dalitis

You ask about what these contradictions might be. FYI: a) Unemployment b. Massive income and wealth inequalities (resulting both due to the inherent logic of capital accumulation and deliberate neo-liberal policies) c) The tendency for the labor-day to increase when capital is given free-reign, despite the constant progress of time-saving technology d) The tendency for wage "suppression" even in times of robust economic growth e) The tendency of the system to fall into one crisis after the next (witness the present period) The above, are only some (the most fundamental) "contradictions" inherent in the capitalist system. These can more or less be papered over during "boom periods" but when capitalism hits the fan, they do tend to explode, and subsequently cause at least a questioning of the hegemonic capitalist logic. You also ask who restricts the Left (by that I mean radical/critical thought and the organized working class, roughly speaking) under normal capitalist times. Well, there could not be a more obvious reply to that question. The capitalist owned mass media for one who act as ideological agitators in favor of capitalism 24/7. The financial power of the ruling class that can easily buy-out political leaders (let alone trade-union leaders) that could potentially cause trouble to the system itself. This has been especially pronounced in the Western World in recent decades, but is not as necessary in the Third World since there is little if any democracy there. You can also add the education system that is is designed as to merely re-produce the socio-economic system under which we live in. By "re-produce" we mean both at the material, and the ideological level. For example, the way that many radical thinkers were lured into an academic career of a "post-modernist" trajectory - so as to not ever say anything truly hostile in relation to capitalism - is indicative of the mechanism that I am describing. And last but not least, the productive success of capitalism itself (its ability to raise the standard of living) is the ultimate basis upon which the long-term survival of the system itself relies upon. As for North Korea and Cuba. Well, if your argument is that a venerable socio-economic system that has ruled the globe for several centuries, and now encompasses almost 7 billion people, is more potent than two extremely isolated ex-colonies, then you are right. But that is not what the critique of capitalism is about. Crucial reminder: Capitalism is not just Florida, California, Tokyo, London, Frankfurt etc... Capitalism is also Congo, Pakistan, the favellas, the millions of unemployed (now found even in the most privileged and advanced capitalist nations) and generally the entire globe in all its astonishing misery. Selectively choosing the bits and parts of capitalism that make you feel good about it, is not very much of a scientific argument.

From what I see in the above posts, some people isolate the financial aspect of the economy in order to explain the economic difficulties faced by the world today, and also to account for the growth of inequality. I am not a financial expert, but my logic and knowledge tells me that the fractional reserve banking system was created in order to accommodate the needs of a much bigger and complex economy than that found in the 19th century. If the Fed were to abandon fractional reserve banking, then my guess pertaining to the outcome would be a total economic meltdown.

The Left wins support when the contradictions of the system itself become unbearable for large swathes of society. The Left (that is massively restricted in normal capitalist times) has no power to affect the development of capitalism as you seem to be implying. The tendency of capitalism to fall into crises (be them cyclical or systemic) is 100% inherent in the logic of the system itself. No "conspiracies" are required for capitalism to fall into crisis. It just bread and parcel of its own functioning.

Some thinkers noticed the productive potential of capitalism, but none with the shrewdness of Marx, if you know any writer from that era that rivals Marx in his analysis of capitalism, then feel free to re-produce it, I would be more than happy to read their words myself. Even more importantly, Marx not only sees the immense productive capacity inherent in capitalist social relations, but at the same time, sees the destructive potential as well. Marx, understands that capitalism is heroically progressive, but at the same time a producer of unimaginable misery and barbarism. The triumph of Marx over other thinkers is that he manages to capture the dualism that is inseparable from capitalism. The concept of exchange value, and labor value does not belong to Marx at all. It was David Ricardo's innovation. Marx though, took one step further, and explained the source profit, through the theory of "surplus value" Marxist concepts (dialectics from Hegel, Logic from Aristotle, English political economy, French political theory, Feurbach's critique of ideology) are not original in themselves, what is original, is the way they are brought together in a systematic tour de force that forever changed the course of human history. I wonder how you can claim with such certainty that Marx got the theory of value wrong. Like I said before, Marx's theory of value is not his own innovation, it is inspired from the Classical English political economists (mainly Adam Smith and David Ricardo) Those theories of value were widely accepted within pro-capitalist circles, until Marx himself appropriated them in a systematic thought that went against capitalist logic. Your allegory with Aristotle, Newton and quantum physics sounds quite bizarre to me. Would you be willing to develop it? You claim that language such as that employed by Karl Marx himself is typical of the early 19th century. If that is the case not many people seem to have noticed. Would you be so kind as to re-produce the texts where Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo speak in the dialectical manner of Marx and Engels regarding the capitalist mode of production? In fact I would heavily disagree with you about modern Leftists. In fact the vast majority of Leftists, has long ago abandoned Marxism. That was the case in the period right before the Great War, and even more so, during the neo-liberal period, where all the Social-Democratic parties in Europe were desperate to distance themselves from the working-class and the like. They were arguing that they were for the so-called New Economy and blah, blah, blah. And I do not see how the invention and existence of the Boeing 747 absolves, capitalism, the free market and free trade from all the horrors they inflict upon humanity every passing day. The Marxist hypothesis against capitalism, is not based on the assumption that it cannot carry technology forward (in fact Lenin himself says: "There is no technical challenge that capitalism cannot deal with) it is in fact based on the expectation that it cannot deal with the social problems that simply arise from its mere functioning.

What you are saying about the Golden Party is true, they are in fact doing the body-guard thing. Now to what extent that occurs I do not really know. But latest polls show that support for them is diminishing. In post-elections polls, the only party that increases its support is the left-wing SYRIZA. The reason for Golden Dawn's fall in support (at least for now) were 2 videos that were released in youtube. In one, the leader of the GD party went in a quite obscene far-right rant, and in the other, reporters that tried to cover a GD press conference were ordered to stand up for when the party leader entered the room. The GD bodyguards even gave a military command to the people present in order for them to stand up for the great leader. For anyone who understands Greek, this is Michaloliakos, the leader of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn: This is the instance where the Golden Dawners demonstrated their fascist face:

Anyone that could come up with that in 1848, needs to be taken seriously. Marx admires capitalism as much as he despises it: For those who thought they discovered globalization in the mid 90s or something: Not even Ayn Rand can praise capitalism with such ferocity: But he also gets the low-side of it all as well: If this is not high-prophesy, then I don't know what is.

I am new in here, and I do not know if this forum is right-leaning or left-leaning, but I am from Cyprus (the Greek part that is not under Turkish occupation) and I am quite familiar with Greek politics. It is now definite, that Greece will have new elections in June. This is a positive development for my money, since the results of the last one, did not give any meaningful mandate to any of the political parties in that country. The momentum is with the left-wing SYRIZA party, led by Tsipras, the youngest political leader in Greece. His program revolves around re-negotiating the terms of the bailout memorandums in terms more tolerable to the Greek populace. Another point, the defeat of the two centrist parties (PASOK and ND) was a historical event in Greek history, and could possibly provide a foretaste for developments in the rest of Europe in the coming period.