, the trade with the money commodity, develops in the first instance through from international traffic... with which the merchant negotiates, the slave owner, the feudal lord, the state (e.g., the despot represent the fruitive richness to which the merchant... As long as there are several national currencies, merchants who buy in foreign countries must convert their national currency into the currency local and vice versa... Hence the business of exchanges, which must be considered as one of the natural foundations of trade" (22) 

Marx explains that in the process of circulation the goods created by labor they circulate transformed into commodities, and the process of circulation is transformed into commodities. develops autonomously from the societies between which it mediates, with its own laws and characteristics: "In circulation, the product is develops for the first time as exchange value, commodity and money... The Autonomous commercial patrimony, as the dominant form of capital, is the autonomization of the circulation process with respect to its extremes, and such extremes are made up of the producers themselves who exchange. Those extremes remain autonomous with respect to the circulation process, and the process remains so with respect to them" (23)

The The process that develops circulation is a simple, proper commodity movement of pre-capitalist societies where the "metamorphosis" of commodities, i.e., the operation by which commodities are transformed in money, as Marx explains: "The operations of the merchant are nothing more than the operations that must be carried out, in general, to to transform the commodity capital of the producer into money... must make the process of its transformation into money" (24)

In this movement of metamorphosis in the simple circulation, in which the economy and the production of goods are oriented towards the use or utility, the producer works and obtains the commodities (C), the sells and gets money for it (M) and then invests that money in inputs and tools to make new goods (C). For Marx: "This process of circulation appears first as a process of circulation." simple mercantile circulation... C-M-C... The producer... Sell your merchandise... transforming it into money... With that same money he buys... Goods which constitute the elements of production" (25)

The simple, use-oriented movement of commodity circulation is the corresponding to the activity of the most pre-capitalist societies on which capital acts. The action of capital, the merchants and merchants on these pre-capitalist societies will begin to cause a change in the movement of circulation. When capital starts to act on pre-capitalist societies, begins to change from the movement of circulation.

In the extent to which capital enters peoples and nations, independently of the stage of evolution in which they are, it includes the products that the peoples elaborate for the satisfaction of their needs and subsistence, and by transferring them to other peoples and nations for sale, it transforms them into wares. So did the Commercial Nations. In this process, the first entrepreneurs, merchants and capitalists, such as those who led Commercial Nations or other forms of commercial capital, take products of more backward societies whose elaboration is oriented towards their use or and by progressively transforming them into commodities, it transforms them into commodities. products increasingly oriented towards exchange or value.

Like this Marx explains it: "On the other hand, any development of the commercial capital acts in the sense of giving production a character increasingly exchange-value-oriented... Whatever the mode of production on which the production of the products entering the circulation as commodities, whether that basis is the primitive community or slave production or that of small farmers and small farmers bourgeois or capitalist production, this in no way modifies their character of goods" (26)

The capital seeks to convert the economic production of societies into commodities, to make a profit. But the progressive conversion of the production in commodities, means that capital appropriates the value and therefore the labor that is contained in those commodities. When forming a system that aims to appropriate value and work developed by the different societies, capital through the maneuver of taking advantage of the price differences between nations, he makes a profit from the purchase and sale of commodities that contain human labor. 

That is, capital profits from the appropriation of portions of value from the production of the different societies between which it mediates. This movement modifies the course of movement of circulation, which now changes because it is a question of money (M), which buys a good and transforms it into a commodity (C), to get more money (M'). This centripetal movement is expressed in the formula M-C-M'. By earning profits from the exchange of products containing masses of value and labour, capital appropriates of work and value that societies develop.

From to little penetrates the pores of the society on which it acts, and when a point of its evolution, the penetration of capital and the predominance it acquires on the mode of production is such that its action represents practically a true depredation of productive systems.

Is that is, to the extent that it begins to be predominant, capital leaves transforming into a system of plunder, through the movement of the circulation, expressed in the formula M-C-M', with which it acts and begins to predominate over that more backward society. This is how Marx explains it: "Apart from the fact that it exploits the difference between the production prices of various Countries... merchants' capital appropriates a predominant part... From the plus product with which it negotiates... Consequently, when merchant's capital it predominates in an overwhelming way, it constitutes everywhere a system of plunder... of the in the same way as its development in the merchant peoples of both the times is directly linked to the looting by violence, piracy, slave theft, subjugation in the colonies..."(27)

To the extent that it plunders the pre-capitalist modes of production, capital goes to the modifying the character of the circulation. If before the movement expressed in the formula C-M-C was the simple mercantile activity that arose from the mere exchange of commodities, now the movement enunciated in the formula M-C-M'. This is how Marx explains it: "This M- M', as a characteristic movement of merchants' capital, difference from C-M-C, the trade of goods between their own producers" (28) The passage from C-M-C to M-C-M' is the exchange rate that allows capital to prey on companies. First, it dissolves and corrodes the most backward modes of production and finally crushing them militarily. To the extent that the process of changes the orientation of the freight traffic of its utility to value, is that capital causes changes in the economic structure of the different societies that develop "in the extremes" of the circulation process.

These changes act to promote the dissolution of these different modes of production. This is how Marx explains it: "commerce has in all parties a more or less dissolving action on the organizations pre- existing production ... will in turn, of course, have an impact on greater or to a lesser degree on the community entities among which it is developed; will increasingly subject production to exchange value... In this way it dissolves the old relationships. It increases the circulation of money. Not only is it It is not only in the hands of the surplus of production, but gradually gnawing at the production itself, making us whole branches of it depend on him." (29)

Dice that capital acts by contributing to the dissolution of the modes of production on which the that acts, it is then necessary to know to what extent capital is capable of dissolving that mode of production, and secondly that a new mode of production will emerge in the future in replacement of the dissolving mode of production. Both issues do not depend on capital, but on the internal solidity that characterizes to the mode of production in dissolution, for Marx: "... the measure in which which causes the dissolution of the old mode of production depends, in the first place, on the dissolution of the old mode of production. instance, of the firmness and internal structure of the latter... And where does this end process of dissolution, that is, what new mode of production will take the place of the of the ancient, does not depend on trade, but on the character of the former Ancient mode of production" (30)

Is that is, the very mode of production on which it acts, determines the "dissolving" character of capital, because in short, the mode of production that arises does so from the very entrails of the previous one. But capital also develops from exploitation that it makes of the mode of production that acts by dissolving, as he explains Marx: "However, this dissolving effect depends very much on the nature of the community producing entity. While capital trade, mediates the exchange of products of non-Community entities developed, commercial gain appears not only as a swindle and a swindle, but arises in large part from these." (31)

By Therefore, since the beginning of the emergence of capital itself, there is a violent contradiction between capital and social formations. In the framework From this contradiction also develops the contradiction between use-value and exchange value. These contradictions are at work all the time, and they are found at the base of the development of the crisis. The action of dissolving the movement of circulation in pre-capitalist societies and modes of production ends with the collapse of these societies, a process that includes the expropriation of the social classes of small and large landowners by military annihilation, and allows for the gradual worldwide consolidation of the mode of capitalist production.

The Contradictions between circulation and production in accumulation

In crises there is a violent eruption of the contradiction between circulation, and production in Accumulation. From now on, we are going to analyze those contradictions that are constituent elements of crises. Once the capitalist mode of production was consolidated between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the The development of industry ensured the process of producing goods for the world market. It is at this historical moment that 3 economic processes began to be linked in an interrelated way, even though those processes belong to completely different historical periods.

1) First, the set of economic processes that are part of the process that we have been analyzing

2) Second, the modern set of economic processes of production which are part of the capitalist mode of production.

3) Third, the combination of the uneven development of the two that gives rise to to the process of reproduction on an expanded scale or accumulation process, which now it reaches its final form.

Is In other words, accumulation has been developing for centuries by establishing partial or transitory, in certain geographical regions, coexisting with various modes of production. But now, because of the combination of circulation and production in the eighteenth century, the mode of production began to consolidate capitalist, and capitalist social formations.

The Capitalism is thus established in a definitive way, dominating throughout the world. At the same time, the process of accumulation already established is the process of accumulation. by means of which, the capitalist mode of production, like any other organism alive, seeks its own reproduction. Each of these processes, although closely related, they are different. And they have their own laws and mathematical formulas that express their fundamental movements.

1) In firstly, the circulation process with its formulas C-M-C and M-C-M already seen above, where neither value nor surplus value are created

2) A The process of capitalist production, synthesized in the formula:

cc+ cv= p  (constant capital + variable capital) = profit

------------------

S  (Surplus)

Is in constant capital (cc) which is: infrastructure, machines, technology and tools, and variable capital (vc) is that is: wages. Both are divided by the surplus value (s), or work that employers did not pay for, and result in (p) benefit or profit. It is, in this process that human labor is exploited and created value and surplus value. The combination of both generates the reproduction process in an enlarged scale that takes its final form with a formula that expresses it in its totality; this is M-M', that is: the money (M) seeking reproduction achieve more capital expressed in more money (M').

This formula is the expression of the whole process of system operation capitalist. In this way, the entire process of extended reproduction The capitalist has one objective: that (M) must become in (M'): that is, the capitalist invests money and what he wants is obtain more capital expressed in money. This is how Marx explains it, "M-M': Here we have a primitive point of view of capital: money in the C-M-C is reduced to two extremes M-M', where M' = M + M, i.e., money creates money... It is the consummate capital that unites the processes of production and production. circulation and therefore at different intervals will produce a surplus value dada " (32)

Is In the capitalist mode of production, the processes that take place in historical times as autonomous and separate forms, are now integrated. In the old days, circulation took place separately from the processes of production that existed. Regardless of the degree of development, the circulation had a divergent movement of production and acted in a predatory over them. When the capitalist production process emerged, the circulation process and production process began to act in a way that Interrelated. Here's how

Marx here explains, "... in capitalist production, both things have place. The production process is entirely based on circulation and circulation is a mere stage, a transitional phase of production... (33) Thus, with the mode of production The processes of production and circulation are produced, in a capitalist way. combined and related to each other. The combination of the movements of these Different forms of capital raise the dispute for the achievement of profits to a higher degree. Now capitals use circulation to go together different branches of production, in the search for what is most convenient to increase profits. And circulation acts on production, where The most serious and fiercest battles are carried out for the attainment of profit.

The contradictions in the interrelation of production and circulation, accelerate the leveling of profit rates. The phenomenon that took place with the industry is that, through the process of expropriation of small property and other pre-capitalist social classes, the obstacles that prevented the capital movement from one branch of production to another was eliminated and the capital circulates in search of profits in different productive spheres.

How Engels explains: "large-scale industry after reducing again and again the costs of producing goods inevitably eliminate all the costs of production. previous modes of production... definitely conquers the domestic market, puts an end to small production... eliminates direct exchange between the small producers and place the whole nation at the service of capital ... to ensure the predominant place for the industry... have part removed from the obstacles that have so far stood in the way of capital transfers from one branch to another" (34)

The capital that expropriated small production is now free to go from one branch to the another of the production in search of profit and tours of the branches of a smaller rate of profit to those with higher rates of profit. This movement of the circulation of capital between the different branches of production tends to to level out the different rates of profit of the different branches of the production at the same general rate of profit.

The combined activity of the circulation process and of production accelerates the process of leveling out the rate of profit. As Engels explained in the same article: "... the industry ... level out the win rates of the different branches of commercial and industrial activity, reducing them to a single general share of profit" (35). On the other hand merchant's capital contributes to the leveling of the way in which that Marx explains: "When we first study, the rate or average rate of profit had not materialized for us see that in its final form... this first study was completed... we exposed the participation of commercial capital in this leveling" (36)

Is this constant change of capital between the different branches towards the highest rate of profit is what ultimately acts as a leveler of the different Rates of Profit. In the interrelation of industrial capital with the The leveling of the average rate accelerates and its conformation takes place. less time. In the days of the stage of capitalist primitive accumulation between the tenth and eleventh centuries, with the development of the precarious regimes of Capitalist Accumulation, the leveling process took a longer time, produced solely by commercial competition, because the processes of capitalist production was still precarious and incipient.

But in the eighteenth century, when the capitalist production process emerged at the surface and economic condition was more developed, capital began to rotate faster, switching to different branches and sectors of production in search of better conditions for obtaining profits. The result of this process is that the faster turnover of capital makes the most accelerated the leveling of the average rate of profit. According to Marx: "The capital reaches this leveling to a greater or lesser degree in accordance with the more high capitalist development in a given national society, i.e., most appropriate to the conditions of the country in question" (37)

By therefore, with the production process and circulation process that work in joint and interrelated form, the dispute for the achievement of benefits reaches a higher degree. Now capital uses circulation to go to different branches of production in the search for what is most convenient to increase profits. This rotation of capital acts on the production with more serious and fierce battles for the achievement of earnings. And the development of these contradictions between production and production circulation accelerates the leveling of the rate of profit.

The move sets the stage for the rate of profit to fall. Are contradictions that act all the time and with interrelated performance of the processes of production and circulation, that is, the consolidation of the mode of of capitalist production, are sharpened. On the one hand, we have the capital that they go from one branch of industry to another in the pursuit of profit, and on the other On the other hand, we have a higher velocity of this capital turnover which makes of the process of leveling out the rate of profit a convulsive process and violent.

The Falling rate of profit disrupts the process of Extended Reproduction

Let's go to insist that we are analyzing these movements and the activity of these profound laws of economics in a schematic way, but in reality These laws and movements act simultaneously and convulsively. Analyze now the different reasons why in the process of accumulation develops a movement that causes the rate of profit to fall, and this movement produces the disturbance of the accumulation process. Different factors cause this trend. The movement of the leveling of the rates of profit caused by the turnover of the capitals that dispute the mass of the surplus value, establishes an average profit, and this does on the one hand, the rate of profit is leveled at the same average for all capitalists, regardless of the size of their capital. Secondly, with the industrial production and producer prices arise cheaper goods, which which reduces profit margins, this also boosts the rate of profit to the downward dynamic.

How we have already seen with the industry and the introduction of machinery more began to circulate due to the decrease in working time necessary to produce them. This makes the fraction of the value of labor and therefore the value which each of them possesses is smaller, and therefore so much cheaper. This issue, which we have already discussed, in the economy known as "The Problem of Transformation", gives as a result producer prices, and pushes the rate of profit to the descent. This is the way Frederick Engels explains it: "If the production managed to impose itself due to the cheapening of products, the great industry does it much more for with its ever-renewed revolutions of production push the prices of goods down each time..." (38)

Even although these producer prices are the result of increased exploitation of the labor that favors the capitalist, have another aspect: they reduce the same time the margins of profit-making for the capitalists and they promote the tendency to decrease the rate of profit. However, a third The decisive theme joins the other two. The benefit obtained by the capitalist capital is transformed into accumulated capital that must be valued. Is That is, now a greater proportion of profits must be obtained than what is obtained before, to valorize this new accumulated capital. Capital does not generate value, and if no new value is obtained by exploiting human labor, capital accumulated is devalued. For this reason, capital, obliged to maintain its value requires a higher percentage of profit than what has been achieved so far and therefore needs a higher rate of exploitation.

Yes he cannot achieve this goal, the rate of profit collapses automatically. And if it reaches the objective of exploitation, it overcomes the crisis conjunctural, but it will be incubating a new one, a higher one, because they accumulate more capital that must be valued. That is why the over-accumulation of capital it implies more complicated objectives for the capitalists, increasingly difficult to achieve, and only achievable through brutal confrontations with the exploited.

Yes If they are not reached, the rate of profit will fall once again. This need of sustaining the rate of profit, explains the atrocities of capitalism and capitalism. constant destruction of the productive forces, which is the main characteristic of this economic system. Producer prices, leveling out the rate of profit and the accumulation of capital, tend to reduce the rate of profit. But there's a fourth movement that comes along with the other three and is caused by the commercial capital in the process of circulation. Capitalists carry commodities in the process of circulation, but circulation does not produce value. This is the way Marx puts it explains: "Merchant's capital is simply the capital that circulates within the sphere of circulation. The process of circulation is a phase of the overall process of reproduction... But in the process of circulation no value is produced, and therefore no surplus value is produced. Only formal modifications occur in the same mass of value. Not really nothing happens, except the metamorphosis of the commodity and the commodity as such has no nothing to do with the creation or modification of value" (39)

The commercial capital does not produce any value or surplus value at all. Only causes "metamorphosis" of goods, that is, the exchange of goods for money, and vice versa. According to Marx, merchant's capital that circulates without producing any value, acts over time as a factor limiting the production of value, and explains it as follows: "... by when these metamorphoses consume circulation time, this time in which the capital produces absolutely nothing and therefore does not produce surpluses of value, this constitutes a limitation to the creation of value and surplus value it is expressed as a rate of profit, precisely, in the opposite way proportional to the duration of the circulation time" (40)

Is That is, for Marx, the longer the time of circulation, the shorter the rate of profit. Therefore, the value originated in the production process is inversely proportional to the time of circulation of merchant's capital. This means that the time of circulation of capital deepens trend general to the fall in the rate of profit. Acting in an interrelated manner, All of the above factors cause a trend movement to of the rate of profit which Marx calls the Law of the Tendency of Profit to Fall, rate of profit.

When the rate of profit falls, the process of Expanded Reproduction is disturbed, it is paralyzed; stops. This disturbance of the reproduction process on a scale is a permanent and chronic crisis, as part of the natural process of The rebellion of the law of value against private ownership of the media of production and is periodically expressed in crises, recessions, bankruptcies, etc. The law of value rebels against private property, since only the work creates value. But for private property, labor has value only if it generates profits. If it does not generate profits, private property has to to destroy value and labor in order to restore the rate of profit. Value and private property become absolutely Contradictory. The disturbance of the Extended Reproduction process means that the fall in the rate of profit produces the withdrawal of capital from the production and interrupts the process of reproduction of capitalism.

Conclusions on the Quantitative Disturbance of the Accumulation Process

All These contradictions historically generated by capitalism act everything time giving rise to crises. These types of crises are periodic, chronic fluctuations, a movement that takes place permanently in capitalism. The disorder affects circulation, production, and means of production and is always the result of the development of the contradictions in accumulation, which is expressed in bankruptcies, inflation, collapse of companies, devaluation, recession, etc. That movement is happening all the time in all stages and phases of the capitalist development. And because they take place permanently, it's It is necessary to call this movement Quantitative Disturbance of the process of Extended Reproduction, or Quantitative Crisis. The quantitative crisis is when Extended Reproduction or Accumulation is interrupted, disturbed, and after damage to or destruction of a part of the capital, restarts its march.

Is that is, the Quantitative Crisis is an organic movement of capitalism, chronic and permanent, which occurs in all stages or periods in the evolution of capitalism. In this organic movement of capitalism, all The contradictions accumulated during the development of capitalism make their apparition. The contradiction between money, prices and value; contradictions between capital, production, value; The contradiction between these and social formations; the contradictions between the circulation and production in the accumulation, and the interrelation of all the that contradictions lead to the development of 4 movements. First, instead, the leveling of profit rates caused by the way in which the capitals that dispute the global mass of surplus value, moves from one branch to another. to another in the process of circulation. Second, "The transformation problem", results in the prices of production, and pushes the rate of profit to fall. Third, capital accumulated must be valued, which requires a higher rate of exploitation, and if capital cannot achieve this objective, the rate of profit automatically collapses.

And fourthly, the fact that the longer the circulation time, The lower the rate of profit, therefore the production process is inversely proportional to the time of circulation of merchant's capital. This means that the time of circulation of capital deepens the tendency to fall from the rate of profit. All these movements explode and produce a fall in the rate of profit, which disturbs the process of Enlarged scale reproduction. The fall of the Rate of Profit is a movement that acts as follows, summarizing the set of contradictions that capitalism has accumulated as part of the a historical process. For this reason, the fall in the Rate of Profit is constitutes as it were the expression of the set of contradictions, although not in the his explanation. That is why the fall of the Rate of Profit is not a Theory of Profit. Crisis, although it is a constituent part of Marxism.

In the extent to which the movement of the fall in the Rate of Profit occurs goes triggering the appearance of the crisis, and detonates the quantitative crisis. This The analysis of the crisis is carried out only by Marxism, because none of the theories of crisis mentioned above analyzes the crisis starting from the set of contradictions of capitalism. Nor the Overproduction, Under-consumption, Disproportionality, or the Theory of Business Cycle makes this analysis, because all these theories meet Outside Marxism

The Quantitative Crisis is a chronic and permanent movement of capitalism that it gives rise to periodic, chronic and permanent crises. But along with this permanent movement acts another movement of a longer term and of a which explains the great crises and catastrophes, as well as the long periods of expansion and contraction of the capitalist economy. This movement, its characteristics and qualities, is a reason for analysis in the next chapter.

Notes

(1) Karl Marx, Capital, Book II, Chapter II "The Circuit of Production of Capital", Part II, "Accumulation and Reproduction Expanded"

(2), (3) & (4) Karl Marx, El Capital, Libro III, Capítulo XV, Parte II, "Conflicto entre la expansión de la Producción y la producción de plusvalor"

(5) Karl Marx, El Capital, Libro III, Capítulo XV, Parte III "Exceso de Capital y Exceso de Población"

(6) & (7) Karl Marx, El Capital, Libro III, Capítulo XV, Parte II, "Conflicto entre la expansión de la Producción y la producción de plusvalor"

(8) & (9) Karl Marx, El Capital, Libro I, Capítulo XVII, "Transformación del valor y la fuerza de trabajo en salario"

(10), (11), (12) & (13) Nahuel Moreno. Escuela de cuadros de Economía.1984

(14), (15) & (16) Karl Marx. El Capital. Libro I, Capítulo III, "Dinero y circulación de mercancías"

(17) Karl Marx: Capital, Libro III, Capítulo IX, "Formación de una tasa de ganancia"

(18), (19) & (20) Karl Marx: Capital, Libro III, Capítulo XX "Consideraciones históricas sobre el capital comercial"

(21), (22), (23) & (24) Karl Marx: Capital, Book III, Capítulo XV; "El Capital dedicado al tráfico de mercancías"

(25), (26), (27), (28), (29), (30) & (31) Karl Marx: El Capital, Libro III Capítulo XX "Consideraciones históricas sobre el capital comercial"

(32) Karl Marx. El Capital, Libro III, Capítulo XV; "El Capital dedicado al tráfico de mercancías"

(33) Karl Marx: Capital, Libro III, Capítulo XX "Consideraciones históricas sobre el capital comercial"

(34) & (35) Frederic Engels. "Suplemento y Complemento al Libro III del Capital"

(36) & (37) Karl Marx, El Capital, Libro III Capítulo X "Nivelación de la tasa general de ganancia por la competencia"

(38) Federico Engels. "Suplemento y Complemento al Libro III del Capital"

(39) & (40) Karl Marx. El Capital, Libro III, Capítulo XVI "Capital dedicated freight traffic"

(41) Nahuel Moreno. Escuela de cuadros de Economía. 1984

3- General Law of Forms of Capitalist Accumulation - Part I: The Crisis Qualitative

To analyze the Quantitative Crisis, we locate the elaboration of the crisis around of the Accumulation Process. This is how Marx and Engels located their entire elaboration theory on capitalism whose contradictions are established from the complex and contradictory process of Capital Accumulation. We have seen that The crises of capitalism have a profound relationship with it, and they find in the Accumulation its determining element. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the Marxist Theory of Crisis in relation to Accumulation, to define its Laws and Movements.

We also seen a definition of what the crisis is. For Marx and Engels crisis it is the explosion of the contradictions of capitalism that lead to the Disruption of Accumulation or Process of Expanded Capitalist Reproduction, as Marx defines it: "The conflict between these contending factors is periodically breaks through in the form of a crisis. Crises are always solutions purely momentary violent contradictions of the existing contradictions ... and drive in this way to violent and acute crises, sudden forced devaluations and a real stagnation and disturbance of the process of reproduction, and with this to an effective reduction of reproduction" (1)

We seen as the historical process of Accumulation of capitalism develops all the contradictions that then motivate the crises, which makes him the determining element of the same. That is, Accumulation unfolds developing the contradictions of capitalism, and these in turn act then on Accumulation. That is why all the other contradictions revolve around the Accumulation or Process of Expanded Reproduction of capitalism which is the determining element.

How As we saw in the previous chapter, there is a first movement that happens all the time. time in all stages and phases of capitalist development. And because take place permanently, it is necessary to call this movement the Quantitative disturbance of the process of Accumulation or Expanded Reproduction. The quantitative crisis is when the Accumulation Process. And after the damage, destruction or burning of a part of capital, Accumulation resumes its march. Together to this organic, chronic and permanent movement, another movement is registered, and a completely different kind of crisis, a longer-term movement, consisting of long periods of expansion or stagnation of the economy, accompanied by deep crises that can last decades or many years. Us we refer to the secular or historical crises that capitalism suffers.

The The current crisis of capitalism corresponds to this type of movement, this type of crisis that is of enormous magnitude, of long duration with small recoveries, but with depression and recession as common denominators. This type of crisis is another movement, a second movement where the capitalism develops the tendency to centralize capital, thus fulfilling the one of the most important laws of Accumulation.

The Current crisis of capitalism

The first movement, the Quantitative crisis is intimately related to a second a movement that is also the result of the process of Accumulation. One of the laws most important aspects of Accumulation is that capitalism develops the tendency to to the centralization of capital, a movement that arises as need to respond to the permanent explosion of the contradictions of the capitalism and gives rise to various Forms of Accumulation.

Forehead In addition to the historical magnitude of the current crisis of capitalism, it is possible to Has capitalism gone through other crises of this importance in the their history? How did you overcome them? What political and social phenomena produced the crises? And vice versa: crises, what political phenomena and social produced? To answer these questions, it is necessary to see the current crisis in a more historical perspective and analyze how they developed the different crises since capitalism emerged, how they unfolded in its different stages and how capitalism tended to solve the problems of the world. contradictions that were the product of its own development. In this chapter we are going to make known and develop the General Law of the Forms of Capitalist Accumulation (Forms). This law allows us to analyze, following the Marxist laws of capital accumulation, the different forms that, at the same time, throughout the history of capitalism, they arose to accumulate capital and which are the Forms of Accumulation characteristic of each stage of capitalism.

Together to this we will analyze the dynamics of the Forms of Accumulation characterized by to go through successive phases of emergence, boom and exhaustion. And we will analyze also how these phases of emergence, boom and exhaustion are linked to the periods of long expansion and stagnation that it has experienced throughout the History The Capitalist Economy. Finally, we will look at the political mechanisms of the that explain how the transition from a Form of Accumulation inferior to a higher one through the development of capitalism.

Law General Forms of Capitalist Accumulation (Forms)

Define as Capital Accumulation, the process by which capitalists accumulate means of production at one pole and wage workers at the other pole, with the goal of accumulating more capital. As Karl Marx explains: "... the reproduction on an enlarged scale, that is, accumulation, reproduces the relationship capitalist on an expanded scale: more capitalists or larger capitalists in this pole, more salaried workers in that one... Capital accumulation is, therefore, increase of the proletariat... All individual capital is a greater concentration or means of production, with the corresponding command over an army greater or lesser number of workers. All accumulation becomes a means at the service of a new accumulation..." (2)

The The fundamental objective of capitalism is for capitalists to accumulate capital and make a profit. To achieve this, the necessary precondition is that the means of production and exchange are privately owned, an objective that the capitalists achieved through a historical process that placed the companies productive, commercial and financial under its ownership, to the extent that they were expropriating the rest of the social classes.

Yes Marx and Engels specified Accumulation as a general and historical process, they did not manage to elaborate on how this process of Accumulation occurs in each A given period of capitalism. This is why we developed the General Law of the Forms of Capitalist Accumulation, allows us to understand how it accumulates and is develops the process of Capitalist Accumulation or Expanded Reproduction in each stage of capitalism.

The Law includes the concepts of Forms of Accumulation, Accumulation Regime, Accumulation Pole and Accumulation Axis. These 4 concepts allow us to understand as the Accrual is established in each stage or period determined by the capitalist development, both globally and in a country, or a region.

Forms of Accumulation: We define as Forms of Accumulation, to these companies owned by the class capitalist to accumulate capital in a given historical period. The Throughout history, the capitalists have never used a single form of capital accumulation. There have always been different forms of accumulation, that is, different commercial, productive and financial companies that acted with the objective of accumulating capital and which, in turn, reflect the different sectors of the capitalist class.

Regime of Accumulation: The Forms of Accumulation do not have the same category, but have a different status between them. hierarchical relationship. A Form of Accumulation is the one that drives the economy by a period, and predominates over the others. The other forms of accumulation are order around it, which is why we call this enterprise the Way of Predominant accumulation.

The various forms of accumulation make up an economic structure that revolves around around a Predominant Form of Accumulation by what we define as Regime of Cumulation: the interrelation of the different Forms of Cumulation around the predominant Form of Accumulation, for a period.

Pole of Accumulation: We define as Pole of Accumulation to the branch of production and technology, around the which the entire economic regime is structured.

Axis of Accumulation: We define as Axis of Accumulation the region and set of economies or countries that the Capitalism uses as a platform for its development in a given period.

Transition from a lower predominant Form of Accumulation to another Form of Accumulation The mechanism by which the produces the passage from one inferior predominant Form of Accumulation to another is through a violent process of destruction of forces Productive. The process of destruction of productive forces required for the centralization and accumulation of capital, implies the permanent destruction and accumulation of capital. The liquidation of social classes and sectors of classes, through wars and Revolutions.

In the development of this mechanism, we observe that, after each violent process of destruction of productive forces, a new centralization of capitals that allowed a higher predominant Form of Accumulation. The Forms of Accumulation go through phases of emergence, boom and stagnation, that are linked to extended periods of expansion or stagnation of the economy.

In the phase of emergence and rise of the predominant Form of Accumulation is develops an extended period of expansion of the capitalist economy, because Both phases allow for long periods of economic expansion. With the exhaustion of the predominant Forms of Accumulation, the period of expansion A long period of economic stagnation came to an end, which which inevitably leads to a new process of destruction of forces Productive. Periods of long expansion or long stagnation have had different durations, sometimes of just a few decades or sometimes of 60 or 70 years and even longer. That is, the long periods of expansion or economic stagnation are determined by the rise or exhaustion of the predominant forms of accumulation. Let's then make an analysis of the different Forms of Accumulation Predominant in the different stages of capitalism.

The Forms of Accumulation Typical of the Stage of Primitive Capitalist Accumulation

The first and embryonic forms of capitalist accumulation began to emerge between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, before the beginning of the mode of production capitalist, when the feudal mode of production was still dominant and coexisted with various modes of production and barbaric, Asian and even slave owners. The stage of original or primitive accumulation of capitalism, developed between the ninth and eighteenth centuries and is the stage in which they were established historically the basis for the development of relations of production capitalist. At the beginning of this stage, the relationships were established of feudal production in Europe and the overwhelming majority of the population were owners of their own means of production and subsistence, whether of small properties such as peasants, or large properties such as the nobility.

In In the stage of Primitive Accumulation, the capitalists were expropriating the nobles, peasants and even other capitalist sectors, and they were provoking the split between the producers and the means of production of which they were Owners. This gave rise to 2 phenomena: on the one hand, the media of production became commodities and capital, the prices of which were fixed in the market. And on the other hand, the working class emerged, that is, the dispossessed workers, whose labor power is also a commodity whose price is set in the market. This is how Karl Marx explains it: "The process which creates the relation of capital, then, can be none other than the process of split between the worker and the ownership of his working conditions, process which, on the one hand, transforms the means of production and production into capital. social subsistence, and on the other hand converts direct producers into Employees. The so-called primitive accumulation is therefore nothing more than the historical process of division between producer and means of production. It appears as "original" because it configures the prehistory of capital and the mode of production corresponding to it" (3)

The stage of primitive capitalist accumulation affected above all the large rural masses, who were expelled from the countryside, while their forms were destroyed and rights of access to the means of production, to the resources natural rights, communal rights, of Compascuo, open field rights and other. In England, between the last third of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth, the feudal mesnadas were dissolved as a result of the violent expulsion of the peasants and the usurpation of communal lands by the lords to transform them into pastures for cattle.

The second wave of expropriations was between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when the ecclesiastical property was confiscated and divided among the oligarchy and its peasant residents were expelled. The process of Primitive Accumulation It also developed in the process of colonization of the rest of the world. of nations and continents from the geographical discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This process led to the brutal crushing of the civilizations and pre-capitalist modes of production in America, Asia, Africa and Oceania, which allowed the expropriation of millions of indigenous people and indigenous peoples. who lived in savagery, barbarism or Asian civilizations.

