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Kevin's Reviews > The Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto
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by
Kevin's review
bookshelves: 1-how-the-world-works, theory-socialism-marxism
Jul 28, 2018
bookshelves: 1-how-the-world-works, theory-socialism-marxism
Read 3 times. Last read July 6, 2019 to July 10, 2019.
“A specter is haunting Europe�...
Preamble:
…so begins 40 readable pages that somehow always raises new questions and insights with every re-reading.
--As always, I try to distinguish methodologies from their contextual implementation at a specific moment in time (29-year-old Marx and 27-year-old Engels writing this political pamphlet to rally support for the 1848 revolutions). Indeed, Marx/Engels later write how they did not update the manifesto and kept it as a historical record.
...Eventually I'll update this review to reflect on how a newcomer would experience it.
The Missing/Contentious:
1) While I find the historical materialist stages of development to be a useful analytical framework to try out in your toolkit, some of the rhetoric in Part I do seem Eurocentric in its conception of modernity/progress:
a) Actual socialist revolutions of the 20th century's decolonization process of the Global South/periphery, especially Vijay Prashad's work at the Tricontinental Institute:
-The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
-Red Star Over the Third World
-playlist:
b) More on the “Asiatic mode of production� as well as that of the "Near East" (ex. ...And Forgive Them Their Debts), and recent radical anthropology/archaeology (ex. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity: despite the provocative rhetoric used in this book, I still see much room for synthesis)
2) The emphasis on the revolutionary nature of the bourgeoisie still follows too closely to the paradigm of classical Liberal economics, which seems to set up Marx’s premature projections for Western capitalist countries and their proletarian revolutions. This is most problematic when considering:
a) Imperialism: where Western capitalism resorted to directly destroying competitive (even superior) productive capacities (with the obvious examples of India and China) not to mention genocide and slavery.
-intro: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
-Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
-masterpiece: Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
-The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry
-The Veins of the South Are Still Open: Debates Around the Imperialism of Our Time
-Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
b) Classical political economy� goal of freeing the market from economic rent (“rentier� class relying on unearned income, i.e. feudal landlords with land rents, bankers with usurious debt/interest payments, monopolists with extortionist fees esp. for utilities) has been reversed by Neoclassical (i.e. mainstream) economics, which explicitly avoids analyzing economic rent.
...Marx's unfinished Capital project (which he spent so much of the rest of his life developing) seems to both build on the Classical school (Smith/Ricardo etc.) and transition beyond (paradigm shift):
-ex. Classical/Marxist Michael Hudson distinguishes Finance Capitalism vs. Industrial Capitalism: Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy and
-ex. Classical/Marxist Anwar Shaikh brings a synthesis of Classical + Marx with the central focus on analyzing/critiquing capitalism's war-like competition: Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises
-ex. Marxist geographer David Harvey emphasizes Marx's critique of capitalism's value system (exchange-value triumphing over use-value): A Companion to Marx's Capital. This is particular useful for uprooting our ecological crises: Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World.
3) Marx’s fascinating dissection of capitalism’s irrationalities/contradictions/crises are not explained in the Manifesto (only a couple sentences on the crisis of overproduction).
-Marx's Wage Labour and Capital pamphlet for his (in)famous Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 tome.
-modern intros:
-Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
-World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction
The Good:
Part I � Bourgeois and Proletarians:
--Touches on core concepts in early Marxism’s political economy, starting with “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.�
--While I raised some concerns over a few of the Manifesto’s conclusions, the methodology of analyzing/synthesizing social relations, institutions, history, political economy, and technology led to some prophetic insights:
1) Historical materialism, capitalism, growth and overproduction:
--I like to describe "liberalism" as "cosmopolitan capitalism", and then use the following quote to bring clarity to that sense people have of technology/economics speeding up with humans/communities losing control and becoming cogs in the machine, from 1818 Frankenstein to 1936 Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin film) to 1999 The Matrix [emphasis added]:
--“For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule.�
--“In these [commercial] crises there breaks out a social epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity � the epidemic of over-production.�
--"The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.�
2) Capitalism, wage labour, division of labour and automation:
--"The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers.�
--"Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him.�
...Keep in mind, this is something that Adam Smith (a moral philosopher, after all) recognized with his own focus on capitalism's increasing division of labour, i.e. while the factory output may improve, this logic increasingly destroys the human capabilities in the wage labourer individual.
Part II � Proletarians and Communists:
--Distinguishes “Communists� and briefly addresses common objections (not enough to convince staunch opposition, but a start):
1) Property rights (basically: personal property vs. means of production:
--On the "means of production", it is crucial to understand capitalist theft through privatization, i.e. Enclosures of the Commons, colonialism:
--Marx debunks Smith's so-called "primitive accumulation" (initial accumulation from hard-working capitalists saving up, classic) by detailing the real-world history of violent appropriation, i.e. theft (another crucial point is how the big-bad state cannot be separated from some utopic "free market" capitalism, since the state created and protects capitalist property rights/markets) in the last part of Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1.
