Marx and Capitalism Music: L. von Beethoven, Quartet Op. 127, Guarneri Quartet)
Overview
Two cheers for capitalism
“The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjugation of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground--what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor? The Communist Manifesto
Two cheers, continued
And one big “hiss”
Basic dynamics of capitalism
Three laws of capitalist development
“Let us sum up: the more productive capital grows, the more the division of labor and the application of machinery expand. The more the division of labor and the application of machinery expand, the more competition among the workers expands and the more their wages contract. In addition, the working class gains recruits from the higher strata of society also; a mass of petty industrialists and small rentiers are hurled down into its ranks and have nothing better to do than urgently stretch out their arms alongside those of the workers. Thus, the forest of uplifted arms demanding work becomes ever thicker, while the arms themselves become ever thinner.” Wage Labor and Capital
Beyond Capitalism
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