The Fragile Juggernaut
Marx & Engels on Capitalism, Class Struggle and Crisis
Abstract
Whether loving or hating it, many visualize capitalism as an unstoppable juggernaut. For those of us who would defeat it, we must identify its weaknesses. Fortunately, Marx and Engels’ writings on “crisis” reveal them. They show how its endless imposition of exploitative and alienating work creates such antagonistic conflicts everywhere as to make it, ultimately, a far more fragile monster than it first appears. Each of its efforts to shape social relationships, subordinating them to the work of commodity production and its control over society, has been and can be thrown into crisis by those of us resisting its way of life and seeking to create more appealing alternatives.
Keywords
19th Century; Autonomist Marxism; Marxism; Poland; accumulation; breakdown; capital; circuit; colonialism; exchange value; falling rate of profit; financial crisis; force; ideology; labor law; labor-power; money; overproduction; primitive accumulation; revolution; underconsumption; value theory; work; working classDOI
10.1163/9789004708631ISBN
9789004708631, 9789004708365, 9789004708631Publisher
BrillPublisher website
https://brill.com/Publication date and place
2024Series
Studies in Political Economy of Global Labor and Work, 6Classification
History
18th century, c 1700 to c 1799
19th century, c 1800 to c 1899
Social classes
Sociology: work and labour
Labour / income economics
Capitalism
Social and cultural history