Between From the tenth to the eighteenth centuries, the following forms of accumulation of Predominant capital:

1) The Commercial Nations. Form of Accumulation of the Commercial Bourgeoisie

The commercial nations or maritime republics that emerged between the tenth and the last centuries. XIII, were Forms of Capitalist Accumulation whose objective was to accumulate capital exercising trade on the basis of the control of one or more routes Maritime. These trading nations constituted an embryonic regime of accumulation, whose pole of accumulation was the maritime industry. The Axis of Accumulation was the Mediterranean and was based on a set of cities located in the Mediterranean in what is now the territory of Italy: Amalfi, Pisa, Gaeta, Ancona, Trani, Ragusa, Noli, etc., and the powers of the time: Genoa and Venice.

Other capitalist accumulation regime of the Commercial Nations was located in the Baltic Sea, with a focus on the cities of northern Germany and merchant communities Germans in the Baltic Sea, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, England, Poland, Russia, part of Finland and Denmark, as well as regions that are now They are found in Estonia and Latvia. This Federation of cities constituted a A great nation called the Hanseatic League or Hansa, in the second half of the century XII and the beginning of the XIII with numerous cities in northern Europe in around the Baltic Sea: Lübeck in 1158, Rostock, Wismar, Stralsund, Greifswald, Stettin, Danzig, Elbing, etc.

The denomination of Commercial Nations has to do with the fact that they were companies- nation insofar as they counted with respect to the feudal authorities of a broad political independence and autonomous government. One or more families dominated the nation, which gave it its character as an oligarchic republic that It had its own currency, its army, naval fleet, commercial colonies called fundacos and "consuls of the nations", who they watched over the commercial interests of their respective cities in the ports Mediterranean.

Like this Frederick Engels explains it: "The Venetians and the Genoese in the port of Alexandria or that of Constantinople, each "nation" in its own own fondaco residence, inn, deposit, exhibition and sales room, in addition to the central office, they constituted trade associations complete". The Commercial Nations began their phase of emergence accompanying the expansion of the European economy, which was developed in the midst of the apogee of the feudal mode of production in the tenth century. The great surpluses and wealth held by the nobility of Normandy, Burgundy, Castile, Aragon, Genoa and Venice, etc., allowed an important circulation in both the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas, and the emergence of the fairs, the most important of which was that of Champagne in the present territory of what is now France, which acted as a commercial bridge between the two seas. Hansa sold its ships all over Europe, even reaching the Mediterranean and Italy.

The Commercial Nations emerged from the very bowels of the feudal system and previous social formations such as primitive communism. This is how he explains it Frederick Engels: "The merchant of the Middle Ages was by no means an individualist, but was essentially a member of some association, like all his contemporaries. In the countryside the association of the brand reigned, emerged from primitive communism. Each peasant had a plot of land originally of the same size... and a participation, therefore, of equal magnitude, in the rights of the common trademark... And the same is true in no less degree for trade associations, which gave rise to overseas trade ... Here we come across for the first time a profit and a rate of gain... In large commercial companies, the profit is discounted from the is distributed in proportion to the share of capital invested, exactly in the same way that participation in trademark rights is distributes in proportion to the justified share of the plot... By consequently, the rate of profit was the same for all" (3)

The Trading nations also accumulated capital to the extent that they began to develop an incipient proletariat as Frederick Engels explains: " Navigation on the scale on which the republics developed it It was impossible without the help of the sailors, i.e. salaried workers (whose wage ratio could be be concealed under corporate forms with profit sharing), such as It was impossible for the galleys of that time to function without salaried oarsmen or Slaves. The guilds of the mines, originally consisting of associated workers, had already in almost all cases become joint stock companies for the operation of the company by means of Employees. And in the textile industry the merchant had begun to put the small master weavers directly at your service, supplying them with the spinning and transforming it into fabric, on its own, in exchange for a fixed salary... Here we have before us the incipient beginnings of the capitalist formation of surplus value." (4)

The Commercial Nations developed as the predominant form of accumulation through the from the tenth century and achieved very high rates of profit. To have a measure let's compare the revenues of Genoa, which was one of the Nations Most important trade with France, the richest monarchy in the world. According to Perry Anderson: "In the year 1293, only the taxes the maritime companies in the port of Genoa produced 3 and a half times more than all the royal revenues of the French monarchy". (5)

The accumulated capital was so great that it allowed the emergence and Setting the gold standard for currencies, as Perry explains Anderson: "The maritime power of Genoa and Venice was what guaranteed Western Europe a continuous trade surplus with Asia, surplus that financed his return to gold... The return of the gold coin in Europe in the middle of the thirteenth century, with the simultaneous minting in 1252 of the Januarius and the florin in Genoa and Florence, was the resplendent symbol of the commercial vitality of cities" (6)

The basis of economic expansion was the high rate of profit achieved by the Commercial Nations, as explained by Frederick Engels. "This rate The original profit was necessarily very high... The business was a monopoly trade with monopoly profit" (7) Trading nations began a process of apogee that spanned the centuries XII and XIII, which developed an important economic expansion in the embryonic accumulation regimes that were established in the Mediterranean and the North Sea and the Baltic and was fed back with the heyday and economic expansion of the feudal mode of production dominant in Europe, with which they developed and they combined. The capitalists of the Commercial Nations made all kinds of of agreements and associations of a corporate nature, with the aim of obtaining jurisdictional, fiscal, and at the same time they achieved the dominion of several personal lordships. In the boom phase of the Commercial Nations, new operations of change, accounting and new scientific discoveries and technologies, to secure trade routes and protect investments.

Herself maritime pilots were trained and lighthouses were erected, the compass was developed, mathematics, astronomy, cartography and geography, all at the service of of the navigation industry. The cities, exposed to the incursions of the pirates organized their defense autonomously, equipping themselves with powerful war fleets to create bases, stopovers and commercial establishments that they had a great political influence. In this way, the Commercial Nations went on the offensive in the eleventh century and waged important wars against the Byzantine and Islamic sea power, with which they competed for control of the trade with Asia, Africa and the Mediterranean routes.

The Crusades allowed them to liquidate Islamic power in the Mediterranean and the Norman invasion of England put a stop to Viking raids on the Sea northern. The emergence of the rate of profit of the Commercial Nations, continued with the process of leveling out the different rates of profit, a process that preceded the fall in the rate of profit. Like this Frederick Engels explains it: "The leveling of these different corporate profit rates were established by the reverse procedure, by competition. At first, the profit rates of the different markets for the same nation... Then it was his turn to the gradual leveling of the rates of profit among the various nations who exported the same or similar goods to the same markets, with the result that they were Very often this or that of these nations was crushed and disappeared from the scene". (8) 

The over- accumulation of capital produced after the leveling of the rates of profit, caused the rate of profit of the Commercial Nations, a process that was combined and fed back with the general crisis of the feudal mode of production, in the fourteenth century. The crisis of the feudalism, produced the collapse of consumption, the ports were paralyzed, the goods dropped their price abruptly and bankruptcies became widespread. This produced a veritable political-economic-social cataclysm known as "the crisis of the fourteenth century", where almost 40% of the population of Europe.

Herself the phase of exhaustion of the Commercial Nations had begun and was unleashed a violent process of centralization of capital that led them to wars among them by the domination of the maritime routes. The exhaustion of the Commercial Nations, as the predominant Form of Accumulation, combined with the The terminal crisis of the feudal mode of production provoked a very violent process of destruction of productive forces and centralization of capital, the War of the Hundred Years. Along with famine and pestilence, wars liquidated nations, cities and entire regions. With millions of dead, the War of The Hundred Years was an immense process of destruction of productive forces with the aim of destroying the productive forces. which capitalism was officially born.

The Hundred Years' War was actually a set of wars between the nations that dominated the European economy at the time and acted as a hinge between the feudal mode of production and the capitalist mode of production that emerged and began its stage of Primitive Accumulation. Next to her too huge peasant and workers' insurrections developed in the craft guilds such as the insurrections of the Ciompi in Florence or the weavers in Ghent.

The geographical discoveries of the fifteenth century accelerated the decline of the Nations Commercial, as Frederick Engels explained: "But this process is was continually interrupted by political events, as well as the whole Levantine trade declined due to the Mongol and Turkish invasions, and the great geographical-commercial discoveries made from 1492 onwards did nothing but accelerate this decline and, later, turn it back definitive". (9) The Commercial Nations continued their decline after the geographical discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which were made possible by the technological development and capital accumulation that had achieved in their heyday cycle and allowed them to be financed. 

But the geographical discoveries and the process of colonization of Africa, Asia, America and Oceania already connected with the beginnings of the mode of production capitalist and its stage of primitive accumulation. To the extent that these continents were colonized and that capitalist relations of production It took a long period to emerge and be consolidated, the capitalists implemented in many cases in the first centuries of the colonization, forms of accumulation and capitalist regimes based on non-capitalist relations of production.

2) Goldsmithing and the first Bankers. Bourgeoisie's Form of financial Accumulation

Together to the Commercial Nations arose another Form of Accumulation, industry financial based on the first bankers and usurers. The great accumulation of capital achieved by the Commercial Nations, allowed the development of capitalists engaged in industry linked to development and circulation of money, its transportation, storage, insurance and loans. As a result From the danger of theft, the practice of placing precious bars and coins was born in the custody of goldsmiths, accustomed to working with precious metals, receive and keep the gold and silver coins for the capitalists who they needed to store the profits obtained.

Is so medieval, monastic and secular goldsmiths worked in workshops that the monasteries possessed with rooms especially suitable for the goldsmiths and goldsmiths, annexed to workshops together with blacksmiths and polishers. The Monasteries always had a great demand for goldsmiths to provide gold and silver objects the Sumptuary Arts, sometimes called "arts minors". In this way, the Catholic Church under the dominion of the Benedictine orders such as Cluny, and the Cistercian order, were fundamental to the impulse of Western capitalism. 

The Cluniac monastery, and then the The Cistercian development developed as a mini-city, and enterprise, in which the Abbot exploits the work of the monks who work from dawn to dusk only in exchange for a bed and food. At the same time that the Church is taking over the neighboring lands product of the donations and inheritances of knights, lords and peasants who leave the lands in the hands of the abbey, whereby the church Benedictine controls agriculture, and becomes the largest company in the world. landowner, and European real estate company.

In this way, the monasteries become a municipal enterprise that centralizes the administrative, economic, cultural, and political control of the regions. The development of Cluny and the Cistercian Order, made the Catholic Church businesswoman who controls branches of industry, agriculture, tax collector taxes, through a high rate of exploitation of the monks which allows for an enormous overaccumulation of wealth and capital to the extent that in which they control businesses throughout Europe. This explains the spectacular development and expansion of Benedictine monasteries in Europe between the ninth and thirteenth centuries.

This way, the Benedictine orders also became bankers to the extent that the goldsmith began to charge commissions for keeping in his vaults all the coins, and precious material deposited. The abbeys promoted the circulation of capital and issued deposit receipts to the capitalists who deposited their coins and metals. The capitalists depositors began to use the depository receipts of the depositors in turn. goldsmiths to make their payments, and orders such as that of the Knights Templar they came to issue receipts and orders in exchange for deposits.

The bankers were linked to the Commercial Nations and the rise of smaller enterprises, in which the capitalists combined trade with the management of funds, currencies and investments. The Fuggers, the Welsers, the Vöhlins, the Höchstetters, Hirschvogel, etc., are the great banking families German companies that together with the Italians dominated the circulation of goods and money in those centuries in the economy of Europe, just as the Rostchilds will do in the nineteenth century. This is how Frederick Engels explains it: "But it is also they founded closer associations for specific purposes, such as the Maona de Genoa, dominator for many years of the alum mines of Phocaea, in Asia Minor, as well as the island of Chios, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, or the great society Ravensburg merchant, which traded from the end of the fourteenth century with Italy and Spain, founding branches there, and the German society of the Fúcares [Fugger], the Welsers, the Vöhlins, the Höchstetters, etc., of Augsburg, of the Hirschvogel of Nuremberg and others, who with a capital of 66,000 ducats and three ships participated in the Portuguese expedition to India from 1505-1506, obtaining in it a net profit of 150 per cent according to some, and 175 per cent according to others..." (10)

A lot the bankers of Genoa, Florence, Venice, the Hansa, as well as those of Castile, Aragon and Portugal financed the companies that undertook the discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These discoveries sought not only new navigation routes to dominate, but also the colonization of new ports, the exploitation of labor and the search for extraction, and precious materials, to feed an accumulation of capital that to finance and form the money base both in metal and fiduciary, an essential accumulation to support investments necessary that allowed the capitalist mode of production to be launched.

The transition from Commercial Nations to Factories

The the first form of predominant capitalist accumulation, the commercial nations, began to emerge from the tenth century, and their development was possible when Allied trading powers launched multiple armed expeditions against the Muslims, the Eastern Christians, Russians and Byzantines, the movement of the Cathars in the south of France and the Jews. It is estimated that the Various massacres and wars carried out by the Crusaders produced five millions of deaths over about three and a half centuries. The process of destruction of productive forces that unleashed the struggle against the Byzantines and the Muslims, allowed them to dominate the Mediterranean and reach the zenith of the boom phase, dominating trade in the Mediterranean and with the East. During the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204) Venice and Genoa took over the islands and the maritime towns commercially of the Byzantine Empire and had become the most important states of the Byzantine Empire. rich in Europe.

When the phase of exhaustion of the Commercial Nations began, a violent process of destruction of productive forces, with the wars between Pisa and Genoa in 1284, the wars of San Saba in 1255 between Genoa and Venice, the Chioggia War of 1372, the wars with the Kingdom of Hungary in 1352, as well as of the wars against the German Empire and the wars against the papacy, among others, while in northern Europe the Hansa wars broke out in 1362 against Denmark.

But The most important process of destruction of productive forces took place during the Hundred Years' War, between the middle of the fourteenth century and the middle of the fifteenth century, which was a hinge between the feudal and capitalist mode of production. The brutal destruction of productive forces that constituted the crisis of the century XIV made it possible to advance in these forms of accumulation and the process of centralization of capital produced the transition from the Commercial Nations to a higher Form of Accumulation that were the Factories.

The destruction of productive forces of the 100 Years' War, was geographically centered in France, which was the most important economy of the epoch and bastion of feudalism. The razed villages, the millions of dead, the development of technology and industry at the service of wars, caused serious alterations in the market prices of products, subjected to unprecedented tensions of supply and demand. In turn, millions of peasants were waging wars for their freedom, which allowed the advance, although incipient, of the first salaried workers.

To the while the feudal lords had to yield to the pressures of their serfs to free themselves from servitude, in some cases, or that the insurrections in another, the 100 Years' War involved the struggle between sectors of the ruling classes for the control of the areas of emergence of the first industrial areas and of greater economic importance such as Guyenne or Gascony. In the same vein, the civil war in Normandy, the War of the Roses in England, the War between England and France, the War between France and Burgundy, the struggle for control of Flanders and the United Nations in the Netherlands, the Civil War in Brittany and the Civil Wars in Aragon and Castile. In all nations at that time, the duchies and kingdoms, in which the wars developed, alliances were constantly changing, and so were the sectors of the noble and capitalist classes, were aligned with different forms. With the development of the war industry, also the great fortunes of the bankers and capitalists who financed the war industry and military technology.

After During the 100 Years' War, an important part of the nobility disappeared, produced an important centralization of capital and the bourgeoisie continued its a world of trade-based cities emerged, and the centres of power began to move towards the new boroughs or cities, where the new Forms of Accumulation were established, the Factories. In the decline of the Commercial Nations, Portugal and the Kingdoms of Aragon and Castile, which had been colonized by both the Normans and Genoa at the height of Mediterranean capitalism, developed an enormous commercial activity with the discoveries geographical powers of the fifteenth century, which made them powers, although already as the last the brilliance of decadent Mediterranean capitalism.

3- The Factories. Form of Accumulation of Merchants-Entrepreneurs Contractors

The Factories are a Form of Accumulation that from the fourteenth century began to be predominant. In them the merchant capitalists began to hire and group salaried workers both in the city and in the field. Merchants developed these companies and became contractors to the extent that they found it cheaper to manufacture the goods in port than to carry them from one port to another, which allowed them to to obtain significant savings and profits, much higher than those achieved with simple commercial activity. For Engels: "... There was already the rate of Profit from commercial capital. What could then impel the merchant to To take care of the contractor's cumulative function? One thing: prospect of a greater profit..." (11) The Factories were based on manual labor, and simple cooperation where each worker performed a job without the set of workers who act on the merchandise is grouped in the same workshop.

Is the same capitalist who carries the merchandise from one place to another, in order to give it the different touches by different workers. In these techniques of industrial branches such as textiles, goldsmithing or metallurgy, productivity of labor was achieved from simple cooperation and manual labor, following the tradition of the working methods of craftsmanship. These Forms of Accumulation had as their pole of accumulation the textile industry and mineworker; and formed a Regime of Accumulation in which the new industries that emerged as factories, combined their production and distribution with the Commercial Nations. The Axis of Accumulation was the tripod that constituted Normandy, England and the Netherlands on the Channel of the Mancha and the North Sea. Precisely that geographical area was, together with France, the epicenter of the violent process of destruction of forces The Hundred Years' War implied, in which the classes dominant industries disputed control of these incipient new industries.

The Hundred Years' War expressed the emergence of a regime of accumulation dynamic, alternative to the decadence of the capitalist accumulation regime established in the Mediterranean. This is how Nahuel Moreno explains it: "there is an extraordinary development of Mediterranean capitalism that has already begun its decadence when he discovers America. Its discovery will only accelerate its decline and the development of the new north-western capitalism, which had already emerged and was displacing the Mediterranean before the discovery of our continent. Mediterranean capitalism impregnated with aristocratism and feudal forms, has a commercial, usurious, local and international character in opposition to that of northwestern Europe that has it manufacturing and national" (12)

The Factories are Forms of Accumulation in which labor was exploited to manufacture the products, which allowed merchants to businessmen lower the prices of goods to better compete with the other merchants, who tend to adopt this form of production, in order not to lose in the competition for markets. The Factories and the grouping of salaried workers is a process that developed in 3 ways that give rise to to different types of companies:

a) The privatized artisan workshops

b) The domiciliaryd rural work

c) Privatized mining concessions.

Let's go to analyze these three business variants

a) The privatized artisan workshops

One of the aspects that gave rise to the Factories was the process of privatization of the artisanal workshops, the existing industries in the feudalism that they produced on a small scale for small communities, following strict production standards that set common goals. From the century onwards XIV these artisanal corporations began to become the property of Capitalists. The craft workshops  had a rather rigid internal organization of 3 Levels: Masters, journeymen and apprentice servants. The teachers were the only ones who could vote on the statutes by which the guild is governed and elect the procurators and chiefs of the same, the officers had the right to receive lodging, food, and a salary, while apprentice servants, with low wages, remained for life in that state.

To the at the beginning, the guilds were characterized by equality and solidarity among its members. Hiring and working conditions They varied from one guild to another and over time the merchant or capitalist merchant proceeded as an intermediary in the exchange activities of wares. Later he regularly bought the goods of the small producers, to provide them with raw materials and to lend them money, with which, small producers fell under the economic force of the merchant.

Together to this end, a process of social differentiation developed within the workshops that were mastered by the masters who began to become their owners. This accelerated the process of social separation between Masters and apprentices and masters began the process of appropriation of the guilds as companies under their ownership. In turn, the partnerships between commercial capitalists and master craftsmen, or directly the teachers were expropriated through usury.

Any Out of the way, the guilds were transformed into factories to the extent that that were transformed into companies that went on to have one or more capitalists as owners. The power of the privatized unions was extended in several cases to the control of municipal governments and in industries linked to the export, the master became more quickly a capitalist and a business owner. In this way, the artisan workshops of the Middle Ages were disappearing, gradually replaced by the new privatized workshops, of which the new capitalists or entrepreneurs emerged. This is how Reyna Pastor explains it de Togneri: "Artisanal corporations are entering a period of stagnation that will persist until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in which disappear because they cannot cope with capitalist forms in the development. Organized in such a way as to increasingly benefit the teachers will often emerge from them the new entrepreneurs" (13)

b) The domiciliaryd rural work

The Domiciliary rural work is the company that arises as a result of the fact that the merchant capitalists hire peasant labor for the processing of the goods. The merchant brings goods and raw materials to the houses of the peasant families who are doing different jobs, whether from fabrics, yarns, dyeing, etc. Peasant families combine jobs to the capitalist, with work for themselves in the fields, until they fall one after one under the control of the capitalist, either out of necessity or out of necessity. debts that they incur with him.

Like this Reyna Pastor de Togneri explains it: "A merchant or Verleger distributed the premium among the peasants and thereby acquired part of their strength of work... Entrepreneurs controlled the various processes of production and they carried the yarn and fabrics to and fro to the fulling mills, to dry cleaners, etc. Through this system the peasant becomes gradually into a home-based industrial worker who produces for the market and that sells part of its labor power to the employer" (14)

This type of factories arose as a result of the changes that occurred in the textile industry. For centuries, industry was based on the drapery of luxury consumed by the oligarchies of Burgundy, Florence, Venice, the papacy or Genoa, etc. But from the crisis of the fourteenth century, this luxury drapery entered into crisis due to the paralysis of trade, the fall in the standard of living and decline of the nobility. The luxury drapery included the complex technique of manufacture of silk brought from China via Islam, and stolen by the Crusades.

The textile industry based on luxury drapery was relegated to a second flat, surpassed by the cheaper woollen drapery consumed by the classes and the bourgeoisie, provided by the wool of the sheep raised in England and Castile, which was combined with the use of the mills of wind in Flanders and Castile and watermills in England that took advantage of the the huge waterfalls in those regions and gave a great boost to the textile industry. Domiciliary rural work was the most important enterprise of those that made up the Factories, for Reyna Pastor de Togneri: "the Domiciled rural industries will be a form of transition that increases their importance as time goes by: by the number of workers it employs, by the amount of production, and by the geographical area it occupies, it is activity is what will accelerate the original accumulation of capital in the hands of of merchants and bankers and the one that was to initiate transformations in the peasantry... since they take him away from the land, they strip him of his means of production, force him to the routine work carried out in long hours and become a salaried employee" (15)

The epicenter of domiciliary rural work was England, the place where the nobility after the Hundred Years' War was weakened, the textile industry had a great development both for sheep breeding and for the conditions climatic with the large waterfalls that allowed the construction of more suitable for fulling mills. There flourished the companies that began to proletarianize masses of peasants and both merchants and capitalists merchants more quickly appropriated the artisan workshops.

c) The privatization of mining concessions

Following a process similar to that suffered by the guilds of artisans, the concessions mining companies were the object of appropriation by the capitalists, teachers become entrepreneurs, metal and coin traffickers and buyers of tin. Mining concessions were communities that signed contracts with the feudal authorities, they received a reward in exchange for the exploitation of the mines and the exploitation of metals and like the guilds of artisans, they maintained norms that imposed the equality of their members.

But mining suffered a serious crisis in the fourteenth century, as Perry explains Anderson: "The silver mining that everything was connected to the urban and monetary sector of the feudal economy ceased to be practicable or in the main mining areas of Central Europe, because there was no a way to dig deeper wells or to refine the most impure minerals... the Shortages of metals led to repeated debasements of the currency in one country after another and, consequently, galloping inflation" (16)

The crisis of mining exploitation, added to the need for trade in establishing currencies, led to the growing search of merchants capitalists to take over the mining industries and even expand the to the recently discovered and colonized territories, as in the case of America, where the establishment of the mitas system involved companies based on the enslavement of the primitive communist tribes who lived in the region.

The appropriation of mining concessions, as well as the appropriation of mining concessions. artisanal workshops by capitalists, or privatization process of these, the stage of primitive capitalist accumulation was part in the to the extent that it was part of the process of expropriation that the capitalists were making of the other social classes. In this way, he established the development of several industrial branches and allowed an incipient process of development of the working class to the extent that workshops and establishments flourished miners in which salaried labor began to be hired.

Conclusions About Las Factorías

The Factories had their phase of emergence in the second half of the fourteenth century. In the second half of the fifteenth century had its boom phase, which allowed in the areas in which it developed, the expansion of the economy until the beginning of the sixteenth century. Both privatized artisan guilds and rural work domiciled and privatized mining concessions, were combined during that period of time with nascent Forms of Accumulation such as Nations Commercial, banking and usury, in addition to feudal forms of production in decomposition.

The Factories were an advance in the centralization and accumulation of capital, which which was expressed in the importance of cities such as Flanders and Ghent in the textile and mining industry. But at the beginning of the sixteenth century the Factories began to enter the exhaustion phase, the economy stagnated again and a new violent process of destruction of productive forces began, whose most important points were the 80 Years' War, with its epicenter in Flanders and the Dutch states in the mid-sixteenth century.

Without However, the exhaustion of the factories did not only express the contradictions arising from capitalist development, such as the leveling and fall in the Rate of Profit, which occurred with the Commercial Nations. The depletion of the factories combined economic elements with political insofar as its development was seriously limited by the existence of the nobility in power, unlike the Nations Commercials that developed in cities where the bourgeoisie had power. The Factories are companies whose development questioned the social structure of the feudalism, collided and drowned in it. The bourgeoisie needed to attack the institutions that sustained the feudal order and against the Catholic Church to to be able to move to a higher Form of Accumulation. The wars combined the fight for the centralization of capital and the struggle for the power of the nations that the nobility controlled, which gave the Factories a character unstable and transitional.

The Factories were not a solid Form of Accumulation like the Nations Not only commercial, but rather a transitional form between industries The medieval craft industries that were in crisis in the mid-fourteenth century and the Capitalist manufactures that emerged in the middle of the sixteenth century. For Alberto J. Plá: "The qualitative leap that goes from craftsmanship to manufacturing is not simple and recognizes an intermediate stage: that of home work. But the The process is slow and actually develops in successive stages. During very long periods of time old and new forms of production" (17) The Factories, as companies industrialists who began to have bourgeois owners at their command, were a a fundamental component of the European economy for almost 2 centuries, and still being companies of a transitional nature, they were vital for the development of the capitalist mode of production, in its stage of primitive accumulation.

The transition from Factories to Manufacturing

In During the Hundred Years' Wars, there were changes in the military industry, the feudal knights were overcome, the first armies appeared Professionals composed of soldiers not bound by a vassalage pact with their lord, but the pay of kings and bankers, and the development of new military technologies. The army and the king were the pillar of a new regime in the feudal state, absolute monarchies and the challenge to economic power, social and political of the nobility, slowly allowed advances for the benefit of the bourgeoisie, which the kings encouraged.

Although the majority of the population remained peasants, the economic impulse and the novelties no longer came from the castle or the monastery, but from the cities, epicenter of the development of the Factories. As they enter their phase of exhaustion, a violent process of destruction of forces was unleashed productive developments, which allowed a new centralization of capital, and the development of manufactures.

This violent development of the productive forces had as its epicenter the War of The 80 years, a war complex focused on the fight of the princes Protestants in Germany and the Netherlands who reflected the bourgeoisie in ascent against the nobility of France and the nobility of Spain, which was the The greatest power in Europe, by then dominated by the nobility of the Habsburg. The Lutheran Reformation movement was leading a process of confiscations of lands to the Church, vital for the development of the textile industry. All the The development of the Eighty Years' War was a set of 8 wars between 1562 and 1648, which included the wars between Catholics and Calvinist Protestants where the Seventeen clashed Provinces of the Netherlands against their sovereign, the King of Spain Charles V. 

The 17 provinces, or United Provinces, sought to achieve independence from Charles V and Spain. The rebellion against the monarch of the Protestants was led by Martin Luther and Calvin, but the process of destruction of productive forces was very violent. The high nobility brutally repressed the Protestants who were persecuted and executed with extreme cruelty; Among those executed was the most important leader of this reform Radical, Thomas Müntzer and the Spaniard Miguel Servetus.

After the 80 years of brutality, confrontations, destruction of cities, villages, and million dead, the war ended with the triumph of Holland and allowed a process of centralization of capitals from which the Provinces emerged United, which gained its independence and the bourgeoisie began its ascent towards the United States. the power imposing a modern state for the time, which had a Parliament with deputies elected in all provinces. The Provinces Together, part of what we now call Holland and Belgium, they emerged triumphant and imposed themselves as a world power in the seventeenth century, which became one of the world centers of industry development manufacturing, added to its powerful navy and merchant fleet.

That area of Europe experienced a significant economic and cultural boom as a result of the development and expansion of Manufactures, Forms of Accumulation that were the resulting from the vigorous industrial development that had been going on since the Middle Ages Flanders and the geographical areas included in the Low, but they were able to break through and develop as a result of the violent process of destruction of productive forces that implied the Wars of the 80s years.

Other process of destruction of productive forces that allowed the passage of the Factories to Manufactures as the predominant Form of Accumulation, which constituted the crushing of the popular insurrections that were developed between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as a result of the crisis situation generalized economic and the policy of the governments that launched brutal measures against the masses.

The most terrible measures were the Labor Statutes that were sanctioned in almost all of Europe limiting wage increases to workers and generalized tax increases that triggered revolts such as the Maritime (1323-1327) and urban (1338-1350) Flanders, the French "Jacquerie" (1358), the revolution of the Ciompi in Florence (1378), the Tylerists English (1381), the Ghent insurrection (1372-1382), the insurrection Hussite in the Kingdom of Hungary-Bohemia (1408-1415), the Calabrian insurrection (1469 -1475), and the Remensa movement in Spain (1462 -1484), among others.

Only the beginning of the revolutionary process escaped this general logic of defeats which allowed the development of the Swiss Confederation (1290 -1351). All This enormous process of destruction of productive forces took place in the form of simultaneous with the beginning of the expropriation and genocide of millions of indigenous peoples of primitive communist tribes and Asian societies of America, Asia, Oceania and Africa.

3) Manufacturing. The form of accumulation of the manufacturing bourgeoisie

The Manufacture emerged in the sixteenth century and is the predominant form of accumulation in the world. which the capitalist groups the workers in the workshop or establishment and manual labor is based on the division of labor among wage earners, which goes beyond the technique of simple cooperation, typical of the Factories. Every one of the workers specializes in one or more operations which raises the productivity of labor, exploitation, and achieves cheaper goods, which allows for greater capital accumulation and profits.

In manufacturing the division of labor makes the worker achieve a specialization, but he is no longer the producer of a finished commodity, so that his dependence on the capitalist acquires a new and firmer character. For Marx: "it consists in bringing together in a workshop, under the command of the workers belonging to various artisanal trades and independent, through whose hands a product has to pass until its definitive termination... As a characteristic form... predominates during the manufacturing period proper, which lasts, in very general terms, from the middle of the sixteenth century to the last third of the eighteenth." (18) There are 2 types of manufacturing: heterogeneous and organic. The heterogeneous is when dealing with a commodity composed of a set of products partials that can be carried out independently, and even in workshops and then meet in a workshop in the hands of operators who they assemble and combine, as is the case with watch factories, for example.

In organic manufacturing, on the other hand, workers of different specialties, which executed on the merchandise all the production process to the end, to create a certain commodity. The organic manufacturing allows items to travel through a whole series of processes passing through a series of specialized workers, and that the various Phases of the production process that were previously successive are now transformed in simultaneous.

This It allowed more finished goods to be achieved in the same time and created the premises for large-scale industrial production, contributed to the further division of the greatly simplified many labor operations, perfected the instruments of work and prepared the conditions for moving to mechanized production. Manufacturing favored the concentration of the means of production in the hands of the capitalists and meant the ruin of the most artisans. But, although the division of labor in the manufactured goods increased and increased capitalist commodity production. that the yield of social labor would rise appreciably, the Manufacture it did not encompass all social production.

To the on the contrary, the existence of an immense number of small industrial enterprises continued and constituted a characteristic feature of the manufacturing period of the capitalism that many manufactures combined their production with factories such as home-based rural work and medieval artisan workshops Residual.

The role of the State in the development of Manufactures

In the whole process of development of the Manufacture played a great role in the state, as shown by the case of France, where it was the policy of Minister Colbert and Louis XIV in France, the domestic market and the export of goods for the markets, what was called mercantilism. This was due to the fact that the emergence of larger domestic markets and colossal market growth as a result of geographical discoveries, caused a lawsuit enormous amount of commodities, which the development of production at the time could not satisfy.

The Manufacturing went hand in hand with the development of the development of the regimes absolutists in the feudal state, increasingly based on the machinery of the state bureaucracy, the army and the set of officials around the centralized and increasingly absolute power of the king. The development of the new Forms of Accumulation required these more anti-democratic regimes, brutally repressive, not only of conquered civilizations, but also of also of small feudal production and property, of the dispossessed and new exploited of Europe.

With absolutism brutally repressive institutions coexisted such as the Inquisition, the Witch Hunt, the Liquidation and the Persecution of the opponents, the accusation of heresy to any scientist or person who rejects the idea of God or of the divine authority of the King, although these regimes absolutists came into conflict with the bourgeoisie that needed to impose its and institutions that would allow the development of their interests Economic.

The European countries that most developed manufactures were England, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland. On colonized continents, states they established industrial and mining manufactures, as in the case of the mitas, missions and encomiendas in America, based on wage labor and slave of the Indians. Large estates were also established for the textile production based on the slave labor of communist tribes primitives captured in Africa and manufactured goods were developed in India.

