Scylla, INTERVIEW WITH SHORT R. Perhaps we all have the occupants of a total madhouse
Reinhard Jellen, and Peter Mühlbauer 11/19/2002 Article URL: http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel / 13/13628/1.html
crisis, Germany's most famous theorist, Robert Short, on the new economy, the fall of the mass of profit, financial bubbles-Capitalism and the Empire
Robert Short, capitalism's critics and value theorists, is a freelance writer in Nuremberg, is Co-editor of the magazine and regularly writes
crisis mean for
. His best known publications are The collapse of modernization and the Black Book of Capitalism (
A body governed society ). Telepolis asked the expert in crisis and collapse of the merchandise on the situation of capital in general and in particular.
Ecom, LetsBuyIt.com, WorldCom ... who currently reads news gets the impression that the days of Worlddotcommunism are counted (see dispute over insider news on the Internet ). If you connect to the sickbed of capitalism, Which diagnosis make? How many days do you give it to? Is it possible to preserve the body or may even bring the mummy back to life?
Robert Short: As a radical critic of the ruling Zumutungsgesellschaft I come not just as a doctor at the sickbed of capitalism. The diagnosis of Exitus relates lethal to the fact
that has become the third industrial revolution of self-contradiction of this mode of production historically ripe one hand, the system is based that it uses up manpower for the irrational end in itself the "recovery of value" in constantly expanded scope ; other hand, the technological development driven by the competition manpower which are increasingly being redundant.
capitalism is economically real world society to a minority event. on the surface of the world market, the absolute inner barrier is initially in two different forms dar. In the capitalist centers, a new, micro-electronic upgraded standard of productivity that is associated with increasing structural mass unemployment. Purchasing power and government revenues decline, the social systems and infrastructure will suffer. The domestic markets shrink. Lack of profitability thus take place less and less real investment. Instead
become globalized capital: less by exports of goods and capital rather than through transnational dispersion of Business Administration (taking advantage of the global cost differential).
capitalism is economically real world society to a minority event. This process goes hand in hand together with a lifting of the financial markets, the "fictitious capital" by increasing the pure rate values. In place of the real accumulation by the enhanced business Vernutzung of labor occurs
financial bubble capitalism, the capital accumulation
simulated only .
break in the capitalist periphery, however at an early stage of the crisis process entire economies and regions of the world together, just because they do not join the micro-electronic upgrade for lack of capital strength. There is increasing much faster in the mass unemployment and catastrophic magnitude. Because the work force is not technically released in relatively slow steps but in large batches by universal bankruptcy of the world market no longer competitive production. The rest break, the transnational corporations for its global network under the nail. In the breakdown region will replace the real one Plünderungsökonomie accumulation of warlords, gangs, etc. It is only exploited the reproductive material to total destruction.
financial bubbles and Plünderungsökonomie capitalism are the two sides of the same coin. In this case no real added value in national and world economic scale rather than more. The inflation of financial values \u200b\u200bare not based on production, any more than of course the Plünderungsverhältnissen. Due to the financial bubbles, it is possible to "fictitious capital" in the real economy to recycle, that is
investment and consumption will be paid with air bookings (with money that does not deserve the goods market, but pulled out of the nothingness of the speculative process was). That was the paradigm of the 80s and especially 90s. Therefore, it seemed possible that structural Mass unemployment in the West herunterzumanipulieren statistically, while the east-south Plünderungsökonomie could dock with a seemingly still functioning world market. But the bubbles can not be inflated at will, if not self-supporting thrust follows the real accumulation.
is now at the limit, financial bubbles have shrunk or have already collapsed (New Market). With a time delay of 6 months to 3 years (depending on the production cycle) beats the back on the real economy. In this process we are right now. With the disappearance of the bubbles, much of the far bubble fed by capital production proves to be excess capacity. The lethal logic runs on
serial bankruptcies and out "decommissioning" of whole sectors in the West , to the general cardiac arrest of planetary reproduction of capital. Of course, breaking a whole historical information, a mode of production, not hours and days together. It will be a painful process over several decades. Nevertheless, capitalism is dying because of its immanent collapse
dynamics measured in historical dimensions much faster than about the Pharaohs and the Roman Empire.
What remains is not a mummy, but
the specter of capitalism in the people : the subject form of universal competition. The absolute limit of capitalism is objective, but this is not a simple a different mode of production beyond market and state, beyond money and bureaucracy of "sovereignty". If no transnational social movement is that deliberately transcends the modern were producing system, we all become zombies of the dead capital ratio, that is, to
crazy subjects of a borderless power competition, as now with the gunmen and suicide bombers, the ethnology and jihadists emerges.
