The  Capitalist  System

The Dialectic

Capitalism remains inhuman becaue the labor force' s work is considered as a commodity, a thing, and paid as such.

The labor force -considered as a thing- cost exactely what it needs to reproduce itself the next morning ; food, clothes, etc, the boss will pay all this as he pays oil for a machine.

But the workers' labor is a particular commodity which can produce a value which is more than its own commodity value that is to say the worker will bring in to the boss more than what he had costed him; the wage is thus lower than the labor-value he had created.

The proletariat is exploited and the capitalists corner this surplus of value.

Capitalists look for increasing this surplus by  increasing the workers' working hours  or  productivity.

There's  therefore a class antagonism ; a difference of interests between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

This conflict is strengthened by the competition :

The competition force capitalists to perfect their machines ; they  invest in the equipment  to the detriment of the employment .

The compagnies capacity to make profits decrease ; there's an "underlying drop of the profit rate".

Compagnies in general resist this  profit drop by using the competition between workers and unemployed.

The unemployed people are the " industrial stock army" , that is to say people ready to work for a very low salary they are men, women and  children, thus they add to the competition between the workers themselves, and between the workers and the unemployeds.

By limitting the workers' wages to the minimum, bosses reduce their possible custumers for their products hence a slump in the sales.

There's then an imbalance between the supply and the demand : people have no money anymore to buy.

A crisis of under consumption or over accumulation  (of the investments) happens.

The indepent bosses can't resist the competition and become a proletarians; they sell their working ability.

The working class is more and more numerous and conscious of its exploitation.

The proletariat -because it has nothing at stake- revolt.

The capitalism will fall because of its own contradictions (underlying profit decrease  and over production crises).

The capitalism system is then bound to give way to a classless society ; the communism.

Now, men and women are themselves and the history begins.

The capitalist solutions to avoid the crisis:

Imperalist Wars

One of the solution is to find some outside outlets for the production that imperialism will find in the south of the earth ; imperialism is the climax of the capitalism.

The preparation for war, the war equipment bought by the state gives an outlet to the production.

But this solution has political limits.

Reforms

Reforms are a way to counter the profit slump; the mass production needs custumers so it becomes logical to partly  satisfy them in order to keep them in their customer status.

They are a means to never question the capitalist system, thus, they  postpone the proletarian revolution.

The dialectic is from Marx in The Capital (1867).