--Colonialism/imperialism as the core of global capitalism: Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
--Capitalism and gender: Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation
--Marx's Capital Vol. 1 focuses on capitalist production of "real commodities", as well as the contradictions of capitalism's labour market (as well as mentions of the money). We should synthesize this with the other Karl (Polanyi) on the 3 peculiar markets of capitalism (labour/land/money), which feature "fictitious commodities" since humans/nature/purchasing power are not "produced" (with a cost of production) just for selling/buying on the market:
-Intro: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
-Fraser synthesizing Marx/Polanyi (see comments)
-Source: The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time
2) Work, laziness, family, country/nationality, etc.
3) Finishes with a list of 10 measures for “advanced countries� to adopt; 2 concerns I have:
i) How to defend against counter-revolutionary violence? Was this easier to assume away because the assumption was for the “most advanced� countries to lead the socialist revolutions, thus avoiding imperialist interventions?
ii) How to prevent State hierarchy, i.e. how will the withering away of the State occur? Turns out Lenin addresses this in The State and Revolution, but we need to combine theory with real-world history.
Part III � Socialist and Communist Literature, Part IV � Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties:
--Brief critiques of the other strains of socialism (reactionary, bourgeois, utopian). I found Engels provided helpful context distinguishing “scientific socialism� in: Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Preamble:
…so begins 40 readable pages that somehow always raises new questions and insights with every re-reading.
--As always, I try to distinguish methodologies from their contextual implementation at a specific moment in time (29-year-old Marx and 27-year-old Engels writing this political pamphlet to rally support for the 1848 revolutions). Indeed, Marx/Engels later write how they did not update the manifesto and kept it as a historical record.
...Eventually I'll update this review to reflect on how a newcomer would experience it.
The Missing/Contentious:
1) While I find the historical materialist stages of development to be a useful analytical framework to try out in your toolkit, some of the rhetoric in Part I do seem Eurocentric in its conception of modernity/progress:
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians� intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. [...]I’m eager to synthesize this with later developments in:
United action [of the proletariat of the world], of the leading civilized countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.
a) Actual socialist revolutions of the 20th century's decolonization process of the Global South/periphery, especially Vijay Prashad's work at the Tricontinental Institute:
-The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
-Red Star Over the Third World
-playlist:
b) More on the “Asiatic mode of production� as well as that of the "Near East" (ex. ...And Forgive Them Their Debts), and recent radical anthropology/archaeology (ex. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity: despite the provocative rhetoric used in this book, I still see much room for synthesis)
2) The emphasis on the revolutionary nature of the bourgeoisie still follows too closely to the paradigm of classical Liberal economics, which seems to set up Marx’s premature projections for Western capitalist countries and their proletarian revolutions. This is most problematic when considering:
a) Imperialism: where Western capitalism resorted to directly destroying competitive (even superior) productive capacities (with the obvious examples of India and China) not to mention genocide and slavery.
-intro: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
-Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
-masterpiece: Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
-The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry
-The Veins of the South Are Still Open: Debates Around the Imperialism of Our Time
-Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
b) Classical political economy� goal of freeing the market from economic rent (“rentier� class relying on unearned income, i.e. feudal landlords with land rents, bankers with usurious debt/interest payments, monopolists with extortionist fees esp. for utilities) has been reversed by Neoclassical (i.e. mainstream) economics, which explicitly avoids analyzing economic rent.
...Marx's unfinished Capital project (which he spent so much of the rest of his life developing) seems to both build on the Classical school (Smith/Ricardo etc.) and transition beyond (paradigm shift):
-ex. Classical/Marxist Michael Hudson distinguishes Finance Capitalism vs. Industrial Capitalism: Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy and
-ex. Classical/Marxist Anwar Shaikh brings a synthesis of Classical + Marx with the central focus on analyzing/critiquing capitalism's war-like competition: Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises
-ex. Marxist geographer David Harvey emphasizes Marx's critique of capitalism's value system (exchange-value triumphing over use-value): A Companion to Marx's Capital. This is particular useful for uprooting our ecological crises: Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World.
3) Marx’s fascinating dissection of capitalism’s irrationalities/contradictions/crises are not explained in the Manifesto (only a couple sentences on the crisis of overproduction).
-Marx's Wage Labour and Capital pamphlet for his (in)famous Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 tome.