The "rationalize" of labor is faster than expand the markets.
1991 her book Collapse of modernization. Later developed network-economic theories, which saw the levy of a plurality of micro-profits on the electronic penetration of previously not covered by the product cycle everyday operations an escape from the impending collapse of the tendency of the rate of profit. What do you think: Does capitalism still a Schlupflöchlein?
Robert Short: The problem is not the trend (relative) fall of the rate of profit, but the absolute
case the total mass of profit social . Falling rate of profit means that per capital invested sum of the "dead" in the form of cost share increasing use of physical capital (relative to the only additional value-added living labor force) is increasing, the recoverable profit per principal therefore less accessible. In other words, the cost per value-added jobs are rising.
This falling rate of profit can be compensated by increasing the amount of capital employed, therefore, by extension investments - if they are profitable. This can only happen if the markets qua development of productive forces and thus cheaper products faster and extend further than the use of physical capital per job, per product and per capital sum increases. In this case, although relatively less Labor per capital total and per product used is limited by the disproportionate expansion of the production as a whole, the bottom line absolutely needs more work force and therefore more absolute value (and thus profit) generated. The prime example was the development of the automotive industry and other Fordist industries.
goes out in the third industrial revolution, however, this compensation mechanism. Although cheaper, the new products as before and the markets will expand accordingly (the computing capacity of the 70 years you can now buy from the pocket money).
But the "rationalize" of labor is faster and extends farther than expand the markets can . The ratio of the two factors was reversed. For that very reason expansion investments are unprofitable. As a consequence, the mass of profit falls completely. What is hidden for a time by the formation of financial bubbles. But
when bubbles disappear, the real economic situation also shows empirically: The business profits crash; must be shut down excess capacity across all sectors, there is an inflation rate of bankruptcies.
This is precisely the manifest crisis of capitalism that goes beyond mere economic waves . This happened before, but only as a temporary transitional phenomenon, as "Lücke" eines Strukturbruchs, als krisenhaftes Intermundium zwischen zwei industriellen Revolutionen, als Timelag zwischen einer auslaufenden und einer neu anlaufenden "langen Welle" der Kapitalakkumulation. Die dritte industrielle Revolution trägt jedoch keine neue "lange Welle" mehr. Nur scheinbar, vermittelt durch die Finanzblasen war an die Stelle der fordistischen Industrien ein neues Trägerkonzept der Akkumulation qua Internet- und Telekom-Industrien getreten. Deren gesellschaftlicher Beschäftigungs- und damit Wertschöpfungs-Effekt ist jedoch minimal. Die Inhalte der fordistischen Industrien wie der dazugehörigen Dienstleistungen waren trotz Rationalisierung immer noch arbeitsintensiv, die Umsetzung der Blaupausen erforderte Millionen von zusätzlichen "Händen" menschlicher Arbeitskraft. Die Inhalte der dritten industriellen Revolution bedürfen dieser "Hände" nicht mehr (Reproduktion per Mausklick). An die Stelle der realen Wertschöpfung mussten deshalb jene spekulativen Finanzblasen treten, die nur platzen konnten. So wurde die emphatisch ausgerufene "Gründerzeit" der New Economy zum größten Flop der Wirtschaftsgeschichte.
Wenn sich trotzdem hartnäckig der Glaube hält, irgendwo in den elektronischen Strukturen könne eine Potenz von Wertschöpfung und Profitabschöpfung verborgen sein, so ist dies dem
fetischistischen Bewusstsein der kapitalistischen Warenproduktion geschuldet. "Wert" ist jedoch keine dingliche Eigenschaft, but a social relation between people. machine units, robotic systems, network structures, etc., are not social agents, make no social relations and therefore produce no "value", as little as they buy cars, cell phones and vacation travel.
capitalism is now even a primitive social condition that is based on the exploitation of human labor . An association of electronic networks is capitalism can not be represented.
Capitalist subjectivity and universal planetary communication are mutually exclusive. The "electronic penetration of previously not covered by the product cycle everyday Operations creates "no new accumulation game room. Not in the circulation of goods value or profit, but occurs only in the production of goods. If circulative operations are skimmed off or taxed, it can only be a deduction from the act in the production value created mass. However, if the social production of value drops can not be skimmed expanded the circulation of value.
The post-modern fashion theories fit perfectly to the short era of financial bubbles-capitalism and its "anything-goes" ideology.
was in the last crisis of capitalism that a healthy push on the resort to authoritarian models. Since the mid-1990s There is a new phenomenon of crisis management: economic power is converted to privileges such as patents or copyrights that ensure a permanent return and to that extent recession-proof in that they, together with dependencies (see free services and opportunity costs ) beyond a pricing by the market work (see The return of feudalism by other means ). capitalism drawn in the current crisis back in the comfortable construction of a new feudalism?