Of at this time, the process of destruction of productive forces that led to the Manufacture consisted of a real genocide, without there being any agreement yet on researchers about the number of dead Indians in the Americas, which oscillates between 50 and 90 million between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The business system called Encomienda in Spain, in which the Indian had to receive a wage for their work, consisted of a brutal process of exploitation, which ended with the enslavement of most of the Indians who worked there.

For in the seventeenth century, in the phase of exhaustion of Las Manufacturas the researchers nor do they agree on the horrific numbers of men and women women kidnapped to be sold into slavery, but calculations oscillate among some 60 million enslaved Indians and distributed in 24 million in America, 12 million in Asia and 7 million in Europe, while 17 million died on the crossings. This It was the fate of the primitive communist tribes crushed, by the armies and fleets of European states and monarchs. In Europe, the The consolidation of absolutist states was based on the development of the mercenary armies, of great performance in the 80 Years' War between Spain and Holland, composed of impoverished and displaced nobles, in addition to the dispossessed artisans and peasants who found employment in the army.

The land enclosures were accelerating the expropriation of peasants and peasants the number of poor and vagabonds increased dramatically. The big ones Capitalist tycoons invested large sums in the financing of the wars, invasions and the development of military technology, to expand markets. In turn, the development of the Manufactures allowed for a colossal process of extraction of metals from America. The program of the manufacturing bourgeoisie brings together several important points that synthesized the defense of their interests, including: The fight against the monarchies, and absolutist states, the imposition of republics parliamentary with a federal or federative structure, where the different manufacturing sectors are controlled by different states, which in turn they federate with each other through economic and political agreements.

These agreements result in the establishment of internal customs between the the creation of banks for each state or province, free trade in the terrain foreign trade, the permanent colonization of markets and lands for the development of manufacturing establishments, in the form of plantations, haciendas, or estancias; creation of new states, or colonies, tolerance or encouragement of slavery and the establishment of relations between the capitalists for the exploitation of human labor of nations or tribes primitive communists for exploitation in the Manufactures.

Phases of emergence, boom and exhaustion of Manufactures

The emergence's phase of Manufacturing allowed the application of labor in the Americas, which allowed for a steady stream of precious metals and increase in the reserves of money in Europe that are quadrupled between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Silver extracted from America between 1530 and 1650 amounted to 11,600 tons, that is, an annual average of 96,600 kg per year, and as for gold, the amount extracted throughout the century The sixteenth century was 153,561 kg, quantities that were very important in the sixteenth century.

This led to an increase in the quantity of money in circulation, to the extent that bankers used these reserves to develop the issuance of securities, papers and all kinds of fictitious capital. With the boom phase of the Manufacturing, the economy began to expand and the European population to grow, overcoming the serious population crisis that had occurred after the Wars of the Hundred Years, when after the end of the Hundred Years, the population of Europe had suffered such a decline that the cost of labor and wages had It went up a lot because there were no workers available.

The boom of Las Manufacturas also allowed an agrarian expansion and the recovery of mining activity. The slow recovery of the population that grew by 2/3 of the seventeenth century, boosted the demand for food and all kinds of food. of goods. A regime of accumulation was established that had as its pole of accumulation to the textile and mining industry. After the 80 Years' War in the as Holland defeated Spain, the regime of accumulation of the Manufacture had as an axis of accumulation to Holland and England. In the seventeenth century, the manufactures began their period of exhaustion, which became manifested in important crises that were unleashed in all economies, product of leveling and then the fall of the rate of profit Manufacturing, for Engels "... It also allows the manufacturer to produce at lower prices than its old-fashioned competitor, the artisan... herself repeats the same process: the surplus value of which he appropriated allows the manufacturing capitalist... sell less expensive than its competitors, up to the generalization of the new mode of production, which engenders a new leveling." (19)

The exhaustion of manufactures, as a form of accumulation, provoked a violent process of destruction of productive forces, both in European countries as in the colonies. In Europe, the War between Holland and England, which defined England's dominance after the defeat of Holland. This war was combined with the genocide in Africa, with the War and the Civil War in England that culminated in the Revolution Oliver Cromwell's English language. With the bourgeoisie in power, England led the way the transition from a Form of Accumulation exhausted by Manufacture, to a Industry.

The Manufacturing enabled the large extraction of precious metals that developed Spain and at the same time, relied on that accumulation of fabulous capital for the expansion of England and Holland. This is how Moreno explains it: "... If today day with what we know we would have to write a course on political economy Marxist, it would be much more complex, richer... I would begin by saying that the The process of primitive capitalist accumulation was a process not essentially English, even if the center was England... The basis of the primitive English accumulation... it was not given by the proletariat but was given for the assault on the Spanish galleons. A great assault that fixed everything... refounded English capitalism with all that fabulous mass of surplus value that came from Latin America from non-worker exploitation, from the Indians and from the slaves." (20)

The great mass of capital accumulated as precious material, gave rise to the great Studied by Hamilton and the subject of much debate between economists and historians, the so-called "revolution of the prices", was an inflationary process that occurred in Europe during throughout the sixteenth century, a process by which over 100 years prices were sixfold. The "Price Revolution" of the Sixteenth Century It was the product of 2 processes that occurred simultaneously, on the one hand, it was he accumulated a fabulous mass of capital, one of the most important in history of capitalism.

This mass of capital that accumulated, was composed of the precious material that came from America and the fictitious capital that rotated at great speed developed by bankers to finance wars, fleets, armies and general economic activity. But while this was happening rapidly, process, the transition from the Factories to the Manufacturing was in its infancy, it is that is, industrial production in relation to these masses of accumulated capital, was still very poor, as was the development of the proletariat.

The The rise in prices in the sixteenth century was the expression of an aspect of the Law of Value, in the sense that this mountain of over-accumulated capital it needed to be valued through the exploitation of human labor in the sense of capitalist. To the extent that manufactures developed, Price inflation began to fall, due to the growth of work wage labor in Europe, combined with the brutal exploitation of human labor made in the Manufacturing companies established on the continents colonized, where although there was also wage labor, exploitation was It was largely based on slave labor.

But this inequality between the strong accumulation of capital based on extraction of precious metals and the weakness of industrial development also caused the emergence of speculative bubbles in capitalism, predecessors of the speculative bubbles that we see today. In turn, this overaccumulation of fictitious capital was the basis of inflation. States had to borrow strongly to boost armies and enterprises aimed at consolidating manufactures. This need for states and companies to contract led bankers to issue securities and debt papers that financed the plans for commercial expansion. This impulse of papers, titles and loans of all kinds was a great boost to inflation from the state or "Profit Inflation," as Hamilton called it.

Of this era is speculative bubbles such as that of 1557 in Spain, that of 1634 of Tulips in Holland. The "inflation of profits" allowed wages, which were very high, to be lowered by the scarcity of population after the Hundred Years' War, at the same time as the wages did not increase because there was an abundance of labor, because of the increase in the population. In this way, guaranteeing the general reduction of wages, the capitalists were able to exploit human labor with the development of the Manufactures.

That is, the great inflation of the sixteenth century, is very similar to the great inflation of the twenty-first centuries, only in two stages diametrically opposed to capitalism. If the "great inflation of the sixteenth century" is part of the stage of the birth of the capitalism that expressed the first steps on the road to valorizing capital developing production, the "great inflation of the 21st century" expresses its decadence and the growing inability of capitalism to valorize capital developing production.

5) The Commercial Companies - Form of Accumulation of the Colonizing Bourgeoisie

The Commercial Companies are a Form of Accumulation constituted by companies of investors who make profits based on the dominance of trading and exploitation of labor in the discovered colonies. In a sense they are the most developed version of the Commercial Nations, but in this case, the Commercial Companies act at the service of the domination of vast territories colonial in which these companies acted as a true state and government, made investments, developed manufactures and exploited labor of local work, which allowed them to obtain enormous profits.

These are the British East India Company, founded in the 1600, the Dutch East India Company of 1602, the Danish East India Company of 1616, the Dutch India Company Occidentales of 1621. Also the French East India Company founded in 1664, the Swedish East India Company, founded in 1731 and the Ostend Company. They were founded by influential businessmen who obtained the royal charter and exclusive permits to trade with the colonies for long periods.

The Commercial Companies and Manufactures were developed jointly and combined between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as did the United Nations Comercial y las Factorías entre los siglos XIV y XV. As soon as they arrived at the colonies, the Companies built the first manufactures, for example, the British East India Company had 23 factories in India and its profits were so great that they had to bribe kings and officials to prevent other companies from disembarking and thus be able to exercise the monopoly of the economic activity in the area. The big gains led to a overaccumulation of capital such that they produced the speculative bubble of the South Sea Company in England in 1720.

The Companies were commercial enterprises, but they also had the right to mint to legislate, to elect rulers, and to form their own armies. For example in 1670, King Charles II granted the British Company the right of the East Indies to Lead Armies and Form Alliances, Declare War or to establish peace and exercise both civil and military jurisdiction in the areas in which it operated. In By 1689, the Company was almost a state within India that administered Bombay, Madras and Bengal were independent and had a very powerful military force. The British East India Company consolidated, after the triumph over France, the monopoly of trade in India and came to have a fifth of the world's population under his authority, while the Dutch East India Company came to include the entire Indonesian archipelago.

These Forms of accumulation began in the first half of the seventeenth century, had its boom in the first half of the eighteenth century and at the end of the century the Companies Commercials had begun their phase of exhaustion, caused not only by the fall in the rate of profit, but fundamentally by the process of rebellion of the peoples against the imperial and colonialist oppression that put limits on the exploitation of the Companies. In India there was a massive uprising and popular revolution called in 1857 the rebellion of the sepoys, which led to the dissolution of the most important of all: the East India Company.

The Transition from Manufacturing to Industry

With the exhaustion of the manufactures developed a violent process of destruction of productive forces, through a complex of wars that included to the Thirty Years' War that took place between 1618 and 1648, the Franco-Spanish between 1635 and 1659, the Wars between England and Holland between 1649 and 1660 and the Civil War in England, the latter, in In reality, a profound revolutionary process in which the bourgeoisie took the power in England and imposed a parliamentary political regime, following the model of Holland.

At the center of these conflagrations was the battle for control of the industry manufacturing in Europe, whose epicenter was the Holland-England axis and the control of the manufactures established in the colonies. But also the Wars carried on by Commercial Companies and the Anglo-Dutch Wars, just as the Civil Wars in England were also a final part of the process of expropriation of the pre-capitalist social classes that characterized the process of Primitive Accumulation of capitalism. The expropriation process included primitive communist tribes and societies in addition to the expropriation of the peasantry, sectors of the nobility and even other bourgeois sectors in other countries of Europe continental and in Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

The Thirty Years' War was a war fought primarily in the Holy Roman Empire, what is now the territory of Germany, between the years 1618 and 1648, in which most of the great powers intervened European companies of the time with the aim of appropriating German and Italian developed by Hansa and Italy and the flourishing industries in both regions, in addition to a serious clash between the nobility and the bourgeoisie in promotion, who continued the struggle for power.

In mercenaries were used in a generalized way, the devastation of entire territories that were depleted by the armies in need of supplies, the continuous episodes of famine and disease decimated the civilian population of the German states, and to a lesser extent, that of the Netherlands and Italy and bankrupted many of the powers Involved. During the course of the war, the population of the Holy Roman Empire reduced by 30%.

In Brandenburg fell by 50%, and in other regions even by two-thirds. The The male population in Germany was halved. In the Czech countries, the population fell by a third because of the war, as a result of famine, diseases and the mass expulsion of Czechoslovak Protestants. Only the Swedish armies destroyed during the war 2,000 castles, 18,000 villas, and 1,500 villages in Germany. The wars between England and Holland, between 1652 and 1666 involved all the economic powers of the time such as France, Sweden, Spain, etc. and ended with the defeat and decline of the predominance of Holland. 

The development of these wars allowed for a the centralization of superior capitals and the world supremacy of England, which carried out the most important industrial development. Both England and Holland was a trading power with huge fleets that dominated the world trade. But even as capitalism was going through the final moment of its the stage of primitive accumulation and merchant capital was still dominant, it was their territories that were at the forefront of the development of the manufactures and later industry, Forms of Accumulation that inaugurated the industrial stage and apogee of capitalism.

Based on the fabulous capital obtained by colonial exploitation and the domination of the seas, both Holland and especially England were able to promote and Financing scientific discoveries to incorporate technologies and new machines that gradually displaced the Manufacture and began the Industry. The booming development of industry led England to displace the Netherlands as a world power, but at the cost of a brutal confrontation between the two powers, which led to an enormous development of the destructive forces.

The the first Anglo-Dutch war took place between 1652 and 1654; the Second World War between 1665 and 1667 with Dutch victories at the Battle of the Four Days and Medway and the Third Anglo-Dutch War between 1672 and 1674 between a front where England joins France against Holland. The Civil Wars in England took place between the years 1642 and 1689. In The First English Civil War of the years 1642-1645 confronted the power parliamentary and real power with the triumph of Parliament that eliminated the Court of the Starry Chamber, and executed William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury and the Earl of Strafford, a great ally of the king. In the second English Civil War between the years 1648-1649 Cromwell suppressed the rebellion of Wales and defeated the Scots at Preston, defeated the Royalists, executed King Charles I and proclaimed the English republic. 

With the Third Civil War Between 1649 and 1651 Cromwell crushed the monarchist supporters in 1649 and 1651. Ireland and Scotland and controlled England. To his wars between the Companies, for example, took place in the colonies. for example, the English with the Dutch and Portuguese in the Ocean area Indian. The war between the English and Portuguese at the Battle of Swally in 1612, or the Seven Years' War between France and England that eliminated the French colonial presence in India, after which the British Company of The East Indies consolidated the monopoly of trade in the area.

c) Forms of Accumulation Typical of the Apogee Stage of Capitalism.

In the extent to which the capitalist mode of production became dominant, and it definitively displaced the feudal mode of production; and to the extent also In which the bourgeoisie was conquering the power of the state, we entered the stage of the apogee of the capitalist mode of production that spans the eighteenth, nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. This stage began after the triumph of 3 majors revolutions, the English revolution led by Oliver Cromwell in 1648, the American Revolution of 1776, the French Revolution of 1789.

The capitalism boosted production, trade and finance by sweeping away all the previous social formations and modes of production pre- capitalists, and reached the zenith of its development as an economic system, political and social. In this stage of the apogee of capitalism, the Forms of The predominant accumulations are industry in the field of production, and Banks and Credit in the field of finance, which we will go on to be analyzed.

1) Industry- Form of Accumulation of the Industrial Bourgeoisie

The Industry as the predominant form of accumulation began to develop at the from the eighteenth century. In industry the capitalist incorporates the machines in the factory where the workers are grouped. The division of labor combined with machines, which replaced manual labor, allowed the mass production, raised the productivity of labor and exploitation so that industry implied a leap in the process of accumulation of capital and profits.

In industry the modern wage-earning proletariat emerged and the mode of of capitalist production with its two fundamental social classes, the and the bourgeoisie. This process began after John Wyatt announced in 1735 his spinning machine, which revolutionized the textile industry. But the The introduction of machines also allowed a revolution in production and trade because it revolutionized transport and communications.

In the beginning of industry, the most important technological innovations were the steam engine and the so-called Spinning Jenny, related to the textile industry, but after them, new machines and technologies emerged and they were a permanent improvement of the production process. We include in the industry, all agricultural and rural production, as well as all the production at sea such as fishing and raw materials.

Although they move under different conditions, such as the product of land rent in the case of the countryside, as the industry develops, the process of expropriation of small landowners and when machinery was introduced into the revolutionizing all production, ended up being absorbed by the industry and becoming one more variant of the Forms of Accumulation industrial. This is how the rural proletariat was consolidated

During the wars of the seventeenth century, the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, consolidated the rule of England, which became the axis of accumulation. The textile industry, cotton and metallurgical were the pole of accumulation and new industries such as chemicals, electricity or automobiles together with the development of new forms of energy such as gas or oil. The Industry spread to new countries such as Germany, Russia, the United States, Japan, the United States, the United States, the United States, the United Netherlands and an unprecedented scientific revolution developed until that moment.

The emergence of Industry coincided with the heyday of the capitalist production, which allowed a sustained expansion of the economy. But the revolutionary character in production that Industry meant developed, in turn, with greater intensity all the contradictions of the capitalism, as we will analyze in Chapter VI. The drop in the rate of Profit began to occur chronically and permanently, precipitating the economy to suffer permanent crises and falls, even when as a whole It was going through a period of expansion. 

In the boom of the industry, more quickly leveling out the win rate, only now this process it developed more rapidly. This is how Engels explained it: "... the industry, which thanks to its incessant revolutions of production reduces more and more the costs of manufacturing goods... On the other hand, it equalizes the rates of profit of the different branches of commercial business and industrial, reducing them to a single general rate of profit and, thanks to This leveling assures the industry the position of strength that it has It is appropriate, by removing all the obstacles that until then prevented the transfer of capital from one branch to another." (21)

The program of the industrial bourgeoisie brings together several important points that synthesized the defense of their interests, including: The fight against the monarchies, and absolutist states, the imposition of republics unitary parliamentarians with autonomy from their territorial entities, the abolition of internal customs, and the imposition of a central customs office, the creation of the Central Bank, and the creation of a single currency, the free trade in foreign trade, agrarian reform, expropriation, and enclosure of land. The establishment of capitalist relations of production based on measures for the development of the emergence of the proletariat such as the elimination of the proletariat, of the pre-capitalist relations of production, the abolition of the the development of public education, the promotion of the immigration, among others.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, industries began to enter their phase of exhaustion, which unleashed a new and violent wave of wars and revolutions. The industry produced rapid development that clashed with inland customs and the social formations inherited from feudalism, for which reason the revolutions and civil wars that brought the bourgeoisie to power, were followed by new revolutions and civil wars in which the bourgeoisie, he eliminated internal customs, expanded the internal market, imposed borders national and modern states emerged.

With the revolutions of 1848, modern nation states emerged capitalists, modern countries. These revolutions and wars were those of 1848 in France, Italy, Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Civil War of 1862. This whole process of destruction of productive forces opened the way to a higher Form of Accumulation, the monopolies, the product of which the wars and revolutions of both 1848 and the American Civil War allowed the development of countries, national unity and their internal market. With the emergence of countries and the internal market emerged in the powers capitalists of greater economic development the Form of Accumulation that allows the domination of an industry at the level of a country, monopolies, trusts and cartels, which began the entry of capitalism into its The imperialist stage is the highest and final stage of decadence.

2) Banks and Credit - Form of Accumulation of the Financial Bourgeoisie

In the heyday of capitalism developed as a Form of Accumulation of financial capital, both the Bank and the Credit, institutions that make up the modern banking system. Both, although they had had antecedents with the first Banks in Genoa and Venice, are the real expression of the capitalist mode of production, which the old claims of the bourgeoisie against usury and the merchants who monopolized the financial capital throughout the stage of primitive accumulation.

The credit was born as a rejection of usury, a Form of Accumulation that together with the The beginning of the consolidation of the mode of production capitalist. For Marx: "The development of credit is effected by reaction against usury... It means nothing more or less than the subordination of the interest-producing capital to the conditions and needs of the mode of capitalist production... it is the starting point of the modern credit system. The credit associations, which were formed in Venice and Genoa in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, were born from the need in which trade was found maritime and wholesale trade based on it, to free itself from the domination of the methods of usury and the monopolizers of the trade of money" (22)

Precisely the ruling classes of financial magnates act by founding the banks that issue debt papers and distribute the credit, while being part of the state that arises and drives the operation of the Banks. This class is born indissolubly linked to the State and the State to this sector of capitalists, as Marx explains: "While the banks properly speaking, founded in these republics, are presented at the same time as as public credit establishments that advanced money to the State on taxes to be charged, it should not be forgotten that the merchants who constituted these associations were in turn the notables of those states and they were as interested in freeing their government from usury as they were in freeing themselves themselves, and at the same time affirm and reinforce with it the subjection in that maintained the State." (23)

Like this Karl Marx explains it: "This violent attack on usury, this requirement of subjection of interest-producing capital to capital is nothing more than the precursor sign of organic creations that in The modern banking system sets the conditions for production capitalist: the banks, on the one hand, deprive usurious capital of its monopoly, by concentrating and launching into the financial market all the reserves of On the other hand, they limit the monopoly of the precious metals in creating credit money." (24)

The foundation of the first officially recognized Bank was that of the Bank of England in 1694, six years after the triumph of the Revolution he led Oliver Cromwell. Like the Bank of France, the Bank of England does not It began as a state bank, not as a crown enterprise, but as a bank controlled by the Rothschild clan, the European banking dynasty that managed finances in England, France, Germany, Austria and Italy, along with with his associates Khun, Loeb, Lehman, Warburg, etc.

The Bank was nationalized in 1946 after the end of World War II World with the beginning of the Keynesian regime, as well as the Bank of France. If industrial production revolutionized all aspects of the production and achieved a mass of goods such as has never been seen in the history of the In the same way, credit achieved an accumulation and the constitution of a mass of capital money rarely seen. But along with this, credit rapidly developed tendencies towards the concentration and centralization of leaving thousands of small capitals in ruins, to allow them to the big capitals will expropriate the smaller capitalists, allowing them to the centralization of capital.

Like this Karl Marx explains the role of credit: "It not only becomes a new and powerful weapon in the competitive fight. By means of invisible threads, draws into the hands of individual capitalists or associated media money that, in larger or smaller masses, are dispersed over the surface of society. It is the specific machine for the concentration of the Capital... the credit... becomes a new and terrible weapon in the struggle finally becoming an immense social mechanism for the centralization of capital... To the same extent that the capitalist production and accumulation, the competition and credit, the two most powerful levers of centralization." (25)

The increasing centralization of capital that drives credit and banks, was laying the foundations for the development of monopolies, cartels and trusts that opened the way to the stage of the decadence stage of capitalism, the When finance capital began to predominate over the imperialist capital, industrial. 

How Frederick Engels explained it: "... these changes tend to concentrate in the hands of stock market speculators all industrial production and agriculture, trade as a whole, as well as the means of communication and exchange agencies, so that the Stock Exchange becomes the representative of capitalist production itself. In 1865 the Stock Exchange was still a secondary element in the capitalist system... Today things are Different. Since the crisis of 1866, accumulation has taken place with an increasingly rapid and more... A progressive transformation of the industry in companies by shares. All the branches, one after the other, succumb in the face of that fate... mining, steel, chemical industry, textile... the same applies to commerce... with the banks... The same thing happens in the domain of agriculture. Banks are increasingly becoming mortgage creditors, if this continues, it is possible to foresee that the English and French lands will also fall into the hands of the Stock Exchange. Last All investments abroad are made in the form of actions..." (26)

Forms of Accumulation typical of the Imperialist Stage of Decadence of Capitalism - Fusion of the Forms of Productive and Financial Accumulation

The predominant forms of accumulation that correspond to the imperialist or of the decline of capitalism are from 1903 to 1945 the Monopolies, since 1945 to 1980 the Multinationals, and finally the Global Corporations since 1980 to today. These 3 Forms of Accumulation belong to the Forms of Monopolistic Accumulation, with those Forms of Accumulation rise the respective regimes of accumulation that arose with its development. The forms of Accumulation that correspond to the imperialist or decadence stage of capitalism are the Monopolies, Multinationals, and finally Global Corporations.

The Monopolies: Form of Monopolistic Accumulation of the Imperialist Bourgeoisie

To From 1903 onwards, the Monopolies were located at the center of capitalism. What are monopolies? A group of companies that come together to dominate a branch of the production in a country and agree on prices, production targets, distribution, benefits, etc., to eliminate competition. For Lenin: "… agree with each other on the terms of sale, the payment terms, etc. The sales markets are distributed. They set the amount of products to be manufactured. They set the prices. They distribute the profits among the different companies, etc." (29)

With the emergence of monopolies ended the stage of "free competition" in capitalism. Through these agreements, the companies formed a kind of league or union that allowed them to advance in the domination of an industry of production in his country, while also They tried to extend that dominance internationally. Those leagues or unions they developed from 1860, especially in the USA under the name of trusts and in Germany under the name of cartels. In the U.S. they had an address of tycoons such as the Mellons, Morgans, Rockefellers, etc.

The emergence of monopolies went through three moments according to Lenin: "1) 1860-1880, the culminating point of the development of free competition. The monopolies are only barely perceptible germs.2) After the crisis of 1873, a long period of development of the cartels, but these they are still an exception, they are not yet solid, they still represent a a transient phenomenon. 3) Boom of the late nineteenth century and crisis of 1900-1903; the Posters become one of the foundations of all economic life. The capitalism has been transformed into imperialism." (30)

In relation to monopolies, as we have seen, although they have arisen since 1860, they become the predominant Form of Accumulation only from the beginning of the century XX. The structure they presented turned out to be complex, as a result of the fact that, if or dominated a branch of production, they are combined enterprises that concentrated in its interior several branches based on the dominion they acquired over one of them. This is how Lenin explains it: "a peculiarity The extremely important role of capitalism, which has reached its highest degree of development, is the so-called combination, that is, the meeting, into a single company, from different branches of the industry that represent in themselves or phases successive stages of the processing of a raw material... or different branches that they play an auxiliary role in relation to each other..." (31)

But Although monopolies are combined companies, we must not lose sight of the fact that The combination is at the service of the domination of a branch of production. For example, taking the metallurgical branch, the cartelization of it is based on in which the unionized group of companies agrees on distribution and advances in control of commercial enterprises; agrees on production goals and advances in the control of companies that provide raw materials, machinery and supplies; it agrees on loans and credits and advances in the control of the banks. That is, the The cartel incorporates into its structure companies from various branches of production, but in the service of controlling a branch. That is why we define monopolies as group of companies that enter into agreements to dominate a branch of the production in a country. As these companies become the Form of Accumulation predominant from 1903 onwards, the capitalist system entered, in terms of historical, in its upper and final stage, of decadence.

Since the fourteenth century in which capitalism began its rise and battle for displace feudalism, had gone through 2 major stages until 1903: 1) the original accumulation between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. And 2) that of boom or apogee, around the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Lenin defined that from 1903 onwards the a third historical stage, imperialism, the stage of decadence of the capitalism, with 5 characteristics: 1) "Monopolies arise that are placed at the centre of the economy and play a decisive role in the Economic life 2) Monopolies are the product of the fusion of capital banking with industrial capital, which gives rise to a financial oligarchy 3) The process of exporting capital acquires exceptional importance 4) Monopolies tend to be international and divide up the world 5) End the territorial division of the world among the greatest imperialist powers and the domination of monopolies and finance capital is established..." (32)

The cartel incorporates into its structure companies from various branches of the production, but at the service of controlling a branch. That is why we define the monopolies as a group of companies that enter into agreements to dominate a branch of production in a country. As these companies become the Way of Accumulation predominant from 1903 onwards, the capitalist system entered, in historical terms, in their upper and final stage, of decadence.

Since the fourteenth century in which capitalism began its rise and battle for displace feudalism, had gone through 2 major stages until 1903: 1) the original accumulation between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. And 2) that of boom or apogee, around the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Lenin defined that from 1903 onwards the a third historical stage, imperialism, the stage of decadence of the capitalism, with 5 characteristics: 1) "Monopolies arise that are placed at the centre of the economy and play a decisive role in the Economic life 2) Monopolies are the product of the fusion of capital banking with industrial capital, which gives rise to a financial oligarchy 3) The process of exporting capital acquires exceptional importance 4) Monopolies tend to be international and divide up the world 5) The territorial division of the world between the greatest powers culminates imperialist and the domination of monopolies and capital is established financial..." (32)

The monopolies tended to be international because of the existence of the world market but the extent of its international domination of the branches of the Production, trade and finance at the beginning of the twentieth century was still very limited. Some of them had branches in other countries, in the industry oil companies, for example, and tried operations for their global expansion. But their world dominance did not achieve the dimensions that they did, as we will see, multinationals in the post-war period or multinational corporations through the from 1980 and 1990, which are superior monopolistic forms.

Stages of Emergence, Rise, and Exhaustion of Monopolies, transition of the Monopolies to Multinationals

The The emergence and development of monopolies from 1860 onwards allowed a development and expansion of capitalism for several decades, which was crossed by by crisis between the years 1873-96 although these crises were part of the process of expansion and growth. On the other hand, from 1907 onwards, both the crises of that year, such as those of 1914-18 and the outbreak of the 1st World War expressed that capitalism had entered a period of decline and stagnation that led to the crash of '29. This process of stagnation of capitalism occurred as a result of the exhaustion of capitalism. monopolies as a Form of Accumulation Why did the exhaustion of cartels and trusts?

As they took control of the economy, the monopolies sharpened to the extreme all the contradictions of capitalism, in the first place, because by concretizing the concentration and centralization of capital in the different branches of production, sharpened the contradictions between the social character and the social character of the of production and the individual character of the appropriation of wealth Produced. The socially produced wealth was concentrated in a few hands, those of the owners of the monopolies, to a magnitude much greater than what they capitalism had made in the industrial period, in which it developed the exploitation of child and female labor and growing masses were thrown out workers to misery and poverty, which were crowded into the large cities and cities.

The monopolies brutally exacerbated those already existing social inequalities, not not only because of the extreme social differentiation between rich and poor, but also because of the extreme social differentiation between rich and poor. by the tensions and confrontations within the class of the capitalists, as a result of the fact that economic concentration also meant the bankruptcy and disappearance of sectors of minor capitalists, at the hands of the most powerful trusts and cartels.

The generalized poverty and the fall of the middle layers of the population aggravated by monopolies, caused a drop in consumption and a general slowdown in the economy. Second, monopolies sharpened the contradiction between the character of the of production and the nation states because they came to dominate industries of production and trade at the level of a country, while tending to to develop internationally. To the extent that they began to dispute the world market, brutal fights arose between them over the markets, which which was at the base of both the 1st and 2nd World Wars. These contradictions showed the limitations of cartels and trusts to to dominate the branches of world production and trade.

The wars were clashes and confrontations between the imperialist states, to decide which of these states would impose on their monopolies, and in turn the sample It was clear that monopoly as a form of accumulation had entered into the stage of their exhaustion. Capitalism needed a form of accumulation which would make the leap to the domination of whole branches of production and production. trade on a global scale, and that magnitude of centralization and elimination of capitalists and capitalists, it was only possible through war. The New Deal does not brought the U.S. economy, or the world's economy, out of the crisis. 

On the contrary, between 1937 and 1938, the economy suffered a serious relapse: "Against all forecasts and efforts to reactivate the economy and control the stock market, restrict large operations, etc., the depression is not had closed. On the contrary, from August 1937 to March 1938, There was a 50% drop in the stock market and unemployment exceeded the figure of the 10 million..." (33) The Great Depression did not found a way out in the measures of the capitalist governments of his time, not were the plans of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, nor that of Edouard Daladier in France, nor Neville Chamberlain in England, nor Adolf Hitler in Germany, the that pulled the economy out of the crisis.

For Galvao: "What put an end to the Great Depression was not a return to production for consumption, but recourse to the means of destruction of capital liberated with the 2nd World War. Unemployment is no longer a problem only when the millions of workers were absorbed by the armed forces and war production." (34) The outbreak of World War II in September 1939 was what began reviving the economy of the main capitalist countries that invested huge sums in military spending. It is estimated that the investment made by the states ranged from 260,000 to 338,000 million U$S at the time, almost 4 to 5 trillions of today's U$S. The millionaire investments of capitalist governments, were a huge change in capital investment flows from the preparation of the war budgets that meant enormous sums for the preparation of the war.

These budgets involved adjustment plans that caused hardship and suffering to the masses, because they consisted of cuts in social spending and increases in taxation. Even so, all this was insufficient for the resources of the time, the The vast majority of governments had to borrow heavily in order to to face the expenses of war. Indebtedness led governments to resorting to the issuance of money without gold backing, which generated a strong inflation. International trade had operated since 1870 with a pattern gold, i.e., the use of gold to settle transactions and debts as a "standard value", the nations they set the parity of their currency with this standard value. 

But the countries belligerents were left with practically no gold in their coffers, compromised in their almost all in the purchase of weapons, and undertook the replacement of those fixed rates for floating rates, i.e. the price of transactions and exchange rates were set by governments unilaterally. Of what happened in the powers that were preparing for war, the countries neutral, net exporters of armaments or raw materials and foodstuffs filled their reserves with gold, for example the U.S. went from having 26% of the world gold reserves in 1913, to 39% in 1918. The powers that are They ran out of gold in the coffers they began to use fiat money, printing of paper without gold backing, which caused the great processes hyperinflationary of the '20s, for example, in Germany and Austria.

