The other camp of bourgeois economists that arose were those that reflected the interests of that large-scale industrial capital, that developed out of the process of concentration and centralisation, driven by competition, and which is inherent within, rather than exogenous to, capitalism. Rather than seeking to reverse this process, they embrace it, and simply seek to manage it by that increasing role of the state. They are neo-liberals, or conservative social-democrats. As Marx and Engels put it, in Capital III, and in Anti-Duhring,
“This is the abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself, and hence a self-dissolving contradiction, which prima facie represents a mere phase of transition to a new form of production. It manifests itself as such a contradiction in its effects. It establishes a monopoly in certain spheres and thereby requires state interference. It reproduces a new financial aristocracy, a new variety of parasites in the shape of promoters, speculators and simply nominal directors; a whole system of swindling and cheating by means of corporation promotion, stock issuance, and stock speculation. It is private production without the control of private property.”
(Capital III, Chapter 27)
“In the trusts, free competition changes into monopoly and the planless production of capitalist society capitulates before the planned production of the invading socialist society. Of course, this is initially still to the benefit of the Capitalists.
But, the exploitation becomes so palpable here that it must break down. No nation would put up with production directed by trusts, with such a barefaced exploitation of the community by a small band of coupon-clippers.”
(Anti-Duhring p 358)
“The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.”
(Anti-Duhring, p 360)
The bourgeois economists of both these camps see the relations of capitalist production as natural and eternal, but they differ about whether what currently exists is capitalism, with the Libertarians frequently describing, even the US, as “socialist” or “crony capitalism”. If capitalism is natural, the providential result of all previous history, then, once those providential results are established, history ceases, because there is no longer any “bad” to be removed. There is stasis. Anything not conforming to that natural order, such as Stalinism, is an aberration to be restored, and when, in 1990, Stalinism collapsed, that is indeed what Francis Fukuyama declared - “the end of history”.
“Feudalism also had its proletariat – serfdom, which contained all the germs of the bourgeoisie. Feudal production also had two antagonistic elements which are likewise designated by the name of the good side and the bad side of feudalism, irrespective of the fact that it is always the bad side that in the end triumphs over the good side. It is the bad side that produces the movement which makes history, by providing a struggle.” (p 113)
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