Robert Short: Basically, all raised questions revolve more about what "value" is actually (profit is nur eine vom Wertverhältnis abgeleitete Größe dar). Für das laut Marx fetischistisch bestimmte kapitalistische Bewusstsein bedeutet Wert ein rein relationales Verhältnis (subjektive Wertlehre). Sobald Menschen überhaupt in eine Beziehung treten, stellen sie dieser Auffassung zufolge auch schon eine Wertbeziehung her. Damit wird jedoch ein spezifisch historisches Verhältnis, das moderne warenproduzierende System, auf ideologische Weise ontologisiert.
Diese kapitalistische Basisideologie spitzt sich in der Postmoderne bis zur Absurdität zu, und zwar in dreifacher Hinsicht. Erstens wird die soziale "Individualisierung" bis zur letzten Konsequenz getrieben, um die Menschen in abstrakte Gesellschaftsatome zu verwandeln, die ihre companies must own experience as a foreign Exterior:
All relationships are up in the intimacy into it to turn into "customer relations" ("Quality Management"). Such a requirement is no longer livable and produces daily disaster on the run.
Secondly negates the difference between essence and appearance, denied any "substantiality" and therefore the working substance of the capital. Value is not only form but also substance, namely, past or "dead" work, a quantum of human energy expended in the form of a "real abstraction".
Third is the difference between signifier and signified, between reality and virtuality, of appearance and reality completely leveled, and the epistemological flatness produces the cult of arbitrariness. That there is no absolute reality is, however, is far from that in respect of a particular historical and social constellation (but also in terms of nature) would have all the items the same dignity or being represented on the same surface could be. Although gravity is known to be a purely relative matter, but still it would not be very palatable to the celestial body earth in the 10th Stock to jump out the window.
all things considered, the postmodern theories of fashion, of course, wonderful to the short era of financial bubbles-capitalism and his "Anything-goes" ideology. Now it's "Rien ne va plus", for both the bubble economy as for the Beliebigkeitsdenken. The anti-essentialism is encountered most essential to the nose to the negative-essential character of the capital.
course there is the fetishistic illusion about the nature of value and profit since the beginning of the capitalist mode of production in ever new variations, postmodernism had one extreme intensification dar. The subjective theory of value was created in the 19th Century and was related to the theory of language teaching Saussure a source of post-modern theories.
Another, older version of the same illusion is the theory of "political values" or "political price" that is the idea that values, prices and profits through political decree, could be determined by pure power or domination. But the capital utilization is an objectified process that can not respond to the subjective order of power. For example, if a certain standard of productivity and profitability on the world market has been set qualitative development of productive forces, then shake it a political dictatorship. The productivity level, with all the economic consequences, with tanks, missiles, secret police, torturers, etc. not to impress in the least.
has reason to and capitalism have never "healthy encountered on the resort to authoritarian models.
The authoritarian state is a model of enforcement and crisis of capital in a very superficial sense. Even democracy itself reacts as a repressive apparatus on the economic emergency, but she can only manage this emergency (as long as people like this can be), but not overcome. Either arise from the inner objective process of capitalist economics new potential for recovery and accumulation, including the new additional Vernutzung of work force, or the economic crisis will intensify further and further.
course It is conceivable that a dictatorship or a democratic emergency management great masses of the population holding down by force and bureaucratic terror, but that is something other than a "healthy piercing of the capital," the just by nature given to the steadily expanded Vernutzung of labor power to the productivity level and no other is dependent. Political power can support capital accumulation, flank, and (it is nothing but the "political expression" of the capital relation), but do not produce autonomous.
Even so-called economic power (control qua property titles on money capital, means of production, etc.) can not draw as such value, but skim off only by a mass-produced value. Patents or copyrights, as such, not create a single euro profit, but only if the relevant knowledge, know-how, etc. is applied capitalist productive. The proceeds of patents, etc. shall constitute a deduction from the productive value or profit generated, which the owner of this title from the "functioning capitalist" who uses the patent may bring for themselves.
It behaves much like the interest-bearing capital, so if someone who does not engage in capitalist production itself lends money to a production company. The interest, which he receives is nothing but a deduction from profits earned, which the "acting" Entrepreneurs must pay the owner money. If the production company is unprofitable or bankrottiert, or if the borrowed money on a whim or unproductive spending has been squandered (like mostly in the New Economy), the crisis of the debtor is well known, the crisis of the creditor. Otherwise it behaves in fees for patents, copyrights, etc.