The lack of a stable payment system led to a fall in world trade and the pound sterling, which had been the reference currency until then, began to be displaced by the dollar. In turn in the field of industrial production the necessities of war definitively introduced the techniques of series production in Europe, as well as numerous other technical improvements organizational of the industry. Also There was the development of advertising and the rapid expansion of the cartel advertising and propaganda as a means of communication. They were destined large amounts of money for the research and development of all kinds of weapons and as a result, the chemical industry advanced significantly. 

The need to soldiers, as well as their mass death already during the development of the war left without manpower to an industry in full expansion. This fact meant the The emergence of women in heavy industry, which came to account for more than 40% of the total composition of the workers, and gave a formidable impetus to the movement for the vindication of equal rights for women. The Capitalism thus began the path out of the crisis that began in 1929, through a colossal development of the arms industry, that is, a colossal development of the destructive forces of humanity. The second World War involved more than 100 million soldiers mobilized, equivalent to to almost the entire population of the United States at the time, destruction of cities, infrastructure, concentration camps and the Holocaust, in addition to the use of nuclear weapons for the first time in a military conflict. The result The final one was between 50 and 70 million victims between dead and wounded.

After six years of war, much of Europe was devastated because the fighting had occurred practically throughout its geography, covering an area much larger than that affected in the First World War. Because of the Aerial bombardments, cities were badly damaged, and industrial areas which had been the main targets of such bombings as well. Berlin and Warsaw were reduced to mountains of rubble; London and Rotterdam were badly destroyed, the economic structure of the continent that was For centuries the center of the development of capitalism was reduced to ruins, with millions of people destitute.

In 1944 famine broke out, a product of the general devastation of agriculture which caused a wave of famine first in Holland and then throughout Europe, aggravated by the harsh winter of 1946-1947 in the northeast. After the war, the The threat of death by starvation was a reality for millions of people, the food shortages were one of the most serious problems, and the situation reached be especially worrying in Germany, because between the years 1946-1947 the average daily consumption was only 1,800 calories per person, an amount insufficient to maintain good health in the long term.

Also The lack of coal was aggravated, whose reserves were greatly reduced after the winter of the years 1946- 47. In German homes, without heating Hundreds of people died of cold. The railways, bridges and roads, which had been the main targets of aerial bombardments. The cargo ships had been sunk, the small municipalities due to the lack of transport networks were practically isolated, physically and economically. Product of the lack of growth of economies, high unemployment rates and the scarcity of food, strikes and revolts followed in all countries, movements revolutionaries, who questioned capitalism. Two years after the end of the war, economies had not yet reached pre-war levels, the agricultural production was 83% of what it had been in 1938, agricultural production industrial reached 88% and exports only 59%.

The World War II was the end of an economic period of capitalism marked by crisis, stagnation, and paralysis. But after the war in 1945, capitalism resumed its march and entered an opposite period, that of a enormous growth with high rates for almost 30 years, known as the "boom" of How did capitalism get out of the crisis of '29 and go from there to the "boom"? What changes occurred in the world economy that made it possible? With the end of the Second World War, consolidated 3 fundamental changes that had been incubating in the economy world capitalist and produced the "boom"

The Multinationals: Monopolistic Form of Accumulation of the imperialist bourgeoisie

We have seen after the 2nd World War all imperialisms emerged shattered and it was only the United States with its extraordinary development of the productive forces, who was in a position to take command of the world economy. This was concretized with the implementation of the Marshall Plan, which produced a change in capitalism: modern multinationals displaced the monopolies at the center of the world economy.

The Marshall Plan, economic assistance to Europe, by the U.S. was not disinterested, sought to extend its monopolies and finance military bases in abroad to consolidate its world dominance. The US monopolies, they took advantage of the capitalist reconstruction of Europe to export massively goods to European countries, promoting economic reactivation and at the same time they were implanted, using Europe as a bridgehead for their global expansion. As Peter Dicken says: "It is not Surprisingly, at the head of the post-war expansion were the companies in the United States, which departed from the unprecedented power of their domestic economy, its technological superiority and its enormous capital reserves of investment. In 1960, the United States accumulated almost 50% of investments foreign direct throughout the world (England's share was of 18%, and that of Germany and Japan a scant 1.2% and 0.7%"...) (35)

For Noam Chomsky: "... The Marshall Plan "created the framework for investment of large amounts of American money in Europe, establishing the basis for for modern multinationals... As the Department of Labour and Forestry later explained, Reagan's trade plan, the Marshall Plan "set the stage for the large amounts of private direct investment in Europe from the United States United," tracing the A preliminary work for Transnational Corporations that are increasingly dominate the world economy." (36) It is that is, with the contribution of the American state to Europe, the monopolies of the United States they became multinationals. A good example is the producer monopoly Ford of the United States, who created an organization throughout the United States, Europe as early as 1967. The mutation of monopolies into modern multinationals, it is the fundamental, structural change, in the productive field, of the division international labour and trade, which develops in capitalism with the Keynesian regime.

Like this The capitalist system adopted the physiognomy that we know it today, as pointed out by Nahuel Moreno: "... The fact that I want to point out to you is the emergence of the transnationals... This is a new phenomenon. Until the 2nd World War no monopoly had branches... with the exception of the oil companies... that is, they are companies that have ten, twenty companies in different countries and all coordinated working together." (37) Lenin He had pointed out that monopolies are national entities, but that they tend to to spread internationally since the beginning of the twentieth century. Thirty years later, and after the great imperialist conflagration of the 2nd World War, The U.S. imposed its monopolies globally, as part of the development of the regime Keynesian.

¿What What are the differences between multinationals and monopolies? As we saw the monopolies are essentially cartels and trusts, syndicates or leagues of companies that dominate an industry in a country. Multinationals they are not a league of companies, they are a single company that dominates a branch of the production on a world scale, and thus constitute a superior form of accumulation, which contain and surpass monopolies. The World War II allowed capitalism to move from a form of accumulation and concentration of capital lower than a higher one, since monopolies such as General Electric, Ford, Coca Cola, etc., which had managed to dominate a branch of production in the U.S. through a complex process of mergers and acquisitions of companies that lasted decades, will become a single global company, with a strongly centralized command.

The board of shareholders and its chairmanship in multinationals, are no longer bodies engaged in complex negotiations within the companies to agree on production and marketing goals as in the cartels and trusts. For the period 1945/47 the multinationals of the USA are a single command, which imposes the goals of production and marketing, counting in its favor that it has an immense world market almost without limits and without competition, because the monopolies of the other imperialist countries are shattered after World War II, and therefore economically disadvantaged and financial.

In second, the boards of directors of U.S. multinationals. imposed on the In the years 1946/47 production and marketing goals, counting in its favor the existence of a very high rate of exploitation as a result of the deterioration living conditions of the masses of Europe and the United States. political agreement, Yalta and Potsdam, which guaranteed them the investment and implantation because it acted as a political shield against revolts or revolutions that they could have expropriated them or harmed their interest in obtaining profits. The political and economic conditions of the 1945/46 conjuncture were more than favorable to go on to dominate the world market. The Business Directory is a centralized command, which in turn leads to production units and in different countries, in which it has branches and can plan the development of production with a division international labor within the company.

Can manufacture different parts of the goods and assemble them into different parts of the goods. calculating their benefits in advance according to the conditions of exploitation that it obtains by negotiating with the different governments. I mean from the point of view of capital accumulation and the supreme goal of capitalism that is profit, multinationals are a form of capital accumulation qualitatively superior to cartels and trusts, monopolies that emerged in the nineteenth century.

These new forms of accumulation were found in 1946/47 with the enormous possibilities of super-exploitation of workers in Europe and the USA, with the Yalta and Potsdam agreements and with the investments of the imperialist state of the U.S., which puts money to facilitate all the infrastructure, transportation, routes, bridges, supply, etc., everything necessary for its development. ¿What more can a capitalist ask for? Is that is, the transformation of U.S. monopolies into multinationals, and the The existence of these companies as the predominant Form of Accumulation is the most important, structural explanation of the changes that occur in the capitalism after the 2nd World War. The implantation of US hegemony, The Keynesian regime and the multinationals are the three elements that explain the post-war boom and historic growth rates, investment and production achieved from 1945 onwards.

Hegemony and dominance of the world economy

After the 2nd World War, US imperialism imposed its world hegemony, this is how Nahuel Moreno explained it: "... They come out of the war completely all the old existing colonial empires destroyed... From the post-war period, the entire capitalist world, including the imperialist countries, has than to accept American leadership and dominance... The logical frictions anti-imperialists cannot change this situation, the U.S. hegemony over the capitalist world and its leadership" (38)

The growth of U.S. hegemony was a trend of the economy and of the world political situation of capitalism that had been developing since several decades ago. Leon Trotsky had already anticipated this tendency in 1926 in the structure of the world capitalist system that was completely modified from 1945: "In recent years, the economic axis of the world has become more and more dynamic. has displaced considerably. Relations between the United States and Europe they have been radically modified... this evolution was prepared since ancient times; Had symptoms that pointed to it, but it has only recently become a fact consummated, and now we try to realize this formidable change effected in the human economy and, consequently, in human culture ... USA. The U.S. is the master of the capitalist world." (39)

In 1945 In the midst of a world in ruins after World War II, the U.S. economy constituted a third of all export operations that took place in the world, held two-thirds of all existing gold reserves and it was the producer of 50% of all goods on the world goods market Manufactured. Hegemony and the colossal development of the productive forces was the lifeline that the post-war capitalist economy found and the lever to rebuild capitalism.

The Keynesian Regime of Capitalist Accumulation

From the Marshall Plan, senile capitalism emerged from the 2nd World War functioning in a peculiar way, an uneven phase and combined of the world economy, which we call the Keynesian regime of accumulation. This Accumulation Regime was a way of functioning of the capitalist system or historically given economic formation, also known as as a "welfare state". Consisted in high wages, full employment, economic concessions to the masses, conquests social wage increases, public works plans and a large industrialization process imitating aspects of the model imposed by Roosevelt in the U.S. as a response to the crash of '29. The Keynesian regime began in the '40s, developed in the '50s, '60s and sold out in the '70s.

The Keynesian regime had the automobile and war industry as the pole of accumulation. How and why did the Keynesian regime emerge? To understand the political reasons that gave rise to the Keynesian regime we must go back a few years and analyze the responses that capitalism had in the face of the crisis of '29. From the political point of view, capitalism had two responses to the the crisis of '29, at that time the most serious of the capitalist system. In In the U.S., the answer was the New Deal, while in Germany it was the Nazi.

Both political regimes, although diametrically opposed, had as their denominator who sought to respond to the global crisis. While the New Deal sought a way out of the crisis through agreements and manoeuvres against the workers and their organizations, the Nazi regime, on the other hand, by crushing workers and their organizations, with concentration camps where they are tested the most aberrant production methods with the aim of optimizing the profits of monopolies and large companies.

The Nazi regime was due to the defeat of the workers' revolution in Germany, while in the United States the New Deal was a defensive regime of the bourgeoisie of The U.S., a product of working-class resistance that big business they had not been able to break down. This is how Leon Trotsky explained it: "Today There are two systems that compete in the world to save capital...: they are the Fascism and the New Deal. Fascism bases its program on the dissolution of the workers' organizations, in the destruction of the reforms and in the complete annihilation of democratic rights... The New Deal policy, which tries to save imperialist democracy... it's just accessible in its great breadth to the truly rich nations, and in such a way that it is not possible to have a great deal of access to the truly rich nations. sense is a U.S. policy par excellence." (40)

Other the common denominator between the two political regimes was Wall Street. The large U.S. corporations, monopolies, and bankers boosted the industry to relaunch the economy in both Germany and the US and financed Hitler's rise to power. Wall Street financed the development of the industrial monopoly of armaments I.G. Farben, which was the basis of the power of the Nazi war machine. This is how Antony C. Sutton explains it: "Without the support of the German industrial cartel I.G. Farben, Hitler would have remained a dark historical note... Without the capital supplied by Wall Street, no there would have been no I.G. Farben in the first place, and almost certainly no Adolf Hitler... Farben's industrial cartel was created by three Wall Street corporations: Dillon, Read & Co., Harris, Forbes & Co, and National City. The Duponts, Standard Oil, the International Harvester, General Motors and Ford, which were companies controlled by JP Morgan, had facilitated the rearmament of Germany... companies such as International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), General Electric, International Business Machines (IBM), Alcoa and Dow Chemical were also implicated..." (41)

Toby Rogers, a journalist for The Guardian, published in September 2004 about the Bush Family Story: "The grandfather of former President George W. Bush, Senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that were benefited from their business relationship with German financiers Nazi... During the decades of the Bush family's public life, the press has made a great effort to overlook a historical fact - that through the Union Banking Corporation (UBC), Prescott Bush, and his brother-in-law, George Herbert Walker, together with the German businessman Fritz Thyssen, financed Adolf Hitler before and during World War II World" (42)

The Nazis and the Nazi regime were crushed in the war by the armies The Allies, the product of a formidable mobilization of the European masses, with the result of the which disappeared as a possible alternative to capitalism. While both the Keynesian regime developed in the United States, taking advantage of the low wages and unemployment of the working class after the depression and was supported by new technologies that allowed the development of mass production for mass consumption. The boosting the war industry, allowed the massive export of tanks, aircraft and weapons to the allied states and to develop "the military- industrial complex" and pole of accumulation of the Keynesian regime that was essentially American. But from the years 1945-47, to the extent that in which the United States imposed its hegemony in the world capitalist economy, this The way capitalism functioned was established on an international scale.

For that the U.S. could impose the Keynesian regime on the whole world, first had to establish international agreements with the retreating powers, such as England, and fundamentally, had to agree with Stalin and the Party Communist of the Soviet Union. It would have been impossible for the U.S. to initiate the investment round that the Marshall Plan entailed, without previously agreeing with Stalin, given that during the war and at the end of it, great revolutionary processes in Europe, first to defeat the Nazis and to liberate the countries from Nazi-fascism, and then, to face hunger and generalized post-war misery.

Processes such as the Maqui resistance in France, or the partisans in Italy and Yugoslavia had allowed the workers to have the right to work after the Second World War power in their hands in France and Italy and the Red Army took control of Berlin and liberated Eastern Europe. The communist militants had been part of the leadership and led the resistance and defeat of the Nazis in the most European countries. An order from the Kremlin was enough for Europe to became socialist, and the world's major economies such as France, Germany and Italy, were transformed into Workers' States, whatever would have been the case. completely changed the destiny of humanity.

But the government of the USSR, led by Stalin and the Stalinist bureaucracy that led the the victory against the Nazis, decided to make a pact with the allied powers, the United States and Great Britain, and to initiate the capitalist reconstruction of Europe. This constituted one of the greatest betrayals of the world proletariat and the international socialist revolution on the part of Stalin and the bureaucracy that led by the USSR. Stalin agreed with Churchill, the old man's representative. British imperialism in retreat to that point exercising the leadership of the world capitalist economy and Roosevelt the president of the United States, representative of the emerging imperialist power. Thus was born the "order world" with the Yalta and Potsdam agreements.

How Nahuel Moreno put it: "... a front is established... between the imperialism and the Kremlin bureaucracy, on the basis of coexistence Peaceful, concretized in Yalta, Potsdam and the new world order: the UN, the distribution of areas of influence... Although the "cold war" occurs and deep frictions... act in general in agreement and defending this new world order... Stalin and Roosevelt divide the world into two blocs controlled by US imperialism and the Kremlin with the aim of to stop, divert, crush or control the workers' revolution in the world". (43)

After the international agreements of Yalta and Potsdam from 1947, in Europe the "Marshall Plan", through which the US invested million dollars, which allowed the reconstruction of the world economy, taking advantage of the massive liquidation of productive forces, famine, brutal unemployment and lower wages of the proletariat and the European masses after the war. We insist that the U.S. was able to implement the Marshall Plan because after the 2nd war its economy represented a third of all world exports, it owned two-thirds of the world's gold reserves, and it produced half of all manufactured goods. After the launch of the Marshall Plan, the world capitalist economy experienced a growth of historical rates for several decades. The chances of obtaining a high rate of exploitation for capitalist enterprises, a product of the brutal reduction in the conditions of life, work and wages that had been consolidated with the war, among the masses of Europe, they became a magnet for the investments and the capitalist governments of Europe used these "advantages comparative" in their favor to attract them.

The Keynesian regime as a Regime of Accumulation, allowed the "boom" of the world economy, with historic growth rates for several decades. This was the economic basis of the enormous social conquests achieved by the masses in the USA, Europe, Japan and some backward countries. The "boom" granted stability to the political situation of the imperialist countries, based on all in the important public works plans for the reconstruction of Europe and Japan, whose infrastructure had been severely destroyed by the war.

In the "boom", the world economy reached peaks of very significant growth, in Great Britain a rate of 17.5%, in the USA a rate of 17.5%, in the USA a peak of 17.7% in 1950 and 17.0% in 1969. In Japan, a peak of 36.5% in 1969, while in Germany and the rest of Europe the economy reached rates of growth of 19% in 1968 (44) Toyotism and Taylorism became the basic techniques of the technological pole, to increase the productivity of labor and both trade and the international division of work was structured around the US-Europe axis.

The exploitation of the proletariat of both regions, placed them at the center of the proletariat. the world economy and consolidated the Atlantic as the center of world trade. With respect to finance capital, the Keynesian regime was characterized by a strong repression of speculative capital with the sanction in 1933 of the Law Glass-Steagall, in 1936 the Robinson-Patman and in 1937 the Miller-Tydings which they were combined with earlier ones such as the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and Clayton 1914. These laws sought the separation between deposit banking and of investment, curb large chains, unfair competition and veto the Participation of bankers in company councils. Anti-trust legislation of the Keynesian regime in the United States repressed the speculative capital that was located in the City of London. Anyway, large U.S. companies They were able to monopolize the branches of production and commerce because the The monopolies of the other powers were destroyed.

We have and the general picture of the Keynesian regime. Its success was based on the super-exploitation of the workers of the USA and Europe, the most popular proletariat. largest, most concentrated, and culturally important in the world, whose wages and living conditions were very deteriorated by the crisis of the '30s and war. The "German miracle," for example, was as a result of the fact that U.S. investments took advantage of the brutal reduction in the standard of living of the proletariat, achieved, among others, by Hitler and his camps of concentration, moreover, because of the division of Germany, and its working class, the most important of its kind. This facilitated the exploitation of the German working class. The name of the plan went down in history because of the surname of the secretary of U.S. State George Marshall, who participated in the summit and was inspiring of the model, together with the English economist Lord Keynes.

The U.S. hegemony was clear in the way trade was restored world after the war, under the conditions imposed by Washington. In July In 1944, a new international monetary system was established in the Bretton Woods International Conference, which established agreements to replace the international monetary system, of floating rates that was imposed after the Great Depression of the '30s for war expenses. The main objective of the new financial system adopted was to return to the fixed convertibility of currencies tied to the gold standard and Bretton Woods established The dollar as the standard currency of the monetary, commercial and financial system backed by the gold that was stored in the Reserve In addition to the dollar-gold parity, it was agreed to create the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and the World Bank International Commission for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) to regulate the newly developed system created. 

Stages of the Rise, Apogee and Exhaustion of the Multinationals, transition of the Multinationals to Global Corporations

How all forms of accumulation the multinationals sharpened all the contradictions of capitalism. We must not forget for a moment two key elements in the transition from the dominance of monopolies to the dominance of the first is that both the hegemony of the United States and the Keynesian regime and multinationals are the product of brutal destruction of productive forces that the 2nd World War meant. In other words, the product of the existence of private ownership of the means of production, the whole process centralization of capital that meant the passage of the predominance of the monopolies to the predominance of multinationals, was carried out at a high cost for humanity.

Is that is, the overcoming of one form of accumulation by another, meant the The liquidation of classes and class sectors, not only between ruling classes and but among the same sectors of the ruling class through the wars, which meant a colossal destruction of productive forces. To the study the transition from monopolies to multinationals, economic and policies formulated by Marxism, are those that explain why the cost of sustaining private property, meant millions of deaths for humanity, liquidation of infrastructure and devastated productive forces.

The second element is that the post-war "boom" in In no case did it mean that capitalism emerged from its imperialist stage, from decadence. On the contrary, it took place within that stage indicated by Lenin, so multinationals are a form of monopoly accumulation and like the monopolies that emerged in the nineteenth century, they are Forms of Accumulation of the imperialist stage of capitalism. This has a fundamental importance to understand why the "boom" of The post-war period ended up aggravating the crisis of capitalism.

The development of the predominance of multinationals did not act to solve the crisis of the capitalist system, but on the contrary, acted to aggravate it and opened up the a huge crisis in capitalism at the end of the '60s. Let's see how it is Produced. With the reconstruction of Europe and the boom, the multinationals as a form of accumulation became generalized to the extent that the imperialisms that had been destroyed in the war, England, Germany, Japan, France, etc., which developed their own multinationals.

The multinationals, first aggravated the contradiction between the global character of production and national states. For Nahuel Moreno: "... The transnational more than ever responds to the law of monopoly, that is, that it needs the national state. … There are tendencies and semi-Marxists who say that They are colossal because they are inevitably going to destroy the states National... then they are going to unify Europe, and then Europe with the US, and then to the USA with Japan, and then we go to the famous empire made by the Transnational... That is a lie, the transnationals sharpen competition among them, it is increasingly brutal... ." (45)

The Another contradiction that the multinationals have exacerbated to the extreme is the Contradiction between the social character of production and appropriation individual, since, in the field of the accumulation of wealth in a few In the hands of the multinationals, they provoked an unprecedented process of over-accumulation of capital. This is how Nahuel Moreno explained it: "The process of internationalization of the economy and its centralization of U.S. imperialism The U.S. and the big international monopolies – the "transnationals" – added to the speed of communications, it allows a dizzying pace of obtaining surplus value, distribution of profit and accumulation and capital accumulation. This same pace accelerates the crisis of the economy imperialist." (46)

Is that is, since it is a form of superior accumulation, multinationals achieved an unprecedented accumulation and over-accumulation of capital, very higher than that achieved by monopolies. But at the same time, the accelerated process of overaccumulation aggravated and sharpened the fall in the rate of profit. How do you produced this? This is how Moreno explains it: "Each enormous increase in the mass of surplus value recovers the rate of profit and makes it possible to overcome the crisis circumstantial. But it prepares a greater crisis: by colossally increasing capital, there is an overaccumulation of capital, which seeks investments where Profit; and since the mass of surplus value remains the same and capital has increased, the rate of profit falls abruptly, causing a new crisis conjunctural" (47)

The enormous over-accumulation of capital that the multinationals implied, acted collapsing the rate of profit and forced the capitalists to seek each time higher rates of exploitation to sustain the equivalent of the magnitude of capital that they accumulated. By failing to achieve among the masses of Europe and the USA a higher rate of exploitation, the enormous fortunes and capital accumulated by the capitalists with the multinationals acted by collapsing the rate of profit and aggravated the crisis of capitalism, because that same accumulated capital it requires more and more exploitation to maintain the rate of profit. This caused the outbreak of the chronic crisis of the world economy, which developed with recessionary peaks that began to follow one another, without capitalism could overcome it.

How Nahuel Moreno explained it: "The ultimate key to start understand all the phenomena that occur in the international arena from The end of the 60s is the chronic crisis that drags since that time the world economy... deepens incessantly and has caused approximately every five years of increasingly intense conjunctural crises... The chronic crisis has been advancing from the periphery to the center. This is a law that is given, as at least, since 1966 – we believe that in all this post-war period... He's had three acute conjunctural peaks or crises. The first, in 1966-67, led to a fall of the rate of profit and of American production... The second crisis occurred between 1973 and 1975 and affected all capitalist and Imperialist... The third was born in 1979 and was also generalized to the whole of the world economy..." (48)

These recessionary peaks occurred because the fall in the rate of profit was each and capitalism had increasing difficulties in overcoming the crises derived from its fall. Between 1970 and 1990 the rate of profit of the factories in the G7 economies fell by 40% compared to the 1950/70 period. For In 1990 the rate of profit fell 27% in relation to 1973 and about 45% in 1990. to its 1965 peak (49) The recovery of the post-war world economy, contradictorily weakened the economy American: "... had suffered a first stagnation in the second mid-'50s. Between '61 and '66 the GDP grew at an annual average of 2.3%, well below the averages of 6.1 between 1931 and 1950, or 5.2% between 1950 and 1955" (50)

With the multinationals, the whole process of accumulation and over-accumulation of capital and its velocity changed qualitatively, as a result of the increase and speed in the accumulation of capital that they achieved. This accelerated the pace of fall in profit rates and thus also accelerated qualitatively the rhythm of the crisis of capitalism. This aggravation of contradictions of capitalism, opened a dynamic that led the Keynesian regime to its exhaustion and end. In turn, the exhaustion of the Keynesian Regime expressed the exhaustion of multinationals as a Form of Accumulation.

Since from the point of view of the regime of accumulation, capitalism entered into a transition period that spans from the years '66/'67 to the '80s, decade in which new forms of accumulation emerge, the Multinational Corporations. During this period, Bretton trade and exchange relations exploded Woods, because in 1971, gold reserves barely reached a quarter of the total official U.S. debts The Nixon administration struck a blow proclaiming the free convertibility of the dollar, he signed the Smithsonian Agreement with which it devalued the dollar by 7.89% in relation to gold and thus made the debts and goods of the United States to strengthen the U.S. Products

In February 1973, the dollar was devalued another 10%. Europe and Japan dropped out also the gold parity of their currencies and put an end to Bretton Woods. The world returned to floating rates and inflation began to rise giving beginning of a long inflationary stage that began to emerge and devastate with the post-war agreements and wages. Global inflation worsened with the oil crisis of '74-'75, which pushed prices up crude oil and commodities worldwide.

Before the crisis of the Keynesian regime, capitalism in need of high rates of exploitation to reverse the crisis, he directed his hands more and more aggressively capital to the Third World, where the conditions of exploitation began to be higher than those in Europe and the USA. But in the Third World after World War II, an enormous series of processes had developed revolutionaries, wars and convulsions, product of the crisis of the old colonial powers France, England, Japan, Germany, which had dominated those regions and emerged destroyed from the 2nd war, which had weakened the chain of its colonial rule.

This caused a spectacular process of national liberation and the emergence of new nations. In front of this huge world revolutionary process that had as its main focus the countries backward, the new emerging imperialism, the U.S. began to fulfill its role as gendarme and defender of capitalism globally, with the aim of defeating the uprisings and revolutionary processes that took place in the countries Late.

Since Algeria, Vietnam, from Korea to China, Latin America or the Middle East, invasions by the U.S. armed forces and the armies of imperialist countries to defeat these revolutionary processes. This is The fundamental difference between the post-war period and the 1st and 2nd World Wars. Yes In the 1st and 2nd World Wars, different imperialist countries faced each other, in the post-war period, clashes are between imperialist armies and nations, peoples and revolutionary processes of the Third World countries that questioned their domination.

How Moreno explains: "From the post-war period, everyone The capitalist system, including the imperialist countries, has to accept the leadership of the imperialist government. and American dominance... and the impossibility, for the time being, of new wars inter-imperialist ... A stage in the character of wars closes and Open a new one. The stage of inter-imperialist wars is closed and enters the stage of counterrevolutionary wars" (51) The confrontation between imperialist armies and revolutionary processes From the economic point of view, it meant a spectacular development of the destructive forces, in many respects, analogous to that produced in the 2nd World War worldwide.

Revolutionary processes and wars developed globally in the Third World, a fundamental epicenter was the Southeast Asian region, where the greatest process of destruction of productive forces took place. As a result of this process, a new axis of accumulation, which was a key factor for the transition between the regime and the Keynesian and globalization. As we said, we define as an axis of accumulation the region and set of economies or countries that capitalism uses as a platform for its development in a given period. For exemplify the concept, let's say that the axis of accumulation in the period 1945/68 was the US/Europe tandem. 

The development of a new accumulation axis in Southeast Asia was the product of a brutal cycle of destruction of productive forces, which had begun with the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and continued with the Korean War between 1950 and 1953, in which there was 778,000 killed, wounded and maimed on the US side and between 1,187,000 and 1,545,000 on the side of North Korea, a total of 2.5 million civilians dead or injured, 5 million left homeless and more than 2 million refugees. 

One A new chapter opened in Southeast Asia with the Japanese withdrawal from Vietnam. After expelling the troops from Japan, the Vietnamese masses defeated to French imperialism and declared the independence of Vietnam, whose war of The liberation spread to Laos, Cambodia and China. To slow down the process revolutionary, the U.S. in 1964 began the invasion of Vietnam, a war unequal, where the U.S. military committed all kinds of horrors of human rights violations and yet suffered a historic defeat. The triumph of the Vietnamese masses and the world was extraordinary, but the balance of destruction of productive forces that it implied the Vietnam War was chilling. 281,896 soldiers died in the war and there were 300,000 wounded in the U.S. military camp. For the Vietnamese people It was a real catastrophe: 5 million, one hundred thousand civilians killed, 1 million 100 a thousand soldiers and guerrillas killed in combat and a minimum of 600 thousand wounded. The U.S. Armed Forces dropped a total of seven million tons bombs, including a large number of chemical weapons, Napalm, bacteriological, defoliant, etc., prohibited by the Geneva Protocol of 1925.

In World War II, all warring sides unloaded a total of one million two hundred thousand tons of bombs and explosives. Vietnam exceeded almost 6 times that figure. The defoliant Agent Orange, used in the U.S. bombing raids until 1971, continues to pollute the country today. In the rest of the region, imperialism continued to perpetrate serious destruction of productive forces, as was the case in Indonesia where with the Suharto coup with the support of the CIA, the dictatorship perpetrated massacres between 1965 and 1967 with 1.5 million deaths.

In Cambodia, Pol Pot's Stalinist dictatorship between 1975 and 1979 exterminated 2 million people, almost a third of the population. In China, the failure of the economic plan called "The Great Leap Forward" produced nearly 32 million dead from famine amid natural disasters, which gave way to the mobilizations and the growing discontent among the People. The Stalinist bureaucracy headed by Mao had managed to contain the rise of the masses in the Cultural Revolution, but in the face of the failure of the "Great Leap..." feared a new outbreak. Faced with the prospect of defeat in Vietnam, the U.S. changed its policy in the Southeast Asia and relocated to the agreement with the Chinese bureaucracy, taking advantage of the the crisis of Mao's government. Mao's Stalinist regime needed another plan and in the face of the pressure of the masses and the Soviet bureaucracy that threatened to intervene, agreed with the U.S.

China pledged to stop the revolution in Vietnam, in exchange for capital and U.S. investments to revitalize the economy. And he complied punctilious the agreement, even invading Vietnam in '79. For Moreno: "Another colossal opportunity opened up when the people supported by millions of Americans who were mobilizing against the Nothing was easier than to extend the that triumph to Laos, Cambodia and the entire continent.... But the Maoist leadership, five years later, it attacked and invaded Vietnam... Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia suffer equal or worse penalties, because of the treacherous leaderships" (52)

After the Nixon-Mao summit in December 1971, and with the guarantee of the bureaucracy China from the brake on the revolution in Southeast Asia, capitalism launched to invest in China's sea-lit provinces, where they emerged the "special zones", a slow process of penetration of multinationals. The process of investment arrival, The establishment of companies and capital took advantage of the non-existence of a proletariat of tradition in the region, the centuries-old famine of the peasantry and the betrayal of Beijing to the revolutionary process.

Like this this is also how the famous "Tigers" Thailand emerged, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong all countries with dictatorial regimes, that trample on the most elementary democratic rights and that crush everything attempt at union organization. The "Tigers" of the Southeast Asia, acted as a magnet for investments because they offered a "paradise" for the voracity of the multinationals that associated with the native bourgeoisies. Like this This is how the new "miracles" came about, the "miracle of the and the miracle of the "Tigers" of the Southeast Asia, which are the product of brutal processes of destruction of productive forces in the region. From the establishment of these processes is that the axis of accumulation Japan, Southeast Asia- The United States, in the transition from the Keynesian regime to globalization.

The restoration of capitalism in the USSR, Eastern Europe, Cuba and China

The The process of destruction of productive forces also extended to the former workers' states. Between the '40s and '70s, as a result of the defeat of the Nazis, the generalized crisis of the old imperialisms, and the processes revolutionary in various regions of the Third World, capitalism was expropriated in the countries of Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, Vietnam, South Korea, North, etc. Twenty years later, from the '70s onwards, these countries began to return to the capitalism, which meant the loss of important conquests obtained with revolutions. In the first years after the revolution, the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, the nationalization of the economy and the central economic planning made it possible to eliminate hunger, unemployment, poverty illiteracy, homelessness, as well as made possible massive access to population to science and culture.

The return of these countries to capitalism was not the product of the choice of the masses, but the product of 70 years of Stalinist policies that repressed violently to the workers and the peoples. For those countries to return to capitalism, Stalinism had to carry out successive counterrevolutions as in the Soviet Union the forced collectivization of the years 1928-1933 which affected more than 10 million people; the massacre of Trotskyists and opponents in the Soviet Union known as "The Great Purge", which reached more than two million people.

