Anti-Capitalist Chronicles: The Coercive Laws of Competition

[S3 E25] The Coercive Laws of Competition

In this episode of ACC, Prof. Harvey examines 2 schools of thought within the Marxist tradition, one that focuses on the falling rate of profit, and the other that explores the rising mass. Harvey argues that both schools miss an important contradiction that separates each of them from the other: the role of competition. The coercive laws of competition are crucial for both falling rate of profit and rising mass. He explains why.

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“Marxism always was the critical shadow of capitalism. Their interactions changed them both. Now Marxism is once again stepping into the light as capitalism shakes from its own excesses and confronts decline.”

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[海狸-mv]

Thank you Prof Harvey, this is another great insight, huge to grasp, for understanding our current situation where monopoly practice is becoming a global phenomenon. It's amazing to see you coming up with this kinds of analysis that are both COMPLEX and RELATABLE, and even on a monthly basis! I have a strange feeling that if Marx himself was giving us a lecture today, he will tell us the exact same thing as you did!

[martymadrid]

Wasn't the brentonwoods agreement torn up in 71? Not 51?

[tabu]

Very interesting, didn't even know that those schools of thought exist

[patrickmazza]

Thank you, David, for getting a microphone. Your stuff is too good for an echoey computer mic. Maybe play with looking right in the camera. In terms of oligopoly/monopoly, what about Amazon? Not just trying to dominate the market, but to be the market, to capture all market relations in its fold.

[_ata_]

Glad Harvey straightens out that not all competition is bad. Talking about this is tabu in some activists circles.

[mandinka]

Wow. Harvey pegged Monthly Review and Andrew Klinman in the first two minutes. Yes- those are two sides of a contradictory unity both discussed in Vol. 3

[PoliticalEconomy]

David what are your thoughts on Anwar Shaikh's theory of Real Competition? It seems he stawmans the ideas of perfect competition and Monopoly.

[PoliticalEconomy]

Oligopoly and competition is not incompatible. If the Big Four go by the Lockean Proviso, they will leave some crumbs on the table for small firms.

[海狸-mv]

Also, speaking of the cohesive law of competition, there is something interesting: 2 old socialist countries, USSR & China failed big on this one:
In Lenin's article "How to Organize Competition?" he briefly envisioned what category a socialist society should focus on when competing:

“In what commune, in what district of a large town, in what factory and in what village are there *no starving people, no unemployed, no idle rich, no despicable lackeys of the bourgeoisie, saboteurs who call themselves intellectuals? Where has most been done to raise the productivity of labour, to build good new houses for the poor, to put the poor in the houses of the rich, to regularly provide a bottle of milk for every child of every poor family* ? It is on these points that competition should develop between the communes, ”

He died before realize it, and during the Stalin era, the Stakhanovite movement made the competition focus solely on *increasing* *productivity*, which started to look more and more similar to *profit* *gain* in capitalism. Both are:
1. *an abstraction*
2. *the gain is limitless in theory*
3. *non-material and not very relatable to daily human necessity*
4. *direct relation to wealth* (increasing productivity is directly associated with promotion in career).
Later, the Stakhanovite movement went so out of control, people started lying about their productivity in order to compete with other workers and officials, and even criminalized those who did not produce enough. It seems the cohesive law of competition doesn’t need a capitalistic system to function, when the condition is right, it will fit in. The movement finally stopped developing during the de-Stalinization era, but the Soviet never fundamentally questioned this method since questioning it would delegitimize the entire government structure, which so many were promoted using these structures and they are still in charge.
China went a bit late and copied Soviet mode, but the Chinese version is still in parallel to the Stakhanovite movement, called “the great leap forward”, it failed similarly, like the Soviet, when officials started lying about harvesting, and robbed peasants’ daily food for personal career promotion. Although in China’s case, Mao is both the person who promoted the movement and the one who called off. Later, he did realize there is something fundamentally wrong within the system, and wanted to reform it, in the movement he personally started: The Cultural Revolution, which is still a complex topic today, nobody is 100% certain what is the exactly end goal of this movement, but at some point, China did nearly breaking, and facing the same problem Soviet had: Nobody knew how to fix it without breaking the entire country. The cultural revolution ended when Mao passed away, China opened its market to globe capitalism shortly after, facing the “original” cohesive law of competition.

[tanujSE]

There is hardly any competition among bourgeois as community of women solely belongs to them rest by seducing each others wives put horror of competition over all other which takes various turns from poverty to cheaping of labour force, some privilege seats of best mentally contested

Wish good health to David Harvey

[normalizedaudio]

Game Shows make competition fun. Other side of the coin is like the dark side of the moon.