It does not matter which, if any mediation channels in between (state, local, legal, etc.). If costs of patents or copyrights, in contrast to the interest of financial capital is not subject to a pricing by markets, that does not not necessarily mean that it is therefore to "crisis-proof 'income concerns. A naked, no one can reach into the bag. This applies to individuals as well as for government agencies or institutions. In a word, all derivative income, fees, profits, payments are ultimately dependent on real capital of successful recovery, and if that does not work, there is no derivative "return period" more, of whatever kind. To think so is the illusion of the owners of capital money or property titles, which do not realize, which are tied to capitalist context switching their "rights".
Because one does not know what is conceptually, and recently in very different (economic, social, political and military) Respect of a return of any feudal conditions, a "new middle age" and so tells stories. This is simply nonsense. Feudalism is an agricultural and natural personal economic dependency. can on the basis of the anonymous general value and the form of money is neither a social reproduction of personal dependencies give more economic in the form of a tax in kind or labor services. A money-feudalism would be a contradiction in terms. Unless money grows on trees this week or on the field.
arises from closure no profit
about new systems of "copyright protection" such as digital rights management are currently world's traditional access rights of the dispossessed population to information (see
Content is King! or the dictatorship of the small print ). Another Expropriationswelle threatened by the conversion of social security. Create such new areas of operations of capitalism, or accelerate the fall of mechanics?
Robert Short: Once again: No one is inherently insolvent. Solvency in the form of money is dependent on you can not sell anything, its work force, or at least his kidneys. Ultimately requires the involvement of solvency in a succeeding capitalist Verwurstungsprozess of labor. If capital does not lend money profitabel verwertet wird, dann ist es verloren und kann nicht zurückgefordert werden. Wenn die Anwendung eines Patents zu keinem profitablen Verwertungsprozess führt, dann verfällt der Anspruch ebenfalls. Der Inhaber des Patents kann zwar dessen weitere Anwendung untersagen, aber das ist rein negativ, davon hat er nichts.
Unprofitable Produktionsanlagen kann man stilllegen, aber aus der Stillegung entspringt natürlich kein Profit. Nicht zahlungsfähigen Bevölkerungsteilen kann man das Wasser, den Strom, das Telefon und natürlich auch den Zugang zum Internet sperren, aber auch das sind rein negative Vorgänge. Und wenn Leute, die jahrzehntelang in die Sozialversicherung eingezahlt haben, am Ende nichts mehr herausbekommen, because due to the changed conditions generation nothing is there, it will be no new investment field.
closures, blocking of access rights, devaluation of claims are manifestations of the capitalist crisis , but how could it create a new scope for exploitation? There are only negative consequences that the recovery is no longer just work.
The target may be only a social self-government of the united individuals.
Hartz Mission: wage cuts, longer hours, poorer working conditions and cuts in benefits for the unemployed with the key words are flexibility, Me Inc. and ownership durchgesetzt. Die Konzepte zielen allesamt auf die Selbstdisziplinierung der Lohnabhängigen und verbinden paradoxerweise das Konzept wachsender Selbstbestimmung mit der faktisch wachsenden Abhängigkeit der Menschen von ökonomischen Prozessen. Warum füllen sich eigentlich anhand solch kognitiver Dissonanzen nicht die Irrenhäuser? Und was sind die theoretischen und praktischen Kräfte, die dieser Entwicklung Einhalt gebieten könnten?
Robert Kurz:
Vielleicht sind wir alle schon die Insassen eines Gesamt-Irrenhauses . Die Verrücktheit der in sich widersprüchlichen Anforderungen springt ins Auge. Die Beamten der Arbeitsämter beispielsweise sollen ihre Klientel als "Kunden" behandeln und sie gleichzeitig bürokratisch schurigeln, sie in Hungerlohn-Jobs hineinzwingen. Die "Selbstverantwortung" in Bezug auf ein gesellschaftliches Zwangsverhältnis, das objektiv nicht mehr funktioniert, kann nur in soziale Katastrophen führen. Die Frage ist, ob und wie lange sich die Menschen das gefallen lassen, wo die Schmerzgrenze liegt. Und die Antwort auf unerträgliche Zumutungen und unmögliche Anforderungen muss nicht emanzipatorisch sein; sie kann sich beispielsweise auch in rassistischen Ausbrüchen entladen.
Es gibt keine "objektive" Kraft, die per se schon die Alternative wäre oder diese in ihrer Existenz repräsentieren würde.