The Stalin's crimes in the USSR between 1924-1953 led to the deaths of millions between purges, famines, forced collectivizations and ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples and nationalities such as Ukrainians, Chechens, Baltics, etc. In Yugoslavia, an estimated 2 million Yugoslavs died a cause of the fierce repression of the Tito government between 1944 and 1977. The masses of Eastern European countries confronted these dictatorships in this period, but uprisings such as the one in Berlin in 1953 were defeated, the Hungarian workers' councils in 1956, the Czechoslovakia trial in 1968. Only in China with the "Great Leap Forward" died around 30 million people. The restoration of capitalism meant a serious process of development of destructive forces in which they died around 50 million people, as the crowning of 70 years of betrayals policies of the "official world left", the Stalins, Mao, Kuruchev, Castro, Deng Xiaoping, Brezhnev and Gorbachev.

The massacres perpetrated by Stalinism were part of its policy of socialism "in one country" that included the dissolution of the Third International at the request of the capitalist powers as part of the Yalta and Potsdam agreements, as well as the policy of the socialism "in one country" and its refusal systematic and permanent to federate to build the workers' states. All This strategy made possible the brutal retreat of these revolutions. The establishment of one-party dictatorships that perpetrated massacres and persecutions, as well as the liquidation of all opponents and Marxists revolutionaries such as Leon Trotsky, ended up crowning a policy of support and support for multinationals "from the left" and a a formidable tool to give survival to the capitalist system.

The Colossal development of the arms industry and destruction of nature

How we saw with the two world wars and in the post-war period, capitalism destroyed immense masses of capital and human lives. This whole enormous process of destruction of productive forces left the balance of poverty, misery, infant mortality for millions, added to the deterioration of nature and the environmental crisis. The destruction of nature is the product of government policy violations of international treaties, pollution environmental abuse, the depredation of seas, rivers and natural resources, waste of non-renewable resources, the effects of which such as the greenhouse effect or the climate change are increasingly evident, more uncontrollable and affect with more strength to the poor and dispossessed. 

According to the United Nations Programme for Development: "... A response is urgently needed decisive to the problem of climate change. In 2007, global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) increased again, reaching 30 billion of metric tons, which is equivalent to a growth of 3.2% compared to the the previous year, and an increase of 35% over the 1990 level... The rate of Deforestation shows signs of remission, but remains alarmingly high And while there have been some successes in conservation... the loss of biodiversity continues relentlessly..." (57)

In the analysis of the development reached by the destructive forces of the Under capitalism it is indispensable to observe the expansion of the arms industry. Military expenditures reached US$1,460 million and the expansion of the profits of arms consortiums in Europe and the United States, are the most irrefutable proof of the ever-closer dependence on the development and economic expansion, with the development of the war industry.

The wars, the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, massacres, torture and persecutions, perpetrated by dictatorships and totalitarian governments that defend capitalism or invasions such as those of Vietnam and Iraq, are an increasingly necessary and evident resource to achieve the reactivation of the economy in the G7 countries, especially in the US, and at the same time, avoid the risk of global depression. In the United States, the development of the forces The destructive consequences ensured the reproduction of the U.S. economy, where the military cats played a decisive role. As we have seen, in the 1930s the military expenditures allowed the U.S. to emerge from recession and at the same time time to emerge as the great capitalist superpower after the Second World War. World war.

The military expenditures constituted an important contribution to the growth of its GDP, making the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex a knot fundamental for the development of its economy. Among some of them, the five largest U.S. defense contractors are Lockheed Martin, Boeing Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics, Honeywell, Halliburton and BAE Systems. These companies are followed by thousands of other defense companies small companies and subcontractors. Some, like Lockheed Martin at Bethesda (Maryland) and Raytheon in Waltham, Massachusetts get close to 100% of its business in defense contracts. Others, such as Honeywell in Morristown, New York, Jersey, have important consumer merchandise divisions. Contractors U.S. defense agencies have been enjoying the big budgets of the Pentagon since March 2003, that is, since the beginning of the Iraq war and have recorded significant increases in the total returns of the shareholders, ranging from 68% (Northrop Grumman) to 164% (General Dynamics) from March '03 to September '06.

The military expenditures fund foundations that receive billions of dollars, such as, for example, the Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Scaife Foundation or the Coors Foundation, which act as a permanent military lobby orienting U.S. foreign policy toward war. In that lot there was The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Heritage Foundation, the Washington Neoconservatives Institute for Near Politics Oriente, the Center for Security Policy, the Project for the New Century American (PNAC), etc. Those Arms Industry Lobbying Political Centers Push Adventures military to the US Army threatening the peoples and democratic guarantees of the world's population as a whole. In 1991, after the fall of the Wall of Berlin, the US defense budget was 298.9 billion Dollars. By 2006, that budget had risen to $447.4 billion dollars, and this does not include the $100 billion more spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is estimated that U.S. military expenditures, About 48 percent of the world's total military spending in 2005, according to figures The U.S. accounts for less than 5% of the world's population and about 25% of total world production.

The U.S. military spending gobbles up 21% of total federal budget In 2006, $2,144.3 million, equivalent to the GDP of several countries together. These expenses have been growing over time involving thousands of companies and millions of people. According to the Rodrigue Tremblay's calculations in 2006 the Department of Defense of the United States 2,143,000 people, the private contractors of the 3,600,000 workers, a total of 5,743,000 jobs, to the that some 25 million war veterans must be added. In the United States, about 30 million people, a figure equivalent to 20% of the Economically Active Population, receive direct and indirect income from military public spending. (58) For Moreno: "... In this post-war period we have seen the colossal development of the arms industry, that is, of the destructive forces of society, and also a development of technology that has led to an impoverishment of the to a crisis of humanity, to growing wars and to the beginning of a destruction of nature. The current development of the capitalist economy... has a growing tendency to the destruction of man and of the nature..." (59)

The Discussion on the development of destructive forces and technology

In the analysis of the process of destruction of productive forces so as not to overwhelm With data, we have not mentioned the brutalities carried out by imperialism in Middle East, especially Palestine, in Africa and other regions, we have only mentioned some to illustrate the concept. But it's important to know that We mean when we speak of the development of destructive forces, to which is important to know the debate that took place in Marxism and the left in the post-war period.

In that period, defenders of capitalism and some Marxists such as Ernest Mandel, they affirmed that the development of the productive forces was the predominant in the development of capitalism. Nahuel Moreno refuted this hypothesis. According to Moreno: "The non-existence of a crisis like the of the year 1929 in this post-war period..., the economic boom... for twenty years (a starting more or less from the year 1950), more... a spectacular technological development, led revisionism to raise a new anti-Marxist economic conception... what a new stage has opened, the neo-capitalist or neo-imperialist one that has become difference from the imperialist defined by Lenin as one of total decadence, of chronic crisis of the capitalist economy." (60)

The technological revolution, the economic boom, rising living standards of the masses in the countries of the 1st world and some led many economists and sectors of the left to formulate the theory of "neo-imperialism" with which they supported that the productive forces were developing. If the theory of "neo-imperialism" was true, then Marxism was wrong, since it held that the capitalism was in the imperialist stage did not have as its fundamental feature the development of the productive forces.

¿Era Is Marxism's statement wrong? For the neo-imperialist current, the great technological revolution that took place in the post-war period was synonymous with development of the productive forces. Moreno explained the magnitude of this Technical revolution: "The greatest technological revolution of all The history of mankind has been carried out under the domination of the imperialism... cybernetics, rocketry, atomic energy, petrochemicals, chemical fertilizers, scientific discoveries in all fields... herself The most human being has been carried out under the domination of the imperialism... cybernetics, rocketry, atomic energy, petrochemicals, chemical fertilizers, scientific discoveries in all fields... herself The most spectacular of the advances made by mankind: the beginning of the conquest of the cosmos, of the universe..." (61)

But for Moreno, great technological development is not synonymous with the development of productive forces: "... the affirmation that in this supposed new stage The productive forces are undergoing a colossal development, thanks to the enormous technological progress... it is an anti-class and anti-human conception... For Marxists The development of the productive forces is a category formed by by three elements: man, technology and nature... And the main force man is productive; specifically the working class, the peasantry and all the workers... Technical development is not development of forces productive if it does not allow the enrichment of man and nature... The technology, as well as science and education, are neutral phenomena that are They become productive or destructive according to class utilization that they be given... and their use depends on the class that has them in their hands." (62)

Tanned He argued that the development of destructive forces was expressed in the growth of the arms industry: "... In this post-war period We have seen the colossal development of the arms industry, that is to say, of the destructive forces of society, and also a development of technology that it has led to an impoverishment of man... crisis of humanity, ... Wars Increased... beginning of the destruction of nature. The current development of the capitalist economy... has a growing tendency to the destruction of man and nature..." (63)

In In reality, there was a relative development of the forces in the post-war period. productive development, but within the framework of an immense process of development of the destructive forces. As the process of development of the productive forces and destructive were developed simultaneously and contradictorily, I was trying to know if one or the other existed, it was about knowing which of the two it was the predominant process. The study of the Keynesian regime and development of capitalism in the post-war period allows us to verify that development predominated of destructive forces. With the exhaustion of the Keynesian regime and the multinationals, a transition process in which the conditions were prepared for the passage of the Keynesian regime to another diametrically opposed, globalization. And in the The globalization regime will be one more step in the process of centralization of capital that gave rise to a higher Form of Accumulation: the Multinational Corporations.

The End of the Keynesian Regime: What Keynesian Economists Hide

The The growth achieved by capitalism with the Keynesian regime was clear, those who defend it and call themselves "Keynesians" or "Neo- Keynesians" try to demonstrate that capitalism is capable of to have a successful model that allows economic conquests to be granted to the masses. These same economists hide the reasons that explain why in the period Between 1945 and 1968 capitalism achieved the "boom". When the "Keynesians" such as Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Nouriel Roubini, affirm that capitalism can recreate the "regime Keynesian" today and loudly demand stimuli economic works, public works, income taxes, and they affirm that with these measures can be overcome by simply Lie. They hide the fact that the regime inspired by Lord Keynes was possible because cities, bridges, roads, counties, municipalities and factories.

The Keynesian regime had as a precondition for its development, the destruction of the of thousands of buildings, warehouses and transport. And most importantly, destroyed millions of human lives, on the battlefields, in the of concentration and with atomic bombs. With war, capitalism confirmed its decadence, its cruelty and its capacity to inflict serious suffering for the masses. With In the 1st and 2nd World Wars, imperialism overcame the crisis by colossal development of destructive forces and the classic mechanism that Marx called burning or annihilation of capital. The destruction of productive forces that preceded the Keynesian regime, was a formidable business for the big and a colossal leap in the development of destructive forces with their highest expression, the war industry.

To Since the outbreak of the crisis in the world economy, millions of people in the world, and movements such as "Occupy Wall Street", the 15- O and the indignados of the world speak out against the multinationals. Many Keynesians approach the movements and sympathize with them. Are Keynesians for or against multinationals? When Krugman, Roubini, Stiglitz or other Keynesians begin the siren songs against multinationals, it is worth asking them a simple question: How did multinationals emerge? The answer is simple: from the Keynesian regime.

Maybe many believe in those who claim the Keynesian regime as a form of functioning of world capitalism. They may believe when they are told that allowed a relative development of the productive forces, high rates of growth and repression of finance capital. Those decades of the "boom" seemed to contradict the Marxist theses that the economy was in the imperialist epoch, of decadence and domination of the financial capital.

Without However, the study of the Keynesian regime confirms the decline of the capitalism, because it shows that thanks to it the multinationals emerged, a form of accumulation and concentration of capital far superior to its predecessors, monopolies. The Keynesian was an economic regime that did not needed finance capital for a short period, because it arose and became developed thanks to U.S. investments in Europe.

In other words, it had a first-rate investor: the imperialist state of the United States. Multinationals and Keynesianism are complementary elements, one is the form of accumulation of the Keynesian regime, the other is the accumulation regime of multinationals. Keynesians' criticisms of multinationals are hypocrites and a denial of the history of capitalism, not history but of its modern history. Multinationals heightened the crisis of capitalism to such a level that in order to solve it the capitalists were forced to compelled to launch increasingly brutal offensive masses upon the masses.

Like this Nahuel Moreno explained it: "Only by achieving a permanent increase, practically unlimited exploitation will be able to overcome imperialism and the chronic crisis, since the increase in the of capital is incessant and dizzying. (64) The contradictions of the Keynesian regime that evolved and worsened were preparing the conditions for the end of the "boom", and the transition to a new world economic regime, diametrically opposed to the Keynesian one: the globalization.

The that developed from then on was a difficult, traumatic and convulsive phase transition from the Keynesian Accumulation regime to the Accumulation regime of globalization, to try to resolve the contradictions and crises of the capitalism. The Presentation of the General Law of the Forms of Accumulation, continues with the analysis of the emergence of the Global Corporations and the Economic Regime of Globalization, as well as This is how the current capitalist crisis can be understood, with the complex structure of globalization as a framework, which is developed in the chapter following.

Notes

(1) Karl Marx: Capital, Book III Chapter XV

(2) and (3) Karl Marx: Capital, Book I, Chapter XXIII, The General Law of Accumulation capitalist

(4), (5), and (6) Federico Engels: Supplement and Complement to Book III of Capital

(7) and (8) Perry Anderson. Transitions from Antiquity to Feudalism. Part Two 4. The dynamics Feudal

(9), (10), (11), (12), and (13) Frederick Engels: Supplement and Complement to Book III of Capital

(14) Nahuel Moreno. Four Theses on Spanish and Portuguese Colonization.

(15), (16), (17) Reyna Pastor of Togneri History of the Workers' Movement. Chapter I Artisans and Peasants in crisis7

(18) Perry Anderson. Transitions from Antiquity to Feudalism. Part Two 4. The Feudal dynamics

(19) Alberto J. Plá, History of the Workers' Movement. Introduction

(20) Karl Marx: Capital, Book I, Chapter 12, Division of Labor and Manufacture

(21) Frederick Engels: Supplement and Complement to Book III of Capital

(22) Nahuel Moreno. School of Cadres Economics 1984.

(23) Frederick Engels: Supplement and Complement to Book III of Capital

(24), (25), and (26) Karl Marx: The Capital, Book Three, Chapter 36, Notes on the Pre-Capitalist Period

(27) Karl Marx: Capital, Book I, Chapter XXIII, The General Law of Accumulation capitalist

(28) Frederick Engels: Supplement and Complement to Book III of Capital

(29), (30), (31) and (32) Lenin. The Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. (1916)

(33) and (34) João Henrique Galvão (PSTU), Brazil "The Historical Significance of the Crisis of 1929"

(35) Peter Dicken "Multinational Corporations, Nation States." Fuente https://www.globalizacion.or/desarrollo

(36) Feature Noam Chomsky, https://www.ecaminos.org/leer.php/4920

(37) Nahuel Moreno. School of Cadres Economics (1984)

(38) Nahuel Moreno. Update of the Transition Program. (1980)

(39) Leon Trotsky. Europe and America. The two poles of the workers' movement and the type of End of reformism. 1926 The New Papers of America and Europe

(40) Leon Trotsky. Fascism and the New Deal. Marxism and our time.

(41) Antony C. Sutton, "Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler"

(42) Toby Rogers. The Guardian. September 2004

(43) Nahuel Moreno. Update of the Transition Program. (1980) Thesis VII "Thirty years of great revolutionary triumphs"

(44) Long wawes, institutional changes, and historical trends. Minqi Li, Feng Xia, Andong Zhu. Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

(45) Nahuel Moreno. School of Cadres Economics 1984.

(46), (47) and (48) Nahuel Moreno. Theses on the World Situation. (Secretariat Project International of the LIT, October 20, 1984). I. The chronic crisis of the World economy

(49) Robert Brenner "Turbulence in the World Economy" Chapter III The beginning of the crisis

(50) Robert Brenner "Turbulence in the World Economy" Chapter II The long rebound

(51) Nahuel Moreno. Update of the Transition Program. Thesis VII. Thirty years of Great revolutionary triumphs

(52) Nahuel Moreno . Thesis on the world situation - International Secretariat of the LIT- CI, 10/20/84

(53), (54), (55) and (56) Martin Hernández. "The restoration did not show the superiority of the capitalism". Living Marxism 16- 2007

(57) USAID Population Reference Bureau. World Population Data Table 2009.

(58) Rodrigue Tremblay, "The Five Pillars of the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex", September 25, 2006

(59), (60), (61), (62) and (63) Nahuel Moreno. Program Update transitional. (1980) Thesis XIV

(64) Nahuel Moreno. Thesis on the world situation - International Secretariat of the LIT- CI, 10/20/84

Forms- Part II: The Current Crisis of Capitalism and the Regime of Capitalism Globalization

All The process of destruction of productive forces in the post-war period prepared the conditions for moving from a lower centralization of capital, the Multinationals, to a higher one, the Global Corporations, which surpass and at the same time they contain the modern Multinationals. These constitute a process of centralization and accumulation of superior capital that both surpass and contain the modern post-war multinationals. In this way, we will begin the analysis of the current crisis of capitalism around the emergence of Global Corporations and the regime of globalization that is constituted around them. These companies, whose name has been popularized by economists and analysts who defend capitalism as "Too Big to Fall" (in English "Too Big" big to Fail") are the ones that explain the seriousness of the current crisis of the capitalism. With the introduction of Multinational Corporations, and the analysis of the regime of Globalization We continue the presentation of the Law General of the Forms of Capitalist Accumulation (Forms).

The Global Corporations: The Bourgeoisie's Monopolistic Form of Accumulation Imperialist

The Multinational corporations are companies that dominate several branches at the same time of trade, industry and finance worldwide. If the characteristic of the modern post-war multinationals was the domain of a branch of the production on a global scale, Multinational Corporations are a form of Superior accumulation because they monopolize several branches simultaneously, which allows them to achieve an accumulation of capital greater than that achieved by the modern post-war multinationals. The dominion over various branches of production, commerce and finance that achieved by the Multinational Corporations was the product of a process M&A, Merger and Acquisitions), which developed increasingly from the 1980s onwards. the '80s. The colossal over-accumulation of capital that this new form of Accumulation, led to a spectacular development of speculative capital and that participated in the M&A process.

This largest accumulation produced by capitalism is colossal, the largest ever produced by capitalism. It currently consists of almost US$700 billion in financial products derivatives registered by the Bank of Basel in mid-2008, but adding other speculative businesses, it reaches a financial mass that would be exceeding US$ 1,000 billion. The process of centralization of capital he made a gigantic leap in 20 years. By 2002, 200 transnationals over 65,000 accounted for 30% of the world's GDP. 91% of the 500 elderly are from the US, Europe and Japan. (1)

"A 48% (239) of the top 500 firms are American... 31% (154) in Europe Western and only 11% (64) from Japan. The nations of the Third World, of Asia, Africa and Latin America have only 4% (22) ... The 5 signatures At the top of the list are all Americans: 8 of the 10 largest are Americans and 64% (16) of the 25 largest are also Americans... 28% (7) … are European and 8% (2) Japanese... at the pinnacle of global power the American-European multinationals... they have no rivals" (2) The M&A are buying and selling companies, commercial movements that express profound clashes of sectors of the imperialist bourgeoisie with each other, with bourgeois class sectors of the backward countries and the workers and peoples of the world. The stronger sectors liquidate the weaker ones, as part of the a tough and stark battle for control of markets and capital. Capital fictional in the period 2000-2009 took a monumental leap and grew 10 times from 95 trillion U$S to 1000 trillion U$S, equivalent to about 10 times GDP worldwide.

Capital fiction is a concept first used by Marx, when he referred to securities for loans whose value is imaginary and illusory and only materializes when they are exchanged for money or goods. The credit created by banks is creation of fictitious capital because they make money available that does not have: "... Not only the bulk of banks' assets it is fictitious, since it is composed of titles and this kind of wealth in imaginary money... With the development of interest-bearing capital and the system of credit, seems to double and sometimes triple all the capital... The largest Some of this "money-capital" is purely fictitious. All deposits, with the exception of the reserve fund, are nothing more than balances held of the banker, but they never exist on deposit." (3)

The exponential development of the fictitious capital that corporations suppose multinationals, has caused capital from diverse origins, from paradises prosecutors and organized crime, rotate and circulate more and more accelerated and convulsive, which causes severe turbulence, and imbalances in the economy. Megamergers and M&A are not a natural process, nor are they spontaneous, Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act into law, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, and Great Depression-era antitrust legislation to facilitate the centralization of capital. The complex structure of corporations multinationals that emerge from the M&A process, can be analyzed by looking at the case of several of them.

See for example, the Investment Bank JP Morgan Chase, which emerged in 2000 from the merger of the Chase and Manhattan banks, two traditional and aristocratic banks groups from the USA, Rockefeller and Morgan. JP Morgan Chase lists 78 shares companies from 11 countries in the most diverse branches of production and trade. This structure of the Multinational Corporations, which dominate several branches of the production, trade and finance simultaneously that we observe by analyzing the JP Morgan Chase, is the same structure that we can observe by analyzing other Corporations such as Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas, UBS, Barclays, Dexia, BofA, etc., which are Multinational Corporations, because they dominate several branches through which they are on a global scale simultaneously.

The Investment banks are the heart of global corporations

The complex structure of multinational corporations is explained by the location of Investment Banks, which concentrate their activity on the control of the immense masses of capital implied by M&A. Lenin anticipated the importance of banks in the process of concentration and centralization of capitals: "... By keeping a checking account for several capitalists, the bank, it seems, is carrying out a purely technical operation... But when this operation grows to gigantic proportions, it turns out that a handful of monopolists subordinates the commercial and industrial operations of all capitalist society..." (4)

The Investment Banks, should not be confused with commercial banks, because, although linked, they are absolutely different. While the banks Businesses specialize in credit for businesses and individuals to purchases of all kinds of goods, the Investment Banks they specialize in credit for the purchase and repurchase of merchandise Exclusive: companies. The Investment Banks Buy and Sell Parts of Multinationals and Large Corporations companies, through the issuance and creation of securities and assets such as derivatives and thus control capital flows, investments, the placement of shares and the M&A process. In globalization, the development of multinational corporations located the investment banks at the heart of its structure and since multinational corporations are the predominant form of accumulation in capitalism, the Investment Banks They became, in turn, the heart of the capitalist system.

¿How and where did Investment Banks come from? Let's look a little briefly at his history and development. From the development of monopolies, cartels and trusts in the second half of the nineteenth century, both investment capital, how the purchases and repurchases of companies were the domain of individuals and rich families. These oligarchies and families controlled the flows of capital and investments, the Vanderbilts, Whitneys, Carnegies, Rockefellers, Morgans, and Mellon in the USA, the Delesserts and Pereire in France, the Mevissen, Warburg and Siemens in Germany, the Rothschilds throughout Europe and Baring Brothers in England.

These oligarchies made their fortunes by financing wars such as those of Secession in the United States, the Napoleonic Secession in Europe, or the Crimea, controlling the arms industry, steel and railways. Morgan Bank was the monopoly issuer of war bonds for England and France, as well as He also invested in supplies for war equipment for both countries. The US Steel Carnegie, a steel company of the Morgan group, was in 1901 the most important company in the world. and the Rockefellers dominated the oil industry with Standard Oil.

The financial oligarchies that controlled the most important cartels and trusts in Europe and the United States also promoted telegraphs and developed under their control the mining industry to own precious metals such as silver and to provide metal to the Central Banks of the most important capitalist states. Powerful. Several Banks were founded by these families to promote investments such as the Crédit Mobilier, a bank that raised capital for the construction of the network French railway, but which, at the same time, served credit to the State, founded the Gas and Bus Companies, the Maritime Company and the new trams of Paris. The Mobilier also made investments to build railways in Spain, Switzerland, Austria-Hungary and Russia. In 1853 the Darmstadt Bank in Germany, and in 1855 the Austrian Kreditanstalt, both of them, under the model of Crédit Mobilier.

In The U.S. had an important development banks such as J.P. Morgan or Goldman Sachs. But in the midst of the Great Depression, capital and investment banks suffered restrictions due to the crisis caused by speculation unbridled that they had promoted. The Enactment of Glass-Steagall and Others regulations in the 1930s, were a repression of capital speculative, for example, J. P. Morgan was forced to choose to develop commercial banking or investment banking activities, choosing the former because it was seen as more profitable at the time.

Faced At this change, many J.P. Morgan partners decided to create the group that is now known as Morgan Stanley. This caused that, after the 2nd World War, in the Keynesian regime, the Investment Banks had a stake in the marginal in the economy. It was only in the 1980s, with the government of Reagan, resurfaced and staged great speculative maneuvers to large-scale, hostile mergers and acquisitions of companies, liquidations of assets, bankruptcies, bankruptcies, mass layoffs and scandals. They starred in the 1987 crash and the financial scandal of RJR Nabisco in 1989.

Of Investment Banks emerged derivatives

For In the early 1990s, Investment Banks began to return to the center of the world. the world economic scene. Shearson Investment Banks were already active Lehman Hutton, KKR, Fortsmann Little & Co.,Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, or Drexel Burnham Lambert. But when with the government of Clinton, all Great Depression legislation was repealed, the process M&A world has jumped, and speculative operations have emerged every year. increasingly complex, such as "leveraged buyouts," LBO "leveraged buy-out"), or private equity (in "private equity").

These they followed the tradition of merchant capital of buying low, and selling high, for example, with the LBO, large companies with debts were acquired by anticipating a minimum capital and applying for loans, which is called "leverage." Private Equity had a "boom" between 2003-2007 performing in similar way, only with companies outside the stock exchange, to restructure them with the aim of profits. All these speculative maneuvers are developed using derivatives as instruments, insurance on the future price of a commodity that is "derived" from possible increases or decreases in the price of the same in the future, hence its name.

The derivatives are a special type of fictitious capital that emerged in '93 in the USA, based on the studies of investment banks, especially JP Morgan and expanded the world, being today between 60 and 70% of the mass of 1,000 billion fictitious capital. They are financial products of extreme complexity, among which products of even more extreme complexity, the so-called "synthetic" financial products that debt papers and options that are sold all together in a "package".

Herself he euphemistically calls them "toxic assets," because are of very different origin and reliability and contain bad debts that act as a real time bomb. Investment Banks developed a process of concentration of enormous masses of fictitious capital, of imaginary and illusory value that devalue the economy as a whole, and to the extent that they are not valued, they prepare a serious crisis. The M&A operations in a high percentage failed, because they involved enormous levels of leverage and credit, which left the corporations with high debts in money and derivatives.

All M&A operations are a threat because the roles that are exchanged they contain many debts and a single declaration of non-payment can cause the generalized bankruptcy. An index is currently used to know the financial statement of large companies that is called EBITDA (in English Earning Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) reflecting the Profit and loss statement of a company. The EBITDA ratio of the companies that make up the S&P500, top ten corporations show that issued trillions of debt between 2003-2007, but their profits fell after 2006 and those billions are pending payment.

The PER (Price Earning Ratio) is a very important indicator used in the stock market, being the number of times the annual net profit is contained in the price of an action. The high P/E indicates the dimension of the speculative process, which leads to to shares at a high price, several times the actual share price, and that does not reflect the reality of the company. Taking the S&P stock market index of New York, both in 1929, 1966, 1972 and 1987 a P/E of 20 times was reached the value of the share, which was repeated in 2007. For Moody's of 10 o'clock largest purchases made by Private Equity, only 4 have their companies in a stable situation, while the other companies border on bankruptcy. (5)

The Investment Banks Promoted Hedge Funds and capitalist states to Sovereign Wealth Funds. All these economic entities are made up of wealthy speculators who swindle the whole world with other people's money. Sovereign Wealth Funds, for example, are state financial institutions from countries such as Norway, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, China, etc. that invest trade surpluses and in some cases reach more importance than many of the top 50 banks in the world.

Between these entities rotate the fictitious capital and also through offshore centers or "havens" small countries where deposits do not pay taxes, they can found companies that are not obliged to publish accounts, or lists of directors and shareholders. This allows money laundering with total impunity, which which attracts great riches. In 1960 there were only 7 tax havens, while which are currently around 100. Began in the islands of Bermuda at the beginning of the twentieth century, in the '70s developed in Monaco, the Channel Islands, and later in Ireland, Hungary, Romania, Cyprus, Madeira, Singapore, Hong Kong, Finland and Gibraltar. By the end of 1998, there were 60 jurisdictions with 4,000 offshore banks with assets estimated at US$5 trillion (6)

The Regime of Accumulation of Globalization

After the end of the Keynesian regime, at the beginning of the 1980s, last century, starting with the governments of Thatcher in Great Britain and Ronald Reagan in the U.S. began a period of capitalism in which he consolidated and unequally and combined a new regime of accumulation, called "neoliberalism", "globalization", or "New Economy" and which we will call globalization, its best-known name. The globalization is a Regime of Accumulation diametrically opposed to globalization. Keynesian. If in the Keynesian regime there were relative economic concessions to the masses, globalization meant a violent economic counteroffensive, political and military against the masses of the whole world, to impose low wages, deregulation, privatizations and the dismantling of conquests workers' and people's struggles, as well as a recolonization of backward countries by the capitalist powers. S2000

The Globalization was the product of a serious process of destruction of forces productive development in the post-war period in the Third World countries that prepared the conditions for moving from a lower centralization of capital, multinationals, to a higher one, multinational corporations. In all During this period, together with the process of capital concentration, the tendency to the concentration of the impoverished masses and the proletariat This was expressed in the emergence of the megacities that we analyze in detail in the final chapter of this book.

In globalization there was no sustained "boom" of the economy for several decades as in the Keynesian regime. There was alternation of periods of economic growth and decline. The decade of the '90s was a decade of a high growth, although it occurred within the framework of a general downward trend and serious turbulence, imbalances and imbalances in the economy that were the the product of a spectacular growth of financial and parasitic capital. The development of this type of capital aggravated to the paroxysm all the contradictions of capitalism.

In The "boom" economy grew at an annual rate average of 4.9% between 1950 and 1973. Between 1974 and 1979 this rate fell to 3.4%. in the '80s it dropped to 3.3% and in the '90s it dropped to 2.3%. Comparing the period '73-'79 With the period '79-'90 the growth in the industry fell 33% in the G7. Comparing the period '79-'90, with the period '90-'96 the GDP of the US fell 25% and that of the G7 fell 45%. In the 1990s, GDP grew at a rate 3.01% below the 4% of the '50s and '60s, 3.26% of the '70s and the 3.02% of the '80s. (7) In terms of productivity growth, between '91 and 2001, the rate grew at the same rate. 1.81% per year, better than the 1.38 of the 1980s, but below 1.94% of the '70s and a far cry from the 2.84 of the '60s and the 2.80 of the '50s." (8) The The U.S. rate of profit for Dumènil and Levy in 1997 was half its value in 1948, and between 60 and 75% of its value by 1956-65. (9) View Overall, this general trend shows that globalization is a regime which expresses the deepening of the general decadence of capitalism

The Beginning of globalization: the violent exploitative offensive in the 1980s

Nahuel Moreno said: "U.S. imperialism has managed to overcome its last crisis. Since 1982 its production has increased. This was achieved super- by exploiting all the countries and workers of the world, including the Americans, in a a degree never seen in recent decades... Marxists who believe that the U.S. imperialism overcame its crisis through the colossal indebtedness of the The Reagan administration sees only the outward aspect of phenomena. In In reality, Reagan got the loans and capital he needed because In recent years, exploitation has increased impressively of workers around the world. Thus he raised the rate of profit. reflected in the interest rate – and this attracted capital" (10)

The '80s is a decade of violent attacks on the working class. Between 1973 and 1990, in the U.S., workers lost 12% of their real wages due to hour in the private sector and 14% in the manufacturing industry. In contrast, In the period 1890/1973 prior to globalization, the annual growth rate of the real hourly wage was 2% and there was no decade in which it was less than 1.2%, but in globalization these indices for the first time in 80 years became negative.

Also there was a sucking of wealth from the backward countries with the debt mechanism by which millions were transferred to the coffers of the Multinational. The economic offensive was accompanied by a counteroffensive political and military against revolutionary processes, such as the "contra" guerrillas in Nicaragua or the IDE (Strategic Defense Initiative) a missile shield in Europe by targeting the Kremlin. Despite the friction and contradictions between the USSR and the USA, the world anti-worker counteroffensive was spearheaded by the governments of Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the Kingdom United States, but accompanied by the governments of the USSR, the countries of Eastern Europe and China, as a result of Gorbachev and Deng Xiao Ping also advancing in a harsh anti-worker offensive.

