Excerpt from Anwar Shaikh's Capital as a Social Relation
"On the one hand, capitalism is a powerful and highly flexible social structure. It has developed its forces of production to extraordinary heights, and has proved itself capable of dissolving or destroying all previous social forms. Its inherently expansive nature has led to the creation of vast quantities of wealth, and to a dominion which extends all over the globe. But on the other hand, this very same progressive aspect feeds off a dark and enormously destructive side whose nature becomes particularly clear when viewed on a world scale. The capital-labor relation is a profoundly unequal one, and the concentration and centralization of capital which attends capitalist develoment only deepens the inequality. The competitive struggle of all against all creates an alienated and selfish social character, imprisons each in an atmosphere of suspicion and stress, and heaps its miseries precisely on those who are in the weakest postitions. Finally, as capitalism develops, so too does its level of mechanization, so that it is progressively less able to absorb labor. In the developed capitalist countries, this manifests itself as a growing mass of unemployed people at any given "natural" rate of unemployment. In the Third World, as the incursion of capitalist relations lays waste to earlier social forms, the mechanized processes which replace them are able to pick up only a fraction of the huge numbers previously "set free." Thus the rising productivity of capitalist production is accompanied by a growing pool of redundant labor all across the globe. The presence of starving masses in the Third World, as well as of floating populations of unemployed in the developed capitalist world, are bitter reminders of these inherent tendencies.
The above perspective forcibly reminds us that capitalism is only one particular historical form of social organization, subject to deep contradictions which are inherent in the very structure of its being. Precisely because these contradictions are built-in, any successful struggle against their destructive efforts must move beyond reform to the rejection of the structure itself. In the 20th century such efforts have taken a variety of forms, ranging from so-called parliamentary socialism to socialist revolution. Whatever we may think of the strengths and weaknesses of these various fledgling social movements, the general tendency is itself part of an age-old human process. History teaches us that no social form lasts forever, and capital as a social relation is no exception to this rule."
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