Die Lohnabhängigen (ebenso wie die Elendsunternehmer oder Scheinselbständigen) sind in itself, only the subjects of the competition . The criticisms and alternative may result simply from the emancipatory process of negative experiences, for there is no privileged social site. It is an achievement of consciousness, which is not itself "objectively" is created and therefore may fail. Whether the shape and form, is currently moving towards the manifestations of the capitalist crisis to an emancipatory power that can march in the barbarism stop depends on their learning processes. The question is whether they can soar up to a critique of the social form of modern commodity-producing system, or whether they will remain trapped in the capitalist categories and to degrade to the co-management of the crisis leaves. This is an open question.
The current ideas ("re-regulation" of capitalism, Tobin tax, etc.) engage in any case much too short and are illusory.
would require a fundamental critique of the whole categorial system of social reproduction on the alienation market forces and state. So a critique of abstract "work" of irrational economic logic, the capitalist classes across subject form, the bourgeois gender relations, democratic self-discipline, the legal form and legal fetishistic illusion of false national identities, etc. So, no "class struggle" in the case of the blind presumed social forms found, but a theoretical and practical critique of the common reference system to which one must go first at a distance.
The target may be only a social self-government of the united individuals. But self-government in the capitalist forms would be a contradiction in terms, a self-mockery, self-exploitation, self-oppression in the name of irrational and wrong objectified criteria. Just at its abolition would be involved. Therefore, a self-government beyond blind fetish media. The productive forces of the microelectronic revolution, driven forth by the process of the competition, über das Fassungsvermögen des modernen warenproduzierenden Systems (seiner Vermittlungsformen) hinausgewachsen, die wir jedoch andererseits "verinnerlicht" haben, die unsere Subjektform ausmachen. Um da herauszukommen, bedarf es erst einmal einer intellektuellen Fokussierung, einer theoretischen Reflexion, die sich einen Platz in der Öffentlichkeit erobert.
Das System der politischen Repräsentanzen ist ein Tummelplatz für Karrieristen, Intriganten und Streber.
Viele Menschen haben - auch angesichts dieser Entwicklungen - den Eindruck, dass Wählen noch nie so wertlos war wie heute. Andererseits steht gerade eine "Reform" der Krankenversicherung, die Abschaffung des Flächentarifvertrages und neue Wars on the political agenda. Are these reasons to vote anyway?
Robert Short: The federal election is over this by now, but this ritual act was almost meaningless anyway. The so-called policy, the political system, the related field of political parties, that's all "dead trousers" as far as possible emancipatory effects. More like a whole planet goes through a needle's eye than that of policy could still something to be turned to good. The "form" policy is nothing more than a secondary level and expression of the capital relation to its objective historical barriers dar. policy can only be switched from one instance of capitalist its crisis management. Which alternative would have been because the election?
the purposes only of a defense or mitigation of the worst affronts the system of political representation, but far from a single scrap heap, at best, a playground for careerists, schemers, nerd. For serious resistance requires an extra-parliamentary movement that can not be fence in the system laws, but the possibilities of the natural and social resources, knowledge, etc. einklagt. Even mere symbolic expressions bring hardly anything, in order to contain the unbridled Zumutungspolitik stop would have real interference with the gloves required (mass strike Blockades, occupations, boycotts, sabotage, etc.).
proposed in the arts pages of the Empire in the shape of the theoretical Jedi Toni Negri and Michael Hardt back (See the Globalizers block the globalization ). What do you think of this Spinoza's secret weapon?
Robert Short: "Empire" I think is a lousy book. Hardt and Negri go in my opinion a very wrong concept of "immanence" of: not transcendence from immanence by criticism of the system, but a drive to be thrown back immanence, in its context, almost any developments hyped just because it it 'is ". Thus Hardt and Negri adopted all the terminology of the new economy and occupy the "self-exploitation" of the one-person naively positive (is embarrassingly her book appeared just in time to burst that bubble). Instead of a critical analysis of the capitalist world crisis, they offer nothing but an infusion of ideological "Opportunities" rhetoric, without any conceptual distinction: All is one, everything is per se already "recovery", all is in itself already "emancipation" and so
All illusions of the past 150 years on a "political" value education, to be repeated over the capital as merely external political power relations, etc.. And to top it then takes the place of the radical critique of social The oldest forms of juridical illusion: they want a "world citizenship", a "world social wage", etc., where there is no world state can give. Basically, it amounts to an illusory repetition of the social democratic project of a "recognition" as part of the capital relation to a fictional world level also, and globalization just shows the limits of capitalist reproduction. This union of operaist kitsch and postmodern arbitrariness was probably the swan song of a theory that gets stuck in the capitalist immanence.
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