"Perestroika", the Gorbachev's plan opened the economy to the installation of multinationals and advanced in the dismantling of the social conquests obtained in those countries through the revolutions that had expropriated capitalism. Nor Reagan, Thatcher, Nakasone, or Gorbachev achieved political defeats historical, nor definitive, on the masses, but they carried out coups, maneuvers and advances on the workers' economic conquests, which provoked a enormous advance of social inequalities.

The Capitalism achieved great economic growth in the '90s. But even in those phases in which there was growth, the indices obtained were less than the "boom" years and never reached the levels of the Keynesian regime. For Brenner: "The rates recorded during the business cycle of the seventies and eighties... Were... below those of the long post-war expansion... during the decade of the ninety the behaviour of the advanced capitalist economies as a whole (G7) ... It was no better than that of the eighties, which in turn was worse than the previous decade and much lower than that of the fifties and the sixty."(11)

In Globalization changed the pole of accumulation, the old industries that were the pole in the Keynesian regime were displaced, and a new pole of accumulation around the telecommunications industry, computer science, biogenetics and pharmaceuticals. If the car was the The basic commodity of the Keynesian regime, the computer was the basis of the globalization.

Like this Moreno pointed it out: "... All the old industries and dominant monopolies You're being displaced. Automotive, steel, coal, aviation, domestic industries are in a crisis with no way out... I agree... in to point out that the Keynesian system no longer works... There are several new branches to which that the hopes of capitalism are at stake: information, space, genetic engineering, automation. Some say that all the problems They will be fixed from 1990 when these branches begin to produce in immense quantities for an avid market." (12)

The Changes in trade with globalization

In In relation to trade, there were important changes with respect to the which reached their peak when the World Trade Organization (WTO). This involved a set of regulations that favored multinational corporations such as the intellectual property, patents on technological advances, the payment of royalties and royalties, the establishment of subsidies and facilities for Settlement to corporations in countries, regions, municipalities, and states where they were found tax-free, with more favorable labor standards for the search for profits.

The The configuration of world trade was at the service of guaranteeing the multinational corporations geographical areas and regions in which they could dominate the exchange as they pleased. Thus, they advanced in the consolidation of their profits, eliminating competition, colonizing the economies of the backward countries and favouring price manipulation, thanks to the monopoly of the productive branches that exercised in the free areas commerce. The WTO made it possible to take advantage of education and health services, at the service of large companies.

One change of historical character is that after centuries in which the Atlantic Ocean was center of world trade, the center of world trade will begin to pass from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Due to the development of the axis of South-East Asian, supported by the economy of Japan, the The emergence of tigers and the "boom" in China, all this caused this change from the mid-'90s.

Another of the most important changes important in world trade in globalization is that it developed since the '70s an incessant increase in prices and a permanent process of global inflation, which affected commodities and oil, which brought accompanied by the increase in food prices, the high cost of living and the growing plundering of workers' wages, in addition to worse conditions of life for the vast majority of the world's population. The growth of the inflation was very important in the '70s, lower in the '80s and then upward in the '90s and the first decade of the 21st century.

One of the most important changes in world trade in globalization is that developed since the '70s an incessant increase in prices and a permanent process of global inflation, which affected raw materials and the which brought with it an increase in food prices, the scarcity of life and the growing dispossession of workers' wages, in addition to worse living conditions for the vast majority of the world's population. The growth in inflation was very important in the '70s, lower in the '80s and then upwards in the '90s and first decade of the 21st century.

The inflation is a two-pronged element, firstly, a clear symptom of the serious crisis that capitalism has been dragging on since the two world wars and that both the post-war "boom" and the monopolistic forms accumulation superiors such as multinationals did nothing more than sharpen. But, on the other hand, it is a formidable tool of the state to lower wages and facilitate the process of exploitation that benefits multinational corporations.

Let's go to analyze this question. In globalization there are enormous masses of capital that began to pour massively into financial speculation with assets such as oil, food, currencies, companies, etc., which caused a tendency to a systematic and permanent rise in prices that it devastated the standard of living of the majority of the world's population. Of these immense masses of capital, the banks extracted small portions of the capital. to provide loans at usurious rates to workers and sectors Popular. But these masses of capital are, above all, the basis of the enormous loans that allow large entrepreneurs to develop all kinds of speculative maneuvers. How were these masses of capital formed? Are constituted by reserves, in metals, dollars, securities and other currencies, resulting from trade surpluses, industry, countries oil, gas, mining and agro-industrial suppliers, and arise from the exploitation of the workers and peoples of the whole world.

Like this Nahuel Moreno explained it: "The explanation that Some Marxists say that the imperialist economy overcomes its crises just by creating purchasing power through credits. If so, the capitalism would develop without difficulties or crisis, creating power of Purchase with loans. In reality, the capital that is lent comes out of the exploitation of workers and the plundering of other countries" (13) enormous mass of capital constituted in globalization, is surplus value, that is, on the unpaid work of the millions of rural workers and the cities that constitute the toiling masses of the whole world.

The a phenomenon that Marxism defines as "surplus value", is a labor, and therefore a value that is in the commodities that are traded in world trade, but that businessmen do not pay for it, they save it and returns to them as profit. This surplus value is the inexhaustible source of capital which contributes to establishing "global liquidity". For Marx: "In fact, profit is the form in which it manifests itself. the surplus value... In surplus-value the relation between capital and capital is revealed. work... that is, between capital and surplus-value such as the latter appears" (14)

In the composition of this world liquidity there is not only surplus value that comes from the direct exploitation of millions of workers, there is also suction of indirect surplus value through the mechanism of foreign debt and exchange unequal world trade of backward countries, for Moreno: " Imperialism plunders backward countries, subjecting them to an exchange of increasingly unequal, directly extracting large masses of surplus value from the investments of the monopolies that are sent to their headquarters and to through the mechanism of the external debt" (15) 

In the globalization, the exploitative offensive combined mechanisms of exploitation that made it possible to obtain what Marxism calls absolute surplus value and indirect exploitation mechanisms, which allow the call to be obtained relative surplus value. The various mechanisms of direct exploitation are extension of working time and working hours, the intensification of the rhythms or "sweat shops," in the Southeast the extension of overtime, corporate migrations multinationals from areas with a smaller union presence such as Southeast Asia and China, the attack on labor agreements and conquests, the exploitation of the immigrant workers, the proletarianization of masses of peasants, etc.

All These mechanisms that allow the extraction of absolute surplus value are those that became widespread in the 1980s with the Reagan and Thatcher. They are directly exploited because they tend to increase the quantity and productivity with the aim of increasing surplus labor, which the Employers do not pay. This is how Moreno defines absolute surplus value: "... Marx says that absolute surplus value is everything that exceeds the necessary value of the workforce... Anything that exceeds four hours is absolute surplus value and that It is the basis of capitalism which is to work more than the people need. workers...." (16)

The Inflation is also a mechanism of exploitation, only indirect. Allows obtain the so-called "relative surplus value" and is highly effective to indirectly lower workers' wages and allow workers to large companies obtain higher profit margins. Analyzing inflation, Moreno considers it an essential element for the extraction of surplus value relative: "What is inflation... We have to stop because it is the phenomenon of phenomena, in a huge number of countries... inflation is (surplus value) relative... more sophisticated forms of exploitation have emerged, such as this.... Inflation is a permanent drop in wages and an increase in the quota of surplus value, for me, relative" (17) Combining mechanisms of direct and indirect exploitation and achieving absolute surplus value and A huge mass of capital was structured that was massively poured into financial speculation. This is the structural, profound reason why a tendency to rise prices developed in globalization, that increasingly affected the standard of living of the majority of the world's population.

The role of the US Federal Reserve

But In addition, inflation is the result of economic measures that drove the G7 states, to consolidate the dominance of multinationals over the of the world economy as a whole and the measures taken by the governments of the capitalist powers to promote speculation with all kinds of assets and wares. In achieving this price manipulation in trade and exchange, a fundamental role is played by central banks and above all, the US Federal Reserve, which, as we shall see, allows us to corroborate that the incessant increase in prices and inflation are a A policy fed and promoted by the highest financial institutions of the world economy.

See the role played by the US Federal Reserve, known as the "Fed". Founded On December 23, 1913, all U.S. banks are, by law, associated with the Fed, both the state and private and the Investment Banking, so the Fed functions as a proprietary consortium that combines public and private entities. The The Fed's functions are to issue dollars, set interest rates, lend to them money to the State and regulate and control the financial market, through so-called "open market" operations. The structure of the Fed is made up of a Board of Governors, the Federal Market Committee Open, 12 regional subsidiaries, and the network of private member banks. Since the 100 most powerful banks in the US are located in New York, this subsidiary he is, in fact, the head of the Fed.

The Board of Governors is an independent agency, and expresses, the multinational corporations, most notably the New York Fed. Their decisions do not They necessarily have to be approved by the president or by someone else of the executive or legislative branch of the government. The members of the Board and its chairman, who is the head of the Federal Reserve are appointed by the president of the United States and confirmed by the Senate. The Fed chairman is appointed by the president of the U.S. and so it was that the current president Ben Bernanke, was appointed by George Bush with the agreement of the heads of the Banks of the Investment (18)

Until the creation of the Fed, there was no sustained upward trend in the level of general pricing. Inflation took place during wars or catastrophes, but prices then gradually fell to their levels Previous. Since the founding of the Fed, a trend has been established continuous and constant increase in prices, caused precisely by the fact that the The Fed is the only institution that has the power to print the dollars that circulate all over the world.

We seen previously as throughout the history of capitalism, the bourgeoisie it has manipulated prices and money. One way to analyze the form is that This occurs in contemporary capitalism is by analyzing how the Fed regulates the price of money, taking into account that the Fed is the entity that has in mind their hands control and the ability to manipulate the price of the dollar, issuing banknotes or ceasing to issue, speculating on interest payments on the holding government securities, or acquiring them.

When the Fed buys government securities, circulates masses of dollars whose price is cheapen, which causes interest rates to fall. When you sell titles The Fed absorbs money, dries up cash or liquidity markets, with the result that the Fed is a which makes the price of the dollar more expensive and raises interest rates. In both cases, These are speculative maneuvers to manipulate the price of the dollar, which they may or may not have a real relationship with the gold backing or the performance of the economy, but which act decisively influencing the prices of all commodities, and makes the dollar the most important of all. The Fed is, in particular, In reality, the Central Bank of the world and with its discretionary budget, its air force of dozens of jets and cargo planes, fleets of vehicles, and managerial salaries of several hundred thousand dollars Annual. In this way, it acts by impacting with its decisions, made in at the highest level of government in Washington, and the heads of multinational corporations, profoundly determining prices and development of the world economy.

The The origin of unbridled speculation finds its explanation in this role of the Fed and whoever may suppose that the emergence of investment funds and speculative panels of increasing magnitude and the growth of informal speculative markets are a construction outside the Fed and the Central Banks of the G7 countries only have a naïve view of the world economy. All global financial speculation, securitization, and venture capital are permanently driven and stimulated by the Fed, the Bundesbank, the Bank of England and the central banks of the G7 countries. This action of the central banks is the expression of the policy of the G7 states and the ruling classes, which pursue mechanisms that facilitate the exploitation of workers and profits of multinational corporations.

For Moreno: "... The most important intervention of the State is to achieve to wrest a greater mass of surplus value from the semi-colonial countries and the proletariat. Also the other: to organize the bourgeoisie, to try to avoid the greater anarchy, but that is impossible, because the transnationals continue to Fighting. That is, it is a role of referee. But the true role of the State is to guarantee in foreign policy, the exploitation of colonial peoples, the defense of transnational corporations... The role of the State is fundamental, decisive... essentially to increase the rate of surplus value" (19)

The unbridled speculation causes a real tragedy among the masses and the workers of the world, because the markets speculate on all commodities and existing assets, currencies, oil, food, commodities domestic conditions, energy, etc., which is a brutal attack on the conditions of millions who have increasing difficulty acquiring these goods. But speculation is driven and sustained by the central banks themselves, which sponsor funds and investment banks.

The "deficits" twins" sustain the world economy

The The Fed's intervention is the expression of the increasing intervention of the State of the U.S. in the world economy that led it to impose its hegemony. Product As a result of this intervention, the U.S. fiscal deficit grew steadily geometric, to today's astronomical figures. In 1940 the fiscal deficit of The U.S. was 50,696 million U$S, today it exceeds 13,786,615 million U$S. For Moreno: "The overaccumulation of capital causes a large mass of of this does not turn to production, and is transformed into fictitious, usurious capital, loan... A spectacular example is the fiscal deficit of the United States." (20)

The fiscal deficit is added to the trade deficit, which has been called between economists the "twin deficits", what role Do the twin deficits play a role in the development of capitalism? Throughout the In decades, a good part of the discussion among economists focused on the meaning of both deficits and their implications for the global configuration of the economy. The evolution of the "twin deficits", he says that the bulk of world trade is sustained by the US, which imports a high percentage of the products that are manufactured in the world. The products come from the same U.S. multinationals located in backward, who exploit cheap labor.

The The best example of the complementarity of twin deficits is China. China exports a large part of its production to the US, which produces a deficit trade between the two countries in favor of China. But this is how the U.S. and G7 multinationals, based in China, make big bucks profits, first by obtaining cheap labor and then, by securing the placement of your products in the U.S. market The trade deficit with China is compensated because the Chinese CP government invests its surplus in U.S. Treasury bonds

That allows a large part of the capital that "leaves" the U.S. to invest in China, "come back" to Grant funds to the U.S. Treasury For Iturbe: "... It's very It is interesting to analyze how the tandem has been working in recent years USA-China. The American bourgeoisie made gigantic investments in China, a country that sells its industrial products to the whole world (especially to the U.S. itself). On the other hand, a large part of the profits obtained return to the U.S., primarily to buy U.S. Treasuries. In this way, form, a part of the state deficit is financed and the circuit is renourished." (23)

The The same mechanism is implemented by the U.S. in the rest of the regions of the to finance its multinationals, as Iturbe explains: "It is In other words, through different mechanisms, the U.S. economy acts as a a "vacuum cleaner" of a whole part of the surplus value extracted in other regions of the world. (24) If both deficits trade and the prosecutor complement each other, it is worth asking: What role do they play in the shaping trade and developing the world economy? One sector of economic analysts, point to the U.S. deficit as one of the most important the elements of the greatest crisis in the world economy. Is the U.S. deficit an element of crisis or stability? 

This is how Moreno explained it: "... I have doubts about the significance of the US fiscal deficit. Instead of Isn't it the strongest element of stability?... I am afraid that the interpretation of the deficit as a serious symptom of crisis is vulgar Marxist reasoning. The trade deficit was the basis of the domination of British imperialism, which for decades and decades maintained immense deficits... The reason, which has been studied ad nauseam by the Marxism, is that the deficit allowed it to explode more than ever... Their ships were those who transported the goods, their companies were the ones who ensured, its companies invested in almost every country in the world, its railways, their loans, filled their coffers with pounds sterling that they compensated with you grow its trade deficit... I may be wrong, but I have the impression that that the world economy has not yet exploded thanks to the deficit (25) 

As Moreno put it, it is precisely the deficit of the USA and the complementary nature of the twin deficits, which sustain the economy of most of the countries of the world, world trade, multinationals, and ultimately, the capitalism. Those who see the U.S. deficit as a sign of crisis, do not do more than ignore the data of reality, which in this regard are Strong. Precisely, the year in which the U.S. deficit was the most high in relation to its GDP, was the year 1946, the year that the United States launched itself into the world conquest.

That year the U.S. debt reached 108.6% of its GDP, and precisely that It allowed it to launch itself into the conquest of the world economy, and the consolidation of the of their monopolies as the modern dominant multinationals. For Daniel Munevar: "... the projected increase in public debt during the The next decade is an unprecedented event in the post-war period both in terms of speed of accumulation of debt as in total amounts. Even Thus, the levels of indebtedness expected at the end of this decade are far, in relative terms, from the peak reached in 1946 of 108.6% of GDP. Is It should be noted then that this situation did not represent an obstacle for the establishment of political, economic and military of the United States in the West." (26)

Stages Emergence, Boom, and Exhaustion of Global Corporations

Already we saw how an enormous mass of capital was developed that is the product of the exploitation of the masses of the world, and like those masses of capital, in the hands of Multinational Corporations and supported by the Fed, are a component of the structural structure of the globalization regime. Now we'll see how those huge masses of capital gave rise to the great speculative manoeuvres that characterize globalization between the decades of the '80s, the '90s, the '00s and how it was related to political and social events. And let's go to also analyze how this process led to the exhaustion of globalization and of multinational corporations, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, a process that we are experiencing today.

Start at the end of the '70s. The increases in raw materials and especially the oil in the late '70s, gave countries and oil companies huge earnings. With "high oil" and rising price inflation that followed the end of Bretton Woods, the profits made by the big companies, gave rise to a mass of capital known as "petrodollars". The Reagan administration attracted those petrodollars by raising the interest rate and the price of the dollar. With the "dollar high," the U.S. government has been able to... USA, it sucked capital from all over the world, which they bet by buying gigantic masses of the banknote.

Entrepreneurs of all nationalities, multinationals, large companies, countries, municipalities and bankers bet on the dollar, buying masses This led to an immense massive flow of capital to the The U.S., of all origins. The binomial "high oil" and "dollar" high" caused a global speculative bubble, an immense mass of capital that allowed Reagan to grant loans to the population to access the purchase of houses, cars, appliances and university careers.

This mass of credits and "easy money", which stimulated the speculative activity of multinationals spurred one of the most important frauds in the world. old of capitalism: the repurchase of shares. For Moyer and Mc Guigan: "From In the 1980s, share buybacks have become more and more popular... during the period from 1983 to 1997..." (27) The companies took out loans to purchase their own shares and the share buybacks caused the companies' values to go upwards, not reflecting the company's profits. Operations Fraudulent policies became widespread with tax evasion and false accounting, euphemistically called "creative accounting".

At the center of this speculative maneuver were the savings and savings institutions Savings and Loan. The "bubble of Reagan" recreated the environment of speculation, cheap credit, and false "sense of wealth" typical of the '80s. The social sectors that expressed this phenomenon, brokers and yuppies, sectors lumpens of the bourgeoisie dedicated to speculation. But the rise of the dollar pushed the American industry into bankruptcy, whose products were left expensive compared to European and Japanese multinationals. A crisis opened up in the U.S. economy that hit Savings and Loans. In '85 the following were signed the Plaza Accords in New York, between the US, Europe and Japan, to save U.S. Industry A reduction in the dollar and a revaluation of the yen were agreed and European currencies, but the crisis in the US economy led to the bankruptcy of Saving and Loan in 1986.

The 19/10/87 the crack called "Black Monday" of Wall Street with the largest percentage drop in one day. So it ended and so the "bubble which provoked a crisis of such gravity that it led to the capitalist powers to seek an agreed mechanism of regulation banking, credits and transactions. Basel I is known as the agreement published in 1988, in Basel, Switzerland, by the Basel Committee, composed of the governors of the central banks of Germany, Belgium, Canada, Spain, USA, France, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, United Kingdom United Kingdom, Sweden, and Switzerland. Basel I was a set of treatises that sought prevent future bubbles and the crises they could cause.

Basel I placed recommendations to establish a minimum capital that should have a bank based on the risks it faced, and entered into force in more than 130 countries. But the mass of over-accumulated capital that continued to grow despite Basel I, it took on colossal dimensions and adopted a composition of fictitious capital by dedicating itself exclusively to the activity which led to a serious development of dangerous bubbles and high destructive content.

Define like bubbles, the brutal and rapid massive injection of capital into a commodity which can be bonds of a country, currencies, industries, or commodities. These capital multiplies in the first successes, attracts more capital and generates a ball that goes up, with no roof in sight. At the first hint that the country, industry, region or raw material is going down, panic spreads, capital flee, the ball deflates and the line of bankruptcies, poverty, paralysis and recession. The effects of bubbles on the economy are similar to those of bubbles. nuclear weapons, wherever they pass, there is nothing left, only scorched earth. In the decade of the '90s, as a result of the increase in the rate of exploitation achieved by the capitalism in the backward countries and fundamentally in China, the rate of Profit grew and multinationals multiplied their capital. But if the growth of overaccumulated capital was important much more it grew speculative activity. As Brenner states: "... The painting of profits have improved significantly for U.S. companies, including 1989 and 1997... increased by 82% and the corporate profit rate by 27.8%...Now Well, those increases in profitability cannot justify tripling stock prices..." (28)

In this way, time and more precisely, December 5, 1996 is when Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Fed, described this speculative explosion of the capitalism saying that there was an "irrational exuberance" in markets. This was the way he found to describe the basses imbalances that overvalued financial assets were Causing. Speculative bubbles continued to develop throughout the throughout the '90s, as a distinctive mark of the globalization.

In 1989 the bubble of Japan developed, a country that was said to be in those years to be the new world power that would dominate the world as it is spoken today of China, let's see how this bubble developed. The Plaza agreement of '85, It caused severe damage to the Japanese economy, which was structured around exports to the US, the high yen caused the industry crisis Japan and Southeast Asian countries flooded with cheaper goods Japan, for the appreciation of the yen. The flow of capital to Tokyo did not take long to generate a speculative bubble, around the sale of real estate.

The value of Tokyo in 1989 multiplied by 75, equivalent to 5 times the territory of the U.S. A district of the capital (Chiyoda-ku) was worth more than Canada and the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, it was worth as much as California. When it burst, the "bubble real estate crisis" in Tokyo and the bubble in Japan had a lethal result, The Japanese economy was flattened for decades. In 1995, to save the Japan's economy, the "Plaza II Accords" were signed, which they lowered the yen and revalued the dollar. Attacks and speculative movements of investors and speculators continued to fight against the price of different countries, for example, Soros against the pound sterling in 1992 that brought the Bank of England to its knees, the "Tequila effect" of 1994 against the Mexican peso that caused losses to the Central Bank of 4 thousand million U$S and the collapse of its GDP in '95. 

From 1997 onwards, the The overaccumulation of capital caused the rate of profit to fall. And with it new speculative bubbles were produced, of which the most The impact on the development of globalization was that of the Southeast. Asian or "dragon effect", which hit the Tigers that until there they were the axis of the world economy. Let's see how it happened. The fall in the rate of profit from the years '96/'97 was a hard blow to the world economy: "... In 1995, the returns of these companies increased by 13%. In 1996 they reached 23.3%. But in 1997, this growth of profits decreased to 7.8%" (29) The fall of The rate of profit caused, in turn, a fall in the investments of the multinationals that had been on the rise since 1992: "... registered a gigantic expansion of 17.3% in '93, 16% in '94 and they grew again 27.5% in '95. But they fell by 0.7% in 96... It was the reduction of these investments, caused by the fall in the rate of profit, which began the crisis process... leading to the debacle of Southeast Asia, Russia, Brazil, etc." (30)

In 1997 The fall in investment in Southeast Asia in Thailand 21.3%, in Malaysia 43.4% and in Indonesia 22.9%. This was combined with the "Plaza II Accords" between the US, Europe and Japan to lower the yen, which affected the tiger industries and multinationals, oriented towards to export to Japan. For Brenner: "Since the "Agreement reverse of the Plaza" in the spring of 1995, achieved between the governments In order to prevent the collapse of the Japanese economy, the dollar has become more and more likely to be the most important in the world. substantially appreciated against the mark and the yen 20% and 50% respectively" (31)

To the lowering the yen and raising the dollar the products of the Tigers were expensive, which which led the Tigers' industry to bankruptcy. The pressure that the devaluation of the yen exerted on the economies of the Tigers, forced their currencies to be devalued to avoid the bankruptcy of industrial groups. This unleashed a speculative attack on the currencies, first of Thailand, the Bath, whose economy had grown between 1985 and 1996 at 9% per year, The stock market fell by 75%, Finance One, the largest financial company collapsed, the "boom" Thai ended and GDP fell 7%.

The The crisis spread to Indonesia, which fell 15%, South Korea, which fell 7%, and The Philippines that grew zero in 1998. The consequences of the "effect dragon" were devastating: the value of almost all coins fell, stock exchanges and companies in the region. GDP fell by 31.7% in one year, millions people fell below the poverty line between 1997 and 1998 and the most affected countries were Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand.

The IMF intervened with bailouts of all these countries, which also constituted a important business and unleashed an M&A process of bankrupt companies. The "Plaza II" failed because it failed to achieve a recovery of Japan and sank the "Tigers", which had been a dynamic pole and support of the world economy. The "effect dragon" produced a structural change in capitalism, liquidated the Tigers as a pole that had been the axis of the world economy along with the United States, in the transition from the Keynesian regime to globalization.

The blow to the world economy was so great that it reduced prices which affected the oil-producing countries, and especially Russia and unleashed the speculative attack on Russia or the "vodka effect" of the '98. Then came the attack on Brazil, which began to suffer capital flight and lost 35 billion U$S in 4 months, which led to the collapse of the stock market. San Pablo and the devaluation of the real. The "samba effect" preluded to the "tango effect" of Argentina in 2001, which also forced the devaluation of its currency tied 1 to 1 to the dollar and caused the popular outburst that overthrew the government.

The gravity and continuity of the bubbles, which are getting bigger and more destructive, led the powers to organize the Financial Stability Forum (FSF) in 1999, consisting of the ministries of finance, central banks and agencies to promote financial stability international. The FSF's goal was to supervise and monitor the institutions and economic transactions. But this attempt failed because and the crisis radiated from the periphery to the center. The crises were no longer developed in backward countries but in the economy of USA. At the end of the '90s and the beginning of the 21st century, 3 serious crises,1) that of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) affected by the "Vodka effect", which made Wall Street stagger, 2) the bankruptcy of Enron Corporation, one of the most important energy companies of the world and the 7th in the U.S. and 3) the "dot-com" crisis.

The dot-com explosion opened the crisis in the basic industrial branch of the globalization, computing. The rapid consumption of millions of people from produced a bubble around their companies that led to the Nasdaq index up to 5000 points in the year 2000. After the explosion of the bubble, the Nasdaq fell to 3500 and 1300 in 2002. 4,854 disappeared companies, in the midst of fraud scandals, such as the World.com case. The 3 Combined crises opened the global recession of 2000-2003. This recession already expressed the process of exhaustion of corporations multinationals as a form of accumulation and globalization as a regime of accumulation. The enormous masses of fictitious capital had produced the fall of the of the rate of profit, but also an accelerated process of devaluation of the economy. The capitalist powers needed to counteract these trends and overcome the crisis, but achieving it required a round of destruction of productive forces and burning of capital of a much higher magnitude the one perpetrated in the 2nd or post-war war.

In the period from 1980 to 2000 with globalization, the degree of destruction of productive forces was important. There had been the 1st Iraq War and the wars in Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Rwanda, the 2 wars of the Congo and Bosnia, which, added to the development of the poverty, extreme poverty, the growing process of destruction of the nature and development of the arms industry, had developed a process of enormous destruction of destructive forces. But this process destruction of productive forces was insufficient for capitalism to achieve a higher form of accumulation that would surpass corporations multinationals, let us remember that after the exhaustion of cartels and trusts, the capitalism developed a process of destruction of productive forces that gave rise to a form of higher accumulation, the multinationals.

In the post-war period, the brutal process of destruction of productive forces in the backward countries allowed the emergence of a higher form of accumulation after the exhaustion of modern multinationals: the Multinational Corporations. But by the year 2000, faced with the exhaustion of the Multinational Corporations, the capitalist powers needed to develop a process of destruction of productive forces that would allow them to move to a higher Form of Accumulation. The crisis was already at the heart of the world economy, the U.S. economy. And the bursting of the "punto.com" bubble had opened a serious recession. These tendencies could only be countered by overcoming multinational corporations through a process of centralization of capital, with an enormous development of destructive forces.

A truncated process of destruction of Productive Forces

The Bush Administration launched the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) strategy in the aftermath of the attacks on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. This strategy consisted of a global political, economic and military counteroffensive, which had as its slogan the "war on terror" and the defeat of the "axis of evil". The strategy of the PNAC sought to overcome the serious crisis opened in capitalism and take the economy out of recession, for which it established a major military operation and the development of a war of vast scope and long duration, with the aim of putting a brake on the revolutionary processes in the Middle East. at the same time as disciplining the workers and peoples of the world.

The PNAC also sought to sustain a high expenditure and development of the military complex. carrying out an important process of destruction of forces Productive. It was impossible for the U.S. state to carry this strategy forward with the opposition of the American people. For this reason, the The Bush administration took advantage of the impact of the terrorist attack on 9/11 to establish a profoundly anti-democratic regime within the United States. The U.S. government is a pillar in the Patriot Act, which sought to limit the democratic freedoms and freedom of expression for workers and the people of the U.S. and to silence any voice that wanted to oppose his strategy.

The Patriot Act was a de facto constitutional reform, which put the The Executive, the army and the security services at the centre of the political regime of the United States, trying to erase with a stroke of the pen the historical democratic conquests of the American people. At the same time, a set of laws and decrees produced a significant curtailment of democratic freedoms, the attack on immigrants, especially those of Muslim origin and the criminalization of opponents. The PNAC was a strategy at the service of to deal a hard blow to the struggles of the peoples of the world who dared to challenge the power of the capitalist powers and at the same time, sought to resume the offensive against the masses of the advanced countries.

The "Global Fight Against Terrorism" campaign was promoted from the US, but it was adopted by all governments and states capitalists of the world. The political-military front that was articulated around of the PNAC, expressed in the military coalition that carried out the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was one of the largest in the history of capitalism. In the economic field, Bush sought to relaunch the economy, copying Reagan with a bubble based on credits for mass consumption, centered in this case, in housing loans.

Million They contracted these loans attracted by the facilities, and so it was that they took The bubble of "second-class mortgages" (in "sub-prime"), which began in 2002 and It broke out in 2007. The entire world financial structure contracted sub- prime, which promised to be a fabulous business that grew and grew without ceasing, providing fabulous profits. The development of the buying spree of houses produced led the construction industry to take a leap, and With it, inflation skyrocketed. Prices for all materials construction rose, dragging all prices with it. To slow down the inflationary wave that was unleashed, the Fed raised the interest rate that in 3 years went from 1% to 5.75%, but this operation of raising interest rates it made the loans granted to very humble families more expensive and aggravated the debts and Defaults.

The Investment Banks began to issue MBS's (Mortgage Backed Securities) and CDO's (Collateralized Debt Obligation) papers that served as insurance to cover possible non-payments. Those papers were traded around the world and became part of the coffers of the entire financial system worldwide. Given the magnitude of the ongoing credit bubble of The G7 states called for the Basel II agreement, in the 2004, seeking to overcome the limitations of Basel I that ignored one aspect of the The quality of the credits and the probability of default on loans.

For Basel II proposed in 2004 a new set of recommendations, which were useless, because the Bush administration had already It drove a huge bubble and pushed capitalism into the abyss. The whole system The global financial system was filled with MBS and CDOs, whose value fell abruptly. By 2006, the U.S. military and the Coalition for Freedom were militarily bogged down by the heroic Iraqi resistance against invasion. At the same time as the resistance of the people of the United States against the repression of the Patriot Act regime and the growing unpopularity of the Iraq war, plunged Bush into disrepute.

Of Thus, the two fundamental pillars of the political, economic and The military of the PNAC was suffering increasing wear and tear. The defeat military crisis in Iraq, it meant the final blow to the PNAC strategy and opened a political crisis of the Bush administration. In turn, this political crisis was combined in the economic field, with the disaster caused by the subprime bubble. The interest rate hikes that the Fed had pushed to curb the inflation, caused debtors to be unable to pay the loans, the The bubble burst, and the banks were filled with bad loans.

For in 2006 there were fifty financial institutions in bankruptcy, millions of seizures and investment banks together with the global financial system in the face of the threat of bankruptcy. The Bush administration had managed to get 1,200,000 A thousand Americans were scammed and more than achieving the dream of the house have been expelled from their homes. In 2007, the sub-prime crisis it exploded and became global. If the "Reagan bubble" was the beginning of the regime of globalization; The "bubble" Bush" of 2007 was his end.

The bursting of the "sub-prime bubble" put manifest the exhaustion of globalization as a regime of accumulation and the of Multinational Corporations as a form of accumulation. The defeat U.S. military prevented the burning of capital and the process of destruction of productive forces necessary to allow a level to be reached centralization of capital that managed to respond to the process of exhaustion of multinational corporations. We are not claiming that there was no destruction of productive forces, there was, and the invasion turned Iraq, which was one of the most beautiful countries in the world, the heritage of the The emergence of humanity, in a real ruin. If we add to this conflagration what happened in Afghanistan the destruction is terrible, but absolutely lower than the round of destruction made in the post-war period.

One A simple comparison allows us to appreciate the magnitude of the phenomenon: The war of Vietnam, for example, in the post-war period lasted 11 years and was part of a process, As we have seen, the greatest destruction of productive forces that encompassed decades, in vast regions of the planet. The war in Iraq, on the other hand, in just 3 years ago it was already resolved, with defeat for the USA. The defeat of the PNAC it had immediate effects on the economy. Not only did the crisis erupt in 2007, but from it the process of centralization of capital fell. This is verified in the figures of the M&A process that suffered a hard blow with the crisis and fell by 50% compared to pre-2007 levels.