-modern intros:
-Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
-World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction
The Good:
Part I � Bourgeois and Proletarians:
--Touches on core concepts in early Marxism’s political economy, starting with “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.�
--While I raised some concerns over a few of the Manifesto’s conclusions, the methodology of analyzing/synthesizing social relations, institutions, history, political economy, and technology led to some prophetic insights:
1) Historical materialism, capitalism, growth and overproduction:
--I like to describe "liberalism" as "cosmopolitan capitalism", and then use the following quote to bring clarity to that sense people have of technology/economics speeding up with humans/communities losing control and becoming cogs in the machine, from 1818 Frankenstein to 1936 Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin film) to 1999 The Matrix [emphasis added]:
Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch [i.e. capitalism, with its singular endless profit-seeking, competition’s “creative destruction�, boom/bust volatility] from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real condition of life, and his relations with his kind.--"The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.�
--“For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule.�
--“In these [commercial] crises there breaks out a social epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity � the epidemic of over-production.�
--"The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.�
2) Capitalism, wage labour, division of labour and automation:
--"The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers.�
--"Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him.�
...Keep in mind, this is something that Adam Smith (a moral philosopher, after all) recognized with his own focus on capitalism's increasing division of labour, i.e. while the factory output may improve, this logic increasingly destroys the human capabilities in the wage labourer individual.
Part II � Proletarians and Communists:
--Distinguishes “Communists� and briefly addresses common objections (not enough to convince staunch opposition, but a start):
1) Property rights (basically: personal property vs. means of production:
--On the "means of production", it is crucial to understand capitalist theft through privatization, i.e. Enclosures of the Commons, colonialism:
--Marx debunks Smith's so-called "primitive accumulation" (initial accumulation from hard-working capitalists saving up, classic) by detailing the real-world history of violent appropriation, i.e. theft (another crucial point is how the big-bad state cannot be separated from some utopic "free market" capitalism, since the state created and protects capitalist property rights/markets) in the last part of Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1.
--Colonialism/imperialism as the core of global capitalism: Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
--Capitalism and gender: Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation
--Marx's Capital Vol. 1 focuses on capitalist production of "real commodities", as well as the contradictions of capitalism's labour market (as well as mentions of the money). We should synthesize this with the other Karl (Polanyi) on the 3 peculiar markets of capitalism (labour/land/money), which feature "fictitious commodities" since humans/nature/purchasing power are not "produced" (with a cost of production) just for selling/buying on the market:
-Intro: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
-Fraser synthesizing Marx/Polanyi (see comments)
-Source: The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time
2) Work, laziness, family, country/nationality, etc.
3) Finishes with a list of 10 measures for “advanced countries� to adopt; 2 concerns I have:
i) How to defend against counter-revolutionary violence? Was this easier to assume away because the assumption was for the “most advanced� countries to lead the socialist revolutions, thus avoiding imperialist interventions?
ii) How to prevent State hierarchy, i.e. how will the withering away of the State occur? Turns out Lenin addresses this in The State and Revolution, but we need to combine theory with real-world history.
Part III � Socialist and Communist Literature, Part IV � Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties:
--Brief critiques of the other strains of socialism (reactionary, bourgeois, utopian). I found Engels provided helpful context distinguishing “scientific socialism� in: Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
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Quotes Kevin Liked
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, that each time ended, either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”
― The Communist Manifesto
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, that each time ended, either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”
― The Communist Manifesto
“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered forms, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away; all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind.”
― The Communist Manifesto
― The Communist Manifesto
“Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Workingmen of all countries unite!”
― The Communist Manifesto
Workingmen of all countries unite!”
― The Communist Manifesto
“The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors,' and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, callous 'cash payment.' It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.”
― The Communist Manifesto
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.”
― The Communist Manifesto
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July 28, 2018
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July 28, 2018
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December 10, 2018
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July 6, 2019
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July 10, 2019
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rated it 5 stars
Dec 10, 2018 06:20PM
Good point and sourcing on the 2)nd negative remark! Most marxists wouldn't hold Marx not recognising financial-monopolist imperialism against him, as it didn't exist at the time of writing, but some overtly mechanical thinkers didn't get the memo that Lenin updated Marx for the new situation. I find Samir Amin's "Class & Nation" to be a particular good re-orientation of marxism on third-world principles; despite some overenthusiastic maoisms, he develops a very original and elegant work-around for the "Asian MoP" and the strictly linear feudal-bourgeois-socialist evolution. Something for your to-read list? :)
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Cheers David, I certainly need to start on Amin asap, heard strong reviews for "Unequal Development" but there's newer WSA works than 1977, and of course been eyeing "Eurocentrism". But if "Class & Nation" talks about Asian MoP then I'm intrigued. The whole Marxist/imperialism/WSA convergence is most fascinating, Amiya Kumar Bagchi wrote a dream book on the history of capitalism that I'm slowing going through.
