features of capitalism’s ageing process

The thing which links the early mercantilist stage of capitalist development with later stages like those of 19th century private capitalism and 20th century state monopoly capitalism is the nature of the accumulation process. Marx characterises capitalism in the Communist Manifesto as where “... the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it. In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour”.

In Capital he stressed that the motive force of this process is not the consumption of the capitalist, but the fact that in order to fulfil his role as a capitalist he has to accumulate. It is competition which drives the capitalist toof raw materials, exclusion of rival capitalists by the erection of tariff walls etc. Price competition is forced to give way to new forms of competitive coercion and this gives us an insight into one of the crucial results of the ageing of capitalism, one that Lenin examined in depth in his Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.

The second related consequence is the inescapable trend towards an increasing role, direct and indirect, of the state as a producer; fulfilling the same role as that performed previously by purely private enterprise.

The results have been remarkable. Already by the 1960s in Italy the state was responsible for the majority of fixed capital formation; in Bangladesh it holds 85% of the assets of what it termed ‘modern industrial enterprise’; in Algeria