The data from the M&A process show that with the defeat of the PNAC the process of centralization of capital, instead of advancing, suffered a sharp setback. Thanks to the bailouts, it recovered around 2010 when M&A reached $2.4 trillion, an increase of 23% over 2009 and the strongest of all the period since 2008, for Thomson Reuters. But the data indicate that the capitalism failed to reach a level of centralization of capital that needed to overcome the exhaustion of multinational corporations, that from 2007 and as we saw in chapter I began to present a after a bankruptcy. The crisis set back the M&A process, in in relation to the levels it had been having before 2007.

¿Because capitalism did not succeed in globalization, that is, in the entire period that has gone from the 1980s to the present, a process of destruction of productive forces that were similar to the levels that were reached in the postwar period? Why could the powers not overcome the crisis caused by the corporate exhaustion? Why didn't they achieve a higher form of capital accumulation? We find the explanation by analyzing some of the facts most important politicians of the twentieth century.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall: The Blow to Globalization

The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 was a severe blow to the capitalism and globalization. When the Wall fell, the governments of the capitalist powers and Stalinist regimes worked in society, advancing in a brutal exploitative offensive and renewing the agreements in common of Yalta and Potsdam. But the popular mobilization that overthrew the pro-capitalist dictatorships in those countries, hindered joint plans of the powers. Without their Stalinist partners, the governments of the capitalists found it difficult to carry out the offensive against the masses of the most important economies. In turn, the chain of popular uprisings deepened and after the Stalinist collapse in the Eastern European countries, the collapse of the dictatorships in the USSR and in the republics under its orbit. The consequences for capitalism were very important, because after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the conditions that had allowed the super-exploitation of the working class European and German.

A fundamental condition for facilitating the exploitation of workers European and German in the post-war period, was to maintain their division with the Wall. His collapse allowed a process of unification of the powerful European working class and Germany, among the most qualified, concentrated, with the greatest conquests social and cultural level in the world. In turn, nationalities oppressed women who had been put in blood and fire under the boot of domination In the post-war period, they began a process of liberation, which he swept away the borders of Yalta and Potsdam.

Thank you to the Stalinist leaders who fell after 1989, imperialism had managed to survive the defeats of Vietnam, China, Korea, had It has been possible to continue its systematic destruction of productive forces. Had transformed these political defeats into even greater hardships for the masses, which allowed large profits to the multinationals. But after the The fall of the wall, these leaders of the "official left" world," which had rendered great services to capitalism, no longer exists. they had that power.

The "order postwar world order" fell, and the "new order "Worldwide" actually resulted in a terrible "disorder" for the capitalist powers. This is the explanation of why in the capitalism failed to match the economic successes of capitalism. Keynesian regime. The fall of the Berlin Wall prevented globalization If there were a global world political agreement of the stature of Yalta and Potsdam, those agreements that allowed the post-war "boom", were liquidated by the fall of the Berlin Wall, and with them, order fell economic and political that sustained the world economy for more than 40 years. G7 governments, analysts and journalists of all stripes proclaimed that the The fall of the Berlin Wall was the "triumph of the capitalism" and the "End of Socialism". Many They believed that story, and most of the left fell into a brutal confusion. We will not develop here the debates that the events produced at that time, we refer to verify the impact they had in the economy.

The best demonstration of the blow that the fall of the Berlin Wall meant for the capitalism and the course of the regime of globalization is China. In China the opposite happened, the Wall did not fall there, the mobilization of the masses in Plaza Tiannanmen against the pro-capitalist dictatorship of the Chinese CP it was brutally repressed and defeated. From these events China has established itself as the "paradise" of Multinational.

After the defeat of the mobilizations the Chinese dictatorship advanced in obtaining greater exploitation rates and all kinds of facilities for multinationals to filed. China alone shows the implications of the fall of the Wall of Berlin for the world economy. If the fall of the dictatorships of the Communist Party had complicated the plans of the capitalist powers in Europe, the triumph of the of the dictatorship of the Chinese CP transformed it into a bastion and lifeline of the capitalism. With the triumph of the Chinese Communist Party, the capitalist powers obtained an immense market of millions of workers that the dictatorship China disciplined to offer low wages, super-exploitative working conditions which allowed, as we have seen, a growth of the economy in the '90s.

Also the wages and working conditions of the workers from the other countries that had belonged to the Stalinist orbit. Imperialism took advantage of these "comparative advantages" which helped the growth of the economy and gave a recovery in the rate of a profit in the '90s that was maintained for almost the entire decade. Capitalism he achieved a victory in China, which gave him a great economic break. But with the The fall of the Berlin Wall, its strategic plans suffered a tremendous blow, because the parties and leaders who rendered great services to the capitalism, agreeing to the capitalist reconstruction of Europe, allowing the development of modern multinationals and slowing down processes Revolutionary. 

The collapse of the Yalta and Potsdam agreements that had allowed the "boom", it was a strategic blow for capitalism. This is the central explanation of why the powers capitalists were unable to develop in globalization a round of destruction of productive forces greater than the 2nd world war or the post-war period, that would allow it to overcome the exhaustion of multinational corporations. Of In this way, the fall of the Berlin Wall is the necessary prologue to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Wall Street, 20 years later. At the same time, the fall of the wall and the crisis of the Tigres modified the accumulation axes of the world economy. The economy in the Keynesian regime it developed around the US-Europe axis, but the recovery of the proletariat and the masses of these countries in the post-war period, prevented capitalism from regaining the high rates of exploitation that allowed the "boom". Therefore When the multinationals and the Keynesian regime began to run out, the The axis of accumulation of the world economy became the US-South-East-Asia (Japan and Tigers), in the transition from the Keynesian regime to globalization.

In Globalization, the axis of accumulation of the world economy, changed again from the consolidation of the capitalist dictatorship of the Chinese CP and the economy was articulated around the US-China axis, the only place where the revolutions that the masses led against the pro-capitalist dictatorships of the Communist Party, was, so far, defeated. In globalization, the axis of accumulation of the world economy changed again after the consolidation of the capitalist dictatorship of the Chinese CP and the economy was articulated around the axis USA-China, the only place where the revolutions that the masses led against the pro-capitalist dictatorships of the CP, was, so far, defeated.

The Course of globalization

We In view of the regime of globalization, its complex structure, the the emergence of an enormous mass of capital destined for speculation The fictitious and parasitic character of enormous masses of capital that they make up this capital that rotates in the economy. We have also seen the emergence of multinational corporations, and the role of the Banks of Investment at the heart of its structure and the world economy. This painting allows us to understand how each of these elements acted constituents of capitalism since the outbreak of the current crisis.

We having regard also to the trends that are developing from the beginning of the crisis. And we have compared the current crisis with the crisis of '29, to understand the similarities and differences between both episodes that capitalism faced in its stage of decadence.

The The set of trends analyzed indicates that globalization is reaching its end, and capitalism needs to establish a new regime of accumulation, as well as new forms of accumulation that exceed those that are exhausted and bankrupt Multinational Corporations. This is the challenge that governments face In the years to come, the capitalist powers must face challenges that will will undoubtedly find its most serious obstacle in the contradictions of the process of capital accumulation, on the one hand, and the resistance of the movement and the working class on the other. In the most important crisis of his In history, capitalism will confront the most powerful mass movement, and the largest and most powerful world working class in history, as we will see in the next chapter.

Notes

(1) UNCTAD, World Investment Report 2002, page 85. Sara Anderson y John Cavanagh, Top 200 - The Rise of Corporate Global Power, Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, 2000, page 3

(2) James Petras, "Myth of third scient- tecnological revolution" 2001.

(3) Karl Marx Capital Book I Chapter XXIII General Law of Accumulation Capitalist

(4) V. I. Lenin. "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" Chapter II "Banks and their new role"

(5) Moody's"$640 billion y 640 days later: how the companies that produced Private Equity during the recession in the USA"

(6) U.S. International Banking Facilities (IBFs) Japanese Offshore Market (JOM) Bangkok International Banking Facilities (BIBFs)

(7) Robert Brenner: Turbulence in World economy

(8) The New Economy: What's New, What's Not. John B. Harms Tim Knapp

(9) Gerard Dumenil y Dominique Levy, "The Profit Rate: Where and Houch Much Did it Fall? Did it Recover? (USA 1948-1097), 2005

(10) Nahuel Moreno. Thesis on the world situation - International Secretariat of the LIT- CI, 10/20/84

(11) Robert Brenner Turbulence in the global economy

(12) Nahuel Moreno. "Opinion: The Crisis Has Begun" International Mail 18, 1986

(13) & (14) Nahuel Moreno Thesis of the LIT on the world situation. 1985 (emphasis added)

(15) Karl Marx: Capital, Book Three, Chapter II, The Rate of Profit, (emphasis added) ours)

(16) Nahuel Moreno Thesis of the LIT on the world situation. 1985 (emphasis added)

(17) Nahuel Moreno. School of Economics cadres. January '85 (emphasis added)

(18) "Although Officially hidden, the problem of private ownership of banks members of the Federal Reserve has been questioned several times in the federal courts, as in the case of Lewis v. USA, which was decided by 9th Circuit Court of Appeals which ruled that the banks of the Reserves are independent, privately owned and controlled corporations locally." Stephen Lendman Research Associate of the center for Research on Globalization

(19) Nahuel Moreno. Tesis sobre la situación mundial. LIT- CI (1984)

(20) Nahuel Moreno Tesis de la LIT sobre la situación mundial. 1985 (subrayados nuestros)

(21), (22), (23) y (24) Alejandro Iturbe. El sistema financiero mundial y su crisis - Parte 3 Marxismo Vivo n 22 2009

(25) Nahuel Moreno. Opinion. The crisis has already begun International Mail 18, 1986, page 8

(26) Daniel Munevar. www.cadtm.org

(27) Charles Moyer, James Mc Guigan Contemporary Financial Management, page 505

(28) Robert Brenner "Turbulence in the World Economy"

(29) and (30) Jonah Portyguar and JR Soares International Mail, February 1999, number 76 "The The crisis of neoliberalism and globalized capitalism puts the world on the brink of a depression."

(31) Robert Brenner "Turbulence in the World Economy"

4 – Forms: Part III Accumulation of the Workers' and Popular Masses, and the Emergence of the Armed Forces megalopolis

If the Accumulation Regime of globalization is coming to an end, the capitalism needs to establish a new Regime of Accumulation, as well as new Forms of Accumulation that exceed the exhausted and bankrupt Corporations Multinational. Accumulation or the process of expanded capitalist reproduction, As we have seen, it accumulates means of production in a pole and masses of people and workers in the other. In the previous chapter we will analyze how has produced the largest accumulation of capital on a scale never seen in the History of humanity. In this chapter we will see how capitalism has created the greatest accumulation of the masses of workers and the unemployed who produce a a colossal amount of goods, also never seen in history. This accumulation of the masses of workers and the unemployed is the absolute Law of Accumulation.

Like this Karl Marx explains it: "The proportional magnitude of the army reserve industry, therefore, increases in tandem with the powers of the wealth. But the larger this reserve army is in proportion to the active workers' army, the greater will be the mass of consolidated surplus population or the working strata whose misery is in inverse proportion to the torture of their work. The larger, in the end, the layers of the working class formed by sickly needy people and the industrial reserve army, all the greater it will be official pauperism. This is the general, absolute law of accumulation capitalist." (1)

Exists today in the world, a mass of surplus population of workers, poor, sickly and of which Marx speaks as never seen in the history of the capitalism. In the 2008 UN report you can read the following: "In 2008, the world reached an invisible but momentous milestone: for the first time, more than half of its human population, 3.3 billion people, will live in urban areas. It is expected that by 2030, that number will be reached almost 5,000 million" (2) This overpopulation was developed by Multinationals and Corporations Multinational. These Forms of Accumulation Have Brought About Changes revolutionary in the demographic structure, the development of the social networks, geographical location, their composition, the displacement of workers and migrations that have a huge impact on the political and social situation of the world.

Is that is, in parallel with the development of multinational corporations and of the process of concentration of branches of production, trade and wealth under their property; there was also the concentration of the world's population in cities. First, large urban concentrations emerged such as Mexico City, São Paulo, New York, Mumbai, New Delhi, Tokyo, etc., and next to them the new metropolitan poles defined as megalopolises, which they arose as a result of the enormous migrations within countries. The migratory movements are permanent movements with successive waves, true demographic revolutions that have a profound impact on the social structure of all the countries of the world, modifying the conformation of all social classes, fundamentally, the working class. These demographic changes produced enormous development, growth and extension of the world working class with the proletarianization and urbanization of huge masses of peasants and popular sectors throughout the world.

Growth of population and global development of migration

The world population is already close to 7,000 million between 2011-2012 and the UN It predicts that by 2050 the world's population will be greater than 11 billion. The fastest growing regions are Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean in which the population will increase by almost 50% and in turn within this Poorer countries will double the size of their populations. Africa is going to doubling its population by 2,050, which will reach 2,000 million. Only China with 1,330 million inhabitants and India with 1,147 million represent almost 40% of the world's population and the Office's calculations of India's census projects that, in less than two decades, India will be able to surpass China in number of inhabitants. After the two world wars, the genocides, massacres and massive destruction of productive forces carried out by the capitalist powers, caused enormous migrations to be a phenomenon global.

The Global Migration Report 2015 estimates that there are 232 million migrants and 740 million internal migrants worldwide. Almost the 50% of all international migrants reside in ten high-altitude countries. highly urbanized income: Australia, Canada, France, United States, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In Asia-Pacific region, an estimated 120,000 people are migrating to the urban areas on a daily basis. At this rate, it is expected that the number of people The number of people living in urban areas will increase by 63% by 2050 in that region. Africa too It has witnessed a rapid increase in its urban population. In 1960 the only city in sub-Saharan Africa with a population of more than 1 million people was Johannesburg. Ten years later there were four cities. For By 2010 that number had skyrocketed to 33 cities.

Of all cities that both internal and international migrants chosen as their new home, some stand out as the most popular. The host cities with more than 10 million inhabitants are, in order alphabetical: Beijing, Buenos Aires, Guangzhou, Istanbul, Jakarta, Kinshasa, Kolkata, Lagos, London, Los Angeles, Manila, Mexico City, Moscow, Mumbai, New Delhi, New York, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, Shenzen and Tokyo.

The United Nations Population Division has estimated that the stock of migrants, grew at a rate of 1.9% per year, a rate higher than that of total growth of the world's population, which was 1.8% per year during the same period. For José Moreno Pau: "... Imperialist plundering pushes the workers of the colonies and semi-colonies to seek the lifeline in the metropolis... The need for cheap labor in the metropolises gives rise to the result of the migratory movement of recent decades, together with the the ageing of the European population and the need for cheap labour. We are facing the opposite phenomenon to that which occurred between the nineteenth century and first decades of the twentieth century when some 55 million Europeans emigrated to other continents mainly to America..." (3)

These migratory flows go in two directions, on the one hand, the migration of the countries underdeveloped countries to advanced countries and on the other from rural regions to the cities. In both processes, the global number of emigrants is on the rise and they have the same final destination: cities, which are increasingly combined in different races, cultures, languages and customs, which change the The composition of the classes and above all of the working class, which incorporates the immigrant proletariat as one of its most combative components.

The migrations to the G7 countries are broken down as follows: 50% go to the US, 40% to the EU, 5% to Canada and only slightly more than 3% to Japan. Immigration arriving in the EU is from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe Eastern, in addition to other regions. The EU is home to approximately 80% of the Arab/Muslim immigration arriving in Western societies. The waves migratory countries are directed to the geographically closest developed countries.

Europe is 78% of Eastern European immigration, 79% of Eastern European immigration, the Middle East and 93% of North Africa. The US is the destination of choice for 98% of immigration from Central America and Mexico. On the other side of the world, Japan's immigrant population comes almost exclusively from East Asia. In the case of the United States, the phenomenon is modifying its social structure, and the people who define themselves as Hispanic, Latino or Chicano are becoming the 1st minority surpassing African Americans, for the first time in American history.

After the 2nd World War, with the rise of modern multinationals in means of the capitalist reconstruction of Europe, governments and states The capitalists led and stimulated this internal migration from the countryside to the city to supply labor to the new emerging industries that led the "boom" of the world economy, which it allowed the reconstruction and reconstitution of the powerful European proletariat.

Like this José Moreno Pau explains it: "... It must be remembered that the reconstruction of the main European imperialist powers, after the second World War, was made not only from the Marshall Plan but also from the Cost of the displacement of millions of workers from southern Europe, Turkey and North Africa towards industrial zones..." (4) The Turks constitute the largest group of immigrants in Europe, with a considerable presence in Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. But the disastrous situation in which immigrants from Europe live, is the same as that the one experienced by their comrades in the US, Japan and the other imperialist countries.

Like this José Moreno Pau explains it: "... immigrant workers have of course, again, the most exploited sector, occupying the lowest positions qualifications and the toughest (construction, agriculture, industry, cleaning, domestic service...). These sectors are the ones with the highest rate of subcontracting and precariousness. Immigrant workers for this reason are the most affected by workplace accidents. (5)

With the development of the Globalization Regime has also developed a increased migration of a more skilled workforce from the backward to develop areas and sectors suffering from labour shortages, such as the industries of production and use of information, communication and high Technologies. This import of "gray matter" and qualified personnel or professionals in agreement with the governments that have established "green cards" or special permits from the '80s.

For José Moreno Pau: "... On the other hand, they also import labor who in recent years have joined the army of interns and researchers working for multinationals with very high salaries and with minimum health rights. This is part of the brain drain which is impoverished for the countries of origin, which see as the investment in their training is lost. Immigrant labor arrives to the city of working age, so that the receiving states have saved years of health and education..." (6)

In definitively, the imperialist countries develop and promote immigration as part of its global plans to advance in the exploitation of workers, according to José Moreno Pau: "... The imperialist countries of the EU use the hand of immigrant labor to divide the working class by keeping them on wages lower and lower, increasing working hours. They replace the social benefits for the care of the sick and elderly and children with domestic workers... the contribution of immigrants to the percentage of the population in developed countries... Today they represent between 10% and 20% of the population of the central European countries..." (7)

The migrations in Africa have several components, on the one hand, migration to oil-producing countries, on the other hand, migration from the most important countries poor to the most developed, and on the other hand migration as a movement of refugees due to wars being the region with the largest number of refugees that went from 3 million in 1985 to 6.8 million in 1995.

For José Moreno Pau: "... On the other hand, they also import labor who in recent years have joined the army of interns and researchers working for multinationals with very high salaries and with minimum health rights. This is part of the brain drain which is impoverished for the countries of origin, which see as the investment in their training is lost. Immigrant labor arrives to the city of working age, so that the receiving states have saved years of health and education..." (6)

In definitively, the imperialist countries develop and promote immigration as part of its global plans to advance in the exploitation of workers, according to José Moreno Pau: "... The imperialist countries of the EU use the hand of immigrant labor to divide the working class by keeping them on wages lower and lower, increasing working hours. They replace the social benefits for the care of the sick and elderly and children with domestic workers... the contribution of immigrants to the percentage of the population in developed countries... Today they represent between 10% and 20% of the population of the central European countries..." (7)

The migrations in Africa have several components, on the one hand, migration to oil-producing countries, on the other hand, migration from the most important countries poor to the most developed, and on the other hand migration as a movement of refugees due to wars being the region with the largest number of refugees that went from 3 million in 1985 to 6.8 million in 1995. In Asia and the Pacific, Japan, Malaysia, Korea and Taiwan were added to Hong Kong and Singapore as labour-importing countries. In all regions, the capitalist governments have a policy of crushing and cutting systematic development of the rights of immigrants with the aim of facilitating their exploitation and the use of these workers as cheap labor and meat of cannon to the imperialist armies.

With Tougher immigration laws, the situation of workers immigrants are getting worse and worse. This is how José Moreno Pau explains it: "... they suffer exploitation, the division between papers and paperless between nationalized and unnationalized and finally the division continues to be fomented by nationality. Imperialist governments offer immigrants joining invading armies, such as the U.S. to Afghanistan in exchange for of papers and permits so that he and his family can live in the country. But even so all immigrants, suffer racism and xenophobia, education of ghettos and clandestinity..." (8)

Without However, for decades immigrants have been leading increasingly more important to defend their residence and employment rights. Particularly important have become the struggles in the middle of the first 21st century against anti-immigration laws in France and the U.S., that placed them at the center of world politics. Specifically, among the In 2005 and 2006, some of the struggles for the rights of the most important immigrants in recent decades. In November 2005 thousands of young French people took part in two A revolt that had its stamp on the burning of thousands of cars in regions of Paris in which more than half of the population under the age of 15 years, is native to Africa.

The same young people mobilized again together with thousands of young French people months ago then in March 2006 to face government legislation Chirac-Villepin and the "First Employment Contract" (CPE), that detonated the opposition of the working student youth, because tried to liquidate the aspects favorable to the workers by establishing the job insecurity and allowing employers to take young people and dismiss them without reason within two years.

One a year later, in 2006, the struggle against HR4437 and the legislation that curtailed the rights of immigrants, fundamentally Latino. This attack had been preceded by brutal discrimination and persecution of Muslim immigration after the events of 9/11. All the The process of immigrant struggle was crowned with a great national mobilization on the May 1, 2006, which added millions in every city in the U.S. to fight against the voracity of large companies, especially in industry construction, meat and services, which sought serious cuts rights of Latinos to secure cheap labor from workers who, not having any rights, are forced to hand over their labor force by coins.

By that, the struggle of immigrant minorities and their rights, between 2005 and 2005. 2006 in France and the USA The United States, with global repercussions, placed at the center of the scene to immigrants and their mobilization against the policy and laws of exploitation of this section of the working class by the G7 governments serving the interests of large companies and multinationals, thus turning the immigrant proletariat into one of the most important sectors of the proletariat. of the world working class, because it is one of the most combative sectors of the world's working class. exploited and oppressed. 

The great Latino mobilization precipitated the crisis of the sub-prime, because the expansion of the property sales business real estate companies, was always based on the exploitation of labor immigrant in the construction industry, which is mostly made up of Latino labor. In 2015 Europe experienced one of the most important influxes of significant of migrants and refugees in their history. Pushed by the terror of the civil war in Syria and the need for a better life, in front of to the crisis of capitalism, hundreds of thousands of people have fled the East Middle and Africa, risking their lives along the way.

The scale of the crisis has put enormous pressures on some destination countries, in particular Greece, Austria and Hungary. At least 350,000 migrants crossed the EU's borders in January-August 2015, compared to just 280,000 throughout 2014. And that figure 350,000, an estimate by the Organization International Organization for Migration (IOM), does not include the many that crossed a border without being detected. Between The forces that drive people to take those risks are the conflicts that scourge in Syria and Afghanistan, and human rights abuses in Eritrea. The The majority - 62% - of those who have arrived in Europe by boat so far this year are of those three countries. There are also people who settle from Libya, Sudan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Kosovo, Iraq, Iran, Darfur, Somalia and other countries with the hope for a new life somewhere like Germany, France, or the Kingdom United.

The concentration and the growth of the working class gave rise to the megalopolis

The large urban concentrations that arise from migrations are the megalopolis. These conglomerates did not exist 60 years ago, but as a result of the fact that half of humanity is migrating from the countryside to the city and from the economies more backward than the most advanced, are developing convulsive and dramatically. The term megalopolis was introduced by the French geographer Jean Gottmann in the '60s, more precisely in his book "Megalopolis, the urbanized northeastern maritime edge of United States." In this book, Gottman referred to that system urban population of 10 million or more inhabitants, the nucleus of large cities that is expanded with satellite cities creating a megalopolis. These enormous urban concentrations are placed in the center of the world political situation, because it is there that they develop the fundamental political processes of the mass movement, the mobilizations, insurrections and most important revolutions.

But also, and as we will see shortly, because these megacities are huge workers' concentrations. It is not only in megacities that vast sectors are concentrated of the mass movement, with the subsequent social groups and sectors of class such as the unemployed, the lumpens and marginalized and the sectors of rich and poor middle class. In these gigantic conglomerates we are developing an enormous and powerful working class, which, as we shall see, already encompasses the 5 continents and colors the political processes with its mobilization fundamental aspects of the world.

The Ongoing global urbanization and demographic transformations show the degree of development reached by the working class with globalization. As the explains in his excellent work "The Workers of the World" Chris Harman gives the following figures: "... The working class (exists) as never before as a class in itself... with a core of perhaps 2,000 million people," around whom there are another 2,000 million whose lives are "subject in an important way to the same logic as its core... 2.474 millions of people participated in the global non-domestic workforce through mid-'90s. Of these, about a fifth, 379 million people, worked in industry, 800 million in services, and 1,074 million in the agriculture". (9)

And continues: "... Capitalism has created a world working class in the last century and a half. Industry and wage labor exist today in virtually anywhere on the globe. The industrial working class has a global presence. But the uneven and combined development of the system implies which is very unevenly distributed among the different regions. The Rough estimates indicate that 40% of the almost 270 million workers industrial are in OECD countries; in China, Latin America and the former USSR, about 15% in each country, in Asia about 10% and about 5% in Africa..." (10)

The installation of multinationals in China and India, which cause a The growth of the proletariat in those countries did not prevent the growth of the proletariat. proletariat in developed countries, as Harman points out "... in In 1998, the number of workers in the industry was about 20% higher than in 1998. 1971, almost 50% higher than in 1950..." (11) In the In other countries of the first world, the number of industrial workers grows unevenly, in Japan the industrial workforce has grown by more than it doubled between 1950 and 1971 and had another increase of 13% in 1998.

In Great Britain fell by a third, and in France by more than a quarter, but as a whole there are 112 million industrial workers in the G7 countries in 1998, a growth in the number of industrial workers in the most important countries. developed by 25 million compared to 1950. The weight of the class is decisive in the most important country in the world, the United States United. For Harman "... Overall, there is a minimum of 42 million "service sector workers" in manual occupations or jobs routine white-collar drugs in the United States. If we add the 33 million of workers in traditional manual industries, we have to around three-quarters of the U.S. population is made up of workers." (12)

Baldoz, Koeber and Kraft state: "... There are now more Americans employed in the manufacture of cars, buses, and auto parts than at any other time since the Vietnam War...". (13) According to data from the Bank Worldwide, the total number of total workers worldwide is growing more Rapidly than ever before in history, the global workforce has grown increased from 1,887 million people in 1980 to 3,102 million in 2008, is that is, an increase of 1,215 million workers in the last 30 years.

The world proletariat is growing in great proportions. In China alone there are 18 million internal migrants per year who find employment in industry. Globally, according to the above data, at least a fifth of the increase total of 1,215 million between 1980 and 2008, are industrial workers, which which means that the industrial proletariat grows and expands worldwide. Overall, the working class has a more complex with several layers due to the changes produced.

Like this Roberto Antunes explains it: "... Our first challenge is to try to to understand what the working class is today, what the proletariat is today, in the broadest sense of the term, not including workers or " the proletarians of the world" as exclusively the proletariat industrial... It includes all employees, men and women who they live by the sale of their labor power and that they are dispossessed of the means of production... the working class today incorporates the totality of social work, the totality of the collective labor that sells its labor power in exchange for salary" (14)

Antunes analyzes the various layers of the world working class: "... The Class The workforce also includes the wide range of employees in the sector services, but that do not directly create value... also incorporating the rural proletariat that sells its labor power for capital, the called "swallows" of the agro-industrial regions... to the precarious proletariat... which is part-time, which is characterized by work temporary, because of precarious work such as the workers of the Mc Donald's, of the services... according to ILO data there are today more than one billion men and women working women who are precarious and underemployed... or are found unemployed..." (15)

One of the most spectacular examples of class growth and strength The world's leading workers' union is precisely China. In that country in 1986 they migrated to the 30 million peasants, which in 1988 became 50 million, in 1989 between 60 and 80 million and in 2003 migration reached the figure of 98 million. In 2001 in China the industrial proletariat was more than 160 million workers, a figure higher than the number of workers OECD (131 million), India (25 million) and Indonesia (13 million). The same phenomenon has occurred in India, and in all the countries of Southeast Asia, especially the "Tigers", which The dynamic pole of the world economy in the transition from the Keynesian to globalization. In those regions, 50 years ago, there were no powerful proletariat that are today. If we consider the existence of these hundreds of millions of workers who did not exist 50 years ago, the development of the working class in the rest of the colonial countries and the fact that in the G7 countries the working class has grown, we can consider then that, in the Regime of Accumulation of globalization, the The working class reached the most important magnitude and weight in all of history of capitalism.

The Theorists of the "End of the Working Class"

In the last 15 years, especially during the decade of the '90s of the last century, Numerous authors spoke of the end of the working class. Many trials with pseudo-scientific pretensions presented the reality of capitalism as that of the beginning of a new era, in which technology would make people disappear The working class or its social importance and political weight would greatly diminish specific. Books like the one published by Jeremy Rifkin in 1995 rained down called "The End of Work" in which He spoke of the decline of the global labor force.

This flourishing of pseudo-scientific literature that heralded the "End of of the working class", was intended to show an idyllic capitalism and angelic in which technical advances would make the conditions of the production were to change in such a way as to give the lie to Marx's thesis that the capitalism engenders through accumulation a large working class and masses of unemployed population. The "post-working-class" literature flourished along with "post-Marxist", "post-Marxist" literature socialist", "post-ideologies", etc. characterized the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the chapter "Requiem for the working class" from the book of Rifkin could read things like the following: "In many communities the poorly lit factories of the second industrial age have already missing. The environment is no longer polluted by industrial fumes, floors, machines and workers are no longer covered with grease and dirt. The hiss of the firing ovens and the incessant jingling of the gigantic machines is, today, a simple memory of the past".

Evidently Rifkin spoke to us of a dream place that does not exist, far removed from the reality of capitalism that can be observed in the workers' concentrations of China, India and the terrible working conditions suffered by most of the the world population. But the charlatanism about a "new capitalism" that leaves the planet with fewer and fewer workers and with working conditions of sublime beauty, collides with overwhelming data of the reality that goes in the opposite direction. Not only the fact of reality shows that the working class has diminished, on the contrary, its sociological importance is enormous and increasing. And of course, nothing proves that capitalism has lost its brutally exploitative character, which holds for the majority of workers and peoples of the world indices of poverty, social inequality and living conditions increasingly unworthy work.

With the beginning of the global crisis of capitalism, this political and social system he is showing his true face. Poverty and inequality indices that were already serious, are skyrocketing with Historical. As of 2012, out of a total of 6,700 million inhabitants in the world population, 1000 million "survive" with a average of 2 dollars per day, of which 70% are women. Three thousand millions are not able to cover basic needs in food, housing and health. More than 24,000 people die a day from hunger, 840 million people are malnourished, of which 200 million are children under the age of five years. More than 1,800 million human beings do not have access to water drinkable. More than 1,000 million lack an estimated housing, 2,000 million people suffer from iron deficiency anemia, 880 million people do not have access to basic health services and 2,000 million people lack access to access to essentials. At the other extreme, Uruguay Germany live who They pocketed the money from the bailouts, the first twenty super millionaires of the Forbes list together concentrate a figure estimated at more than 100 billion US$, which is equivalent to more than what is necessary for the end of hunger and poverty in the world.

Those more than $100 trillion of accumulated wealth in the hands of "millionaires" exceeds the world GDP, that is, the annual wealth produced by all countries, which around US$ 100 billion. These data show that the bailouts exacerbated social inequalities, the data of which worsen day by day. With the beginning of the world crisis in 2007 the indices of social inequality, human and natural destruction, were triggered, which foreshadows the danger to which this phase of the capitalist system is leading us.

The devastating data on the world economy are so serious that we can affirm Without a doubt, there has been no phase, stage, or period of the capitalism that means such a serious fall in the living conditions of billions of people on the planet simultaneously, such as those who We live today. Before the beginning of the crisis he was always in consideration of the existence of an integrated "First World" by an elite of 7 countries USA, England, France, Canada, Germany, Italy and Japan, and a "Third World" made up of the 192 remaining countries that, beyond inequalities, always had the highest rates of poverty on a global scale.

For those inhabitants and citizens of the countries of the so-called "First World" were always raised living conditions higher than those of the rest of the planet, even for the social and social sectors with lower purchasing power. After the bailouts this is changing, definitively. Today in the countries formerly called the "First Poverty and unemployment are advancing by leaps and bounds, driven by the austerity and austerity plans implemented by their Governments.

The poverty and unemployment rates, although they are not yet the same as in the United States, Third World countries, tend to equalize and approach quickly. For this reason and taking as a definition of country the social formation composed of the classes social and class sectors at a moment in the historical process, we can to affirm that in the countries or social formations of the United States, France, England, Canada, Japan and Italy tend to increase poverty rates and unemployment typical of the social formations of the countries of the "Third World". World".