The sad reality is that this "book" will be read by mostly left wing readers and a rare right winger will grab it. I expierenced this when I read Robert Service's book "Comrades. A world history of Communism". As a right winger he misinterpreted Manifesto by turning it upside down. Sadly, he writes so many books about so many complicated topics making it look easy and understandable. What are your thoughts about him or similar historians? Any way, it is very important to read conservative(can call them how you will) authors and to disprove their ideas and so called "facts". In this occasion I am mostly talking about the Europeans.
Edvinas wrote: "The sad reality is that this "book" will be read by mostly left wing readers and a rare right winger will grab it. I expierenced this when I read Robert Service's book "Comrades. A world history of..."Ah, I have heard of Robert Service/criticisms of him, but have not looked into it. Most of my readings have been in political economy; I have a lot of history to catch up on, so I am prioritizing legit accounts first. In general, I share the disgust for conservative (and liberal) accounts of history, and it is frustrating how many casual people adopt these views by osmosis. However, with some patient unpacking, such world views are rendered impotent with regards to (at least) 2 contradictions (as mentioned in Discourse on Colonialism): the colonial problem and the proletariat problem.
I found The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump (second edition, which includes Trump + more focus on reactionary economics) to be quite insightful. And in my subject of focus, I do indeed find it valuable to read the reactionary sides to unpack their tricks and fallacies. In fact, I inadvertently started on the reactionary side of economics (Mises), lured by the anti-interventionist rhetoric of Ron Paul (who promotes Mises' "free market" as the solution to the "State", which in this case happens to be the US empire and its Military Industrial Complex), and I had to wade through Wall Street liberal Krugman before I found any footing.
Pretty good review, I like it!
M(^-__-^)M_ken_M(^-__-^)M wrote: "Pretty good review, I like it!"Much easier to review than the unfinished Capital project ;)
Also "historical materialism" as developed in the main line of Marxism reminds me a bit of the Whig theory of history, in that there is one axis of development for "productive forces" and it's capitalism's job to pursue this axis. The antidote is stuff like Marglin's "What Do Bosses Do" &c, showing the ways in which there are multiple parallel options for development of productive forces, and capital selects some over others even when they're suboptimal, because they're the most efficient at surplus extraction and legibility.
Are these both your accounts or different kevins?
Maria wrote: "Are these both your accounts or different kevins?"I think Kevin Carson's beard gives it away ;)
Kevin wrote: "Also "historical materialism" as developed in the main line of Marxism reminds me a bit of the Whig theory of history, in that there is one axis of development for "productive forces" and it's capi..."Great reference! Reminds me of Capital Volume 1's assumptions that:
1) Industrial capital will discipline finance capital/merchant capital (although Anwar Shaikh's elaborations focusing on profitability is growing on me, as I could only take Hudson's industrial vs. finance capital so far).
2) Centralized factories will replace putting out/subcontracting, whereas Harvey being a geographer points to different time/space contexts for surplus value exploitation even during Marx's time (Engels' factory experience was based in Manchester's large-scale factories, but Birmingham had agglomerated small workshops and they co-evolved in parallel).
Also I guess he doesn't work in public health... I got a little confused because you both added me pretty much back to back and idk goodreads well so I wondered if maybe some authors had personal accounts too. Anyway don't mind me. Over here making things more complicated in my head as usual 😊
Maria wrote: "Are these both your accounts or different kevins?"Everyone is Kevin. We all float down here!
A comparison with Schumpeter is most striking."Capitalism, then, is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary. And this evolutionary character of the capitalist process is not merely due to the fact that economic life goes on in a social and natural environment which changes and by its change alters the data of economic action; this fact is important and these changes (wars, revolutions and so on) often condition industrial change, but they are not its prime movers. Nor is this evolutionary character due to a quasi-automatic increase in population and capital or to the vagaries of monetary systems of which exactly the same thing holds true. The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers� goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates."
"The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U. S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation—if I may use that biological term—that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in."
"Every piece of business strategy acquires its true significance only against the background of that process and within the situation created by it. It must be seen in its role in the perennial gale of creative destruction; it cannot be understood irrespective of it or, in fact, on the hypothesis that there is a perennial lull."
Capitalist crises:
"But capitalist policies wrought destruction much beyond what was unavoidable. They attacked the artisan in reservations in which he could have survived for an indefinite time. They forced upon the peasant all the blessings of early liberalism—the free and unsheltered holding and all the individualist rope he needed in order to hang himself.
In breaking down the pre-capitalist framework of society, capitalism thus broke not only barriers that impeded its progress but also flying buttresses that prevented its collapse. That process, impressive in its relentless necessity, was not merely a matter of removing institutional deadwood, but of removing partners of the capitalist stratum, symbiosis with whom was an essential element of the capitalist schema."
"that the capitalist process in much the same way in which it destroyed the institutional framework of feudal society also undermines its own"
