Flint's poisoned water and capital's second contradiction

Proyect, Louis
http://climateandcapitalism.com/2016/01/23/flints-poisoned-water-and-capitals-second-contradiction/
Date Written:  2016-01-23
Publisher:  Climate and Capitalism
Year Published:  2016
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX18702

The politicians who poisoned the water supply in Flint are as bad as they come, but it's the system they serve that makes such disasters inevitable.

Abstract: 
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The first contradiction is generated by the tendency for capitalism to expand. The system cannot exist in stasis such as precapitalist modes of productions such as feudalism. A capitalist system that is based on what Marx calls "simple reproduction" and what many greens call "maintenance" is an impossibility. Unless there is a steady and increasing flow of profits into the system, it will die. Profit is the source of new investment which in turn fuels technological innovation and, consequently, ever-increasing replacement of living labor by machinery. Profit is also generated through layoffs, speedup and other more draconian measures.

However, according to O'Connor, as capital's power over labor increases, there will be a contradictory tendency for profit in the capitalist system as a whole to decrease. This first contradiction of capital then can be defined as what obtains "when individual capitals attempt to defend or restore profits by increasing labor productivity, speeding up work, cutting wages, and using other time-honored ways of getting more production from fewer workers." The unintended result is that the worker's loss in wages reduces the final demand for consumer commodities as is obviously borne out by the closing of Wal-Mart stores all around the world this week.

This first contradiction of capital is widespread throughout the United States and the other capitalist countries today. No amount of capitalist maneuvering can mitigate the effects of this downward spiral. Attempts at global management of the problem are doomed to fail since the nation-state remains the instrument of capitalist rule today, no matter how many articles appear in postmodernist venues about "globalization".

The second contradiction of capital arises out of the problems the system confronts in trying to maintain what Marx called the "conditions of production." The "conditions of production" require three elements: human labor power which Marx called the "personal conditions of production", environment which he termed "natural or external conditions of productions" and urban infrastructure, the "general, communal conditions of production".

All three of these "conditions of productions" are being undermined by the capitalist system itself. The form this takes is conceived in an amorphous and fragmented manner as the environmental crisis, the urban crisis, the education crisis, etc. When these problems become generalized, they threaten the viability of capitalism since they continue to raise the cost of clean air and water, raw materials, infrastructure, etc.

During the early and middle stages of capitalism, the satisfaction of the "conditions of production" were hardly an issue since there was apparently an inexhaustible source of natural resources and the necessary space to build factories, etc. As capitalism reaches its latter phase in the twentieth century, the problems deepen until they reach crisis proportions. At this point, capitalist politicians and ideologues start raising a public debate about the urban and environmental crisis (which are actually interconnected).

What they don't realize is that these problems are rooted in the capitalist system itself and are constituted as what O'Connor calls the "second contradiction." He says, "Put simply, the second contradiction states that when individual capitals attempt to defend or restore profits by cutting or externalizing costs, the unintended effect is to reduce the 'productivity' of the conditions of production and hence to raise average costs."
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