Other authors developed the thesis about the loss of political importance of the working class. Tony Negri in both his books Empire (2000) and Multitude (2005) or John Holloway in 2001 in his book "Changing the World without taking power," were some representatives of the current of opinion that maintained that the working class had lost its political importance, and that now the confrontation with capitalism would lead him other social sectors are ahead. From this thesis another would be derived: That "new revolutions" would emerge that would be made by a "crowd", without the class content of the processes had some importance.

These theoreticians of the self-managed "new revolution" and The autonomist views were a version of Rifkin's vision of capitalism, but "since the left." This vision culminated in an embellishment of the capitalism from another angle: capitalism can be changed from within, organized into "networks" and "nodes" the The multitude will make the changes without changing the power that exists. Therefore, Therefore, the working class is not necessary as a social agent to fight for a alternative power, since capitalism will be modified from within by the action of the "multitude".

The emergence of the indignant movements in Europe and "Occupy Wall Street" in the US would seem to agree with these theorists of the "new revolution". But in reality, both Holloway, like Negri, and Rifkin, like so many others, are categorically being denied by reality. The new movements that emerge are children of the capitalist crisis that began in 2007. The gaze of young people activists and leaders who promote them are critically aimed at power concentrated of multinational corporations, far from naïve and naïve the view of the Negri and Holloway who saw a capitalism that could be easily dismantled from within. The wave of general strikes in Europe and the world, the The resurgence of trade unionism in the U.S. shows that the working class as a whole its strength and plenitude, it has begun to face the brutality of governments capitalists who try to destroy their living conditions.

Far of the "idyllic" world that Rifkin painted reality it collapses all their words. The movements of the young and indignant, and The workers' strikes will converge while both build the beginning of the a movement of worldwide struggle against capitalism. And in this struggle we will see in action not only the greatest crisis in the history of capitalism, but also the we shall see how it sets in motion the largest and most important working class in the world. The history of capitalism.

The crisis has only made Marx's ideas return with force. And the The return of Marxism does nothing more than put an end to so much charlatanism and petty-bourgeois illusionism, of those who formulated the existence of a "new capitalism", reformable with "networks" and "nodes". The reality is that the proletariat is once again a fundamental actor in the world political situation, and its role and social weight will become increasingly important throughout the twenty-first century. If we add up the industrial proletariat the rest of the sectors that make up the class workers, agricultural proletariat and service proletariat, we will find that in the Accumulation Regime of Globalization has emerged the largest proletariat in the history of capitalism, made up of hundreds of millions of workers.

Notes:

(1) Charles Marx. Capital Book I Chapter XXIII The General Law of Accumulation Capitalist

(2) UN. State of World Population 2007

(3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8) Joseph Moreno Pau "Immigration in Europe" with the collaboration of Jan Talpe. Marxism Vivo 15 year 2007

(9), (10), (11) and (12) Chris Harman. "The Workers of the World" (Part 1)Source: International Socialism 96 Date: 6/12/2003

(13) Baldoz, Koeber and Kraft "The Critical Study of Work: Work, technology, and world production"

(14) and (15) "The new proletarians of the world at the turn of the century." Roberto Antunes Marxism Alive June/September 2000

VI- General conclusions

In In the midst of the greatest crisis in the history of capitalism, the most common problem The great thing that we Marxists face is the lack of a Theory of Democracy. Crisis, the product of the fact that Marx and Engels did not manage to elaborate it in a formal way. finished, organic and systematic. The non-existence of a Marxist Theory of Democracy crisis has led Marxist organizations and analysts to countless misunderstandings, misinterpretations and erroneous forecasts about the current crisis of capitalism. How as we stated in the Introduction to this book, this configures a panorama of general disorientation and the general feeling that we are in a reality that unfolds beyond human control, of a world driven to the destruction by alien forces, impossible to understand and comprehend. And this feeling is stronger today than ever among huge swaths of fighters, activists and political and social leaders from all over the world.

The absence of a Marxist Theory of Crisis forces us more than ever to work on the formulation of premises that allow us to elaborate it, and this This is the task we undertake with this work, a task of elaboration scientific that requires the greatest attention due to its immediate need, given the acuteness of the capitalist crisis we are experiencing. But also in defense of Marxist Theory that requires permanent updating. For In this sense, we must flee from theories elaborated in the twentieth century that sought to revise the Marxist Theory, and delve into the orthodoxy of Marx's classic works, Engels and Lenin to draw conclusions from there. In this work we have established the premises of a Theory of Crisis, in order to march towards a global formulation that allows us to respond to the crisis that the throughout its history, and above all, to the current crisis, the most important important in the history of capitalism.

Following to Marx, we have made a definition of crisis, we have proposed that crisis is the Disturbance of the Process of Expanded Reproduction or Capitalist Accumulation. And We have seen that there are two types of crises: On the one hand, fluctuations or periodic crises, on the other hand, and, on the other hand, the tendencies secular or historical of capitalist accumulation. The Accumulation Process causes the capitalist crisis to be shaped by 2 movements that occur in Simultaneously and interrelated:

• The first movement is that of the permanent irruption of the contradictions of the capitalism. This movement, in turn, is synthesized in the fall in the rate of profit, and is expressed in bankruptcies, inflation, fall in stock markets, devaluation, recession, bankruptcies, etc. it happens all the time and in all stages and phases of capitalist development.

Call to this movement Quantitative Disturbance of the Reproduction Process Extended (quantitative crisis). It is when the extended reproduction or Accumulation is interrupted, slowed down, disturbed, until it resumes its march. This movement occurs permanently, but does not threaten the survival of the mode of capitalist production.

Is In other words, quantitative disturbance is an organic, chronic, and of capitalism, regardless of the stage in which it finds itself, either in primitive accumulation, at its height or the imperialist stage. The burning and destruction of capital, even in a small magnitude in relation to the existing capitals in the economy as a whole, allows it to be resolved. This first movement is closely linked to a second movement which is also the result of the accumulation process. The capitalism develops the permanent tendency towards the centralization of the capitals, and this is one of the most important laws of Accumulation Capitalist. This movement of centralization of capital arises as a need to respond to the permanent outbreak of contradictions of capitalism and generates the different forms of accumulation

2) The second movement is a Disturbance that paralyzes the Accumulation in form almost total. The way out of the crisis is not achieved with credit, nor with a burning of regular capital, as in the quantitative crisis, because it is the product of the exhaustion of the predominant Form of Accumulation. By not being able to get out of the crisis, constitutes a threat to the capitalist mode of production, so that we define this second movement as a Qualitative Disturbance of the Process of Accumulation or Expanded Reproduction (qualitative crisis)

Is In other words, we are not in this case dealing with an ordinary, regular disturbance of those that capitalism usually and regularly suffers. This is a disturbance extraordinary, long-lasting and very serious. The way out of this crisis requires of a profound process of violent liquidation of productive forces, which allows capitalism to overcome the exhausted Forms of Accumulation and to pass to a higher Form of Accumulation.

The crisis qualitative is long-lasting and endangers the survival of the capitalism. The qualitative crisis is always linked to the great upheavals due to the need for capitalism to destroy large masses of the productive forces in order to be able to overcome it. This causes another phenomenon to occur: the qualitative crisis is always there connected to the great political and social events of history in the last centuries.

The crisis qualitative and quantitative have a certain interrelation between them. The quantitative crisis happens all the time, while the crisis qualitative occurs only when the Predominant Forms of Accumulation they enter their stage of exhaustion. Now, we have seen that the Forms of Accumulation have stages of emergence, boom and exhaustion. The movement of The quantitative crisis acts all the time, and in all these stages.

By therefore, in the phases of emergence and rise of the Forms of Accumulation predominant, the qualitative crisis acts all the time, so that the bankruptcies, recessions, devaluations, inflation and other disruptions of the Accumulation, they happen permanently, but linked to a period of expansion economic, which feeds and interrelates with it. When the Forms of Accumulation enter its phase of exhaustion, the economy enters a long period of stagnation and the movement of the qualitative crisis occurs. The quantitative movement continues to act within this movement and intimately related to it. Both movements are linked as follows: bankruptcies, inflation, recession, etc. act within the qualitative crisis, but subordinate to it. The quantitative crisis is subordinated to the crisis qualitative, because Accumulation has been completely paralyzed. And the movements of the quantitative crisis only aggravate the general crisis.

The crisis qualitative not only threatens the capitalist mode of production because it paralyzes Accumulation. It does so for another reason as well: To speak of capitalism is in the reality an abstraction. In reality, the capitalist mode of production changes all the time and is not eternal, nor immutable, so that, when we speak of capitalism, we speak of determined Forms of Accumulation, which act in a a specific and concrete historical moment.

Is that is, although the general laws of capitalism continue to operate throughout the world, time and do not change, the predominant capitalist enterprises do, concrete and determined, which act by accumulating capital in a specific period of its development. For example, to talk about capitalism in the sixteenth century is to talk about capitalism. of the Manufacture.

In in the nineteenth century it is to talk about Industry and in the twentieth century it is to talk about Multinational. Capitalism, as we have seen, is shaped in a global and around them, constituting a Regime of Accumulation. But if As a result of the qualitative crisis, these companies that are predominant in a A certain period of time enters into crisis, this threatens not only the existence of the Predominant forms of accumulation and of the accumulation regime as a whole that has been constituted, but also threatens the mode of production concrete and determined capitalist, which has been formed around them.

And the threat extends to all corners of the capitalist system without being left no sector that is spared from being totally or partially affected. This is the The underlying reason why the qualitative crisis threatens the existence of the of capitalist production. This is what is happening now with the crisis current capitalist system, which began in 2007.

The Qualitative Disturbance Throughout History

As we have seen then, the capitalists never used throughout the history, a single Form of Capital Accumulation. There have always been different Forms of Accumulation, that is, different commercial, productive and financial institutions that acted with the aim of accumulating capital and that, in turn, they reflect the different sectors of the capitalist class. Capitalism ended up imposing itself as the dominant mode of production between the eighteenth and nineteenth century, when the bourgeoisie seized power in the most important countries and liquidated the remnants of feudal rule in the state.

A lot for the historical periods in which capitalism is still an element embryonic production, and is not yet the dominant mode of production, as in those in which the capitalism is already dominant as a mode of production, they have always existed different forms of capitalist accumulation. These Forms of Accumulation developed unevenly and combined around a predominant Form of Accumulation that was the driving and structuring engine of the economy. That is, there are various Forms of Accumulation that act simultaneously and at different levels of development, they revolve around and are interrelated with the predominant Form of Accumulation, which constitutes the axis on which the entire development of capitalism is ordered.

The mechanism by which the passage of a Form of Accumulation occurs predominant inferior to a superior one, is by a violent process of destruction of productive forces. Marx developed the laws of accumulation of capital that explain how this process unfolds from the point of view of economic point of view, it was necessary to know how it did in combination with the factors political and social. The General Law of the Forms of Capitalist Accumulation (Forms) it unites political economy with historical materialism. We now know that the The process of destruction of productive forces required for centralization and accumulation of capital, implied the permanent destruction and liquidation of social classes and sectors of classes, through wars and revolutions. In this way, the laws that explain the passage from a Form of Accumulation to a higher one links the laws of Marxist economics with materialism historical.

The mechanism of annihilation and burning of capital that capitalism developed to solve their crises and advance in the forms of accumulation and centralization of capital, is fundamentally explained by the role of property and social classes. Ownership of the means of production and On the other hand, it gives rise to the bourgeoisie as the ruling class, and in it to the different sectors of the bourgeois class that are permanently disputing the capital and profits.

Behind of commercial nations, factories, industries, manufactures, monopolies, or is the social class that owns these different means of production and the different sectors of that ruling class. It is the struggle for the defense of private property, interests and profits, which explains why the capitalism evolves in different Forms of Accumulation. The different Forms of Accumulation are overcome and transformed, for example, monopolies continue to exist, but they are overcome and contained in turn by multinationals. The whole process of evolution of the forms of accumulation it was deposited one on top of the other, like the different geological layers.

In the development of this mechanism, we observe that, after each violent process of destruction of productive forces, a new centralization of capital that allowed a higher Form of Accumulation, and began a period of of the long expansion of the capitalist economy. With the exhaustion of the Forms of Accumulation predominant, the period of expansion ends and a long period of economic stagnation, which inevitably leads to a new process of destruction of productive forces. The long periods expansion or long stagnation have had different durations, sometimes of just a few decades or sometimes 60 or 70 years or even longer. But these periods are explained by the phenomenon of the emergence of a new Form of predominant accumulation and its boom, it is this that explains the long periods of expansion of the capitalist economy.

On the contrary, the exhaustion of the Forms of Accumulation is what explains the long periods of stagnation. These periods are in turn determined by the rise or exhaustion of the predominant Forms of Accumulation. See from the point of view, the main qualitative crises that capitalism has suffered through history are:

1st Qualitative Disturbance: In the fourteenth century as a result of the fact that the first predominant forms of accumulation were Commercial Nations, entered their phase of exhaustion. Together with them too the first forms of financial accumulation that had been emerged linked to them. As we have seen, this P-CL caused an enormous process of destruction of productive forces, known as the Hundred Years' War. This process of destruction of productive forces coincided with the exhaustion of the of the feudal mode of production, and allowed the consolidation of the Factories, as the Predominant Form of Accumulation.

2nd Qualitative Disturbance: Aims of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries as a result of the fact that the Forms of Accumulation predominant, the Factories were exhausted, which caused a huge process of destruction of productive forces, the 80 Years' War, the crushing of the of the popular insurrections that took place between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Europe and the beginning of the expropriation and genocide of millions of peasants in Europe and the primitive communist tribes of America, Asia, Oceania and Africa. All this enormous process of destruction of forces allowed the emergence of Manufactures as a Form of Predominant accumulation.

3rd Qualitative Disturbance: Aims of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries as a result of the fact that the Forms of Accumulation predominant, Manufactures were exhausted and so were Commercial Enterprises linked to them. This caused a huge process of destruction of forces productive wars and wars: The 30 Years' War, the Franco-Spanish, the Anglo-Dutch and the Civil War in England, the latter, in fact, a profound process revolutionary revolution in which the bourgeoisie took power. Product of this process of destruction of productive forces were placed Industry as a Form of Predominant Accumulation and Banks and Credit as a Form of Accumulation financial.

4th Qualitative Disturbance: Located at early nineteenth century when industries began to enter their phase of The Disturbance unleashed a new and violent wave of destruction of productive forces, with revolutions and civil wars in which the bourgeoisie, eliminated internal customs, expanded the internal market, promoted national borders and modern states emerged. After them emerged monopolies as the predominant form of accumulation.

5th Qualitative Disturbance: Located at early twentieth century when monopolies entered their phase of exhaustion. This unleashed a new and violent process of destruction of forces The 1st and 2nd World Wars. In between, the Fascism and the Russian Revolution. After it emerged the modern multinationals as the predominant Form of Accumulation.

6th Qualitative Disturbance: Located at At the end of the 1960s, when modern multinationals they entered their phase of exhaustion. This disturbance capitalism could It is not possible to weather it because of the violent process of destruction of destructive forces unleashed in the post-war period in backward countries, which included Vietnam, Korea, China, Yugoslavia, etc., added to the process of restoration of capitalism, started in the '70s. All this enormous destruction of productive forces developed in the post-war period allowed the Corporations to be located Multinationals as the predominant Form of Accumulation.

7th Qualitative Disturbance: The current, located at the beginning of the 21st century when the Multinational Corporations They entered their phase of exhaustion that began to manifest itself with the crisis of the punto.com in the year 2000. There was no process of destruction of forces of the magnitude necessary to move to a Form of Accumulation The project for a new American century with the defeat of Iraq and the failure of the Patriot Act in the U.S. This caused that The crisis burst in June 2007, with the bursting of the sub-crisis bubble. First.

The location of these Qualitative Disturbances throughout history, allows us to verify the role that the process of destruction of productive forces has fulfilled throughout the development of capitalism. This key role for understanding the process of evolution of capitalism, places the relationship between productive and destructive forces as another important element for the elaboration of a Theory of Crisis

The relationship between the development of the Productive and Destructive Forces

Is It is necessary to clarify what is the relationship between the development of the forces productive and destructive in capitalism. There is a one-sided concept and unbalanced around the development of the productive forces and a vision in which capitalism only develops the forces of the productive in the phase of primitive accumulation or in the stage of apogee, and only It develops the destructive forces in the imperialist stage.

This unilateral vision prevents us from understanding the true development of the process of capitalist accumulation, and the development of crises. In reality, the capitalism develops the productive and destructive forces simultaneously, in all its stages and phases, even in the imperialist stage. An example of this in what happened in the post-war decades of the '50s, '60s of the twentieth century where there was a relative development of the productive forces, but within the framework of of an immense process of development of destructive forces. In the post-war period of the twentieth century, while capitalism was developing indices of growth at historic rates in the US, Europe and Japan, developed at the same time destructive forces in Southeast Asia, with the horrific wars of Korea and Vietnam. That is, the development of the productive forces and destructive violence was occurring simultaneously, in Europe, the United States and Japan on capitalism built bridges, houses, cities, provided high wages to millions of people, work and food. But at the same time and simultaneously, destroyed millions of human lives, homes, cities, and all kinds of infrastructure in Southeast Asia.

The simultaneous development of the productive and destructive forces was brought forward by Lenin in his book "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of the Revolution". capitalism", where he states that in the imperialist stage the capitalism develops the productive and destructive forces simultaneously. This is how he puts it: "It would be a mistake to believe that this tendency to Decomposition excludes the rapid growth of capitalism. No; in the epoch of imperialism, certain branches of industry, certain sectors of the bourgeoisie, certain countries, manifest, to a greater or lesser degree, either one or the other of these tendencies. On the whole, capitalism is growing rapidly incomparably greater than before, but this growth is not only, in the first place, general, increasingly unequal, but their inequality is also manifested, in particular, in the decomposition of the countries with the largest capital, such as the case of England" (1)

How Lenin puts it, the process of development of the productive forces and destructive of capitalism develops simultaneously and contradictory, while in some countries and regions the forces are growing productive, in others declines. While in some countries and regions there are growth, at the same time in other regions and countries there is war and destruction of productive forces. While in some countries and regions the capitalism grows, at the same time the overaccumulation of capital decomposes branches of production, and the economy of regions and countries.

Already we saw the example of what happened in the post-war period of the twentieth century, and the development of the General Law of the Forms of Capitalist Accumulation (Forms) presents examples of simultaneous development of productive and destructive forces in unequal and combined form, in all phases and stages of the history of the capitalism. This relation between destructive and productive forces is dialectic, the 2 develop simultaneously, but always one predominates on the other.

To sometimes the development of the productive forces predominates, and sometimes it predominates the development of destructive forces. So, it is not a question of knowing whether there is the process of development of productive or destructive forces, it is not It was a question of knowing whether it is one or the other, it was a question of knowing which of the two is the predominant process in the different stages through which the capitalist development at each moment of its concrete historical development, and determined by different political and social circumstances.

Even Thus, although the relationship between the development of the productive forces and the destructive is dialectical product of the fact that they develop simultaneously, One question is clear and definitive: In capitalism, the engine of evolution of the economy and overcoming one Form of Accumulation by another is development of destructive forces and war. The mechanism by which the passage from a lower predominant Form of Accumulation to a higher one, is through a violent process of destruction of productive forces.

And This process of destruction of productive forces is not only predominant in the the imperialist stage of capitalism, but in all stages, periods and phases of its history. Marx developed the laws of capital accumulation that explain how this process unfolds from an economic point of view. In Volume I of Capital explained that the process of Accumulation tends to concentrate and centralize capital, an issue that was explained from the point of view of economic. It remained to be seen how it did so in combination with the factors political and social. It is at this point that the General Law of the Forms of Capitalist Accumulation Unites Political Economy with Materialism historical.

But that permanent struggle between sectors of the class for the appropriation of value created by the toiling masses at all stages of the evolution of the capitalism, implies a permanent process of centralization of capital, which it is carried out violently. When the Form of Accrual Is Exhausted Predominant, violence reaches historic proportions that show the horrific and destructive face of capitalism, whose engine of evolution is the massive and violent destruction of productive forces.

Nahuel Moreno anticipated some of these conclusions in his last economics courses and he expressed doubts about the progressive character of capitalism, about whether it was Throughout its history, capitalism evolved in a contradictory way with capitalism. development of the productive forces. This is how he expressed it: "I have Doubts... If capitalism was not always a contradictory phenomenon, which he developed the technique and exploded nature and man. And if it's not a Permanent Law of Capitalism. I have great doubts, I, personally... I'm very scared of the numbers of the Indians, and the numbers of the black Africans that capitalism exploded in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In other words, there are calculations Creepy. Almost 90% of the indigenous people were liquidated in 50 years... Then I don't know if capitalism doesn't permanently have a disastrous face against capitalism. development of the productive forces... It was very progressive with respect to the technique, is the stage of great technical development, but objectively, from its beginning... leads to barbarism. That is, what we are seeing now is not consequence that was a wonder and change, and became bad, but before it was sinister as it is now, and more and more sinister, more sinister, more sinister..."

"The it is doubtful whether it began with imperialism... or began with the arrival of capitalism ... what it is the first production system that does not work for consumption, which is already such an irrational thing... which is an irrational thing from the outset, it is against the development of the productive forces at the outset from the outset, then it is a highly contradictory phenomenon from the beginning. Technically it is the one that more develops, precisely because it does not produce for consumption... But at the same time time is the one that destroys nature the most, the most blows everything up from the beginning. And today it is the monstrosity of a law that was permanent" (2)

The General Law of Forms of Accumulation allows us to understand more the development of the crises of capitalism and allows us to overcome old schemes such as the old view that capitalism in its stage of apogee had developed for a long period essentially the forces productive and then in its stage of decline it had developed only the destructive forces. With the General Law of the Forms of Accumulation, this schema is definitively outdated, which allows a more A profound and scientific analysis of how crises develop in capitalism.

Conclusions on the relationship between capitalist accumulation and crises

For the development of a Theory of Crisis we have settled on the analysis global and historical process of capitalist accumulation. We saw first how capitalism accumulated at one pole the masses of capital also more important in history, and at the other pole in the megalopolises grouped the The largest human masses of workers and unemployed in history. Also we saw the journey made by industrial and commercial capital. They act in historical terms developing 3 types of movements in form interrelated, which are the following:

1) During the predominance of commercial capital between the tenth and seventeenth centuries acted in the form of divergent, with commercial capital oriented to change and production Use-oriented.

2) During the predominance of industrial capital between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, In an interrelated way, commercial capital is oriented to change and the Industrial capital begins to orient itself in the same direction.

3) During the imperialist stage between the 20th and 21st centuries, the two types of exchange-oriented capital, merged through the action of the exchange rate. interest and the domination of financial capital.

The usurious and financial capital, a variant of the commercial one, predominates again in the capitalist economy. By means of this last movement, the fusion of both types of capital credit capital as part of finance capital, and both in turn as part of the commercial capital, began to develop thus the dissolution of the capitalist mode of production. When this fusion is produced, finance capital begins to prey on the mode of production capitalist, taking up its historical movement effected in all modes of production, only now very quickly.

Like this Marx analyzes it: "... The one who must now be expropriated is no longer the worker who works on his own account, but the capitalist who exploits many workers. This expropriation is carried out by means of the of the immanent laws of capitalist production themselves, by means of the concentration of capital. Each capitalist liquidates many others. With the steady decline in the number of capitalist magnates who usurp and monopolize all the advantages of this process of post-touching..." (3)

"... This the result of the supreme development of capitalist production... is the suppression of the capitalist mode of production within itself, and therefore a a contradiction that destroys itself and that prima facie is presented as a simple transitory phase towards a new form of production..." (4) Why Does this 3rd movement occur in an accelerated manner? How did you make the capital commercial its dissolving action on the modes of production? How does Capital this movement on the capitalist mode of production?

The commercial capital carried out its dissolving action on the modes of pre-capitalist production when it developed the process of circulation in autonomous form from production. Movement between spheres of production and circulation was oriented in a divergent way, with production oriented to the use and circulation to change. The dissolving action of capital on the pre-capitalist modes of production It was effective, despite not establishing a direct relationship with the production. But from establishing a direct relationship with it and that capital commercial and industrial merged, this changed. Once they have begun to commercial and industrial capital, the processes of circulation and production began to act in an interrelated and convergent manner.

In instead of orienting one towards use and the other towards change, they were now oriented towards both towards change. This movement of both spheres of capital in the form of convergent turned the historical dissolving action of merchant capital into a Movement even faster and more powerful, more effective and precise. Capital, in the imperialist stage, freed itself from the bonds imposed by the existence of the social classes that owned the previous modes of production that were expropriated by him.

Herself freed from the limits imposed by the old modes of production that they prevented them from moving from one branch of production to another. It was developed in contradictory form to the production of which its evolution was always inversely proportional and now reached the form of a complex and sophisticated machinery of expropriation of the capitalist mode of production itself.

In the imperialist stage of capitalism, the movement of the fusion of capital industrial with the commercial is expressed in the over-accumulation of capital of a magnitude never seen before. This brutal overaccumulation is the expression of the contradiction between the private ownership of the means of production, on the one hand, on the one hand, with the wealth generated socially by the other. Financial capital resumes in the imperialist and decadent stage of capitalism, the historical dissolving action that merchants' capital carried out on the modes of production pre-existing to capitalism.

The commercial and industrial capitals, oriented to change and in this way fused as finance capital, they act as a swift expropriation machine that devours enormous masses of production. In this way they liquidate class sectors and accelerates concentration to levels never seen before, as he explained Marx, "the suppression of the capitalist mode of production in its own bosom." The capitalist mode of production, gnawed from inside by the actions of financial capital, expropriated in thousands of parts and its contradictions sharpened to the paroxysm, it begins to undergo a process of dissolution. The historical tendency of Accumulation is for capital to begin to position itself in a contradictory way in front of the capitalist mode of production. Is that is, that it begins to deny the mode of production engendered by itself, which is, in terms of Marxist logic, a negation of the negation. 

Thus Marx he describes it in Volume I, chapter 24 when he analyzes the historical tendency of Capitalist Accumulation. "... The monopoly exercised by capital becomes a fetter on the mode of production that has blossomed with him and under him. The concentration of the means of production and the socialization of work reach a point where they are incompatible with its capitalist crust. He makes her jump. The last hour of the capitalist private property. The expropriators are expropriated... The denial of capitalist production is produced by itself, with the need for a natural process. It is the negation of the negation..." (5)

The process of dissolution that capitalism undergoes by capital is the general and historical framework that allows us to understand the current crisis in the imperialist stage. It is in this historical framework that we have This analysis of the relationship between Accumulation and the crisis has been made in order to to advance in the more precise formulation of a Marxist Theory of Crisis. In both Quantitative and Qualitative Disturbance are dialectically interrelated expressions of the fundamental contradiction which is at the base of capitalism. The quantitative crisis and the crisis The qualitative contradiction between capital and labor between the private property and the Law of Value, between collective production and appropriation and all the contradictions that act relentlessly, in all the stages, phases and periods of development of the capitalist system.

When contradictions appear, capitalist states, analysts defenders of capitalism of all stripes are perplexed by the such forceful action of the economy, whose profound laws they do not understand. These characters are increasingly confined to explanation based on trickery, periodic or secular cycles, luck, providence, horoscope and in short, the divine will of some superior being who it determines events. This explains why all the policies of the G7 governments seeking to resolve crises by intervening in the market or world trade, by manipulating prices, or by stimulating credit or manipulating portions of the world flow of capital, systematically and Flatly. Policies to resolve the crisis through interventions in the terrain of circulation and commerce, do nothing but aggravate it because the crisis is expressed in trade, but it develops in the process of accumulation that crosses the whole economic process.

The functionaries of capitalist governments, economists who defend the capitalism, and even some analysts, considered Marxists, observe the origin of the crisis in the market, trade, the sphere of circulation of goods or the consumption of goods, which leads them to qualify the crisis overproduction, underproduction or low consumption. With knowledge of these motions and laws, we can then define the character and nature of the current crisis of the diagnosis of the crisis: The capitalism is going through a process of Qualitative Process Disruption of Extended Reproduction. In other words, we are experiencing a process of exhaustion of the current predominant Forms of Accumulation, the Corporations Multinationals, whose bankruptcy and support with bailouts expresses that they are Forms of Accumulation that have entered their phase of exhaustion.

These Forms of Accumulation, are in turn successors of the Modern Multinationals post-war periods, and both, consolidated the capitalist era in which the economy was is under the control of companies that dominate branches of production on a large scale as part of the imperialist stage of capitalism. Being in the middle of a P-CL, the successive injections of giant masses of capital on credit, carried out by the central banks with the bailouts, they managed to revive the world economy, but they responded to the weaker indicators economic development of the last decades.

Herself has opened up from now on a historic, long-lasting crisis, which he will go through depressions and momentary recoveries. Even so, the ability to response of the capitalist governments of the world, both imperialist and The semi-colonial has been effective, coordinated, has formally avoided the bankruptcy of Multinational Corporations. QE and interventions of states, not exempt from crises and contradictions, seek to stop collapse.

Independently of the rhythms of the situation, of whether a new fall is made or not, whether economic assistance from the G7 states, which continues, will be combined With new global or partial bailouts, what we are witnessing is the the end of the economic regime of globalization, and the beginning of a new phase, or regime that has all the elements of barbarism, foreshadowing Some of the tendencies to the decomposition of capitalism.

In the last period, a major controversy has been unleashed about the meaning of the of the bailouts, whether they will succeed in moving the world economy forward or not, and that consequences will bring for the development of capitalism. We already know what effect will bring about these monstrous masses of capital that have been injected into the world economy, will allow for short-term relief, will allow them to recover partially the process of circulation, the credit and the money that are Collapsed. But they will be developing all the contradictions even more strongly of the capitalist system, the crises and with it, the shocks and social uprisings that foretell a greater crisis.

The Dying and decadent capitalism threatens to drag humanity into the disaster and the conditions are ripe for the transition of a mode of production to another. But this step is no longer in the field of economics, but which will be determined by the course of the next events of the struggle of classes. No matter how much credit and finance capital act to accelerate the dissolution of capitalism, no matter how much the bailouts put this perspective in a swift and precise movement, even though the acceleration of all the contradictions are rising to paroxysm, capitalism is not going to disappear. Its fall is not an economic movement, although the movement raise the possibility of its fall. It is in the political field where it will be defined whether or not capitalism will continue to exist, and in what way, if any, if it survives, it will.

Yes There is something important about the current debate on the state of the economy is precisely that of advancing in the elaboration of a Theory of the Crisis following the Marxist method that our teachers, such as Nahuel Moreno who, in the face of the study of economics, he advised giving class definitions, when facing the study "It is good that we put ourselves once and for all on the all agree what it means for a Marxist to study political economy Marxist... For example, there is a tendency to let ourselves be enveloped by formulas or by economic laws as if they had life of their own, as if they acted on their own." (6)

For Moreno the formulas, the laws, and the analyses of economic processes, if although they are fundamental, they are worthless if they develop on their own, isolated of political and social phenomena and of class analysis. And just as the history is made by classes, Moreno advised us not to forget for a minute that the economy, so do the classes.

Like this he explained: "For me the decisive thing is the class character of everything... It is the key to everything... Marxist economists almost always forget that. What, if History is made by classes, economies are also made by classes. What do I mean by this? ... That, if there is something that is of the classes, it is the economy... We must not lose ourselves and isolate ourselves from the class process by to make the economic analysis"(7)

The The current crisis of capitalism is the current crisis and the exhaustion of the Multinational. Multinational Corporations, entities that express the highest degree of accumulation achieved by capitalism, are those that have bankrupt, and its bankruptcy expresses the exhaustion of globalization. When we are talking about the End of Multinationals, we do not refer only to describing the agony of these Forms of Accumulation. We speak of the crisis and agony of a social class; that of the owners of the multinationals, those of the tycoons and big capitalists who dominate the whole of the world economy and possess the ownership of almost all the most important means of production and exchange. We make this work available to all those who want to defend the Marxism, and constructing a theory of crisis, in the midst of the greatest crisis of the history of capitalism.

Notes

(1) V. Lenin. "Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism" Chapter X "The Historical Place of the Imperialism" (1916)

(2) Nahuel Moreno. School of Economics Cadres

(3) Karl Marx: Capital, Book I, Chapter XXIV "The so-called Accumulation Original" 7 "Historical Tendency of Accumulation Capitalist"

(4) Karl Marx, Capital, Book III Chapter XVII The Role of Credit in Production capitalist.

(5) Karl Marx: Capital, Book I, Chapter XXIV "The so-called Accumulation Original" 7 "Historical Tendency of Accumulation Capitalist"

(6) Nahuel  School of Economics Cadres

(7) Nahuel Moreno. School of Economics Cadres